The Big Creep

I recall once a use of the word "you" that stunned me, coming from a German expat who worked mostly in Africa. It wasn't personal and individual, but a collective use, referring to me as an American and wondering how "we" could have resoundingly reelected the obviously rogue, illegal, incompetent government of George W. Bush after witnessing the destruction he and his hoodlums had caused already.

The damage was clearly still building to its climax in economic collapse and international military and diplomatic humiliation, so maybe we were only dancing with the girl we came with, out of a sense of honor or some other misguided, idiotic, chivalric try at consistency driven by vanity and false pride of a playground level of sophistication. Whew, I'm glad we survived that! It was an aberration!

Not so fast. Enter Trump.

Perhaps we would still like to think "we" are good people at heart and mean well but it isn't going to fly anymore--not since Trump, and reasonably much sooner. The level of denial involved in the conviction that we aren't represented by the actual, murderous, grotesquely brutish effects of our elected government is too great to stomach and suicidally addictive in its severity. It is as epic in its aspect as it is cowardly. 

It requires a level of dissociation worthy of the Taliban and other such groups that embrace the inevitable dishonor of a personal code of narrow, tribal focus, raping and murdering at will in the name of some assumption of a divine mandate. How are we different? We aren't anymore and Trump proves it. Donald is representative of us. No protest is enough. It never should have happened and "we" can't disown it.