The Task Ahead: Pull In The Dissatisfied Trump Voters
Yes even though they're condemnable.
As President Donald Trump and unelected president Elon Musk go about shredding not just the US government but our once-great system of health research, our relationships with other nations, our security, our standing in the world, and the general traditions of democracy and justice, I am desperately hoping that we see a backlash, and soon. And I think we will. Prices seem destined to continue to rise. Americans may say they want harsh immigration enforcement, but that will change when horrifying images of sobbing children being pulled from school and confused grannies being arrested in church start to proliferate. I don’t think Americans will like it when our bureaucracies stop functioning: When grandpa can’t get his Social Security payment, when mom gets kicked off Medicare, when your kid’s public school is cutting programs and can’t teach American history, when there are no rangers to let you into the national park, when your town floods and FEMA doesn’t show up, when you see on the news that critical research that might have cured your best friend’s was cancelled. At some point, I think — I desperately, desperately hope — many more Americans will realize the damage the Trump administration is doing, and they will start to question it, or even oppose it.
The hardest job in the world will be to welcome them, to talk with them, and to resist the urge to tell them that they are absolute morons who got us into this mess in the first place. Friend of the newsletter Julian Sanchez put it like this:
He’s right. (Instead, we should primal scream in the privacy of our own homes, or to our friends).
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