Look for the enablers
As we navigate this election season, remember that the ex-president himself is a symptom of an inequitable, discriminatory, and damaging system.
Remember Mr. Rogers’ famous story about learning of a disaster, and his mother comforting him by telling him to “look for the helpers”? It’s a sweet and touching story, and an important way of coping.
There’s a dark side to helping, too. As we follow the first criminal trial of the ex-president, we see the cadre of wealthy, well-educated, and powerful people who enabled his rise to the presidency. In arguments at the Supreme Court, a well-educated lawyer claims a president is immune to prosecution even for murdering a political opponent. In another court proceeding, wealthy bankers must prove the bond they put forward to cover the ex-presidents appeal is really worth as much as they claimed.
One lesson we can draw: In the rise to power of any aspiring totalitarian, look for the enablers.
And then there are the enablers of the enablers: the systems of privilege, wealth, and higher education that enable their participants to ignore the inherent moral and ethical aspects of their choices and actions. Or, worse, to believe that their privilege is a sign of divine preference for their family, ethnicity, birthplace, or class - none of which is earned, all of which is an accident of birth.
Without the wealthy and powerful enablers, and without the systems that generate and support them, no one as dishonest, incompetent, grandiose, and abusive as the ex-president would be anything other than a reality television star and a late-night talk show joke.
As we navigate this election season, remember that the ex-president himself is a symptom. Our fight is against the root causes of his rise to power: inequity, nationalism, supremacy, and the strategic use of fear to divide people from one another.
We win not only by electing better representatives of our democracy, but by constructing more inclusive, equitable, just, and joyful communities. That is our ongoing commitment and work.
Thank you for being a part of this worthy effort.