President Trump Stress Disorder (PTSD)

by Madeleine Kando

Yesterday, I watched Trump addressing a crowd of core supporters at the American Conservative Political Action Conference. **

My visceral reaction was a tremendous sense of doom. Not because he said anything new, which was accusing ‘the dishonest media’ and repeating all the platitudes that we heard during his campaign, but because of the crowd’s reaction. The speech went on for an hour and as the crowd exploded in a chant of ‘USA! USA!’ shivers went down my spine. At the height of this frenzy, Trump turned his back to the audience, showing the world that they have completely surrendered to him and nothing that he can do will change their allegiance to their leader.

How did we get to this state of madness? Gone are the good old days when I could go about my daily life, a life of relative harmony, a life of simple pleasures like taking walks in the forest or wonder whether it was too early to plant my seedlings.

Trump has put an end to all this normalcy. Now I worry about politics every minute of the day. It is like finding out that your child has a major disease and suddenly all your time is taken up by learning everything about that disease and feverishly trying to find a treatment plan. But in the end, would I not rely on the medical experts to tell me what to do?

These days, I get hundreds of petitions, asking for my support, my opinion, my signature and of course a donation. But am I responsible for the country’s policies and the mess we are in? I am just a private citizen who has to spend her time earning a living, taking care of her children and paying her taxes.

What happened to our elected officials and the party we voted for? Isn’t it their job to fight it out by compromise and deal making?

I am not against activism. In fact, I joined the Women’s march, I am active in several protest groups and I write daily emails to my senators. I read the news; I keep myself informed ad nauseam. I worry about the freedom of the press, about the repeal of Obamacare and whether Medicare will still be around in a few years.

It is true that the last 20 years have been especially crappy and I can understand why so many people are angry with ‘the Establishment’. The Iraq war, New Orleans, the financial crisis and the bailouts. There has never been a time when so many have lost complete confidence in the way they are represented. It is usually the less affluent that have paid a higher price and are angrier.

In his book The Twilight of the Elites and the End of Meritocracy, Chris Hayes explains that this disillusionment is due to the failure of the ‘Elites’ to do their job. We think that we are electing the brightest to represent us, but our Meritocracy is dead. The only thing it accomplishes is to increase inequality in our society, which is pretty much the source of all our troubles.

Now that our Elite has turned malignant, is there any chance we can change their ways from the bottom up? We cannot all be activists. There is just not enough time in a person’s day. Besides, without a clear understanding of what’s wrong, how do we know what to be active about?

The only hope I have is that there are enough members amongst our ‘Elite’ that have kept some of their moral compass. I have not lost ALL my trust in our institutions. Not yet. In the meantime I will keep writing my emails and hold up signs in front of my State House and hope that soon I will remember this period in my life as a bad dream. leave comment here

** The CPAC is a brainchild of the ACU, the American Conservative Union, a political organization whose mission is to promote conservative ideals and pump up and motivate its conservative members. There is no liberal equivalent to the CPAC.