James 4:1 – “We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us”
So here we are, America, staring into the bloodshot eyes of a freak show. Donald Trump is president – a man so soaked in narcissism and ignorance, it’s a wonder he hasn’t drowned in his own reflection. And yet, here we are, scratching our heads in disbelief, wondering how the hell we got to this point.
We should have known, I guess. The signs were everywhere — loud, brash, and hideous in the way that slapped you in the face.
I thought we were better than this. I thought we had evolved beyond the primitive, animal instincts that led to leaders like this. But no. What we have now is a nation in thrall to spectacle over substance, to empty promises over real action.
The most disheartening part of Trump’s victory was not just the man himself, but what his election revealed about the state of the country. It exposed the deep fissures in our social fabric — the economic inequality, the racial divisions, the mistrust in our institutions. Trump’s rise was no fluke; it was the culmination of years of corporate corruption, endless wars, and the spiritual rot of an entire political system that turned its back on the American people.
But this isn’t the America I grew up with — the one that prided itself on its intellectual capacity, on its capacity for reason and progress. We had our flaws, sure. We were a country of contradictions, always walking the line between our ideals and our reality. But we were trying. At least we made the effort to do better, to push the envelope forward, to correct our mistakes.
I thought the American people, when faced with a candidate so blatantly unqualified, so unapologetically self-serving, would make the right choice. I thought we had learned from history, that the lessons of demagoguery and authoritarianism had been hammered into our collective consciousness. But instead, we elected a man whose idea of governance is tweeting insults and leveraging his position for personal gain.
Trump’s supporters find comfort in the simplicity of his narrative. Women, minorities, immigrants, the media — these are the visible villains he conjures to explain the complexities of their lives. For them, it’s easier to blame these groups for their economic anxieties, cultural fears, and feelings of disenfranchisement than to confront the deeper, more complicated issues at play. Like Trump, they crave simple answers, black-and-white distinctions between “us” and “them,” and the reassurance that their problems are caused by something they can easily identify and vilify. It’s a narrative that doesn’t require introspection or nuance — just a scapegoat, and Trump provides it in spades.
I thought we were better than this. Maybe we were. But it sure as hell doesn’t look that way now.