We Need Their Changed Minds but All Is Not Okay
Lots of Trump voters will be changing their minds. We need to work with them to change directions back toward more sane ways of doing things, but that does not include forgiveness. The two things can, and should, be kept separate.
Many of his voters have long since lost faith in him. Many more now will be against his having gotten us into another Middle East war. Many others will be against him in a strictly selfish way, having to pay high prices for gas and having that change their feeling toward him.
When midterm elections for Congress and local and state elections come up many of those people may just not vote rather than support Republicans or Trump-supporting candidates, or some may vote for Democrats and other candidates. That’s great. We need all the help we can get to turn things around. We need to have an attitude of working with them. Maybe not happily, but nevertheless eager to get their help. Going forward for years to come, if some general sanity returns to politics and to how we act toward one another as a society, we will need to have a willingness to work together.
That is not the same as forgiveness. Someone having changed their mind about what they think of Trump’s presidency does not change a fundamental fact. In 2021 Trump did everything he could to instigate an insurrection. His efforts succeeded in creating the attack on the capitol. Then he waited before doing anything to call it off, clearly hoping it would succeed. He even said things that amounted to inviting the insurrectionists to attack his own Vice President, Mike Pence.
The insurrection was an attempt to overthrow everything that is most basic about our country. To overthrow the democratic transition of power, to overthrow democracy, and all the rights that our constitution acknowledges. That’s true because if who is in power becomes a matter of who is more violent then it destroys the foundation all the rest is built on. If power is chosen by violence then obviously such a leader would have no hesitation to use violence to get anything else he wants. If he doesn’t like you he might have you arrested and jailed with no process, or a fake process. If people aren’t safe in that way then they have no rights.
What is ironic is that even the insurrectionists were giving up their rights. While they were convenient allies for Trump in that moment, if the next day he wanted their property to put up some monument to himself, he would. Their rights would have been gone too. Trump tried to destroy all of the basic goodness at the foundation of what America is.
Then four years later an enormous number of people, having witnessed that insurrection live on TV, voted for him again. That is not something to be forgiven. It is in some ways close to the analogy of a battered wife. Similar to a man who beats his wife to try to force her to stay, then later quits the violence and goes along with divorce. Yes, the wife then has to meet peacefully with him in the courthouse to process the divorce, and they may have to meet peacefully for years going forward to deal with child or custody issues. They have to find ways to go forward and make life work. But that does not mean she forgives him, or should. Changing his mind about violence, deciding a different way of going at things will be better for him, is a chance to make life work again, but it is nothing like a reformed person who deserves forgiveness.
We’ll take all the people we can get who want to change their mind, but don’t mistake that for forgiveness, or that all is well, or that all is good now. It’s not. It’s just the practicality of having to find ways to move forward and make life work.
“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.
