What a big man
What a big man nation
So strong and cool and manly
Got the back of your Don
He’s just another thug do’in what he’s gotta do

Except that actually, that kind of mafia logic makes sense maybe a little in smaller communities where you can’t trust the police and so people band together against all outsiders, including the law.

But what you are doing is voting to hand the power of the government over to a man who has tried to steal that power already and who has in the interim managed to corrupt his own political party and has had time to find the ideas and people to help him successfully replace our wobbly but still functional democracy (a place where people who stand up for honesty, fair play, and competency in government might not always win the day, but at least they don’t routinely find themselves bankrupted, imprisoned, or worse by the government; just go spend a little time in Russia, if you think kleptocracies are cool, or if you imagine we’re already living in one) with a criminal organization that routinely abuses the power of government to fix elections, silence dissent, and oppress political opponents.

You go into a secret ballot box in a nation of three hundred million, daydreaming that you’ve got the back of the Big Man
I guess you’re now part of the Big Man club?
Maybe even he’ll have your back too?
But the Big Man has only his own back, and the backs of those friends, family members, and cronies who stay loyal, who stay on their knees, who keep slobbering on the ring of the man who would be king.

What you are doing is voting for a serial abuser, who thinks “true” and “false” are meaningless tools to get your way in the only thing that matters, which is winning wealth, power, and prestige, and using those spoils to spoil yourself most of all and then the people who rub your belly and make you purr, and then your loyal cronies.

Don’t you feel it? Don’t tell me you don’t know how it works. A man puts his hands on your shoulders. That’s step one. He leaves them there a little longer. That’s step two. He massages your neck and tells you how glad he is to see you. That’s step three. And on and on he goes, always a little further. Because this what an abuser knows: People can get used to anything. And getting used to something is almost identical with submitting to it.

Donald jokes that they’re gonna have to give him more terms to be president. Donald threatens political foes with legal woes, and in his first term in office there is an unprecedented pattern of him threatening legal repercussions for failing to submit to his will, and the US government actually proceeding against Donald’s “enemies of me = enemies of the people”. Donald lies in a manner and degree unprecedented in our politics, and he rails against the “fake news” that has the temerity to fact-check him. He says they will be punished. Out of office he suggests he’ll be a dictator just on day one, and he’ll fix things so his supporters never have to vote again, and he drops hint after hint and doesn’t backpedal them meaningfully when given the opportunity.

Not too much happened in his first term as far as successful retribution goes: the courts and system is still strong enough to thwart his attempts to use the government to crush dissent.

But from the point of view of an abuser, he’s doing quite well:

First, he added a lot of judges, at least some of which seem willing to bend legal logic in order to respect Donald’s prime logic of loyalty to Donald being equivalent to loyalty to the nation; second, he got us used to the idea of a post-reality politics, where the only “reality” is who has power and what they make everyone else accept; third, he got us all used to having his hands on our shoulders and massaging our necks and sliding down under our shirts. Yes: He did a good job of warming us up, of getting us used to his touch, his demands, his special privileges over us. Most people aren’t allowed to spend months trying to overturn a fairly lost election, but King Donald is special: Look, look how his GOP bows to him: That proves that he’s allowed to do anything to all of us because he’s got a posse willing to look the other way while he forces himself upon an entire nation; they have signaled to him and us that he can continue reaching down our shirts, putting his hand on our waist: A little more every day: Yes, his GOP will stand by and either dutifully look the other way, or — for followers of a certain disposition, and supposing the Big Man’s Okay with it — join in the fun.

What abusers know is that you just need to spend a little time every day getting people used to the idea that you’re in charge, that you have special rights and privileges over them, that it is futile to resist, futile to pretend that you can say No to whatever they decide you need to give them.

Donald Trump has the instincts of an abuser.
And he has been prepping us for more and more and more submission to his ego, his drives, his will, his everything.

Oh
but such a Big Man
Such a Big Man Nation
Yes you are!
All grown up, got your big boy pants on.
Yes you do:
It’s a man’s world, ain’t it?
And we’re not gonna let some dumb broad rule over us!
That would be pathetic.
To have a woman be the boss of us!
And look at her show off!
Thinks she knows about politics and government and shit.
And thinks that’s what makes a good leader.
What makes a good leader is being strong, and that’s something only men can do.
Because they don’t just have strong arms and legs and genitals, but also strong brains and hearts!

Yeah?
What about the strength required to put your country before yourself?
And the man currently falling apart into grievance-drunk rants on stages all across this great land:
He doesn’t even have the strength to pretend that he believes this country is about anyone except himself and those who swear loyalty to him.
The strength needed here and now is the ability to go beyond oneself enough to work within democratic norms, rules, and laws to serve the whole nation while protecting a system of government that keeps us all safe from tyranny — not the “strength” to ramble incoherently, scapegoat immigrants, and praise those who clap for you as you threaten to destroy any who oppose you.

Representative democracy assumes that the people will work together and share enough reality to serve as a final check on madness, corruption, and political evil in their shared government. That’s their job. This system of government is anchored in the voters. The voters act as a foundational branch of government. They don’t write the laws, they only choose their representatives, and so their task is to choose representatives who have demonstrated the willingness and ability to be faithful stewards of their government: Yes, we vote for politicians who we think will enact those policies that will be best for us and for the nation as a whole, but most fundamentally, we must make sure our representatives will be good stewards of our shared democracy — otherwise, we lose the joy of living in a nation where we can be both publicly virtuous (fight against dishonesty, corruption, meanness, and incompetency in government) and protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm (in a tyranny, you can only be publicly virtuous to the degree your virtue doesn’t contradict a top-down criminal organization that is interested first and foremost in maintaining and exploiting power over you and everyone else), and our specific policy desires become moot anyway (maybe today the Big Man’s team outlaws abortion; maybe tomorrow they decide to mandate it after your first child, or maybe even always for certain groups).

And all people already always share enough reality to work meaningfully together: We all know that none of our worldviews make any sense to any of us except to the degree we feel, think, and act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind and joyfully-together; and we all know that we can only be meaningful to ourselves to the degree we live in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone. So we all already know we are in this together. Donald loves the lie that half the nation is at war with the other half. But the truth is, this is one nation, and deep inside we all know we agree enough on the essentials to share enough Reality and enough reality to work together as a final check on madness, corruption, dishonesty, cruelty, and bad-faith in government; even as we work together to gently nudge our shared nation and our shared conversation towards the better and away from the worse.

What if instead of asking ourselves what xyz politicians had done for us, we asked ourselves what have we done to create the conditions that will select for and enable politicians who can help the whole nation go forward together? Part of the beauty of a democratic form of government is that it has built into it an incentive for us to all work together to find what’s best for everyone — here again we see a healthy representative democracy pragmatically working with those universal spiritual values without which none of our values mean anything to any of us: We humans are all in this together; a nation divided against cannot stand; and if my success harms you, it also harms me.

What if instead of griping about how our politicians aren’t doing a good enough job, we take a good hard look at the playing field that we have helped to create? And what if we choose candidates based on who can work with us to create the nation we would like to see here and now? We could choose Donald Trump to help us get rid of our ability to meaningfully influence our own government; or we could choose Kamala Harris to help us figure out how to protect our government from overreaches like the one that Donald Trump is guilty of.

Anyway,
God belongs to no one.
Instead,
we all belong to God.
No nation and no individual owns God.
And God loves everyone infinitely, so it is silly to pretend that God chooses some more than others.
Maybe some are fated to be wiser and others more foolish.
But God still chooses everyone 100% and God is so much bigger than we are, that none of us, no matter how shitty, can escape God’s Love and God’s salvation.
So let’s stop pretending
that we or Donald or anyone has special rights and privileges over anyone else
It’s an evil lie
And he should take his hands out of our shirts, away from waists.
And the great thing about this wobbly but yet-functioning representative democracy, is we now have a chance to gently — without violence and/or ourselves committing crimes against our fellows — take his hands off our bodies.

Author: I don’t know
Editor: Tire of alone
Production: Bartleby and Amble
Copyright: Andrew M. Watson