It is possible to look at the Trump Event, and intentionally place this noisy rite of passage in a more useful (for the understanding) context.
Part of the problem is not so much Trump&Company, but rather the often too reactive responses. Passions are not helpful if they get in the Way of the Seeing.
Human societies are alive, on multiple levels, given that all their constituent parts are living human beings. If – as many of us do – we hold that there is a depth to be sought in the individual human being, then that should be true also for the organisms of our social existences: family, community, religion, school, as well as kind./type and level of government.
Living organisms are born and die. They undergo metamorphosis.
America is watching (and participating in) a dying of a part, that has gotten old, rotten, and useless.
What Trump&Company are is just a more naked (obvious) reality to politics as usual. He was better at the lying, and more outrageous at inflaming of passions. Most ironically is the increasing tendency that elected people who don’t know anything other than what they hate.
That didn’t just happen recently. It is as old and tired as any other process internal to government. Rotten begats rotten, and a lot of citizens don’t care, as long as their favorite bias is on top. Older white folk in America have actually good reasons to not trust liberal elites (too much intellect doesn’t fix the plumbing very well). The Kennedy-folk put Harvard in charge of a war, and we saw how well that went.
What this means is that the cure for Trump et.al. is not out there in the political aethers, but inward in our own hearts.
https://thecollectiveimagination.com/why-the-trump-voter-is…/
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 