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A
wounded bear is a dangerous thing. Detested and defeated, Donald Trump
is now in a tear-the-country-down rage. Day after day, he rips at the
last remaining threads of decency holding this nation together. His
opponent is the devil, he says — hate her with all your heart. Forget about the rule of law. Lock her up!
He’s
made America vile. He’s got angel-voiced children yelling “bitch” and
flipping the bird at rallies. He’s got young athletes chanting “build a
wall” at Latino kids on the other side. He’s made it O.K. to bully and
fat-shame. He’s normalized perversion, bragging about how an aging man
with his sense of entitlement can walk in on naked women.
Here’s
his lesson for young minds: If you’re rich and boorish enough, you can
get away with anything. Get away with sexual assault. Get away with not
paying taxes. Get away with never telling the truth. Get away with
flirting with treason. Get away with stiffing people who work for you,
while you take yours. Get away with mocking the disabled, veterans and
families of war heroes.
You
know this by now — all the sordid details. For much of the last year,
the Republican presidential nominee has been a freak show, an oh-my-God
spectacle. He opens his mouth, our cellphones blow up. But now, in the
final days of a horrid campaign, an unshackled Trump is more national
threat than punch line. He’s determined to cause lasting damage.
Is
there one sector of society he has yet to maul? Until this week, it was
the denial wing of his own party, those “leaders” who looked the other
way while their leader walked all over the Constitution.
But
those who take pleasure in watching Trump destroy the Republican Party
are missing the bigger picture. He’s trying to destroy the country, as
well. Civility, always a tenuous thing, cannot be quickly restored in a
society that has learned to hate in public, at full throttle.
Trump
has made compassion suspect. Don’t reach out to starving refugees —
they’re killers in disguise. Don’t give to a charity that won’t reward
you in some way. Don’t pay taxes that build roads and offer relief to
those washed away in a hurricane. That’s a sucker’s game. We’re not all
in this together. Taxes are for stupid people.
Every
sexual predator now has a defender at the top of the Republican ticket.
The most remarkable thing about last Sunday’s debate was Anderson
Cooper having to school a 70-year-old man on workplace taboos that most
of us learn on our first job.
“You
described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,” said
Cooper. “That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually
assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
What
you heard was the lecture the human resources director gives just
before saying, “You’re fired.” Trump could not get hired at the
drive-through window at a Jack in the Box. Knowing about his history
would make any employer liable. It took decades to get the workplace to
that point where Trumpian predators are shunned. Given the biggest
pulpit in the world, Trump is trying to bring that consensus down.
He
calls it locker room talk. The locker room has pushed back,
resoundingly. Let’s call it what it is — the workplace. And as Trump
told Howard Stern in 2005, when he bragged about his voyeur intrusions
into backstage beauty pageants, “I sort of get away with things like
that.” He made a similar comment — the blueprint for his actions — in
the 2005 television tape that has blown up in his face. If he can do it,
any creep outside of the celebrity bubble should be able to get away
with the same thing.
He’s
destroyed whatever moral standing leading Christian conservatives had —
starting with Mike Pence. Their selective piety is not teachable. Take
solace in one of the small acts of courage breaking out in recent days: a
group of students at Liberty University telling their Trump-supporting
president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to practice what the school preaches.
Trump
is “actively promoting the very things that we Christians ought to
oppose,” the students wrote. These young people, at least, are smart
enough to see what Trump is doing to their world.
It
will take many people like those students, and like the first lady,
Michelle Obama, a model of decency and class, to repair the awful damage
Trump has done.
In
a powerful speech Thursday, the nation’s most respected public figure
scorned the “hurtful, hateful language” of Trump and its effect on
children: “The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our
ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything to a
woman. It’s cruel. It’s frightening.”
So
it has come to this: The core lessons that bind a civilized society are
in play in the last days of this election. We long for family dinners
where Trump no longer intrudes, for tailgate parties where football is
all that matters, for normalcy. Remember those days? They may be gone
forever.
Read more articles from The New York Times, here.
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