Connections: Fear and Loathing

There we were, seven of us, in a circle with prosecco in stemmed glasses and lovely hors d’oeuvres on a table at center. Like-minded people, we were talking about Trump. What else?

It’s easy to go on about the president. Each of us had something to contribute to the conversation, a bit of news the others had not heard or a droll comment. When I asked if anyone had a friend who voted for the president, one of the seven said he had tried without success to talk someone out of it; another said the same about a parent. When I asked if, subsequent to the election, anyone had spoken about national issues with Trump supporters, or made an effort to do so, the “nos” had it. We admitted we lived in a bubble.

The conversation continued, and we all said we had received endless email requests for money for candidates in other states, whom we might not have heard of previously; we agreed that after the election many political and environmental organizations had been persistent in asking us to sign petitions against certain actions emanating from the White House. But my friends looked askance when I described a problem I have with some of these relentless petition drives: It sometimes seems, I said, that we have forgotten that in this country everyone is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. 

Among myriad others, I have been asked, for example, to demand that Jared Kushner lose his security clearance. This proposal and others like it are based on allegations of wrongdoing rather than evidence presented publicly and reviewed impartially. Are we succumbing to something we accuse the president and his cronies of doing — basing our actions on personal bias or emotion? If so, how can we so easily brush aside the president’s claim that Democrats are promoters of falsehood or that the press is biased?

There is, of course, a world of difference between petitioning for the resignation of a presidential appointee who may have broken the law or petitioning for the removal of top federal officials placed in charge of agencies that they had fought and even litigated against before getting the nod from the president. I know enough about Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, for example, to want him out, even if he conceded during his Senate confirmation hearing that he didn’t believe climate change was a hoax. 

Half the people I know are jumpy, walking around trying to stay calm, pushing down anxiety that the president will bring on a crisis, perhaps even a nuclear disaster. Six months in, and many federal agencies are understaffed and in increasing dissaray. Six months in, and the shock has worn off. What more can we do than sign petitions, pour drinks, and have world-weary conversations with our fellow bubble-dwellers?