I personally am anti Trump because of what he’s doing to marginalized groups, not to me. Because my background is studying and teaching history, I know that the greatest atrocities of the previous century were enabled because people gave a blind eye to injustices of marginalized groups. My wife and I are fairly successful landowning white Mormons in Utah. So Trump’s deportation and authoritarian policies that he’s proposing right now towards the “vermin poisoning our national blood” won’t directly affect us negatively. But in my 39 years of life, one constant I’ve learned is that it might be someone else’s turn in the barrel now. But if I turn a blind eye to that injustice now, who knows when my turn will be? Will anyone stand up for me? Or will they too turn a blind eye to my suffering because what’s happening to me isn’t directly impacting their life?
I think a “politics of selfishness” only enables authoritarianism. We’d benefit more by seeking out a politics that widens our field of vision. That’s my opinion. But you can’t have a country without many many villages. If everyone just looks out for their own family or village, what a sad and pathetic existence we’ll have. The politics of a dry empty amoral greedy husk of a man with the only morality being transactional just leaves everyone angry and empty inside.
