Looking Backward on the Presidency of Donald Trump
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/the-election-of-donald-trump/401579/
That’s how President Donald John Trump began his inaugural address, that clear morning in January of 2017. The fact that Gandhi never said these words was among the very least of our problems. Besides, the line drew rapturous applause from the crowd. According to a joint statement released by the White House and Nielsen, the Trump Inaugural drew the largest television audience in human history. As President Trump himself pointed out in his second press availability that afternoon, the numbers would only go up, once you factored in DVR....
Anyway, there’s no need to belabor the details of how the next four years unfolded: the budget crisis, President Trump’s impeachment, Vice President Cruz’s inauguration, the second budget crisis. It’s all pretty straightforward. It was a painful and frightening time, to be sure. And while it didn’t bring about the collapse of society, it did hurt us. Our economy suffered, as did our standing in the world. (Relations with Mexico remain tense.) One bright spot: We elected a man who loves to name things after himself, but all we named after him is the “Trump Recession.” He’ll be remembered for that forever. The irony was almost worth the price.
And maybe it was a price the American people had to pay. Maybe Trump was a mirror, and we hated him because we hated what we saw in our reflection. We were coasting and knew it. A generation of elites prized shamelessness and ambition over virtue. Our newness and pride as a nation didn’t protect us from decadence, but it did allow us to ignore it, glued to our grievances and our phones as our culture and politics grew ever more brittle and shallow and crass.
In the end, Trump is what America had earned. Trump is what America deserved. Trump was our reckoning. And while his rise to power was born of our failings, it also forced us to find our strength. It’s amazing how adaptable we are as human beings, isn’t it? Trump saved us.