When I logged in to Facebook this morning, I noticed a number of American people saying things such as 'I no longer identify as American'... 'I plan to move to [insert person's favourite foreign country]'... and of course the old favourite, 'not my president'.
My kneejerk was to feel approving. In a democracy, surely it's a good thing if people in general realise it when their country is being badly run. It is a good thing, right? Just as personal outrage can fuel large, scary life changes, such as leaving an abusive spouse, so societal outrage can fuel large political movements. We need the energy that righteous anger gives us to drive our actions, when those actions are daunting.
When I think about it a little more, though, I find it deeply disturbing. Looking at America today, from outside as of course I do, I see so many, and so strong, parallels to prewar Germany that it just isn't funny. I have been seeing this for a long time, of course, but these days I am finding myself among the mainstream. One can hardly go online without seeing someone comparing Trump to Hitler. And there's a part of me that still feels pleased that at last people are starting to see it, but there is a much bigger part that shrinks from the fact that I believe they are seeing the wrong thing.
The thing is, however short it may fall of the ideal, America is still at least attempting to present itself as a democracy. And in a democratic government, it's not all down to one person. That's basically the whole idea of democracy, right? You don't have a king, or an emperor, or a dictator or whatever. You have a president, and that president is elected by a (however flawed) democratic process. And the moral result of this is to spread the responsibility right out through the populace. It is the American people who made President Trump possible, just as it was the German people who enabled the rise to power of the NSDAP. The Trumps of the world, the Hitlers, the Duttons, the Abbots, are not the disease; they are the symptom of our societal sickness. And just as these individuals are not single-handedly responsible for their rise to positions of power, we have to face up to the fact that is the people of each nation who helped them to achieve those heights, and we must accept our share of the responsibility for every stupid, vicious thing they do.
So, Americans. Let's not hear so much about your disapproval of the mess your country is in. It's been in trouble for a long, long time, getting worse every year. Let's rather hear about what you plan to do about it. Because this is not something that was done to you, of which you are the helpless victims. No, this is something you did, yourselves. You did it, not just with your votes on election day, but with your compliance, for years, decades, with your culture of greed, of fear, of celebrity worship, of dehumanising Blacks, gays, women, children and other groups, of 'rendition', of torture of prisoners, of grabbing everything you could get regardless of who then went without.
It was you all the time.
