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Why Do I Find It So Disturbing? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-18
Why do I find it so disturbing?
Every week brings news — abundant news on multiple fronts -- that should disturb any sane American: this wrecking-ball presidency battering our nation and the world, while the party this lawless President has captured ratifies his every move.
So why, last weekend -- in view of this ongoing national catastrophe -- was I more intensely disturbed by something so small: a man weighing in against my weekly op/ed column in the online comments?
This has been going on for years, and this week – not for the first time – he was insisting that, when it comes to what’s wrong on the American political scene, both sides are similarly at fault.
As I have for years, I responded on that online thread, making a strong case for the obvious. But that’s just for the sake of the “audience,” for my history with this man has made it clear that no matter what happens, he’s not going to see that he’s been supporting a political force that is consistently working to make the world worse.
Seemingly a small thing, so why was I so profoundly distressed over the next couple of days.
Partly, it is because I’ve had a friendly relationship with him for several years, in a context where we avoid politics. So it is disturbing to see someone — a sweet man who has shown an exceptional level of basic decency (apart from habitually lending his support to the fascistic destruction of our country) -- use his voice to support a political force that no longer even hides its “Evil.”
It is also wounds me to see someone of his intelligence (more than good enough for college), and who actually exposes himself to news outside of the right-wing bubble, weirdly not see what even just the news of one week makes blatantly clear about what’s in charge of his side of our polarized country.
At one point, he seemed to be coming around to the obvious truths I kept pressing in our online conversations. But then -- as America was facing what was by far the clearest presidential choice in the nation's history, there it was: a Trump flag flying in his yard. Like a ball rolling back downhill.
My friend's Trump flag shook me badly. I stepped away from our friendship for months, torn by the question: how could a “good person” align himself with Evil? How could a man with reasonable intelligence embrace so many obvious lies?
This “good person” also writes columns filled with patriotic devotion to America’s democratic and humane values. He seems to believe quite sincerely in those values. And I have no doubt that he himself has always played by the rules. Yet somehow he fails to see that the party he supports is continuously trampling on our nation's longstanding rules.
It is disturbing because this patriot’s supporting the opposite of what he believes in, and believing lies that couldn’t be more obvious from a known continuous liar, makes him representative of a whole huge contingent of Americans. There are a whole lot of “good people” in Conservative America who do this weird thing my friend has done, supporting Evil and believing Lies.
For a decade I have tried to understand how a human mind could get so broken in such ways. Despite those years of effort, I still find it mysterious. So when my friend insists -- ludicrously -- that "both sides" are equally at fault, that reminds me of my failure to understand. That reminder adds to my distress.
How could it be clearer that -- while the Democratic Party is behaving as a normal American party (moderate and generally seeking the nation’s good), the Republican Party has become something whose destructiveness is unlike anything seen here before? A force using its power to dismantle the constitutional order and install an authoritarian, fascistic regime.
Both sides? It boggles my mind—and in a disturbing way.
His both sides comments triggered me because a person I care about is displaying a pattern that Trump’s power has always depended upon. Evil capturing Good, Lies prevailing over Truth.
How am I to understand the human psyche if something like this is possible? So disturbing that decent people can become allies of Evil, despite holding good values, and can, despite being intelligent, buy an obviously False Picture of the world.
Rather than just sit there in my distress, I wanted to do something with it.
My impulse was to write him privately, to tell him how deeply disturbing I find what he’s doing. I even worked with my AI on what such a message might look like.
But I could not convince myself it would accomplish anything. Nothing I could say would disabuse him of his political delusions. If oceans of daily evidence cannot open his eyes, how could a little shower of my words?
Is sheer honesty reason enough? Perhaps there's value in simply bearing witness — just telling him plainly that this is how I see him. For I believe in the Truth. And these days, in America, the Truth is not just on the ropes. It is on the mat.
And that, finally, is what disturbs me most: that someone intelligent and decent can look straight at a Destructive Force at work, and not see it. This is what has mystified so many politically sane Americans, beholding what has happened with friends and family in Conservative America.
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