Kustra: President Trump’s base needs a shot of compassion and empathy
Like so many Americans, I thought Donald Trump’s candidacy for president in 2016 was a joke and any number of Republican candidates would be able to capture the nomination. I was wrong then, but I since learned from his four years as president that nothing comes as a shock anymore when it comes to the depths the man will go to lie and cheat his way through his presidency.
What is more perplexing is how so many Americans fall for his narcissistic and arrogant tirades at his campaign events. And just when I thought I would never hear anything more outrageous than what he said at the last rally, he shows up in Iowa recently to greet a wildly enthusiastic crowd of supporters and finds a way to insult his audience, most of whom apparently are just masochistic enough to enjoy his insults, aimed directly at them.
Trump complained about how news of floods in Iowa, subsequent crop damage and hurricanes in Florida knocked his Nobel Peace Prize nomination out of the news. He shared his discontent with Iowa supporters living in the very state devastated by flooding and significant crop damage. First of all, a Nobel Peace Prize for a president whose incendiary tweets have sparked the fires that white supremacists and the radical right ignited on the streets of our cities? Hardly the peacemaker and hardly a set of qualifications for the Noble Peace Prize. And never mind that, according to FactCheck.org, the Nobel website identifies a cast of thousands eligible to nominate a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, not exactly a juried process of nomination. Proof of that is the recent nomination of strongman Vladimir Putin.
How could any politician, much less the president of the United States, be so insensitive and so insulting as to complain in the very state that has suffered from a natural disaster that news of such events got in the way of his Nobel nomination? The more important question is what in God’s name are those folks in the audience doing supporting a man who has just minimized serious weather events and their impact on the lives of fellow Iowans. Why wouldn’t they simply walk out of the room and finally admit the man has taken leave of his senses and, in the process, insulted the entire state of Iowa and its citizens?
Trump’s focus on his own narrow and selfish objectives reminds me of the reverse of such narcissism when President Kennedy captured the imagination of a generation of young people by exhorting them to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I built a career in the public service influenced by Kennedy’s words.
If there’s a modern-day version of Kennedy’s call to action to put aside considerations of self and think about how to give back, it’s the new documentary, “The Way I See It,” Pete Souza’s remembrance of the Reagan and Obama administrations. Souza had a front row seat as the White House photographer who was the “fly on the wall” taking photos of Reagan and Obama every day of their presidencies.
There is a moment in the film when President Obama travels to Sandy Hook to offer his sympathy and embrace parents whose children were gunned down and killed in their own school. As he holds one mother tightly as she weeps on the president’s shoulder for her 6-year-old who was among the victims, her husband utters words that resonate today in the wake of countless insensitive and hateful remarks Trump has leveled at women, minorities, the disabled and others whom his rallies mock and deride.
David Wheeler said simply, “There’s no substitute for empathy. It is foundational for the relationship between human beings.” In a nutshell, Wheeler captured what is most disturbing about Trump’s tweets, his rally rants and the crowd’s reaction. Trump will move on at some point, either because he loses in November or because he finishes his second term four years from now. But either way, the anger and hate he has fomented will not disappear just because he is no longer president. Trump tapped into a seam of appalling human behavior totally incapable of imagining what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes or show compassion for those struggling with life’s challenges.
Whether Trump is reelected or not, we must find a way to build bridges to those folks who have had their prejudices celebrated and encouraged by Trump. We must find a way to broaden the narrow perspectives of those who demonstrate so little compassion or empathy for others. We must find a way to help them see themselves as part of a mosaic of Americans who come from all walks of life, who come from all corners of the earth, who worship God in their own way, who think differently about the issues facing America, but who can stand united with those with whom they differ celebrating their good fortune at living in the greatest nation on earth.
Some have already written off America as having its best days behind it thanks to how Trump has driven so many of our citizens into a 51st state of hate and vitriol. I think there’s still time to reach out and get them back, still time to educate, still time for the media to show an America that heeds the prescription the father of a 6-year-old gunned down at school offered the president of the United States.
Compassion and empathy must be our guiding lights as we reweave the social and moral fabric that has frayed at the edges.