This Won’t End Well

Trump supporters need a reality check

Richard Turcotte
Politically Speaking
5 min readAug 19, 2022

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An Annisquam sunset [Photo by Richard G Turcotte]

America has long prided itself as being an honorable democracy with citizens loyal to its principles and values.

Most of our leaders have been guided by a desire to create a more prosperous and peaceful future for our nation. The give and take of politics, coupled with the varied interests, needs, and expectations of innumerable constituents, has always made achieving that goal a challenge. That was a given, but it rarely prevented most elected representatives from doing what they could to advance our prospects and fulfill their promises to those they served.

Successes earned and realized incrementally are always a better outcome than the elimination of options in their entirety.

Given so many competing interests and the diversity of its citizenry, American democracy and government could never be a perfect system with every constituency’s interests fully-served each and every time. Mutual understanding of that overriding reality enabled our representatives to cooperate just enough, more often than not, to move the legislative ball a bit further downfield. Disappointment was inevitable, but for a long time, contentious though disagreements often were, citizens also understood that today’s small victory advanced the chances for another soon enough.

The ebb and flow of democracy and governing was accepted as the best opportunity Americans had for peace and prosperity. Our leaders were guided by that same understanding. We tolerated the setbacks, failures, and frequently less-than-perfect accommodations to a broad array of differing and different considerations, circumstances, and needs. It was still the best system we had available. Our achievements speak volumes to that recognition.

We’re not “there” now. We have Donald Trump to assign responsibility and blame for our current hyper-partisan conflicts. It’s actually frightening to consider just how much his disruptive personality has driven most of us to dangerous levels of intolerance for others’ perspectives. It now threatens our nation’s well-being.

Democracy lost to authoritarian evil will be all but impossible to resurrect. More Americans need to understand this.

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Richard Turcotte
Politically Speaking

Partisanship has no good ending. I’d like to do my part to change that. A better future is a choice.