On November 8, 2016, 62 million Americans decided it was a good idea to play Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver—and now, they’ve just pulled the trigger.
We will never know just how many citizens of the world will lose their lives as a result of the decision to make John Bolton National Security Advisor. This decision was not made by Trump per se. It was made by those who made the demented decision to put Trump in the White House. They will have to answer to their children—the children who survive, that is.
To a certain extent, every generation hates the generation or generations that came before. Young Americans horrified by segregation in the 1950s and 1960s had every right to be angry at those who crafted and enforced Jim Crow instead of embracing the descendants of slaves as equal citizens. Young Americans horrified by discrimination against the LGBTQ community in the 1990s and 2000s had every right to be angry at those who demonized LGBTQ citizens as “deviants” and “sodomites” instead of recognizing that all love is equal. (Of course, thanks to Trump, discrimination against the LGBTQ community remains rampant.)
Young Americans today have every right to be filled with resentment towards those from previous generations who made the despicable decision to back Trump. Older Americans who voted for Trump inflicted the sort of damage upon the young that simply cannot be repaired.
What will Trump voters say to those young Americans once Bolton’s bombs drop—especially if the countries struck by those bombs decide to retaliate? Will they apologize? Will they say they got 2016 wrong? Will they beg for forgiveness?
Of course not. The selfishness of the Trump voter is unlimited. The MAGA crowd doesn’t do self-reflection. It’s unbecoming, dontcha know.
No wonder the right-wing evangelicals love Trump. They want apocalypse and Armageddon—and the bigoted billionaire may well give it to them. If Trump and Bolton blow up the world, what do they care? They’ll be in heaven with Jesus, or so they think.
Their vote has inflicted hell upon this country and this world. Historians not poisoned by nuclear radiation will look back and declare that Trump’s election was the single most destabilizing international event of the early 21st century. Some Presidents have been bad, even awful. This President is, for all intents and purposes, a weapon of mass destruction.
I’ve mentioned before how difficult it must be for Barbara and Jenna Bush, the level of embarrassment and shame they must feel for being the offspring of a war criminal. Their embarrassment will presumably be dwarfed by the embarrassment and shame Barron Trump will feel when he becomes an adult. His older siblings obviously have no shame, but what about him? What kind of psychological horror will he experience years from now, as he reflects upon his father’s path of rage?
Barron is innocent of his father’s crimes. Those who put his father in power are guilty. History will view them as unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s crimes against humanity. In the name of making America great again, they—and their vote—put us all in peril.
They gave this man power. They gave this world pain.
