A look into the mirror
In the 1720s, Jonathan Swift wrote that satire is a mirror where beholders “discover everybody’s face but their own.” Sadly, not much has changed.
When the tent begins collapsing on the Donald Trump circus, watch how many of those who voted for him won’t recognize that we did this to ourselves. Watch how pro-Trump Hispanics won’t recognize their winning vote contributed to their painful loss when a friend is deported.
When Christian nationalism infringes on our First Amendment rights, notice how the anti-Kamala Harris voters protesting the war in Gaza will fail to see the folly of their protest. Notice how evangelicals who voted for the most un-Jesuslike candidate imaginable will not see their own culpability when their chosen one exacts Old Testament revenge against perceived enemies.
Watch how pro-Trump women fail to see their own faces in the mirror when someone they love can’t find pregnancy help. And notice the pearl-clutching already happening with women senators like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who were shocked by Trump’s Cabinet nominations of men who mistreat women. They had ample opportunities to stop Trump before he was elected, but like most Republican politicians, they cared more about reelection than responsibility.
No, when the forgotten chaos of Trump’s first term reemerges, we won’t see ourselves in the societal mirror, because that would require true reflection, and we have come no further in that respect than when Swift wrote his satires against the “folly and baseness” of England in 1728.
Mike Ruskovich
Grangeville
