You stepped onto the Trump Train, smiling as the conductor told you that Mexicans were rapists and criminals. You accepted it, even enjoyed it, when the conductor, now the engineer, said that his political opponent should be jailed. You rationalized as “locker room talk” a tacit admission of sexual assault. You explained away the statement that there were “fine people” among the Nazis marching in Charlottesville. You justified adultery and payoffs, and lies about same. You explained away the endorsement of a senate candidate who abused teen girls. You accepted as a “Witch Hunt” the ongoing investigation into the many meetings with agents of a foreign power, the consistent failure to disclose those meetings, the lies about them to cover them up, even the resulting indictments. You rationalized away the undermining of the western alliance on which decades of peace was built, the inexplicable attacks on allies, the inexplicable embrace of dictators and enemies. And now you stammer an explanation for the forced internment of children.
And you accepted all this, rationalized it, justified it, because you were on the Trump Train, baby, and the engineer assured you that the train was on its way to that sunny place where the country would be great again.
But while your imagination was on that sunny myth, the reality of the train ride– that the Trump Train doesn’t travel overland – hadn’t yet struck you.
See, the Trump Train travels underground, and each stop is a bit deeper and darker than the last. Each stop demands that you rationalize a slightly more horrific deed, an incrementally worse atrocity. It’s so gradual and slow that you don’t even realize it, but each rationalization takes a tithe of the moral sense you possessed before you stepped aboard.
And it’s obvious now that the ride will just keep getting darker and darker, demanding more and more of who and what you were until there is nothing at all left.
But, listen: You can step off the train anytime. And you should, because the route the Trump Train is on has no bottom. There is no darkest place; there is only more darkness forever.
Remember yourself. And get off.