I recently read this in an editorial: “[Mr. Trump] He takes his inspiration and guidance not from the intelligence and virtue of the Republic, but from the uneducated, the unenlightened, and the malicious. He follows the lowest echelons of public opinion…Let us return to the Constitution, and in our terrible sorrow, banish to the outer darkness the shallow agitators who make jokes and sarcasm; it implies the presence of clowns and worse beings.”
But wait. Let me cheat a bit. These lines are not actually about Donald Trump, they are about President Abraham Lincoln. They were published in the New York World in August 1864.
Lincoln was widely denigrated in his time (and not just in the South) as rude, tyrannical, power-hungry, ignorant — all adjectives some use today to describe Donald Trump. My point? I’m not saying Trump and Lincoln are equal. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But is it not instructive and humbling to know that our opinions, even if we believe them to be based on truth, and even if they are motivated by the purest of motives, may be viewed as misguided by future generations?
Winston Churchill probably didn’t say, “History is written by the victors,” but someone did, and while some might argue that the statement isn’t entirely true, there is enough truth in it to make us informed and humble in our reading of historical accounts.
Similarly, Napoleon is said to have said, “History is a series of agreed upon lies.” Even a cursory read of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (also flawed but evocative) reveals that many of the myths (often understood as history) that animate our country are not based in fact. The popular idea of ​​the first Thanksgiving in the Plymouth Colony is a good example, in that most of it is untrue. The actual situation, and the actual relationship between colonists and Native Americans, is much darker.
After all, our opinions and views must be rooted in the deepest soil of conscience, and we must hold them with “fear and trembling,” always conscious that we may be wrong, or at least that we may be regarded as wrong by our successors.
It seems to me that civilization rests on a soft, sharp fulcrum, where certainty and doubt balance each other. Too much certainty and our position is rigid and fragile. Too much doubt and we waver with every wind. It takes courage to stand up, while recognizing our own shortcomings.
I will oppose Trump and Trumpism as much as I can, but I will always remain humble and honest. That’s the best I can do. I hope that Trump supporters will do the same. That shared humility, or lack thereof, is the only thing that stands between us and the abyss.
Copy story link
Related article
