Reconciliation Despite Trump’s Lies?
Published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(Germany) on 19 November 2020
by Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger (link to
original)
The new American president faces an onerous task, one that even his predecessors failed to accomplish. How does Biden plan to reconcile and unite the bitterly divided nation if Trump continues to add fuel to the fire?
The future American president, Joe Biden, faces expectations that will be incredibly difficult to meet considering the situation across the nation. He has set himself possibly the greatest task of all, apart from curbing the spread of COVID-19: to overcome the division in American society and to unite the different groups of people. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama also made this their goal but at the end of each of their terms in office, however, the country was left in an even worse state. And that is to say nothing of the state in which Donald Trump has left the country. In Trump’s case, though, he did everything he could to set the different groups against each other. When a gesture of reconciliation was needed, he added fuel to the fire instead.
And he continues to do so. Though he has no verifiable evidence, he still claims that Biden stole his election victory, that the vote was manipulated. Anyone who says the opposite, such as the director of an important cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is fired. That is the way things work under Trump, the real estate mogul that landed in the White House. Objection is punishable, while lying is the trump card. Everyone knows this by now and the consequences are disastrous. Such action undermines the institutions of American democracy. The vast majority of Republican voters actually believe that Trump is the rightful winner of the election. And he keeps working on his story, despite the fact it is a figment of his imagination. How can the nation be reunited in a situation like this?
The future American president, Joe Biden, faces expectations that will be incredibly difficult to meet considering the situation across the nation. He has set himself possibly the greatest task of all, apart from curbing the spread of COVID-19: to overcome the division in American society and to unite the different groups of people. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama also made this their goal but at the end of each of their terms in office, however, the country was left in an even worse state. And that is to say nothing of the state in which Donald Trump has left the country. In Trump’s case, though, he did everything he could to set the different groups against each other. When a gesture of reconciliation was needed, he added fuel to the fire instead.
And he continues to do so. Though he has no verifiable evidence, he still claims that Biden stole his election victory, that the vote was manipulated. Anyone who says the opposite, such as the director of an important cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is fired. That is the way things work under Trump, the real estate mogul that landed in the White House. Objection is punishable, while lying is the trump card. Everyone knows this by now and the consequences are disastrous. Such action undermines the institutions of American democracy. The vast majority of Republican voters actually believe that Trump is the rightful winner of the election. And he keeps working on his story, despite the fact it is a figment of his imagination. How can the nation be reunited in a situation like this?
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