The omnipresence of malice

A trait that Donald Trump exhibits constantly is malice.  His press conferences, his rallies, and his tweets are nearly always expressions of malevolence.  It does not take a mental health authority to diagnose Trump as a malicious person.  He puts his malice out there for everyone to see with  every public appearance.  He is driven by it.  He tells reporters who ask questions he doesn't want to answer that they are disgraces.  He claims that every president who preceded him was inferior.  He is a constant dribble of malice toward others as he makes false aggrandizements for himself.

The ways and the purposes for which people use language reveal their essential character.  Language is a necessary part of the psychological processes.  Language development and personality development are reciprocal factors in the becoming process of a person.  Consequently, the way a person uses language is an indicator of character.  That's why people who did not vote for Trump cannot understand what motivates those who did.  His puerile name-calling, insults, and inane self-aggrandizement reveal a person possessed by malice toward everyone who does not grovel and fawn before his impulses.  He makes no effort to mask his malice, but puts it on full display.  The only explanation for those who approve and collaborate with his nefarious conduct is that he complements their states of mind.  They do not reject his insults, his  abuse of others, or his many documented lies because he enacts the ill will that is within them.

Those opponents who regard Trump as a political force hold great hope that his vileness and malice will be removed from the White House by the November election.  The problem is that the malignancy  which put Trump into office is not merely a political issue.   Sixty-three million people chose Trump as their leader, and even if Trump loses the election, the malignancy that possesses these people will remain as a force in the nation.  Their attraction to Trump is not a matter of political policy, but a deeper matter of the debased character and indecency they choose as their standard.  If America were the moral and intellectual light of the world that it has sometimes claimed to be, its effort to rid itself of Trump would be overwhelming.  But Trump's indisputable depravity is proclaimed as a national banner by his collaborators.  It is the object of their patriotism and the symbol of national character to which they aspire.  

Trump's tenure in office has defined a malignancy in the nation that does not offer a hopeful prognosis.  The onetime longshoreman who became a moral and social and  philosopher, Eric Hoffer, anticipated what the advent of Trump as president has meant:

No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.  

The United States is a government of the people.  And the covid-19 pandemic has exposed the evil.  Those who demonstrate against the efforts to control a destructive and lethal virus are, in fact, demonstrating the lack of decency, a disdain for human life, and are creating a justified ill will.  They have also demonstrated that the divide in the nation goes far deeper and far beyond anything that can be resolved in the voting booth.  The moral malignancy they spread is more virulent than the coronavirus.  Just as the people of Europe were forced to realize that a resistance of mere words was ineffective in counteracting the spread of nazism, we in America are being forced to contemplate what it will take to form a resistance to the malice of Trump and his collaborators.