Trump Keeps Tearing Us Apart
I’m publishing this series of articles to share and discuss my ruminations on coping with a troubled and messy world. You can “follow” me to never miss an article.
Writing about Trump in any way is hazardous to our Mental and Social Health and overall Well-Being. For this and many reasons reason, it’s highly problematic.
But then not writing about Trump is a fundamental dereliction of duty. He needs to be held to account in every possible way.
An Op-Ed in The New York Times is a sad testimony to the personal damage Trump has wrought[i]. Thus, Art Cullen, the author of the Op-Ed, writes how Trump has caused friendships that have lasted for years to be “torn apart” irrevocably.
Mr. Cullen’s words speak for themselves:
“One of my old friends, or shall I say acquaintances, recently said on Facebook that I lacked integrity after I posted an editorial from our newspaper complaining about Mr. Trump’s contempt for the democratic process and rule of law. I’ve been a community newspaper editor for decades and no stranger to controversy, having angered the agribusiness gods and endured their reprobation, but I have to say that barb stuck. Our mothers are good friends. They would not have spoken that way about each other, at least in public.”
Again, in his words, “We went from Iowa Nice to Iowa Nasty”. In short, one can’t talk anymore about normal things such as the Weather. Ad Hominem Attacks have become the norm so much so that Mr. Cullen has given up trying to “see around our differences”.
While Iowa is certainly far from being representative of America, when a State that is generally Conservative is split by the same Divisiveness that has gripped the country as whole, one can’t help but feeling that we’re living in The Disunited States of America.
[i] Art Cullen, “ They Were My Friends for Years. Trump Tore Us Apart,” The New York Times, Thursday, February 8, 2024, P A24.
Ian I. Mitroff is credited as being one of the principal founders of the modern field of Crisis Management. He has a BS, MS, and a PhD in Engineering and the Philosophy of Social Systems Science from UC Berkeley. He Is Professor Emeritus from the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Currently, he is a Senior Research Affiliate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, UC Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Management. He has published 41 books. His latest is: The Socially Responsible Organization: Lessons from Covid, Springer, New York, 2022.
Photo by Josh Berendes on Unsplash
