“When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Reich tweeted. “It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

Reconciliation Commission, eh?

I’m currently reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis (2006)
It introduces a concept which clearly explains what we’re currently experiencing. In a very acute manner.

“We judge others by their behavior, but we think we have special information about ourselves—we know what we are ‘really like’ inside, so we can easily find ways to explain away our selfish acts and cling to the illusion that we are better than others. . . . Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don’t agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies.

What kind of a ‘Reconciliation Commission’ is that whose conclusions have already been reached before the commission itself has even been commissioned?!?

OK, Trump’s lies need to be set straight. Those he had hurt need to be comforted. And so on…

But way more important is for us to understand how ‘Trump’ had become possible in the first place!

That a “guy called Trump” had made ‘good use’ of an already existing set of circumstances and had become President of the USA is already history.
Some people, including Reich, don’t like it.

I’m afraid they’re going to re-live the experience – sooner rather than later.

The true role of the proposed commission is to shame rather than heal.
It’s proposed consequences will further deepen the chasm rather than bridge it.

It is nonsensical to argue, as do Trump and his allies, that government cannot mandate masks or close businesses during a pandemic but can prevent women from having abortions and same-sex couples from marrying.

The quote above also belongs to Robert Reich.
It perfectly describes the current situation.
Some people are OK with the government being able to mandate A and strongly oppose the government being able to mandate B while other people are situated in the exact opposite position.

For as long as each of these two parties will continue to defend their positions without paying real attention to the arguments presented by the other side the situation will remain more or less the same. It will oscillate around an equilibrium point but will not actually move.
The ‘problem’ will continue to fester, unsolved.

The real questions being:
– ‘why would anybody need a government to tell them to put a face-mask on during an airborne pandemic?!?’
– ‘why would anybody accept/mandate a government to determine who may marry whom?’ After certain conditions had been met, of course.
– ‘why would anybody accept/mandate a government to tell us what we may or may not do with/to our own bodies?’ After certain conditions had been met, of course!

And, above all, what happened with ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people‘?!?

This nightmare, like all others, is of our own making.

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