I’ve been thinking lately about the way in which we place all our hopes, all our fears or all our anger onto some singular man. I sent this bit of writing to a friend and she suggested that I make it more gender neutral. In a way I agree, though I do think that there is at bias at play that makes things less than neutral.

Anyway, we imagine that one person can save the environment. We hope that if we elect one particular person as president our country and the world will be saved from imminent disaster. We imagine that if we can impeach Trump our country will return to the perfectly just path that, in fact, it was never on.

When we decimated Iraq, we spoke of the fact that we had defeated Saddam Hussein, when in fact we had bombed the whole country. When we place sanctions on Iran, we place sanctions on all the people, not just the ayatollah.

I think about this these days. We jail refugee children at the border. Trump encourages such depravity, but he doesn’t actually do the deed. He would be powerless without his minions.

I want to understand what conditions led to his election. I hope we manage to get rid of him, but I also hope we remember that he’s just one man. The conditions and attitudes that brought him to power will remain.

This has been a racist country for a long time. It still is. Obama didn’t fix that. We imagined that if we elected Hillary we would be curing ourselves of the sexism that had oppressed women for centuries.

As much as I hope that we will elect as president a decent person who cares about justice and peace, the change won’t happen unless we all work toward that goal.

Abby Shahn

Solon

Copy the Story Link