[I am sick and tired of reading and hearing about this assh*le but to ignore him, to mute his words would be courting disaster. We must hear him and speak out against him, incessantly and endlessly.]
At two very different celebrations in Florida — one posh, one humble — the U.S. President’s admirers see him as the hope for future prosperity. I hope they don’t just wait for him
KATHARINE LAKE BERZ
SPECIAL TO THE STAR, January 25, 2025
At Monday afternoon’s bombastic inauguration celebrations near Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s glittering southern fortress, I finally caught a glimmer of understanding of what fuels such passionate devotion in his supporters.
It was a faint glimmer, at first.
For people like me who were hoping for a progressive woman in the White House, Monday’s celebrations felt devastating.
Millions of our American neighbours were celebrating the coronation of a felon who has threatened democracy, dragged women back to the Dark Ages, demonized immigrants, empowered unqualified billionaires and cozied up to the world’s most dangerous leaders.
The pain cuts deep since two of my Canadian children are pursuing their futures in America. How do I help them understand their new home’s dark turn?
Seeking answers, I ventured into two victory parties only a few miles from Trump’s gilded palace. What paradise, I wondered, do his supporters imagine awaits?
At the first party I visited, Palm Beach’s privileged and pampered were sipping cocktails over fine white tablecloths bedecked with red glitter and American flags. The joy on this regal terrace, overlooking lush croquet lawns, wasn’t completely baffling. Pulling up in their Porsches, Mercedes and Ferraris, these are the true beneficiaries of Trump’s America. In his farewell address, Biden called them “ultra-wealthy oligarchies”— a new generation of “robber barons” who will thrive under Trump’s permissive business policies, low taxation and rule-bending deals.
“We will see prosperity like never before,” local party chair Carl Casio said to the jubilant crowd.
But as they booed Democrats filing into the US. Capitol and toasted the man they called “our beloved DJT”‘ with champagne, I wondered how their wine could taste sweet in a country where misery and poverty would blossom around them.
Are country club memberships worth more than civil liberties? From what I heard there about the “horrors” of diversity, equity and inclusion and the “evil” of transgender supporters, apparently so.
I was more puzzled when I drove a short distance to a second celebration, this one of working-class parents and minorities — folks who would be turned away from Mar-a-Lago’s front gate. Over pizza at a downtown restaurant, I was surrounded by people of all ages and ethnicities, pumped about the second coming of a strongman and wearing MAGA caps, American flags, and T-shirts with slogans like “Made in America” and “Crypto President.”
My brain started to numb listening to the ovation as Trump promised to “send troops to the southern border” and the ear-splitting applause when he announced that “there are only two genders.” What twisted path had led the world’s most powerful democracy to this moment?
But then I spoke to a young couple holding up their five-year-old to see Trump’s face on the screen. The mother, Amanda Beckwith, 29, a disc jockey, comes from a long line of blue-collar workers in Montauk, N.Y., she said. She and her husband, Adam Lipson, were rejoicing over “a bright new world” for their five-year-old daughter, Navah. A future she described as filled with “prosperity, wealth, happiness and hope.”
And as I shook Amanda’s hand, I remembered what I was once told by my friend Claire Cram, a thoughtful kindergarten teacher who has taught in both Toronto’s toniest neighbourhoods and in some of the toughest:
“People will believe crazy things if they think it will help their children.”
It is a crazy thing to believe that Trump will help working families. While Trump has made many false claims, perhaps his most devious has been portraying himself as a champion of working-class American parents, a daredevil who will break all the rules to make their children’s lives better, but in fact is breaking rules only to help himself.
As I left the party and went out into the unexpectedly quiet, yet somehow trembling streets of the United States, I thought about what I shared with Amanda Beckwith and other Americans taken in by Trump’s con.
Like me, they are discouraged by the country’s wealth inequality, which is higher than in almost any other developed country.
Like me, they worry about an America where many hardworking people struggle to make ends meet.
Like me, they yearn to see their children safe and thriving.
To Beckwith, the solution was a man, whom I see, with pretty strong evidence, as a complete con. But what about beyond these next four years? Is there an honest direction for America that would satisfy us both? And how do we bridge our different views about the type of leader who could help America achieve that better world?
What will I tell my adult children in America?
I will tell them I hope that they can reach out to people like Beckwith to offer a new coalition beyond the grief they are likely to feel as Trump’s campaign promises turn to dust.
I will urge them to help forge an America that will still fight for people on the margins of society — if not through its elected institutions, then through private organizations.
Finally, I will say that this paradoxical double commemoration of Trump and Martin Luther King Jr. must remind us of King’s powerful idea — that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
I will say that this is not a passive statement. It is a call to action.
They cannot simply wait for the next four years to pass by. They must recognize that many Trump supporters are not so different from us. They need to reach out to them and team up. Then, they must work tirelessly together to bend that arc toward truth and justice.
“We want change,” said MaKenna Jackson, a 19-year-old Black Trump supporter. “That’s what we all want.”
[KATHARINE LAKE BERZ IS A FREELANCE WRITER AND FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR TO THE TORONTO STAR. SHE LIVES ON VANCOUVER ISLAND AND IN TORONTO. HER WORK FOCUSES ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ISSUES AND THEIR EFFECT ON INDIVIDUALS.]
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Richard comments
Katharine Lake Berz is a respected writer and journalist who contributes often to the Toronto Star. She writes an passionate piece in this article, loaded with emotion but likely ineffectual in persuading readers from taking away support they have given T****.
There are numerous areas of Berz’s piece that may be futile or pointless:
- “I wondered how their wine could taste sweet in a country where misery and poverty would blossom around them.”
People do not evaluate, analyze and think as professional writers do. These authors think about their words, analyze and evaluate them and think about the repercussions of what they say on future developments. Most readers likely do not think about anything more than the toppings on their next pizza. Enough American voters have already confirmed they do not think before they vote. They have not heeded any of the advice, words or columns written by thoughtful columnists like Berz, Vance, Rather and Cox Richardson. If these voters were thinking, they would have seen through the smoke of T****’s words, any and everywhere. Just look at his vague ‘policy promise’ about his health care policies for Americans. Unfortunately, the wait-and-see attitude will be a done deal once they realize they’ve been conned. How can any thinking person actually vote for a convicted felon to say the least? - “A future she (Amanda Beckwith’s hope for the future) described as filled with “prosperity, wealth, happiness and hope.”
Beckwith is delusional. Anything we say here is moot in her view. She is convinced this man is the ‘second coming.’ All that experts, experienced, professional writers have said about T****, all the fact checkers confirmations of endless lies, all the evidence that suggests this person is a psycho, a criminal, a lying cheat, all this has fallen on deaf ears.Berz does not point this out but simply raises questions throughout her entire article thinking she is writing to people who think. She is also deluding herself. T**** is a grifter, a scam artist believed by people who are sick of the politicians of the past, politicians who affected a world with as many problems and issues as ever before. The hope is that changing to such a drastic new politician may result in positive change.
- “People will believe crazy things if they think it will help their children.”
When Berz’s teacher friend writes those words, it is with hope. People always want a better world for their children and often will accept extremes in hopes that their hopes will be actualized. Unfortunately, it is the thinking that was prevalent in Germany in the 1930’s where hope was based on wishful thinking rather than considered and logical evaluation.
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I respect Berz very much. In reading many of her columns, I find her to be a very intelligent and principled writer. However, in this T**** piece, she is either caught up in the delusional hope so many have about him, or she doesn’t want to go out on a limb, a likely politically incorrect one and call him out for what he is or predict what the outcome will be with this leader. Surely, she cannot be equivocal about the outcome with this leader. We cannot stand by and pose questions for consideration to a public that does not listen, does not make considerations. As she says later in her article, ‘It is a call to action.’ We must speak out against this demented person every day in every way, continuously, never stopping until he proves the critics right, at which point people will hopefully come to their senses and vote the assh*le out of office. But we have to have an opponent who is worthy of consideration. That should not be a problem with T**** as the other choice…except that we live in ‘con-believing times.’ Richard
