I’m guilty of giving up talking with Trumpers [Trump-supporters] let alone trying to convince them. I’m guilty of unfriending people on fb, because I simply don’t want that toxicity in my life. I’m guilty of dodging political discussion with family and people whose opinions I otherwise respect.

But it does not make me “feel good,” nor do I get a “dopamine-rush of self-righteous satisfaction” in exercising these maneuvers. It makes me sad; it makes me heartsick. It makes me feel empty that so many of my fellow Americans are enamored of this tragically, fundamentally empty man. My empathy is met with mocking apathy.

I simply do not understand them, I cannot understand them, I cannot reach them. My view of fulfillment is in being a part of the human experience, of humanity as a whole. A posterity that will, hopefully, exist long after I am gone.

The most fundamental difference I see between myself and “them” is this sense of connected fulfillment. Mine is a continuum of life. Theirs is a zero-sum game. A Pharaonic view. They may not be able to take their treasure with them into the “after-life” but they sure as hell will try. But if that doesn’t work, they have a backup plan: They’ll make damn sure that YOU won’t get your hands on what’s theirs, or what they’ve taken from others. It’s not their job to make life better for anyone but themselves. It’s greed, it’s selfishness that wins the game – and they play for keeps. Let the next-gen solve the problems they’re leaving behind; “Not my problem.”

The Titans of the Gilded Age, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan, certainly had their faults but they also had one common benevolent philosophy: He who dies rich, dies poor. Give back to the people.

One cannot imagine such a philanthropic quality in a man such as Trump. Most sadly of all, that is the personality trait most anathema to Trump, and to Trumpers. And that, no one can or will ever change.