OPINION Trump 2.0 United States Donald Trump MAGA US Politics Polarised Politics Political Polarization Charlie Kirk Far-Right Far-Right Politics US Democracy

Maybe we don’t heal

Whether or not there is no going back from Trump, we shouldn’t.

by Chad Parenteau

Updated 23-Dec-2025

A n online friend of mine put it best following Trump’s recent Truth Social post dancing on the graves of the late Rob Reiner and his wife. In their mind, Trump has become pure cruelty and ego to the point where “he wallows in it... enjoying the freedom he has to be vile, and so he’s decided to be vile all the time, because doing anything good, anything that acknowledges the importance of others or their opinion, is loser stuff to him.”

Trump’s infamous Truth Social post on December 15. | TRUTH SOCIAL/DONALD TRUMP

Compassion – even the illusion of it – is officially out in many circles of American life. Cruelty and vileness are in. Supporters are now on X/Twitter justifying Trump’s attack. One person sniped how actor and director Ron Howard never said anything about nice Charlie Kirk the way he did about Reiner, his friend and colleague (also, not a racist or a misogynist). Another had this rationalization about Trump’s words: “[Trump] was almost murdered... twice. It’s personal.” Obviously a reference to the two people who tried to take Trump’s life in 2024, when Reiner wasn’t even using X/Twitter anymore.

Where Trump’s vileness goes, so go his followers. If this doesn’t include you, this likely includes people you know. Co-workers, neighbors friends, family. So many who have embraced open, unabashed and unashamed cruelty under the protective banner of the most shamelessly cruel world leader of the allegedly free world.

These people, out of a fanatical need to feel like they are still at the universe’s center have rebelled against any idea of change or improvement for anyone, leaning on their own life of sometimes exaggerated or half-imagined past challenges to squash any attempts to make newer generations in America slightly more comfortable.

Nothing has gotten better in the last decade, let alone the last eleven months. Still, Trump supporters (and future 2028 Trump voters) persist to do victory dances in their bubbles until someone tries to point out that their worldview is conveniently closed off to racism, gynophobia, transphobia, and policies that will hurt certain groups of people physically, mentally and emotionally.

A bizarre Charlie Kirk tribute on a car close to the hometown where I grew up. | CHAD PARENTEAU

I know of people in my circles who mourn Charlie Kirk more than they did for family members who died due to the pandemic or shrugged off the suicides of transgender family members. They had other problems is the most often listed excuse for both categories.

And yet, when people in support of attacks on “the others” ranging from repression to genocide have bad things happen to them – like losing a New York City mayoral race – the cruel side that’s piling on win after win can’t help but react as if they are ongoing victims of the so-called Great Replacement theory.

In America, the side that’s winning is often a group of bullies, and they almost always are the group that feels the most oppressed, no matter how much they dominate.

Some people are starting to rebel against cruelty for cruelty’s sake after Trump’s most recent stunt, but for the most part, people are going to line up and at least be compliant through silence.

Despite all this, the side that’s winning is calling more than ever for healing.

That’s bully talk, asking the rest of us to “Get over it.”

Get over it. That’s what bullies say when they don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. When they just want to victims to go home crying and rest up for another throttling.

“Get over it” is exactly what Trump supporters were saying when he first won in 2016. Not so much when he lost in 2020, but now?

Now, people are being pushed to their absolute limits, even to the point of testing the limits of his supporters. Now, people serving under Trump’s command are starting to suffer under his orders.

The scent of comeuppance, however impossible it seems at this point in time, is always in the air for bullies, and it comes up whenever you hear of people rallying whenever a horrible idea is even just called a bad one.

Now, there is a call for everyone to heal and accept the fate the winning bullies have imposed on us all through collective compliance, fealty to an egomaniac crying for love he can’t feel from a world he doesn’t care about.

To hell with healing.

Anyone surviving this era of open cruelty is going to have at least one scar they should not be embarrassed to present.

I have been relatively unscathed so far, but I am less than six degrees from people feeling the results of Trump’s policies and the ongoing violence. At the rate things are going, it will only be a matter of time before something out of Trump’s hole hits me and the rest of us in the face.

And there will be a number of people I know who will say I deserve whatever happens to me.

And if this particular chapter of Trump in the White House ever ends, people stripped of their reality show immunity and left to suffer under the policies they helped to make happen.

If any shred of them is still human, or is forced to live in the real world, they might have some shame, maybe some regret.

If unrepentant, at the very least, they will be aware that they have the mark of having supported fascism and will not feel as protected or entitled as they were before they had their demented daddy figure hovering over them.

We should never stop reminding the world, even our personal worlds, of who stood with fascism and especially those who watched and listened from afar as various communities were “owned” with voyeuristic pleasure.

The Trump supporters should have their own scars, their own stigmas.

The vulnerable young, especially – watching families support a convicted sexual assaulter who has allegedly done far, far worse – should never forget.

Entire generations of people will deserve to be soiled with mistrust.

There are many people I no longer trust with children, or even knowledge of friends I have who are in danger under this regime, or even my own thoughts. There is much I keep from people every day because I can’t be sure who won’t try to turn me in for even knowing someone in danger, for just existing.

It will take these people the rest of their lives to earn back even a fraction of my trust.

And so, no. No healing.

The shame of these people’s decisions, actions, or just passive support should last as long as the pain they’ve caused, if not longer.

I’m old enough to know that pain is an everyday thing, and in some cases a lasting thing, but it can be lived with.

That’s what America needs to re-learn again. Not to get over awful truths about themselves and others for the sake of a fake cleansing, but to live with them.

It’s one of many things this country will have to re-learn at the end of this seemingly endless road, but it’s a start.