Let’s Reduce Loneliness: Who Says Donald Trump Doesn’t Pay Attention to Democrats?
- Feb 4
- 3 min read
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut has been concerned about loneliness for several years[1]. In June of 2023 he took to the floor of the Senate to talk about something that most politicians and people can agree about—that we are becoming lonelier as a society. Murphy articulates some of the most obvious causes of this loneliness: too much screen time, a reduction in face-to-face interactions, and a loss of local community connections. He notes that it is often local institutions that have brought us together over the decades, and this he says, has contributed to the formulation of our identities.
In that same year, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy of the United States also addressed the issue of loneliness[2]. His comments echoed and expanded upon Senator Murphy’s.
If you have read my book, Stuck in Our Screens: Setting Aside Social Drama and Restoring Human Connection, you know that I write about these concerns. My biggest worry is that we are losing our humanity. That we will soon be reduced to unfeeling, unthinking, robotic facsimiles of human beings. That we will no longer be able to ponder anything more complicated that a piece of toast. And ultimately, that we are losing our identities.
So today, I am trying my hand at sarcasm. Please note that AI might be able to do a better job than what follows, but I refuse to use AI. So here we go.
Is it possible that Trump has a secret plan to eliminate loneliness? Here are a few actions he is supporting that are reducing loneliness…
By deploying ICE into peaceful neighborhoods and endorsing the removal of people from their homes without a judge’s warrant, they are getting citizens who barely know each other to come out of their homes and object to the violation of basic constitutional rights. Folks who only knew each other because they waved or said “hello” in passing are now locked in a fight-to-the-death effort to keep each other safe and alive. If this isn’t community building, I don’t know what is.
Trump wants to build ICE detention centers all over the country. These buildings will house hundreds, maybe thousands of people in conditions that some say mirror concentration camps. So I guess no one will be lonely. They will get to know each other when three hundred of them stand in line to use the one toilet assigned to them.
On a happier note, people are getting to know each other at protests. People who have never met and might never have spoken to each other are chatting it up at protests organized to speak out against tyranny, fascism, cruelty, the trampling of the US constitution, and just about everything else this administration does. I don’t think Trump realized that he could get us to talk to each other and wave at each other just by his lawless behavior.
One negative about all of this is that people are using their screens a lot more than is probably healthy. The videos they take capture law-breaking officials and horrific cruelty that then get posted to social media. The bad part is that we end up doomscrolling through these images. But this screen time then motivates people to reach out to each other and do something about the horror. The upside of so much screen time is that we at least have devices that will record and disseminate the proof that we are transitioning from a democracy to a fascist state. So, I guess we can conclude that even the screens are playing their part in getting us to look at each other and talk to each other. That was a bit convoluted, but I think you can follow the line of reasoning.
This concludes the end of my sarcastic rant.
I’m sure some of you can come up with some brilliant ways Trump is reducing loneliness in our country. If you get a moment of inspiration, send them to me!
Obviously, none of this is funny. It is tragic. More of us need to come to the realization that the only thing that might save us is our connection to each other. It’s hard to support such evil when it is being done to someone we know. Right now, we are all in this, and if one of us isn’t safe, none of us is.
Let’s hang together.
[1] https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-the-right-and-left-can-come-together-to-address-the-epidemic-of-loneliness
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