Liberals don't *necessarily* hate Donald Trump.* Rather, we hate what he stands for.
So, what does Donald Trump stand for?
Nothing! Literally, nothing.
Trump has no principles. He has no core beliefs. He doesn't believe in science, or religion, or philosophy, or art, or evolution, or climate change, or rationality, or progress, or diversity, or law, or human rights.
Nothing.
Notice that these things that he doesn't believe in are the very things that form the fundamental core(s) of the Enlightenment. They represent what liberals/progressives see as the pathways to peace, equality, justice, and progress.
In tossing these fundamental values aside, Trump attacks the very center of liberals' self-identities. We see ourselves as not just creatures--animals--but as *humans*--aspirants to the divine. Through self-cultivation (character) and education, we aspire to achieve a world *on earth* of everlasting love and beauty: poetically, a "kingdom of heaven on Earth."
The Trumpian alternative to Enlightenment values and aspirations is a life of mutual strife, where power and self-interest prevail: a war of all against all, in which those with resources hoard those resources for themselves and their allies, building walls to keep out those they see as "other" or "less than." In this way, those who reject the Enlightenment, like Trump, are nothing more than creatures, allying themselves with other creatures only to protect themselves and their own interests, competing against other creatures, to the death. Their relationships are all transactional ("What’s in it for me and mine"). They are nothing but linguistic animals.
In accepting Trump, MAGA followers and others who voted for their own perceived interests, have rejected the alleged superiority of liberals' social compact. Most poignantly, they have rejected the alleged superiority of education, culture, ethics, democracy, personal restraint, respect for others, and the post-WWII world order. The have rejected the idea that *any* human can achieve personal salvation on Earth through study, devotion, or personal transformation.
In short, followers of Trump reject *us* as liberals, as embodiments of everything they hate about the modern world.
Thus, the current battle for the soul of our nation is a battle for the future of democracy, as an ideal in which the potentials of each human being are valued equally, as holy and immeasurably worthy, and the best direction for society and the world is the realization of *every person's* unique potential in collaboration with all other persons. This ideal is equivalent to the "heaven on earth" ideal of progressive Christianity, reform Judaism, and the ideals of other peace-loving believers around the world.
The fight for the soul of America *is* the fight for the soul of humanity itself.
We must join the (non-violent!) fight in this spirit.
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*Many liberals *do* hate Donald Trump. Others of us feel very sorry for him for being psychologically damaged beyond repair.
