The Trump Parallax: Why America Can't See Straight

The Disrespect That Defines Us Is Not The Donald's Fault

Politics today feels broken because Americans are looking at the same man and seeing completely different people. Donald John Trump is a parallax figure—appearing fundamentally different depending on your angle of view. And that parallax explains why our fights have been so heated and irresolvable. Parallax is the difference in apparent direction of an object when viewed from different positions. Astronomers use it to measure distances to stars—the same star appears in different locations depending on where Earth is in its orbit. The same principle explains why half of America sees Trump as an existential threat while the other half sees him as their last hope for salvation.

Same man. Two completely different perceived realities.

For millions of Americans, Trump is painfully, even eerily familiar. He's every terrible supervisor who mocked you in the break room while cutting corners with impunity. The executive who failed upward while you got laid off. The projection is based on real problems and pain. The boss who never read the manual but blamed you when something went wrong, then took credit when things went right. This archetype runs deep in the American experience. We've always harbored rage against inherited privilege—from the aristocratic pretensions of colonial governors to the robber barons. Trump activates this old time resentment against elites who claim greatness without earning it.

But there's another psychological layer—the family wound. Trump as the absent boomer father who abandoned his children emotionally and financially, then reappeared decades later demanding honor and respect. When European leaders called him the "dad" of NATO, millions of Americans with unreliable fathers felt their stomachs turn.¹ The metaphor hit too close to home.

For his supporters, Trump's personal failings are irrelevant because he's their instrument of retribution. Their fury isn't aimed at him—it's aimed at the system that disrespected them for decades. Factories closed and moved to Mexico or China, leaving entire communities to die slow deaths. Opioids ravaged neighborhoods while politicians offered thoughts and prayers. The cultural elite dismissed their patriotism as “primitive nationalism.”

Meanwhile, those same elites stepped over the homeless on their way to climate conferences, virtue-signaling about inequality while living in gated communities. The hypocrisy was suffocating. So when Trump spits back at the establishment, his supporters finally feel seen. He doesn't offer technocratic competence, instead he offers something far more primal: “retribution.” Against whom? You fill in the blank. Every scandal becomes proof he's willing to break the rules of a rigged game. Every insult he hurls at a journalist, politician, or celebrity feels like a blow landed on the very forces that wrote them off. This is sadly basic political psychology: people vote for recognition as much as policy. Trump offers recognition through constant combativeness and being unapologetic. He fights dirty and is cheered because his supporters believe the system has been fighting dirty against them for years.

So, here's the parallax: both sides feel identical pain—disrespect—but see completely different villains. To his critics, Trump embodies every authority figure who abused power and got away with it. To his supporters, he's the only authority figure willing to humiliate the elites who've systematically abused and dismissed them. This is why fights about Trump are so personal. It is more than policy disagreements over tax rates or healthcare. They are primal battles over who deserves recognition in America, who gets to be heard, who matters.

Trump has agency in choosing behavior that does not edify the country, but many in the USA now confuse respect with simply cowing others and being domineering. We've forgotten that the republic was founded on a radical idea: all people deserve dignity, not just those with wealth, titles, or the sharpest tongues. Trump reveals our fracture and is the mirror of our brokenness, so, I guess the parallax is ours. Blaming him entirely misses the real grievances driving public anger against an aloof elite that lectures about democracy while living in bubbles of privilege. Without understanding the causes of this parallax, the two sides remain unintelligible to each other—speaking different languages, inhabiting different realities.

And that division is exactly what America's enemies want to exploit. Foreign adversaries do not need to destroy American democracy; they just need to convince Americans to destroy it themselves by making compromise and good faith negotiations impossible.

If there is a scheme of the elite it is to make the American people believe that dignity is a zero sum game. Where the uplift of one requires the downfall of another. And where taking wrong advantage in a situation is justified by the doctrine of “because I can” and this is seen as the “smart” way to proceed. This is false. Americans must realize that their political salvation must come from themselves and from building strong institutions, not from individual leaders claiming to be the retribution of one group of the people against another group of the people.

That is a scam, playing on your emotions and disappointments. We can be wise to both that fact and why some Americans see things differently. In a nation of hurting individuals and families it is important to remember that the health of the one does not require the diminishment of the others. We must also see that few will long consent to being the lone rule followers in a society of pirates. If we can do that, we can see straight again.