By electing Donald J. Trump to the nation's highest office, Americans have not only betrayed our forefathers, dishonored true masculinity, disgraced our wives, sisters, and mothers, and delivered fear and violence to our children, we've also given a vengeful, draft-dodging, narcissistic madman with zero record of public service the keys to the nuclear codes, command of the world's most powerful military machine, control over an ever-expanding surveillance state, a Republican-controlled Congress to work with, and at least one vacancy on the high court to fill. Additionally, we've turned our economy over to an inarticulate, fake billionaire, con-man who won't even release his tax returns. Trump, who fancies himself a supermodel, has snaked through 6 bankruptcies, skipped out in hundreds of millions in taxes, cheated his partners, investors, contractors, banks, and employees. and failed as a huckster of everything from bad steaks to cheap cologne.
Rather than wallow in fatalism, instead let's drown in the reality of that for a moment. Because this is real. There is no silver lining, no Hollywood happy ending, and little visible upside. The eventual Trump administration will, in all probability, pass laws, which stem from and pander to the anger, and generational hatred and fear driving the bulk of their mostly white evangelical base, and then stack the Supreme Court with like-minded Justices who will potentially uphold those laws for longer than many of us will ever live...and that's just the first 100 days.
Want me to continue?? It's easy. Putin and the potential of a Russian compromise of Trump, multiple untenable policies, extreme environmental deregulation, trickle down policies, millions lose healthcare, religious freedom laws, Trump with a kill list and the legal authority to spy on you, Internet freedom, federal hiring freeze, more wage stagnation, protectionist trade wars, Chinese bank loans, media suppression, business related conflicts of interest, improper role model for children, denies science, marriage equality rollback, promotes conspiracy theories,...it's easy.
I'm not finished. You either already know exactly who Donald J. Trump is, or you don't care, or both, so there's no point in much of a recap. We're all going to find out and get a chance to see and hear plenty soon enough.
Sorry to say, but that battle is over...lost. It's so bad that now the war itself is out of reach; unwinnable for a generation at best. I mean the most important war of all of course, the war on Imagination itself. I'm so truly sorry if you don't know what I mean. On a related note, tens of millions of us have had our illusions shattered recently.
We imagined a country based on love, inclusion, unity and tolerance; instead we got a future based on hate, marginalization, hostility, and white supremacy. It's a bleak future that looks a lot like the past that we have struggled desperately to escape. We've tried to teach our children that success comes from a positive attitude, good work, integrity, compromise, reasoned discourse, cooperation, and showing kindness to your fellow human beings. Instead our children have been shown a new precedent for success: bullying, rancid lying, taunting, and dirty tricks. Openly mock and demean women, the disabled, Mexicans, blacks, Muslims, veterans, POW's, immigrants, Jews, and flaunt general human decency, and you can become President.
"This is America," we naively told them, "you can be anything you want!" But now they know the harsh truth. If you are not white, christian, male, and straight, you are not welcome in greater America, and you should be afraid. Rape culture won. Pay inequality won. Every single step forward women have taken in the last 50 years will soon be undone.
Our children see clearly that white armed insurrectionists can seize public land, hold a community hostage, and destroy sacred sites with impunity, but Native American pipeline protesters are arrested, shot, and beaten. White, right-wing shooters kill police and routinely live to see trial, while cops routinely shoot and kill unarmed black men. Yes, our children see this clearly...and early. Already schools across the country are the scenes of racial violence and vandalism in the form of beatings, verbal harassment, and racist pro-Trump graffiti.
The pretense is over. The gloves are off. Once again America shows its true colors, its defining traits. The lunatics are running the asylum for the foreseeable future. The Reaper has returned. The Cult of Death Worshipers once again reigns supreme...and don't be fooled...people will die...lots and lots and lots of them. This is the true tragedy, the wages of our sin.
As a young man, I grimly watched Reagan cultivate the image of black "welfare moms" and callously allow so many gay people to die from HIV/AIDS, while his minions righteously trumpeted their dissonant religious psycho-babble about "God's vengeance." It feels like just yesterday when Bush and Co. played off the fears of the right-wing base, destabilized the Middle East, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, none of whom were involved whatsoever in the 9/11 incident. The mind reels attempting to imagine what Trump might be capable of.
We've left the door open, and authoritarianism and cruelty have moved in for a nice long stay. Cruelty is our old friend from our playground days. We all remember the bully boys who beat up on the meek and the different, and the mean girls who made fun of the less attractive and the innocent. We also remember how most of us went right along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one ourselves. Cruelty is a sadistic childhood tendency, which should be put away with the same. Instead, cruelty now sits at the head of the table. Caught behind enemy lines in occupied territory, strangers in our own land, for many of us...it's time to survive.
White liberal elites (translate as 'shrinking professional class', a.k.a. white liberals who went to college) are at least lucky enough to have a choice when it comes to survival. With sickening certainty I know just what that choice will be for most. They'll take full advantage of the white privilege that they pretend to battle when they are around their friends. America's 'old friend', the affable Garrison Keillor lays it out:
We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids and we Democrats can go for a long brisk walk and smell the roses...
Wellllll Mr. Keillor, aren't you a part-of-the-problem, short-sighted, self-absorbed, smug bastard. While you and your ilk build 'your walls' and hide behind them mentally masturbating, millions of our brethren don't have that luxury!! Maybe you forgot?? Or maybe you and yours never really gave a damn to start with...go ahead and put your head in the sand...at least then you're out of the way.
This hypocrisy reminds me of the victorious Republicans. After 8 solid years of vitriolic obstructionism, they now immediately say, "Let's all work together now for the good of us all." Sorry, I'm not buying it...now...or ever. Nothing they propose to do is for the good of us all...absolutely nothing. You are free to foolishly believe otherwise.
Safety pin = Safe person
Like Brexit participants, Trump protesters have begun wearing visible safety pins to show anyone threatened by the hate and fear mongering of Trump and his supporters that they are a safe person, and will do all they can to combat forces such as xenophobia, racism, sexism, bigotry, and ableism when they are encountered. This is a great idea for starters, but don't treat it like a FaceBook post. Don't you dare wear that safety pin if you don't mean it and aren't willing to back that statement up by truly doing "all you can." Hang together if possible, bullies run in packs.
This goes right along with something else I read today. "We have to adopt a no tolerance approach towards the intolerable. We have to hold onto our own moral center and not be lured into compromising with attitudes that are clearly immoral. And we have to do it with solidarity and a sense of our own self-worth." Or maybe like Keillor, you prefer monastic refuge, and let the unfortunates fend for themselves.
We lost, and it sucks. But we have to stop mourning and sober up, because we must stand in the gap now if the most vulnerable among us are to survive. Something else...if you want to see even more done...if you support more solution-based action...if you really believe that it's worth fighting to bring about a better world, even if we may personally never see it, experience it, or even be welcomed in it...then it will take real hands-on organized effort. Contact me. If, like myself, you are willing to make such sacrifices...or seriously wish to discuss these things further...email me...leave a comment...let's talk and then let's walk...let's dispense with useless politicians and their endless shell games and begin a new, authentic dialogue of tolerance and cooperation...rekindle the fires of Imagination....together.
RM
