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
A Rallying Cry for us all.
ReplyDeleteProtect the children, defend the weak and wounded, speak for the voiceless...I still remember the first time I read those words in that beautiful combination. "The fog lifted, the earth shifted, raise the gifted..." The timing was perfect for me to recognize their value and brand them on my heart, thank you for providing the opportunity. I do not regret having done it. There is no surrender in me when it comes to those ideals, and I will not abandon my private oath to uphold them or the ones I love. If there exists retreat it is merely to redeploy.
DeleteNow, more than ever, it is incumbent upon artists and writers to follow your example and become agents of social change, agents of transformation...and more. Artists should create and writers should write, and they should pursue other worthy endeavors as well. Perhaps only these deontological creative minds have the Imagination to keep certain dreams alive...
The truthful beauty of your words say much better than I how I feel, why I am so outraged, and give the tinge of hope. How can I help, what can I do, where do I start has been my plea since this devastation. I am an older American, I am not wealthy,I worked with my local DNC headquarters on this election and knew then we were doomed. What do I do now? So much fb garbage assaults my eyes daily but no answers. I must do something.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your heartfelt comment. Forgive my untimely reply, but I've taken your questions very seriously, and considered my answer carefully. In the end, it is the paraphrased words of Liel Leibovitz that fit best here:
DeleteTreat every poisoned word as a promise. When a bigoted blusterer tells you he intends to force members of a religious minority to register with the authorities believe him. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t lean on political intricacies or legislative minutia or historical precedents for comfort. Don’t write it off as propaganda, or explain it away as just an empty proclamation meant simply to pave the path to power. Take the haters at their word, and assume the worst is imminent.
Do that, and a second principle follows closely: You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions. Explaining away or excusing the actions of others isn’t your job. While many beautiful minds have struggled to understand the world around them, the world around them has been consumed by simpler and more vicious appetites. Don’t waste any time, then, trying to understand: Many are amused by the demagogue and moved by his vile vision. Some have perfectly reasonable explanations for their decisions, while others have little to go on but incoherent rage. It doesn’t matter. Voters are all adults, and all have made their choices, and it is now you who must brace for impact. Whether you choose to forgive those, friends and strangers alike, who cast their votes so deplorably is a matter of personal choice, and none but the most imperious among us would advocate a categorical rejection of millions based on their electoral actions, no matter how irresponsible and dim. So while you make these personal calculations, remember that what matters now isn’t analysis: It’s survival (continued)
DeleteWhich leads me to the third principle, the one hardest to grasp: Refuse to accept what’s going on as the new normal. Not now, not ever. In the months and years to come, decisions will be made that may strike you as perfectly sound, appointments announced that are inspired, and policies enacted you may even like. Friends and pundits will reach out to you and, invoking nuance, urge you to admit that there’s really nothing to fear, that things are more complex, that nothing is ever black or white. It’s a perfectly sound argument, of course, but it’s also dead wrong: This isn’t about policy or appointments or even about outcomes. This isn’t a political contest—it’s a moral crisis. When an inexperienced, thin-skinned demagogue rides into office by explaining away immensely complex problems while arguing that our national glory demands we strip millions of their dignity or their rights, our only duty is to resist by whatever means permitted us by law. The demagogue may boost the economy, sign beneficial treaties, and mend our ailing institutions, but his success can never be ours. Our greatness, to use a tired but true phrase, depends on our goodness, and to succeed, we must demand that our commander in chief come as close as is possible to reflecting the light of that goodness. There’s no point indulging in the kind of needlessly complex thinking that so often plagues the intelligent and the well-informed. There’s no room for reading tea leaves, for calculations or projections or clever takes. The only thing that matters now is the simple moral truth: This isn’t right. As long as we never forget that, we can never lose: As grandpa Siegfried knew all too well, those who refuse to gradually put up with the darkness are making a very safe bet; if you’re wrong, there’s no harm, but if you’re right, you win more or less everything.
So forgive me if these next four years I’m not inclined to be smart. When it comes to the task ahead, I’ve no interest in deep dives or shades of grey or mea culpas. When the levers of power are seized by the small hands of hateful men, you work hard, you stand with those who are most vulnerable, and you don’t give up until it’s morning again. The rest is commentary. Bless you my anonymous friend. I wish us well.
Thank you Raggedy Man!!! I can't write a lot at this moment. But I want to say you've cleared my head! We need to work together to resist evil, promote love. I'm ready to fight!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome Sheila. That's fantastic. We are the resistance.
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