Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Donald, the idiot, the madman, the consummate cowardly thug is preparing to unleash shock and awe to paint his agenda onto the American and the world stage such as we have never seen before. Day one, two, three…infinity. He will attempt to unleash the hounds of horror. Why?
To impose his horrendous agenda—of course. But what’s his rush? To embrace MAGA ever more intimately and to draw those who inhabit its fringes to its center. To instill well beyond MAGA’s fringes futility so debilitating that we either shut up and hunker down to protect ourselves or we kiss up and hope for a few goodies while others suffer. You doubt this prognosis? Okay, suppose we get oil madness, high waters rising, storms beyond measure, deportations beyond counting, gilded billionaire enrichment, intensified austerity, gutted regulations, fascist retooling of government, international mayhem, and vengeful repressive violence not by shock and awe but by slow boiling in a monstrous kettle. How different is that in the end?
What’s the alternative? Resistance. And what is that? It is saying no by every effective means one can employ. It is no longer laughing and winking. No longer denying what this thug is all about. No longer shrugging it off. It is telling the truth to all in range, so all souls can hear it, openly, loudly, no sugar coating—and trying to act on it.
When someone with the steering wheel of a gargantuan tank revs the motor and hollers I am going to drive this wonderful magnificent machine upside your head, does it make sense to assume that he doesn’t mean it? That he is just joking? Is it sensible to predict that he won’t be able to aim it? Is it wise to say that someone else, something else, is going to stop him? Or to suppose he is just going to run over a neighbor. For those reasons should we not read the news today and instead return to dressing this morning, and tomorrow morning, and the next and the next, preparing each day for familiar life and familiar life only as if there is no tank? There is no emergency? Does it make sense, even, to list reasons why others won’t resist and then proclaim that because they’re not going to resist you won’t either? Maybe it does make some limited kind of sense, but will it stop the tank?
You think I am exaggerating? You think this is hyperbole? Are you sure about that? Certainly the above doesn’t exaggerate Trump’s side of the picture. He lies about everything except the malevolence he wishes to enact. Will he break from the starting gate as fast as I suggest? Or will he enact his malevolent wish list more carefully? Does it matter?
What about our side of the picture? Some of us Americans seriously, steadfastly support Trump and his agenda. There is plenty worth saying about that, but not in this screed. I want to talk here about the fifty shades of Ostrich side of our situation. The stick our heads in a hole side of it. The hide our eyes in our pockets side of it. I want to talk about the people who rightly regard Trump as evil, insane, delusional, or whatever else we may sense at Midnight, just before we drift off, but then we wake the next morning and do what we have been doing each day, unaltered.
Are we too frightened to face facts? Are we more worried about being embarrassed or perhaps seeming pushy than we are worried about getting run over by fun loving fascism?
Are you a high school student? Is that too young for you to want to dodge a sniper who wields the biggest gun anyone has ever wielded? Is it too young for you to work to stop Trump from squeezing sympathy and respect out of your future?
Perhaps you are lucky enough to be in college. If so, this is the time of your life when you have the simplest path toward resistance. It requires only that you muster less time for mindless make believe learning and more time for sincere, militant, informed (and even informative) action.
Or maybe you work and are just getting started or perhaps you already have a grown family. Either way, you suffer the ills of twenty first century working class subordination. You curse nearly unbounded elitism but suffer unrelenting injustice. You know everything is broken, but you also know that it can get much worse. It is union time for you, isn’t it? It is community time for you, isn’t it? It is find a way to resist time, isn’t it? Yes, it is true that the time you give will be time you have to steal lost from very far from luxury activity. On the other hand, time you don’t give is going to be hard to explain to yourself or to your kids down the road, when they ask, where were you when that babbling, play-acting thug trounced freedom and demolished hope?
Or maybe you are better off than doing rote work for a boss. Don’t puff up. Don’t deceive yourself. If so, it wasn’t entirely deserved. Your relative plenty sits to at least some degree on top of others’ relative and often absolute denial.That’s the nature of hierarchies. But set that aside. You do have material means. You do have accumulated resources and perhaps you even have considerable knowledge plus access to many ways to get more. Now what? Should you use what you have to try to protect only yourself and your family? Or should you resist for everyone? Which will it be? I have to admit, I was tempted to write, which will it be, motherfucker? Our times are busy twisting our minds.
You may read the above and think to yourself whoever wrote this has certainly had his mind twisted. He has wigged out into paranoia. He is a guilt-tripping psycho. He is a radical left lunatic! You might then say, “listen lunatic, the U.S. doesn’t do fascism. The U.S. is above all that. Yes, sure, things are seriously bumpy but history doesn’t need my help. History will right itself. USA, USA. My eyes are where they belong. I can see clearly now. I can see the glory. I’ll vote in two years, and I’ll vote again in four years. That’s my path. Good enough. The momentary insanity will surely pass. I’ll be fine. Mine will be fine. You deal with yours. And who are you calling motherfucker, motherfucker?
Well that sure sounds like a clever and comforting turn of phrase for you. The only problem is, gee whiz, your turn of phrase is not just morally myopic it is also self delusional. It is head in the ground. Head in yesterday’s papers. Blind to today and tomorrow denial. It is holding your head in the clouds, telling others to get off.
You may tell yourself my words are ridiculous, if you even allow yourself to acknowledge that there is a possible issue to address, a dangerous situation you might need to resist. “Not me,” you might say. “I can’t possibly be so blinded by my past, so blinded by my habits, so blinded by supposed ever-present sanctified myths and lies that I am missing that a giant tank with an orange monster at the helm is headed for my life, my community’s life, my world. Really? You sure?
Years down the road, we sit on a wasted old lawn chair. A bedraggled, hungry kid walks up. He asks what did you do when the tank rolled? Or maybe we nap cooking in the sun, waiting for more floods. Our dead parent asks what did you do when that monster took my life? What do we say back? Do we say we put our eyes in our pockets? We locked the doors? We turned the other cheek? And when that check got burned too, we cursed and we wept, but we did it privately? Turn, turn, turn again? Or do we way we resisted, and together we stopped it. My chair is comfortable. You aren’t bedraggled. You aren’t hungry. You aren’t dead and now we continue on to win another liberated world?
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