May We be Overreacting

In conversation—okay, an argument—with someone I know who, while not necessarily a voter for trump, is nonetheless willing to give him the benefit of whatever doubt she still harbors, she said I was overreacting because of the "hyperbole and rhetoric" of the opposing campaign. "This has," she wrote, "caused policy disagreement to elevate to terror."

She is, of course, a lawyer who has long spent time making big things out of little ones, so she knows of what she speaks when it comes to hyperbole.

But I hope she's right. While I don't recognize these "disagreements" she mentions, which seem to me more like fiats, I do recognize the terror people feel about them. I know folks who fear for their livelihood, their housing, their health needs, even for their lives, because of things trump and his toadies have said they will do. 

But I would like to be wrong. I would like to wake up one day and realize, "God, what was that all about? Why was I so worried?" In this world, trump is no worse, if no better, than any other president, having made no real inroads into the American psyche or legal structure. As a result, he goes down in history, not as the King Joffrey of our political structure, but as the Claudius of it, being no more memorable or despicable than Millard Fillmore. And maybe played by Derek Jacobi.

Of course, his first term eradicated that possibility. This one has all the earmarks of being worse given what we're already seeing of his choices (RFK Jr at HHS? Matt Gaetz as AG?). But I would still like this to be an overreaction on our parts, projecting all our fears and worries onto a politician (and he is one now) as pliable and loveable as your grandfather with the initial stages of dementia. 

From my lips to God's ear.

I also really, really doubt that. 

Rule Number One: Don't Isolate

This is an issue I'm particularly prone to. I feel embarrassment after a political loss, as if I somehow failed the people I worry for. As a result, I would self-isolate if I could. It's a hard thing, dragging myself to meetings and church services and even work when all I want to do is hide in the bed for the next four years. 

But we know that's not productive, either on a communal or personal level, and I know from past experience it doesn't leave you or the people you love any less a target. As the author writes, "you just need to show up consistently. How else do we get to know the people around us if we don’t make the effort to get together?...[Every] interaction and every group meeting is an opportunity to get to know one another and create trust." 

And trust is our weapon the opposition can't replicate. 

I Will Not Give Those People One Tear

I'm in the process as I'm sure many of you are looking for as many allies and good people as I can. To that end, I'm going to share them with you. 

Nana Tuckit is a drag queen on Instagram (for now? perhaps) who brings her A game to the results of the election. As she says, You can stand behind me.

An Essay You Should Read

 

This is a good, hard look at what our immediate future can look like if we can look beyond our own fears and trepidations and stay in touch with the people we trust, not just to bitch but to bitch and work toward solutions. Don't allow yourself to be isolated, that's the way these motherfuckers get their way. Love each other and stay safe. 

Take courage friends.
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.
For deep down, there is another truth:
you are not alone.

Wayne B. Arnason

Hope Among the Meanness

 

I've often lived in an America meaner than the sum of its parts. I was born into the hopeful Kennedy years, and I was five when the Civil Rights Act made things a little better. The American with Disabilities Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency were a couple bright spots, too.

Meanwhile, a majority of citizens supported wars in Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, and lots of little places and little wars in between. Jimmy Carter, with his sensible sweater and solar panels, made me think things weren't so bad. But I remember the Reagan/Bush years, when nastiness was the point and people were encouraged to say what they already felt, the Clinton years, when citizens were left banging on empty factory doors, and the Bush II years, when lies authorized a lot of death.

Obama, well, what can I say. We really saw a difference, both in personal conduct on the president's part and government. That "hopey-changey thing" Sarah Palin disparaged made things easier for a lot of people. Sure, there were still food wastelands in all our inner cities and prices fluctuated, the way they always do. But for the first time, in my lifetime, we had a president who understood that most of us live paycheck to paycheck, a lot of us don't have steady transportation, and those that do can't always afford to use it. Obama understood that bosses could be assholes and owners looked out for themselves long before they paid a living wage or overtime. We felt the meanness many Americans experienced at the hands of officials begin to slip.

Then came trump I. The hood came out. Children were separated from parents. Many children died. The guy who was supposed to be looking out for us suggested we pour bleach in our guts to relieve the symptoms he got the most cutting-edge treatment for. In the name of enriching himself further, he bullied, stole, and cheated. 

We hired Biden, Obama's number 2, and thought we'd bid adieu to America's Bunga-bunga leader. And for a while, especially when Joe made the decision to put country before himself and stepped aside for Kamala, it looked like we had it made. It would be a rout.

It was a rout. But in the wrong direction. 

Kamala was not a flawed candidate, or not any more so than any candidate, and if you want to call a candidate flawed, look to the one with 34 felony convictions, the one whose followers were violent because he told them to be, the one who had to have a new vice presidential candidate because they tried to hang the last one. In any contest, there shouldn't have been one. But there was.

We lost. 

America is mean again in the agglomerate. Get any two together and they'll find a way to diminish a third.

That's who we are, and I want to thank the electorate for defenestrating the notion I wasn't aware I still held that we were a unique nation, one where right wins out, where history is slow in coming but is coming still, where decade by decade the lives of its people get better. This second trump term, even if it ends with him, leaves the clock America lives by spun back, particularly if he names another SCOTUS member. 

This time it's not just Muslims and Hispanics (whose individual votes for him actually increased) on the receiving end of their meanness. It's women (oddly, a group which voted in greater numbers for him than in 2020, despite all they have lost, except for black women, who have never had illusions about America's meanness) and the LGBTQ+ community and people who are already at a disadvantage and whose lives were already endangered. I'm white and straight and already on a lower rung of the middle class, and I can feel the meanness boiling around me. I can't imagine the fear my friends face. 

Amid all this despair, can I offer any hope? Yes. 

While America in the aggregate is mean, individual Americans are not. When I lived in my car, I was often taken in by people I never would have expected. From sharing beers in the truck bed with a bunch of guys who had more guns than teeth, to fundamentalist Christians who gave me a safe place to sleep and eat without attaching their religion to it except as the reason they did it, to any number of people in suits and skirts giving me money because I asked for it, when you get people one on one they surprise and delight you. 

While a majority of us allowed our inner trump to direct our actions and together can terrorize what Jesus called "the least of these," I celebrate the rolled-down car window and a hand holding out a $20 to the guy standing by the exit; the cop who might disdain their behavior helping up the trans~ victim of assault and listening to their story; the angry worker bee who has had it up to here with these illegals handing a bottle of water to the thirsty Guatemalan at 6 AM in front of Home Depot; the self-described trad wife whose greatest fear is she won't have dinner ready on time offering the single mom who's paying with EBT and is short $2 to add it to her bill, and then takes out another $10 in cash for her. 

Are these examples of self-aggrandizing individuals making themselves feel a little better about how they have it by deigning to give a little out in dribs and drabs? Maybe. Maybe it's all we've got. Maybe we're all we've got. Like the beloved Ram Dass said, "We're all just walking each other home." Even Jesus laid it out on the individual: "Sell all you possess and give it to the poor and then follow me." Maybe the best we can hope for in a mean America is the individuals who give away what they have one element at a time, making one person's day a little bit better. 

It's like the kid who throws a starfish back into the ocean. Help that one.

Uncomfortable Places I've Slept In

Not the actual van. Duh.

A Nonworking Van in Someone's Driveway, Rural Minnesota

I used to get around everywhere by bike. I loved my late 80s white Specialized Stumpjumper, bought for about $200 brand new and lovingly obsessed over for a decade by me. I especially enjoyed the feel of speeding down hills on roads, sitting straight up evoking the sensation of time whipping past me.

I took several bike trips after I'd moved to Minnesota. This one was the cycling tour I took to visit my soon-wife while she was doing a radio internship in the small Wisconsin town she'd grown up in. I rode several days from Mankato where we were students on the Sakatah Trail and then began riding back roads east across Minnesota to the Mississippi. 

It may have been the third or fourth evening of the trip. I was on a road bordered by long lines of trees with occasional houses. Back then I used a slim backpack US atlas where I traced my travels with markers, including stars at places I'd spent the night. But I've long since lost that, so my best guess is it was along one of the rural roads between Northfield and Prescott. A storm was brewing that I expected, having heard about it on a radio playing at the McDonald's where I'd had breakfast that morning. But by midafternoon I didn't need a weatherman to tell that. The sky had been a milky grey before covering what was left of the sun by 4 or 5.The wind, which had been pleasant through most of my trip, picked up so I was pressing the pedals as hard as if I'd been riding through a river flowing in the opposite direction. 

I didn't have a watch--I haven't worn one since the mid-80s--so my estimate of the time of day is really a guesstimate. But I was certain it was darker earlier than it should be. I'd started looking for someplace to set in for the night, hoping my tent would weather it but worrying it wouldn't. So I was searching for a place under trees where, even if I was at risk of a limb falling on me, would afford better protection than being in the open. 

I'd decided to start looking for an abandoned barn but while they were plentiful in that part of the state the only ones I could see were all in use by cows and horses. I was beginning to wonder if I could ask some family if I could cower on their porch when I passed a house with several vehicles in the driveway. My eye was caught by a van up on blocks. It looked like it was unlikely to suddenly be dragooned back in use. I stopped just past the house, listening to the sounds of people inside it, determined they were unlikely to hear or see me--it was the kind of place built into a hill where the ground floor on one side was actually the basement with no windows and the living was done on the next floor--and without giving it another thought opened the back of the van, popped my bike and gear inside, and closed it behind me.

The sharp smell of disuse and gasoline intoxicated me. The floor was a collection of tools, laid out where they could be grabbed easily from the door, and beyond them it was comparatively clear. I laid out my mat and mummy bag and read by what thin light was still available; when I decided it was safe,  I used my tiny reading light for a while until I gave in to exhaustion.

The wind had been pretty steady while I'd read and for the initial part of my sleep until the sound of a train barreling down the tracks at me shook me awake in a panic. The wind had  become a behemoth during my nap, a massive dragon snuggling up to my shelter and buffeting it enough that the sides shook. 

But I felt safe. The van had stood on those blocks for a long while and through many storms. Nothing was going to pierce those walls, not the harridan wind or the rain that hit the roof and windows sounding like stilettos. It probably went on for hours but I had little trouble, once I determined there was nothing coming into the few holes I noted in the van's floor, sleeping the sleep of the just plain tired. 

Despite my referring to it now as uncomfortable, it actually was pretty warm and secure and, most of all, dry. I slept close enough to one of the holes the smell of gas didn't bother me. When I woke the sun was just cresting the horizon. I usually spent the first minutes of my day brushing my teeth and splashing water on my face, but I didn't want to be caught by my unknowing saviors, so after a quick gulp from my water bottle, I opened the door as quietly as I could, and stepped out into a brilliant aqua-tinted world. Everything looked washed clean by the storm. Even the air seemed like it had been spiffed up. I took my bike out, closed the door just as quietly, walked it to the road and hopped on it without looking back. Tree limb after tree limb had been flung to the road and huge puddles were easy to navigate away from. Reaching the next town I heard it'd been a severe thunderstorm with sub-Category One winds, only(!) reaching speeds in the 60s. I was dry and safe and celebrated with a full breakfast at the diner. 

Weave a Mesh Together From the Bright Spots

 

I've read a book I came across at my local library a couple weeks ago with the bold title, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future. It's by 2021 Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa and recounts her chronicling the return to authoritarianism in the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, ending with the election of Ferdinand Marcos' son and Duterte' s daughter as his replacement president and vice president. Along the way she presents a lot of distressing facts and events suggesting we are headed ever closer to a willing abdication of our political rights in favor of the  relinquishment of our political responsibilities.

The "our" of the subtitle is not rhetorical. If you're tempted, as many of us are, to shrug her warning off as "that's Asia's problem," presuming that as bad as Trumpism has proven for the US, it can't be that bad, she points out that in the early 20s the US was the only country whose use of Facebook superseded the Philippines. And while both nations have since then lost their number one and two status--India now dwarfs us, and the Philippines has slipped behind Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico--we remain thoroughly within the grasp of what Shoshanna Zuboff has named "surveillance capitalism" which is the -ism whose operational form is "primary extraction". This is a practice by which " social media companies took our private actions and lives by using machine learning and artificial intelligence to collect and organize our personal data..., then publicly declared that they now own those corporate assets, which are then used to create algorithms that... manipulate us for profit. They offer no compensation, and they don't have to ask us for permission." 

As an example, you will never find a way to lower the number of ads you see on FB, despite those regularly appearing pitches that claim all you have to do is this and this. Delivering ads to your feed is what Facebook does, what it's meant to do. It's not good or bad in itself, but as Ressa describes, it can easily be put to bad uses. For instance, it will favor news and information one entity paying another wants you to see. She includes charts and details that, frankly, are too much for my very small brain, but people with greater experience with how the internet works will likely understand it.

There are moments when we might see the light at the end of the tunnel is not an approaching train. Ressa focuses on Facebook, for instance, because that was the primary social media platform at the time. While it remains the lead it is swiftly being overtaken by YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and as the bulk of boomers like me die off and stop using it, will be subsumed by younger, more malleable apps. They're likely to start by aping the successes of FB, but we've already seen how that kind of thinking has already become both corrosive and obsolete for Elon Musk/X. 

In her penultimate chapter with the depressing title "Why Fascism is Winning," Ressa explains that you stand up to dictators by "embracing values, defined early...: honesty, vulnerability, empathy, moving away from emotions, embracing your fear, believing in the good. You can't do it alone. You have to create a team, strengthen your area of influence. Then connect the bright spots and weave a mesh together.

"Avoid thinking in terms of 'us against them.' Stand in someone else's shoes. And do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Technology has proven that human beings have far more in common than we have differences; the tech platforms insidiously manipulate our biology regardless of our nation or culture. Fascist ideology, whether you call it 'the great replacement' or not, pits homogeneity against domestic enemies, who invariably champion democracy and its ideals. It's happening not just in the West, but in India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Philippines. We all have our own Pol Pots who encourage mass violence based on us against them."

Indeed, trump is simply the airbrushed version of Putin, Kim, Orban, and Bashir, made more palatable for a nation that claims it operates on individuality while it thrives on fetishistic consumerism. As we should already know, the hard work of governing ourselves requires paying attention and making difficult choices. Evil lurks in the easy answer, the simple solution. The core thing we have in common is the dignity all of us deserve. Dignity demands real thinking, hard thinking, and we must not let that go.