As of today, Donald Trump is the President of the United States. I still can’t decide which stage of grief America seems to be in. I asked a friend the other day how many stages of grief there are: “9, right, 9 stages?” I quickly responded to myself, “Oh wait, no, there are 5 stages of grief, 9 is circles of HELL.” My blunder seems to become more and more correct with each confirmation hearing of Trump’s Cabinet ‘O Ghouls.
Donald Trump is a clown, is a puppet, is a whatever the late night host of your choosing is apt to call him. But I’m not worried about Donald Trump. Woah, rewind, strike that - I am SO SO SO worried that we have become the dystopian nightmare that we see in all-too-many sci-fi movies. Robocop was supposed to be a dramatization; now it seems like a premonition of a corporate-owned, dumbed-down but amped-up society where facts don’t matter and an opportunist Cheetoh Puff with a penchant for pee-pee can be elected President. But I digress. Donald Trump has tapped into the same things that have always caused social fractioning for political or economic reasons. It’s a played-out story: People with no stake in the game of social welfare (for anybody besides themselves, their families, their donors, whatever) making it seem like they are doing what they’re doing ‘for the people.’ Is it any surprise that Trump quoted Bane in his Inaugural address? You can say and do ANYTHING - even nominate, I believe, 6 folks from Goldman Sachs to your transition team after destroying your opponent over their own involvement with the firm - as long as you pull on people’s heartstrings and find a scapegoat they can be pissed off at.
Donald Trump is a deeply, deeply narcissistic man so desperate for attention that he ran for President as a means of garnering attention for a television network. Now that his scheme worked in a way that blew us all away (including DJT himself), he is so desperate for attention that he is going out of his way to cause as much chaos as possible in America (and soon the world). He put together a Cabinet of people whose aims are largely to demolish the departments they are supposed to head. He tweets like a petulant teenager. And he’s a dummy (you don’t have to be smart to do what he’s done throughout his life, but it helps if you’re a sociopath). There was no way I would have believed America could elect him. For the moment let’s disregard the Russian hacking, the disgusting behavior of FBI director, James Comey, and the fact that 3 million more Americans voted for his opponent. Let’s say Donald Trump FAIRLY won the election. Through it all, the same argument is made as to how he won: ‘The ‘Coastal Elites’ were out of touch with ‘Regular Ol’ Americans.’’ Well, enough is enough, for me.
I was born and raised in Littleton, Colorado - a small, white bread suburb of Denver. The only reason you know it is because the shock of the Columbine High School massacre was not only due to it being the first of its scale, but because it happened in an ‘ordinary’ place like Littleton. Neither of my parents went to college. They divorced when I was 2. I remember what it was like to be raised by a single mom trying to take care of two kids on $20,000 a year. I ate more beans ‘n weenies and Ramen than you could ever hope to eat. My only exposure to the “real world” was TV (The Real World) and advertising (my decade of crippling body dysmorphia and self-hatred can thank you for that, you fuckers). But I had the privilege of living near an excellent public school system that had the funding to provide materials to a kid like me, who didn’t live in the houses my friends lived in, but who was given the opportunity to learn, and to perform in school plays. After a Drama Club trip to New York City to see Broadway shows, I knew that was where I wanted to go. And I fucking did. I applied to Sarah Lawrence College. And I got in.
I also know how it feels to be put off by people with privilege. The class difference I encountered when I first arrived at Sarah Lawrence was like a smack in the face. I was a kid from Middle America, who’d never had money, who never did half the bogus shit many of my college peers got to do while growing up, and I know the kinds of resentments that can bring. My father saved a college fund of $50,000 that he’d been keeping since I was born. And that was how much one year at Sarah Lawrence cost. I had scholarship money, and I am currently paying student loans that I will be paying for years to come (I turn 30 in March). I was flabbergasted when I truly comprehended that many of my peers didn’t need financial aid (a couple romances were destroyed by my inability to quell said resentments). ‘How the fuck could someone go to this school without help?!?’ Further, ‘How the FUCK could these people possibly be concerned with human rights violations around the world when these Dickwads have never had to worry about anything, RIGHT?’ But because I was given financial aid, I was at the same school they were. I was able to challenge my beliefs like the other kids. I was able to form who I was and who I wanted to be. I went to Italy. I performed my ass off. By the time I graduated, I truly felt that I was as capable, and, nay, WORTHY, of such an experience as anyone else - even “rich kids.” I don’t believe that I am the only one in my position. (I also went to school with some really swell people; the broad-brushing carries some truth, but I am fully aware that there were many at SLC like me, and who continue to struggle as I do).
I have worked at box offices, waited tables, cat-sat, worked at the Museum of Sex (ask me later, it was nutso). I’ve done plays for nothing, and I’ve done plays for everything. I am not a ‘Coastal Elite’ because I happen to live on the West Coast. I am the Gawd-Damn American Dream. I am working 3 jobs to barely keep my head above water (‘the poverty line’) because my Dream is that important. So how am I so out of touch with “ordinary Americans?” I am the beneficiary of the kind of social welfare that provides public education to those who cannot afford private schools. I am the beneficiary of grants and scholarships that offered me the opportunity to prove that I am worth as much time and attention as anyone else. And I could sure benefit from raising the minimum wage.
I certainly don’t want to suggest that I have had it worse than anyone else. We seem to want to make suffering into a pissing contest. I am simply saying that many of us are fighting the same fucking fight. And getting out of your bubble - meaning leaving and seeing other perspectives besides your own - will do away with all the peripheral bullshit these oligarchs throw at us to divide us - the racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, the denial that our planet is fragile and needs ALL OF OUR help so desperately. We can all be kept ignorant if we let them. We have to find a way to deal with our own shit, our resentments and projections, so that we can deal with the real problem - there are a small number of Douche Canoes at the top that don’t care about anything but their own bottom line. And they will say and do anything to play into our anxieties.
The coasts are not the problem. The problem is the narrative that the coasts aren’t (mostly) comprised of people FROM Middle America who still want what’s best for the country, the planet, and the ever-fleeting jewel of our Republic - Democracy.