This post is an edited excerpt from my contribution to this important Garn Press book.
“All you need is love . . .” – John Lennon
Friday, January 20th, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of these not-so-United States.
The very next day millions of humans of all identities gathered around the globe to march, sing and love one another. It was the golden sun after the rain, the rediscovery of the deep blue firmament after clouds lifted.
I felt great despair on election night. But I don’t despair now. I’ve come to see this dark moment in American history as the death rattle of intolerance and injustice. It is the final ugly expression of resentment over social progress – civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights. It is the angry sigh of Americans who feel left behind and blame those who are further behind. It is the subconscious longing to preserve the assumed privilege that has been mistaken for the natural order. It is the imbalance felt by millions of white men as the world levels off and “the others” walk confidently among them.
History suggests that children tend to lean toward their parents’ political values. But history need not repeat itself. Students at a public school in Illinois sponsored a “Walk a Mile in Her Hijab” event. When gay students were attacked in Texas, their classmates protested in the streets. The great cultural divide between the adult coastal “elites” and “flyover country” Trump supporters doesn’t exist among the vast majority of young folks. They are, by and large, accepting and generous of spirit.
During the presidential campaign, the Clinton folks borrowed from the elegant and powerful Michelle Obama. “When they go low, we go high.” This is not the same as the Christian imperative to turn the other cheek. Going high does not mean going silently. It means speaking truth to power with dignity. It is putting a flower in a rifle barrel. It means not fighting fire with fire, but extinguishing fire by not giving it the oxygen of our attention.
And the very “highest” we can go is to love our children. The children in our homes, the children in other’s homes, the children in the streets and most of all, the children in our schools.
This includes the child in Donald Trump’s home. On the Sunday after inauguration, Facebook reported nasty remarks about 10 year-old Barron Trump. Shameful. He was the only light that pierced the inaugural gloom as he played peekaboo with his nephew while his father signed executive orders. His small face was fully alive in contrast to the grim pomp and “America First!” exhortations from his father. I wonder if Donald ever played peekaboo with Barron? I wonder if Fred Trump ever played peekaboo with little Donald?
I wonder because I know Donald Trump was not born evil. He too was once a small boy, ready to absorb whatever filled his life, whether unconditional love or unbearable pain. In one way or another, we all fulfill the prophetic acts that are visited on or withheld from us. If love is conditional or absent, callouses grow on the inside and eventually encase the heart because it cannot bear further assault. A narcissist has an insatiable appetite for adoration – not because it feels good, but because it can’t be felt no matter how persistently sought. If love for a child is unconditional and generous, narcissism is impossible, because the heart is open and feels deeply. We can’t be sure what acts were visited on or withheld from our President during his childhood, but a 2016 New York Times article hints at the family dynamic:
Mr. Trump (Donald) said that their father (Fred) “could be unyielding,” and that (brother) Freddy had struggled with his abundant criticism and stinginess with praise.
“For me, it worked very well,” Mr. Trump said. “For Fred (Jr.), it wasn’t something that was going to work.”
It is a familiar pattern. A child of an abundantly critical parent who is stingy with praise might crumble and self-medicate as did Freddy Trump, an alcoholic who died at age 43. Or such a child might grow callouses of narcissism and become a desperately tweeting President of the United States. It didn’t work very well for either of them.
What they both needed was love.
For millions of children, school is the most dependable place they might get the love they need. The fight for justice has many fronts: Health rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, economic rights, gender rights and more. We must reverse climate change before it reverses human existence. It can seem overwhelming. But it must start with education. If we engage on all the other fronts but don’t preserve education rights, we will fail. If we preserve education and lead our children toward love, democracy and empathy, all the other matters will eventually yield to a mighty wave of justice.
We can resist, protest, march and fight. But our most urgent need is to demand an educational system that provides an equitable, accessible, humane and engaging public school for every child in America. We need a school system that brings America’s children together, not one that divides them through the propaganda of “choice.”
We need schools that love children unconditionally and invite our children to love each other. And we need schools that encourage our children to love the world so much that they will save it.