What can I scream into the fray--what can I say that’ll soothe the ache of a broken heart--what will quiet the fears of the people I love?
What can pick up the pieces of shattered idealism and force them back together?
I don’t know if I can undo the pain of this moment.
Frankly, this post is as much for me as it is for anyone who cares to come by and read it--I can’t promise continuity, or even a cogent point.
Hell, I never thought I’d be writing this.
And I’ll dispense with the introductions. I know my audience, and my audience knows the tale of the tape.
For millions, the election of Donald Trump is about more than taxes or trade policy. It is about identity. It is about what it means to be an American--truly, an American.
I was raised by beautiful people, who were imperfect products of their time and place.
I grew up hearing that this is a white man’s country. A white man’s country, founded by white men, for white men--and that our prosperity, our position of importance, was due to the superiority of our unique gene-pool.
In this view, everyone else was a tenant; living in a nice apartment we owned. As long as they pay their rent on time, and don’t cause too much trouble--they can stay.
I, too, came of age in a time of darkness. My first memory of political consequence was sitting in a 5th grade classroom, listening to a live radio broadcast--a plane had just veered into the south tower.
We were under attack. We were at war.
And I got older. And I watched Americans die. And Iraqis die. And I watched my parents die, not in a war, not as such, but under the crippling costs of an out of control healthcare industry--and it is an industry--and then I washed dishes with a man whose family was from Palestine, and he lent me cigarettes that we smoked out behind the trash compactor.
And when my soul was crushed and my world fell apart, he cradled me as a panic attack stole over me in a crowded dining room.
And so did my Mexican-American roommate.
And so did a dozen others of all shapes and sizes.
And then I cast my first vote in 2008, for Barack Obama. Because he was an orphan raised by his grandparents, too. That’s really why I did it, more so than any policy he proposed.
He made sense to me, and he reminded me so much of the people that carried me to where I am.
Then, I lived in an apartment complex not far from Louisiana State University. When the election was called, my neighbors poured into the parking lot--black, white, hispanic--there were shots taken in honor of liberty, strangers danced--together.
It seemed we--a generation--had arrived just in time to watch our entire civilization turn towards the humane. All of those civics lessons with their rose-colored readings of America’s place in the world seemed so true on that night.
We were naive.
We were children--we still are.
And it’s time to grow the fuck up.
God isn’t on our side. He isn’t on any side. We will not be carried through by the righteousness of our cause, or by the breadth of our humanity, or by the nobility of our ideals. This is not a movie.
There is no plot, and there isn’t a convenient solution written on the last page.
Because what I was told as a child, about my role as a white man in America--was not wrong.
We idolize Martin Luther King Jr., but rarely recall that he was shot in the head on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.
This is a white man’s country, and if we aim to change that we’re gonna have to be mean.
And I don’t use that word in the sense of being unkind, no, we’re gonna have to be hardscrabble.
We’re gonna have to do a lot, with very--very--little.
Not because Donald Trump is some superhuman figure, but because he is--as I wrote a week ago--a Trojan horse who does not know he is hollow.
We cannot undo this. But we must not forget why this hurts, and why it challenges who we are.
Because when I watched Donald Trump walk on that stage as President-Elect, I saw fear in his eyes.
Not of us.
But of the great monster he now stands astride.
And it will devour him.
And we have to be ready for whatever the hell that means.