It’s
been hard to write a column about the utter depravity of the last three weeks. Steve thinks it is
time to hit them with our best shot.
Well, we finally know Donald Trump’s secret plan to deal with immigration. He intends to turn the United States of America into
such a despicable, amoral, and cruel country that no one in their right mind
would ever want to come here.
And now we find ourselves in the middle of one of the more
ruthless, soulless, and deceitful human rights atrocities ever committed in our
hemisphere, and it is being implemented by the government of the United States
of America. We are the people who take the tired, weary, and hungry people yearning
to be free and rip their babies out from their mothers’ arms as a conscious
strategy intended to discourage any other rapist and drug-dealing, ah, infants from coming to our shores.
At last look, 87% of Republicans approved of Donald Trump’s
performance as President. Perhaps that number may drop a point or two because a
couple of Republican mothers accidentally see a clip of the footage from Texas
while switching from “Real Housewives of Atlanta” to “Hannity” at 9:00. Maybe.
Of course we’ve said that so many times before. It always starts the same way. Well, this finally is it… This is as low as
it goes. This is so despicable, so shameful, so morally bankrupt… finally, Republicans
will turn on Donald Trump. Finally, this time, they will see his cruelty, his shameful
arrogance, his monumental ignorance, and his decision-making process based
solely on calculations of self-interest. Finally, they will see…
Sometimes I am forced to wrestle with the ineffectuality of
the columns I write. Because of the radical polarization of our media, it’s
likely that 85% of the readers of this column are educated progressives who are
likely to generally agree with the positions taken here. Perhaps we
occasionally express a new variation on a theme, but we do not change minds, if
only because there is pre-existing concurrence.
Writing columns that simply make liberals feel smug and ignite
Trumpublican internet rage is arguably
a waste of valuable electrons and fiber optic bandwidth. The purpose must be to shape an argument that
actually changes minds of the people who approve of or condone the actions of this administration.
This many months into our epic national nightmare, allow me
to reveal a secret. It has long been my fondest dream that I write the column
that causes a significant number of Republicans to finally see, to realize, and
to acknowledge that the man they have elected President is an amoral, ignorant
wrecking ball bent on destroying our democracy and our values solely for the
purpose of keeping him and his family out of prison. That I would write the
words that finally changed their minds.
That one of our columns would go viral among decent Republicans and finally help them
realize that they, too, must take a stand. That we must all rid the country of
Donald Trump before Donald Trump rids our country of its soul.
How to do that? What could possibly do that?
Earlier this week a flyer was stuffed in my
mailbox urging me to join my neighbors in attending the monthly meeting of the
Police Commission here in town so that they could lodge a formal protest about
the fact that the Waze app is now rerouting traffic off the crowded parkway
nearby and flooding our blissful suburban street with rush hour traffic
approaching 200 cars an hour. I decided
to attend to watch local democracy in action. A town officer spoke a tad condescendingly
to me and my neighbors about our naïveté in thinking that there were immediate solutions
to this complicated problem. He prattled on about the complexity of traffic
patterns, state laws, and the many competing priorities vying for attention in
our community. He concluded by proposing a formal analysis of traffic patterns, which will take six months to complete.
Our meeting with town officials may not have been satisfying, but I sure realized something by attending it.
At least twenty of my neighbors thought that this newly
bastardized traffic pattern was a big enough problem that they should postpone
cocktail hour long enough to show up at the police station and register a
complaint that their government was not serving their needs.
I can’t say this for sure, but I am willing to wager that
the strong majority of those twenty people did not march with the MeToo people,
did not write angry notes to their congressional representatives to protest presidential
proclamations about “shithole countries,” and did not stuff flyers in mailboxes in
outrage when their president announced that neo-Nazis and anti-Semites were the
moral equivalent of the protesters who objected to their violence and bigotry. For that matter, they probably did not attend any of Donald Trump’s gas-bag stadium
shows,either.
No, the people who showed up at this particular police
precinct may not be tuned into national politics, but if a
Waze app causes hundreds of tardy type-A private equity nerds to drive their
Beamers through our ‘hood, then it is definitely time to storm the local
Bastille.
Most people, it seems, are rather apathetic about our national political crisis,
our constitutional rights, and our freedoms until those sacred principles are
violated on their own block. It’s sort of like conservatives and gays: they
find homosexuality morally repugnant until their daughter comes out of the
closet. Then they become instantly transformed into progressives on that
particular issue.
And then it hit me.
Is this how to make the argument to
Republicans? Is it simply a matter of re-framing the discussion in a way that will make it
all more tangible, immediate, and relevant to them?
Ok, dear Republicans, I need you to take a moment and think
about the friendly little American town where you live, have raised your
family, have volunteered with the local scouting organization, and where you
sing in the church choir. Please create that picture in your mind. You are
immersed in that lovely little town. Perhaps you were born and raised there. It
is a pretty town, where the people are nice, considerate, charitable, and
respectful of the rights of others. It is a place where people generally live
by the golden rule, regardless of where they worship. It is home. It embraces you, your spouse, your
children, your work, your friends, your spiritual life, your home, and your recreation.
Everything. You like it just the way
it is, and your fondest hope is that when your children grow, they will return to live and work in this pretty how town, with up so floating many bells down.
Now imagine that your daughter is walking down Main Street
on her way to the Gap and she runs into the new elected mayor. He slaps her on her ass
and tells your daughter that he is such a popular mayor that if he wanted to,
he could grab her “by the pussy” and get away with it.
What??? He did what???
Allow me, my Republican friend, to depict how this presidency would feel to you if everything the Donald Trump was doing on a national basis were being done by some local political hack who got elected mayor of your town. How would you feel about it if everything that is happening
in the shells of empty Wal-Marts on the border in Texas were actually more like
that Waze app creating utter havoc on your street and destroying your way of
life. You would be horrified, wouldn’t you?
How’s this? You know Juan, the guy who does all the
work in your yard? He and his crew show up every Friday morning at 8:00 am,
and they work their butts off for two hours, cutting, trimming, and weeding
until your yard looks like a million bucks.
I have news for you. The new mayor just had Juan arrested
on suspicion that he is an illegal immigrant, and I.C.E. stormed his house and
grabbed his four year old twin boys, threw them in the back of a Chevy Blazer,
and shipped them to a detention camp in Alabama. Juan has not had a trial, and has not been convicted of anything. But now he is in a
cage down at that old shuttered K-Mart screaming at the top of his lungs for
help finding his children.
Hey, if it was your loyal, hard-working gardener Juan that was behind bars
screaming for his children, you’d race down and try to fix that travesty,
wouldn’t you?
You know that severely angry young man who was been
arrested last year for carrying loaded weapons into a classroom at your local junior
high school, and who threatened to blow up the Starbucks on South Main Street with
a military-grade explosive? The one who is rumored to have broken the legs of
his uncle?
Did you hear that the
Mayor just had a big public embrace with that kid and is now walking around saying that they are
really good friends? The mayor welcomed him back to the school that your kids
attend because the kid promised that
he would stop bringing his AR-15 into the assembly room. Apparently the new
Mayor thought it would be a real P.R. coup if he could claim that he had "solved the problem" that the kid represented because he now had a
personal relationship with the
borderline psychotic. So that kid can come back to school any time he wants. The mayor
claims he has indeed solved the problem, but you are not convinced. The dangerous young man still
owns all of his weapons.
And then there are your dear friends on your cul-du-sac … Justin,
Angela, and Theresa. You go way back – they have always been steady,
reliable, and important friends, and positive influences in your household. They
were there to take care of your kids when you had to rush Mary to the hospital.
Justin coached your kid’s soccer team and Theresa is the girl scout troop
leader your daughter so admires.
Well, the mayor just announced that he thinks – with no
evidence -- that your three friends have
been fleecing the town for years, and he is requiring that that they pay more
to use the town’s services. Your good
friends are being singled out for punishment with no evidence. When they object,
the mayor publicly disrespects these citizens, calling them childish names.
Then there was the time that the mayor showed up at the big
football game and announced that the opposing high school – the one closer to
the city with more diversity than the lily-white high school in your community
-- was located in a town that was a “shithole.” You have friends in that town.
It was hard to look them in the eye after he said that.
How about the time the mayor told the high school to stop
teaching science – right after he proclaimed that science is just a “big hoax.”
How did you feel when your high school – that used to be number one in the
state – is now rated far below the neighboring towns in science and math scores, and the colleges have
taken note?
How about the time you learned that your new mayor routinely
pays for sex, and then had his employees pay hush money to the women to buy
their silence? You learned that your mayor had a pattern of sexually
predatory behavior, and that he categorically dismisses all allegations of impropriety by saying that every single victim of his misogyny is a liar. Every single one.
There was the time that a gang of neo-Nazis and
anti-Semites showed up and began chanting their hateful slogans and taunting
anyone who wasn’t a white male. Remember when your son when down to the village
green to protest the neo-Nazi hatred and bigotry? Remember the riot that ensued
and the young woman who was killed? Remember when the mayor announced that your
son was every bit as much to blame for the young woman’s death as the neo-Nazi who drove the car into the crowd?
Remember when you first learned that the election that
this major won actually was enveloped in a cloud of suspicion that he had enlisted
the help of mobsters and criminals to influence the voting? You then watched as he
fired the Chief of Police for conducting an investigation and tried to put one
his cronies in his place. When that failed, he started to tear into the local
police, telling everyone he could that they were liars and biased political
hacks who were trying to destroy him.
And, yes. There was the time that your daughter and
son-in-law had the baby, your first grandchild. And someone from the town
thought that your son-in-law had committed a criminal act. So to set an example
to all the other people in the town, the government ripped your granddaughter
out of the hands of your screaming
daughter and shipped the infant off to a camp miles away.
Then,
of course, there was that very first incident... when the mayor groped your daughter on Main Street.
When she complained, the Mayor announced very publicly that your daughter was a
liar and that he was going to sue her.
Of course, you were forced to deal with all of this stuff first hand, because you
don’t learn about what is going on in your home town from a flagrant liar on Fox News.
No, Fox News doesn’t cover local stories, so they couldn’t spin all this crap
in a way that makes your disgusting mayor look like a hero. You can’t hide
behind some fantasy that all the terrible stuff that this mayor has done is the
invention of a biased press. Because when it happens in your own town, you see
it, you feel it, and it happens to people you know. People who you have known,
respected, and trusted for years. So you know deep down that it is the truth.
Here's the problem, my Republican friend.
This horrific little scenario that I have concocted about
your town?
You actually live in that town.
Right now.
That town is called the United States of America.
If any one of the acts that we have described here – just one -- had been committed by your
local mayor, you would be justifiably
ballistic. You would be up in arms in rage. You would fight tooth and nail to
protect the civility, decency, and charity that defined your community.
You would fight for your town.
Please.
Stop watching Fox News and kidding yourself that Sean
Hannity’s perverted, self-interested version of reality is actually the truth.
Don’t kid
yourself thinking you can wear a hat that says “Make America Great Again” while
wearing a jacket that says, “I really don’t care.”
You’d care if it was happening to your wife. Your daughter.
Your son. Your home. Your job. Your friends. Your town.
I wouldn't tolerate this shameful behavior if it was being done by a Democrat. You shouldn't ignore it because it is being committed by a Republican.
Take a look and see what is happening to this country.
If only half the town is fighting to preserve it, this town
will die.
Perhaps, readers, if you agree with what we have put forward today, you might print this essay out. Fold it up, and make it into something that looks like a local flyer about a horribly flawed Waze app that is ruining the neighborhood. Then stuff it in the
mailboxes of the people who you know are Republicans.
Maybe they will realize that this particular Waze app is actually a president who is taking
this country horribly off its course. Maybe they will join us down at the town hall. Maybe they will realize that is time for all hands on deck to
get the problem fixed.
If only half the country is fighting to save it, this
country will be changed forever.
And yes, Mayor Trump, you would have solved your supposed immigration problem once and for all. No tired, poor, huddled masses yearning
to breathe free will ever again aim their hopes and dreams toward these shores.
Because it will no longer be the land of the free and the home of brave.
anyone lived in a
pretty how town
(with up so
floating many bells down)
spring summer
autumn winter
he sang his
didn't he danced his did.
Women and
men (both little and small)
cared for anyone
not at all
they sowed their
isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars
rain
--E.E. Cummings
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment