Monday, November 14, 2016

New Normal

In the seven days since election night, I have avoided almost all news coverage of President-elect Donald Trump, and I am normally a news junkie. I have avoided engaging on social media. This isn't a bad thing; I consume far too much media, particularly around politics. But, it does indicate the depth of my shock and despair. That man and everything he stands for are utterly odious to me; he makes me nauseous. I will never understand why anyone would consider voting for him and yet half the country did. I'm related to several of them, one of whom referred to people opposed to Trump as "fucking pussy-ass liberal hippies." Another called Hilary Clinton a cunt. Nice, cuz; do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Social media is a strange place. I know much more about distant relatives than I used to and that is not necessarily a good thing.

I have to believe that the human race will survive Donald Trump, at least in the short term. We survived Reagan-Bush and Bush-Cheney. Those elections felt apocalyptic and alienating, but I survived. Hell, I lived through the last days of Richard Nixon, drunk and delusional with his finger on the nuclear button. Trump and his ilk don't want to end the world, they just want to own it outright and siphon it dry. He will definitely immanentize the eschaton, but I don't think he will bring on on the end days, at least not in his first term.  Who knows?

After each of those previous political reversals, I took my lumps, pulled up my socks and went back to work. I don't know if I can do it this time. I don't know if I have another protest movement left in me. I don't know how to change people's minds. I don't know how to reach them.

Whitman thought he knew.
  • This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Sheesh Walt, that's a lot to ask, even of a pussy-ass liberal hippie like me, and I sincerely doubt that my cousins will ever crack open Leaves of Grass. I think I'll just sit quietly for wait for whatever happens next.  


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