Digging Out of the Hole

Yes, we all received a small burst of optimism from seeing Michelle Obama speak. And we got a tiny jolt of hope from witnessing progressives, establishment Democrats, and even a few moderate Republicans unite in defense of sanity. And we savored an infinitesimal sliver of joy from realizing that Trump has only a 27% chance of winning the election.

Well, that was all great. But the fun times are over.

You see, the GOP will hold its convention next week, complete with smirking teens and gun-toting rich people and conspiracy cranks, all of them wildly enthusiastic about the possibilities of four more years of right-wing deviancy and madness. And this gathering of lunatics will make an impact, because the race will tighten, and we all will be tense as hell until November.

But that’s not the extent of the negative news.

Because even if Trump loses and voluntarily leaves the White House (not a given on either count), the United States is so deep into chaos, so submerged into catastrophe, that Biden will spend his entire term just trying to get us back to where we were  in 2008. On a cultural, social, economic, and political level, we are screwed for the foreseeable future.

Let’s start with our favorite virus, Covid-19, which has killed 170,000 Americans so far and continues to ravage the nation. You might be thinking everything will get back to “normal” as soon as that ruggedly handsome and /or stunningly beautiful scientist holds up a test tube and shouts, “We’ve found the vaccine!”

Well, there are just a few problems with that Hollywood ending.

First, most experts think a vaccine is unlikely to become widely available until mid-2021, at the earliest. Keep in mind that this “would be a huge scientific feat, and there are no guarantees it will work.” Developing a vaccine could, of course, take a lot longer. And rushing the process would only lead to a horrific backfire. Also, there are numerous issues with production, cost, and accessibility when it comes to distributing a vaccine. And finally, because we are Americans, there’s a good chance that anywhere from 30% to 50% of us will refuse to take it. 

So yes, we could easily be years down the road, still fighting this damn bug. That scenario would naturally prolong the economic recovery.

And speaking of the economy, the early talk of a rapid rebound now looks as accurate as those predictions that we would be ditching our cars to buy Segways. No, the economic recovery is going to be long and drawn out, wavering up and down, struggling to take off. The reasons for this include Trump’s botched response to the pandemic, the haphazard methods that the government took to fight the economic meltdown, and the complete lack of guidance on reopening schools. All of these factors have combined to dropkick us into economic calamity.

Also, please note that our last economic disaster under a Republican president (i.e. the Great Recession) was a top-down recession. That is, it hit the wealthy first, then filtered down. For this reason, it was taken more seriously, in that rich people demanded immediate action and got it. This current catastrophe is hitting the poor first and then moving up. And of course, our government doesn’t actually care until the rich donors are suffering, so it will be a while before shit gets real. In the meantime, the housing market will take a hit (sound familiar?), cities will hemorrhage residents, prices will go up, and we will still have massive unemployment and / or parents struggling to work and homeschool their kids simultaneously.

Now, don’t you feel better that the stock market is doing ok?

Meanwhile, on an international level, Trump has damaged America’s standing so badly that we may become permanent laughingstocks. Russia and China are both poised to dominate us. And no self-respecting nation is ever going to enter a treaty with us again.

Back here in America, the conservative judges that Republicans have littered throughout the federal system (including a possible rapist on the Supreme Court) will have us chained to oligarchy for decades.

And finally, please note that our most virulent racists, conspiracy nuts, and homicidal right-wingers have all been emboldened. Do you really think that if Biden wins, they are going to collectively shrug and say, “Guess we were wrong, so we will now go peacefully into the night”? More likely, “if Trump loses and QAnon evolves into a narrative about how a conspiracy of pedophiles won, then it’ll become even more violent than it already is.” And white supremacists will feel even more victimized, with many of them willing to go out in a theoretical blaze of glory.

Basically, the legacy of Trump will not just linger for years, but fester and boil and seep and decay and infect. If everything goes right, it will be years of struggle to climb out of this pit of despair, fear, ignorance, hatred, and paranoia that this man and his sociopathic supporters have flung us into. It may prove to be impossible, leading to a future America where we all wonder, without thinking about it too hard, how everything went wrong.

But on the plus side, Barack Obama gave a pretty good speech the other night.

Farewell to a Friend

We met freshman year in high school, and yes, that was a couple of decades ago. She became one of my best friends, not just during the four years of adolescent angst, but through college and the travails of early adulthood. 

Even after moving to separate states, we stayed tight. But eventually, we segued into that maintenance mode of friendship, where you’ve probably had all the adventures you’re going to have with a person, and your continued relationship consists of staying in touch and enjoying the rare times you get together.

And then even that was gone. I had not heard from her in about five years, when last month — abruptly and seemingly at random — she sent me a text. 

Before I tell you the content of that text, let me tell you about my friend. I’ll call her Anna, which is not her real name and is clearly not an anagram.

Anna was one of the first people I ever knew who came out, and she was outspoken in both her defense of gay rights and her condemnation of racism. Overall, she was about as progressive as it gets.

So you can imagine my surprise when I read her text — a hodge-podge of reintroduction — that culminated with the alarming phrase “Trump 2020!”

What the actual fuck?

I ran through the scenarios. Was this a bad joke? A jab to see if I had turned to the dark side? Perhaps a highly improbable typo?

Nothing made sense, so I texted her back and asked, as calmly and politely as I could, just what the hell she meant by that sign-off.

Anna responded with the following text:

“President Trump is the best thing that’s ever happened to our country. I am done with the Democratic Party. All the states and cities that are burning right now are run by Democrats. There’s a darker agenda.”

Ok, so that’s no to the whole idea of a typo.

I responded (again, as peacefully as I could), and asked what she was talking about.

Here was her response:

“Mayors kneeling to a mob of rioters is one clue to this agenda. Antifa, who has done most of the rioting, is funded by George Soros, a far-left puppet/frontman of a shadowy group of international bankers. This group is notorious for bringing countries down from the inside out. Through infiltration instead of invasion. The Democratic Party has also been infiltrated to an astonishing degree, but you probably don't want to hear about that.”

Well, Anna was right about one thing. I didn't want to hear crazy anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I’ve heard enough of them.

So I wished her well and ended our correspondence. The last thing she wrote to me was “Your mayor is a traitor who wants to defund the police,” which is a particularly odd, random, and sad way to finish our friendship. Believe me, when we were 14, I would not have predicted that this exchange— decades later — would be the final word on our relationship. But I highly doubt that I will ever hear from Anna again.

I will never know what happened to Anna. How did an open-minded, kind-hearted liberal morph into a paranoid, delusional conspiracy monger? Did her mind suddenly snap? Or did she just gradually decide to abandon all the principles of the first half of her life? Did someone hypnotize her? Did she decide to give racism a try and liked it? 

Other troubling questions bubble up. Is it a common occurrence for young progressives to turn into bitter reactionaries as they age? If so, is that what happened to the hippies who went to Woodstock who became Trump supporters 50 years later? Could this happen to anyone? Are we all at risk?

I have no answers to any of those questions.

My only hope is that, in later years, when I think of Anna, I will not remember the middle-aged woman furiously texting me bizarre, offensive rants. Instead, I hope that I remember the funny, creative, sweet artist who hung out with me in our youth, when we were close as could be, and when we shared dreams about our bright, limitless future.

School's Out

I’ve been homeschooling my son since March. He is seven years old, and he’s obsessed with dinosaurs and the pyramids of Egypt. So most of our curriculum revolves around velociraptors, King Tut, or a combination of both. And yes, King Tut fighting velociraptors would be an awesome Bruckheimer movie.

However — and this may shock you — I cannot replace a trained teacher who actually knows what he or she is doing. So just a few months ago, I was hopeful that our local schools would at least partially open, and my son could continue his proper education and socialize with his friends.

In retrospect, that idea seems so naïve that perhaps I should be the person in my house who is heading off to second grade soon.

Although to be fair, I did not believe at the time that my fellow Americans would be so foolish, so reckless, so gobsmackingly selfishthat their insane actions would cause the pandemic to not only linger at lethal levels, but soar to deadly new heights. Even at my most cynical (and I can be crazy cynical), I still thought we had a chance at joining the civilized world by cobbling together some kind of semi-organized, barely coherent plan for self-preservation.

No thank you. We would all rather die.

Despite the clear statistical and anecdotal evidence that it is idiotic to open schools now (when the situation is actually worse than when we closed them in the first place), our rejected Veep character of a leader is insisting — even demanding — that we flood kids back into their classrooms and hope for the best. Of course, in this scenario, hoping for the best means “only a hundred kids die and maybe a couple thousand teachers, tops.” Hey, we can’t let the science get in the way.

The president apparently believes that reopening schools and further spreading the virus will boost his chances of reelection. No, I don’t understand the logic either. But keep in mind that this is the same guy who thought sending in federal troops to rough up protesters would somehow make suburban moms vote for him. So who knows what the hell he’s thinking.

In any case, Trump’s bellicose stance on schools is one of his least popular positions (and the guy has lots of opinions that people just hate). In fact, a majority of Americans oppose the administration’s demands for schools to reopen, with an overwhelming 65% against “cutting funds to schools that do not physically reopen, as Trump had threatened.” And of course, school districts from LA to Chicago have ignored the president’s whining and made plans for virtual learning instead.

Yes, even some of Trump’s hardcore supporters draw the line at sacrificing their own children just so he has a better shot at winning North Carolina. Sure, they’ll happily sacrifice other people’s children, but not their own, so maybe there is an upper limit to the cult’s power.

Now, this whole scheme — to call it a “plan” is absurd — is yet another example of the Trump Administration’s general incompetence. After all, there is no national strategy for reopening the schools, no real guidelines on how to do it safely, and no ideas for how to deal with a viral outbreak in the classroom. Call it the return of Republican magical thinking or “no exit strategy, part two.” Either way, it illustrates how conservatives cannot think even one step ahead, no matter how predictable, logical, or necessary that step might be.

But wait — it gets worse.

Because in addition to the haphazard flailing from the White House that we’ve seen so many times before, this debacle in the making is fresh proof of the administration’s complete indifference and/or active contempt for the well-being of Americans.

It also reinforces the conservative disdain for education in general, and for public education in particular. Republicans are always freaking out that their children are being “indoctrinated” by teachers who point out that climate change has a scientific basis and that the Tulsa Massacre actually happened. More specifically, this administration has not been shy about its goal of making sure that only rich kids going to private religious schools actually get instruction. 

Speaking of instructors, I’m still trying to figure out how, according to the GOP, teachers are lazy morons and a scourge to America, but they also should be trusted with firearms (you know, to defend against all those school shootings that are the price of freedom). And in today’s world, teachers should be happy to die of coronavirus if it means kids can get out of their parents’ hair for a few hours.

And speaking of kids, conservatives have made it clear that they really don’t care about educational excellence (that’s something those socialist losers in Finland inexplicably prioritize). To the GOP, school is just glorified daycare, which allows parents to work, which keeps the economy going, which is the most important thing in the universe. And since we should all be willing to die for the sake of the stock market, opening schools is a natural extension of the Republican death cult.

As a final insult, we hear that we cannot possibly take even minimal efforts to safeguard classrooms because it would cost too much. This argument is never — as in never, never, never — made when we are talking about, say, a new aircraft carrier or a pile of bombsthat can blow up a continent or invading a foreign land. For those items, we have infinite cash. Also, we can always cut taxes for millionaires, but hand sanitizer is a fucking handout.

As a not-so-wise man once said, “It is what it is.”

Fully Colonized

It’s the little things that make us happy. Like the sound of children laughing, or the taste of ice cream, or the toppling of grotesque statues of treacherous slaveholders that are then dragged through the streets and thrown into rivers or hammered into oblivion. Things like that.

But while we’re all happy that monuments to Confederate generals are being yanked down across America (just a few decades too late), there remain some dicey issues about who should or should not be honored.

Indeed, it’s fair to ask, “What should be done with statues honoring Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, and what do these statues represent for Latinos — whose ancestry includes this Spanish legacy?”

Yes, depending on our DNA, we Latinos are a mixture of both the oppressed and the oppressor. For example, my family is from El Salvador, but our name originated in Spain. This is a common conundrum. The fancy way to express the twisted nature of our heritage is to state that “Latinx people are both the protagonists in historical justice and the progeny of colonization."

OK, that all sounds deep — and distressing — but this is largely academic, right? Surely, there is not an undercurrent of bigotry and/or self-loathing within Latino culture when it comes to racial issues. Is there?

Well, the truth is that, historically, many Latinos have “embraced white identity versus mixed identity to avoid further discrimination at the hands of white people.” Personally, I’ve known Hispanics who have happily checked the “white” box on the census and not thought twice about it.

The problem with this attitude is that it frequently becomes a conduit to prejudice against black people. Keep in mind that “anti-blackness has deep and complicated roots throughout Latin America, where fair-skinned people are frequently viewed as the ideal and receive better treatment.”

And if you’re thinking that this mindset is just another one of those silly immigrant traditions — like hating dishwashers — you’re wrong. For many Latino families, antipathy toward darker skin has “often carried over to the United States, where some believe that assimilation is the path to equality.” And for the second generation, “assimilation” often means, “becoming white.”

For proof of this phenomenon, just look at our perpetually tongue-tied, rage-filled president, whose hostility toward Latinos and fear of immigrants are so well-known that only the most delusional or partisan can deny it. 

Currently, almost 30% of Latinos plan to vote for the guy who called them “rapists,” and who has spent years building a shoddily constructed wall to keep brown-skinned people out. Yes, more than one out of every four Latinos is a MAGA supporter. That is nearly triple the percentage of his African American support.

You may be tempted to dismiss this as a polling error that sampled far too many right-wing Cuban Americans. But in truth, Latinos for Trump is a very real thing. And his base of Hispanic support has remained fairly consistent for his entire term.

Now, the president’s “relative resilience with Latino voters can be easy to overlook because he is losing these voters by a large margin” (which is certainly good news). However, Trump “is losing them by less than he did in 2016, which is strange at a time when his numbers are otherwise falling.”

It’s beyond strange. It’s fucked upside-down and backward.

So what are the reasons for this embarrassing anomaly? 

Well, we’ve heard that many Latinos don’t “know” Joe Biden, which is odd, considering his name came up once or twice during the Obama years. We’ve also heard that many Hispanics were big fans of Bernie Sanders, and if they can’t feel the Bern, they’re fine voting for the lunatic who advises chugging bleach. And of course, there are those aforementioned right-wing Cuban-Americans and the fact that Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc.

But none of those reasons ring fully true.

Because, in truth, many Latinos who support Trump are no different than other conservatives. They are so loathe to admit that they were fantastically, astronomically, stupendously wrong that they are willing to burn America down rather than acknowledge reality. 

And many other Hispanics see nothing offensive about Trumpism. For them, white supremacy is only a problem for blacks and dark-skinned immigrants. It’s not an issue for those who have successfully “assimilated.” Right? 

In essence, Trump is for all those Latinos who look at a statue of a conquistador and think, “Yeah, I’m that guy.”

Where Is That “Well-regulated Militia” Now?

You really have to give a shout-out to the Founding Fathers. Yes, they were hypocritical slave owners who stole land from the Native Americans, and they routinely drank toilet water and thought mastodons roamed the Pacific Northwest. But they still had some pretty good ideas.

For example, they gave us the First Amendment (a definite highlight). And they also gave us the Second Amendment, a bizarrely worded clause that has defied simple interpretation for almost three centuries now, and which makes the United States the only industrialized nation in the world where it’s easier to get an assault rifle than preventative healthcare.

Now you might ask, “What’s so great about that?”

Well, the whole point of the Second Amendment, according to hardcore advocates of gun rights, is that it is bulwark against government tyranny. Americans are constantly told that if it weren’t for citizens packing heat, the U.S. government would herd us all into labor camps at gunpoint… although it’s unclear who would be doing the rounding up, or why, or how rednecks with shotguns could prevent that from happening, or why the citizens of Japan or Great Britain or Canada don’t require this kind of protection.

Yeah, the details are a little fuzzy. But the point is that we have to guard against tyranny. 

Well, I have good news for all those militia types who have spent their lives hoarding AR-15s and shrieking about government oppression.

This is your chance. The tyranny is here.

You see, we now have a president who is in office only through a constitutional fluke and who has never been the American people’s choice. And this president has spent his entire term undermining our democratic norms and using the White House for personal gain. He has sold out to foreign dictators, ignored the murder of our troops, and dismissed any calls for accountability or transparency. And to top it off, his incompetence and hubris in the face of a pandemic has led to needless death and economic turmoil.

Doesn’t all that send a chill down your freedom-lovin’ spine? It should. But ok, maybe you gun-toting patriots out there believe that this is not enough to take up arms against the government. 

Well, how about the fact that, just last week, the president deployed federal law enforcement officers in “unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters”? These government shock troops are “driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation about why they are being arrested, and driving off.”

I mean, heavily armed government agents with no ID are grabbing citizens and shoving them into cars, with no respect for law and order. These brazen violations of civil rights “are more reflective of tactics of a government led by a dictator, not from the government of our constitutional democratic republic.”

Come on, all you Clive Bundy clones. There are literally jackbooted thugs marching around Portland! Unarmed moms are putting up more of a fight than you are! What are you waiting for?

OK, maybe I’m a little confused.

You showed up, armed and ready, when governors asked you wear a mask. But you don’t issue a peep when unidentifiable storm troopers are breaking the bones of veterans.

And perhaps you missed our president’s latest executive order, which is in direct violation of the Constitution? Or maybe you didn’t notice when he implied that he might ignore the results of an election and stay in office illegally?

I mean, all that is Despotism 101. And yet you do nothing.

Do you really want to prove that liberals are right when they say that threatening to fight your own government is paranoid delusion? Do you actually want progressives to point out that despite your tough talk, you are happy to fall into line behind a wannabe fascist prone to Orwellian doublespeak?

If so, maybe you can go ahead now and admit that your problem isn’t “government oppression.” It’s the fear of change, of an evolving country, of people who don’t look like you gaining more respect and power.

So the next time you feel the urge to issue a manifesto or proclaim your supposed principles, do the rest of us a favor.

As you stand there clutching your gun, just consider, for a moment, that nobody believes you. Because it’s all nothing but lies.