As the
self-proclaimed Eternal Optimist, I’m known to have high hopes in the direst of
situations. The political climate right
now is one of them, and it has been -- or had been -- for years. The Oval Office is still being occupied, as
of writing, by a guy who I once knew best (by virtue of not being born, an
infant, and a child, in no particular order) as that guy from that one reality
TV show on a channel I couldn’t get to come in clearly on my TV. That’s not a great look for the country. I still remember my reaction on Election
Night when it became increasingly clear that Trump somehow carved out a win: I
internally thought “Oh. Oh no. No, no, no, no. Oh shit.” In that order. And then, as is often the case when I get bad
news or otherwise face quasi-impending doom, I had to rush to the bathroom to
void my colon.
I thought that
things would even out in the end. That
the system of checks and balances would keep Trump and his worst impulses in
check. That didn’t happen. I thought that the Democrats and Republicans
would be able to work together and do what’s right for the country. That didn’t happen. I thought that impeachment -- justified for
any number of reasons -- would lead to him getting booted out of the hot
seat. That didn’t happen. I thought that the Mueller report would seal
his fate. That the Democrats retaking
the House would settle things. That his
weekly, sometimes daily controversies would make him too toxic to keep
around. Didn’t happen, didn’t happen,
didn’t happen.
Now we’re a country
whose stability, values, alliance, and future are all getting body-slammed by
one feisty orange boi.
Where do I even
begin? Well, I guess it’s with a
clarification: as easy as it is to blame all of the country’s ills on Trump
(and by extension, assume that everything will be okay when (if?) he’s gone),
he’s not the only one we should glare at right now. Billionaire donors pulling the strings from
the shadows; news networks and right-wing journalists spreading propaganda;
interference from abroad, itself espousing an uncomfortable truth about how
vulnerable we are. And of course, we
have the overwhelming majority of an entire political party who have basically
turned their back on the common man to…I don’t know. Hold onto power? Make more money? Punish their rivals and anyone they don’t
like? I mean, it seems like a pretty bad
exit strategy to systematically destroy America and the planet when you
kinda-sorta need a place to live. Power
and money won’t save you from polar vortexes or Death Valley-level conditions
on an average Wednesday afternoon. Or
death, put more simply.
Maybe this is me
being an idiot, but I would have thought that those in power -- thanks to
money, power, prestige, whatever -- would care about their legacy. Yeah, we’ve got senators and reps who won’t
be alive to see the chaos they’ve wrought, but history won’t be kind to
them. And even overlooking the anxiety
that would come from knowing there are so many people who hate and will hate
you, past, present, and future, a lot of these guys are working under the
assumption that they’ll never, ever face consequences. That they’ll be able to retire or pass
peacefully, surrounded by money. How
have these guys -- men
deep into their sixties -- made it through so many days, knowing full well
that only the most desperate tactics and exploitations are keeping the house of
cards standing?
I guess the obvious
answer is “because so many of them are evil”.
That’s a gross oversimplification, but, well, it’d explain a lot.
Like why we’re
putting children in cages. Still.
Everything should
come to a stop until this problem is resolved.
And by that, I mean the REAL PROBLEM -- not something “solved” by
building The Big Dumb Wall of Racism That is Stupid and Also Won’t Work. Step one: free the children. Step two: reunite them with their
families. Step three: beg for
forgiveness. Step four: accommodate them
fully -- rehabilitation, care packages, money, whatever. Step five: burn the newly-vacated detention
centers to the ground, so that this never happens again. There.
Done. Simple.
…Is what I’d like
to say, but it’s not that simple. I know
it. There’s no easy fix, and no coming
back from this entirely-avoidable, needlessly-expensive
situation. These children are going to
be scarred for life. And what hurts more
is that I’m tempted to add one of two addendums to that sentence. Scarred for life if they ever get out.
Or scarred for life if they survive.
Innocents are getting thrown into cramped, unsanitary holding pens,
denied of toiletries, festering with illnesses, and forced to endure who knows
how many abuses from guards. The best
way to resolve this crisis is to have never resorted to it in the first
place. But since we’re already
here? The next best thing is to at least
start. Do something to fix this. And yet I say this in 2019, when I feel like I
said something eerily similar last year -- meaning that things have either stayed
the same or gotten worse.
If you’re reading
this and can make a decent argument as to why what might as well be kidnapping
is a viable policy, then by all means go ahead.
Until then? I’m going to make a
bold claim and say there is no justification for
this. How could there
be? The only way to say that “this is
okay” is if you’re actively profiting off of it, you really think it’s the
right thing to do, you’re numb to the suffering of others, you’re enjoying it,
your sense of justice is horribly misaligned, you’re ignorant to what’s
happening, or you’re malignantly stupid.
There’s plenty of room for overlap, of course.
The catch-all
answer/reasoning is if “you’re a Republican”, i.e. a person who’s an active
member of the party on capitol hill, someone who votes along party lines, or
simply just goes along with Trump’s impulses.
And guys? I’m trying -- I am trying
not to make this a black-and-white, good-versus-evil, me-right-u-wrong scenario. I don’t want to believe that my fellow men
and women are beyond reach -- that the gaps between us are untenable just
because we don’t believe in the same things.
If we start collectively believing that there’s no hope for “them” (no
matter which side you’re on and what “they” think), then the nation’s already
scraping the floor of Challenger Deep.
With all that said? Holy shit.
The GOP is completely in IDGAF mode right now. It seems like anyone who’s aligned with the
party, working for/with Trump, or otherwise has a stake in their efforts is
willing to embody the worst qualities of any given human being as long as it’ll
help them get through the day or an awkward conversation. At one point I happened to catch a CNN
interview that brought on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who took questions from
anchor Jake Tapper over the decision to pull aid from Honduras. Tapper argued (correctly) that offering aid
to the country has positive effects, and building it up could dissuade its
people from wanting to leave and come to America. Pompeo’s reaction was “Well, that’s just a
liberal theory,” and prattled on a bit.
Meanwhile, Tapper
gave him the biggest “Are you for real?” look I’ve ever seen on TV, and
the first chance he got, he murdered Pompeo with words on the spot. His response: “You can say that it’s a ‘liberal
theory’ if you want, but that information came from your department.” Cue Pompeo freezing up, looking dumbfounded,
and then walking it back to say “We’re looking at our options and trying to
find out what works.”
These are the
players we have at bat for us. And I
pray it doesn’t last -- because if it does, then we’re
all fucking dead.
Is there anything
that can get through to them? Are power
and money the only things that matter?
Why will those matter if the country and planet are on fire before all’s
said and done? What kind of
self-preservation tactics are they willing to rely on if they can’t even face
their constituents in public? Why are
all of these men and women, people who have the ability to put a stop to some of
America’s worst problems -- up to and including, you know, LOCKING CHILDREN
IN CAGES -- so afraid to do what’s right?
Like, say, NOT LOCKING CHILDREN IN CAGES?
This is beyond
infuriating. It’s heartbreaking. It’s actively hurting me, throughout my everyday
life, knowing that I’m powerless to do anything to help those in need or impart
justice on the unjust. And guess
what? I’m not in a cage. I haven’t been separated from my family. I’m not being used as a pawn for someone’s political
(or monetary) gain. But my frustration is
at its absolute peak right now, having opened Pandora’s Box. I need a solution. We all do, including those so casually
mistreated by a pack of criminals in suits and ties.
But what’s the
solution for everyday nobodies like us?
What’s the right course of action?
Protests haven’t changed much. Hard-hitting
journalism has exposed the truth and on occasion forced a backdown, only for
the Orange House to move on to its next crime.
We have the power to end this with an overwhelming vote, but 1) that’s
not feasible until 2020 even though we need it now, and 2) there’s no guarantee
that the election will be fair, given how there’s been no
effort (and sometimes negative
effort) to safeguard it from foreign
influence.
I want to point out
that violence is not the answer here.
Ideally, it shouldn’t be. It may
have worked for other countries in the past, but coups and bloody revolutions
in this day and age don’t strike me as feasible. It would be too easy for the propagandists to
spin any attack in the GOP’s favor.
Heaven help us if something ever happened to Trump. Setting aside the fact that he needs to face
the law for pretty much everything he’s done thus far, resorting to violence to
remove him is the same as admitting “the system doesn’t work” and this is the
only way I can win, so it’s time to cheat”.
But as things get direr -- as more crimes are committed, more people
suffer, and more abuses of the country happen before our eyes -- it’s not hard
to imagine someone, somewhere, at some point, going all in to dispose of
whoever he thinks is “the bad guy”.
It’s
unnecessary. Not just because we can
have a more satisfying victory when it’s done properly. Oh no.
We all know who the villain of this story is. Even though it’s so easy to glare at the
Republicans -- those in Congress, those in the administration, and everyone in
between -- we have a name and a face to go by.
No matter how much I retch internally over making such a basic (if
obvious) generalization, it all really does go back to Trump. You could say he’s the symptom of the GOP’s
rot, or an exploited glitch in the system.
No matter what, though, I don’t think it’s off-base to say that he’s the
cause of countless problems. The GOP’s
downfall is just a byproduct of them collectively, foolishly thinking that this
is the man they need to fall on the sword for.
Put on a blindfold
and throw a dart. You’ll hit a Trump
controversy, guaranteed. Off the top of
my head, he’s enabled the longest government shutdown in history, escalated a
trade war with China that’s the equivalent of playing Stop Hitting Yourself
with his own face, picked a fight with Iran -- to the point where a US missile
came within 10 minutes of striking -- banned transgender folks from serving in
the military, argued that wind turbines cause cancer, and demanded a tank-filled
parade on the Fourth of July, irrespective of the damage and costs it would
force. Also, it’s a safe bet he’s still
enjoying golf trips to his resorts on the taxpayers’ dime. So, you know, that’s always fun to remember.
Even if -- EVEN IF
you work under the belief that Trump somehow managed to win the presidency
without any help from Russia, and thus can’t nail him to the wall with
accusations of collusion or treason, there are still dozens of other reasons
why he should get booted out of office. He’s
been violating the Constitution from the first day on by way of not divesting
from his businesses. He’s a constant
embarrassment on the world stage. Not only
is it clear that he has no idea what he’s doing -- still! -- but it’s
pretty safe to assume the man is mentally unwell. Having made it to his 70s, it’s only natural
for something to have gone wrong inside his head. What’s unnatural is to have everyone around
him -- by his orders or otherwise -- pretend he’s the same virile big shot he
was back in the 80s. Or however he
imagined himself. Take your pick.
If that’s not the
case, then we’ve got hard confirmation that he’s an unapologetic racist. His “go back” tweets demanded four freshman congresswomen
to leave the States and head back to whatever broken country they came
from. That’s bad enough in its own
right, and even worse when you realize that three of the four women -- those
who’ve publicly taken shots at “the president”, I’d wager -- were born in
America. It gets even worse when you
realize that someone with access to a wealth of the world’s information can’t
even be bothered to tap it…or won’t even use a Google search.
Does this man think
that whatever he says is the truth? Or
that if he says it, it’ll become the truth?
I guess I shouldn’t
worry about that, because it gets even worse.
Not only did Trump make some horrifically-racist tweets, but he also
thought it would be a good idea to double down.
Triple down. And then whip
up support for his insanity at one of his beloved pep rallies. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, you’ve got
the GOP either staying silent on the obvious racism, or sidestepping it like
they were playing hopscotch on a minefield.
They barely wanted to acknowledge the racism. Just turned it into victim-blaming and tried
to prop up Trump with his “accomplishments”.
Like how “the economy is good”.
Not to go off on a
tangent -- as if I haven’t already -- but if the assumption is that Trump is
going to ride out the 2020 election on the strength of the economy, then he and
his pals are going to have to answer some hard questions. I keep hearing “the economy is good”, but I
have to ask him, the party, and their supporters: in what way? Fox News will say that there are more jobs
now and the stock market is doing well, but so what? What’s the quality of those jobs? Are they enough to provide a decent standard
of living? Are they helping the country
stay competitive globally by promoting the R&D of new technology?
How are the jobs,
old and new, faring in the wake of inflation and/or the rising cost of goods
(not to mention the tariffs in place for no raisin)? Has any of the wealth perceptibly flowed into
the hands and pockets of the average American?
What steps have been taken to stabilize the economy? What happens if and when “the strong economy”
you’re so proud of (and piggybacked off of thanks to the Obama administration’s
efforts) tanks -- and tanks decisively because of the policies Trump and pals
put in place?
I have severe
doubts I’d get good answers to any of those questions -- barring reality checks
from analysts and journalists whose
forecasts sound like doomsday in the making. It feels like the GOP, having fused with Trump
to become a shambling, amorphous blob of lard, wrinkles, and bronzer, just want
me to believe that everything is fine.
Meanwhile, pressing Trump on anything more complex than what he had for breakfast
runs the risk of him shrieking about how great he is, while all of his enemies
can suck a lemon. It’s been like that
pretty much since January 2017. They’re
going in circles and circles, dragging us along by our heels; they’ve done the
loop so many times that their footsteps have put them in a trench fifteen miles
deep.
And we’re going
lower. Because there are still children
in cages.
*sigh*
I remember when I
didn’t have to worry about this shit. I
remember the days when I would never even dream about putting political rants
on what’s mostly a gaming blog. Even
now, I can think of other stuff I’d rather be writing about, up to and
including work on novels in the making.
I want to go back to the days when competent, well-meaning adults -- not
even the best and brightest if that’s what it took, because that’s how low the
bar is right now -- were in control.
Maybe if that were the case, I could have used the time making this post
to push my own agenda as to why Kamen Rider is so hype. I mean, a new one just got revealed, and he’s
looking fresh AF.
But I can’t. I have this pain in my heart. This anger in my head. This desire in my soul -- a wish to see
justice served, and for my brethren, here in America and in every corner of the
world, given the chance to live freely.
Happily. No one should ever have
to feel like they don’t have a future. But
Trump and those who support him -- either because they believe in his “vision”,
or simply because he’s useful for their own gain -- clearly don’t share the
same creed. The only time they seem to
think about the future is when it’s time to put their next power-grabbing
scheme into action. Frankly, I can’t
stand it. So, if nothing else, I have to
hand it to Trump: he’s awakened in me a level of fury and rage I didn’t even
know I could muster.
Then again, maybe
it’s not Trump and his administration I’m angry with. Maybe it’s just me lashing out at the most
convenient target. It’s feasible. Having hit the wall -- having realized my
weakness, a smothering sense of futility, and the gap between ideals and
reality -- I can’t help myself. I need a
release. If I can’t save the children,
then what can I do? How can I make the
world a better place, in the wake of an entire, hive-minded political party
that utterly refuses to do the right thing?
As unsatisfying as it may be, I think I have my answer.
In the end, I’ll
just have to do what I always do: sit here, write, and hope that one day, my
feelings will reach out to others. That
one day, I, too, can make a difference.
But until then, I’ll have to hope that soon, a true hero will come and
give us our respite.
I think it’ll
happen. Because despite everything, I
still believe in America. And no matter
what side you’re on -- mine, theirs, or your own -- I’ll make it clear here and
now.
I believe in you,
too.
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