I have tried to write about Trump countless times over the past two years. A few days ago, I read a fine essay by SF writer Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian and decided to try again.
And then there were the midterms.
I found myself disagreeing with one of my favorite scribes, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, about whether the Russians had hijacked the 2016 election (I still think it’s likely). Hillary Clinton was no charmer, and far too much of a corporate centrist for my taste, but she was qualified. I thought the business class would see Trump as unstable and work to remove him quickly, but the promise of massive tax breaks, deregulation, and token fines for corporate wrongdoing proved too tempting.
Many of us liberals and lefties in the privileged white middle and upper middle class believed the country was on a long arc towards justice. Those of us left of center tended to feel that the country was not moving forward fast enough, but deep down we still felt equality and justice would come to pass. Now, we don’t know how long a diversion Trump and his ilk will prove to be. No matter how long he lasts, it will be too long for me.
The idea of a long arc toward justice—at least in my lifetime—was a delusion. A few things happened that shook up the comfortable folks on the liberal-to-left continuum. On the one hand, the rise of new technology. I am not talking about the hacking by foreign powers or the misuse of social media—although those are worth talking about. No, I am talking about something more basic than an algorithm: the ubiquity of the video camera.
Nearly every person over the age of 12 seems to own one. Many police are required to wear them embedded in their gear. The result: many more instances of police abuse have been recorded and shared across the country. And yes, the many claims of police brutality turned out to be true: African Americans, as well as others, are being abused every day. Jim Crow lives on in the streets.
Another event turned out to be the opposite of what we thought it was. When Barack Obama was first elected President, I leaned out my window (which doesn’t open far, thank heavens) and rang a bell. Oakland went wild. What better sign that equality and justice were coming?
My bell ringing was a false positive. When racists on the right went after Obama about birth certificates and Muslims, we shook our heads, thinking them extremists. To borrow a cliché, they were the canaries in the coal mine. All of Trump’s lies have revealed a truth that has been hard for the rest of America to swallow: racism and violence are thriving in the US of A. Jim Crow put on a nice suit of clothes. But pull the jacket off, and the lining is still a Confederate flag.
As Solnit and others have pointed out, white people will be a minority by 2044. But even then, what will it take for them to lose their hatred of the other? The white minority in South Africa ran that country for a long, long time. I fear it is going to happen here.
Obama’s election was a harbinger of the inevitable diverse future. And the white guys just aren’t having it. Obama knew better than us white liberals how tentative his position was, which is why he tread so cautiously. These racists are going to go fighting for their loss of privilege well into the next few decades, if not through to the 22nd century.
What’s worse is that they are well armed with automatic weapons. I think the folks who voted for Trump know he is a con, in the same way we all know game show hosts are hucksters. But as long as those voters believe Trump is going to return them to their former position, they will rally, intimidate, vote, and give the liberal elite the finger. And with a little help from the Russians, their guy came to power without a majority.
On the way in from Dulles Tuesday night, I saw the Lincoln Memorial lit up. A beacon of hope for the future, I thought. But Trump was not soundly renounced on Tuesday. Yes, the Republicans lost the house, which is a breath of encouragement. The fact that, after all of this president’s evil lies, the vote was still so close suggests to me that my time here may be running out. I feel relatively safe in the Bay Area bubble and a few other major urban centers, but I don’t feel safe in America anymore. In my mind, 2044 can’t come soon enough.
