Understanding the Uncomfortable

I’m a white cisgender able-bodied straight woman in New England. I am unlikely to get shot by cops, harassed for my religion, deported, drafted for a nuclear war, or, really, have much worse happen to me under Trump’s administration than have more job prospects disappear, the planet melt, and my access to birth control further limited. My chances of being sexually assaulted are still about one in five, although that may increase if Trump’s ascendancy makes sexual predators feel more entitled. So, largely, I can write safely and compassionately about understanding the white working class frustration that fueled Trump. As I find myself saying frequently, understanding is not the same as condoning.

It’s not, exactly, that I am surprised that Trump won—just stunned and saddened because the rhetoric of his campaign was so vitriolic, and I hate that so many people found resonance with that anger. I suspect that the anger of many of Trump’s almost entirely White voters has more to do with a fear of losing identity, of wanting to make sure that, in a growing and changing and browning and gender-changing America, there is still a place for them, for the life and the values they know.

That fear of being left behind, of losing your place, losing a place, in the world, I understand. My father once stood up in a crowded bookstore, in an almost entirely female audience, to ask Terry Tempest Williams a question. Williams was on a book tour for When Women Were Birds, about her relationship to her mother and the women in her family, and my father’s question was, “where is your father in all of this, does he have a place in this story?”

Williams answered warmly that her father did, and my dad sat down, and I deeply regret that I can’t remember now if I ever told him how proud I was of that moment, what I learned in it. To me, that exchange, crystallized my understanding that as movements for social change go forward, that as Progressives work for equal rights, representation, and opportunities for women, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, immigrants newer to America than ourselves, and non-Christian people, we cannot overlook that to change the country—as I believe we must—this is going to intrinsically make, particularly, straight White men feel like they don’t have a place anymore. That lack of inclusion is a disservice, and as it turns out, a disservice that is dangerous to everyone.

I don’t believe that White America is under an assault, that we need to let straight WASP dudes be in charge again forever because they get sad (or dangerous to everyone else) when they don’t get all the seats at the table, but I do think that, as Progressives, we have been narrow-minded and unkind when it comes to this issue. We have not embraced diversity that did not agree with our ideals. We have not been open-hearted, we have not understood that shifting the balance of power is as out and out shitty for some as it is bold and beautiful for others.

That said, it is an unacceptable response to our liberal idealistic ignorance to have misogynistic, climate change denying, White Supremacist billionaires running the country.

I don’t know what to do about it, exactly, but I do know that I am open to almost all suggestions. I think that Progressives like myself will have to change our tactics, because all of the pot-luck rallies, listening sessions, membership drives, candlelit vigils, direct actions, writing letters to Congress, laboring for policy changes in a corrupt system, Black Lives Matter marches, bike lanes, and all the rest that we—that I—have put such idealistic faith in, believing that by doing so we were curving the arc of history so sharply to justice, these activities have not been enough, this time.

Which isn’t to say we should cease to do whatever both feels good for our souls and is socially effective. My faith in that arc of history is shaken and I am appalled at my own ignorance at how long the arc is, how hard progress is to come by and sustain, but I’m not giving up on justice.

How we go forward has been the grief soaked question of Progressives this week. Real things—a registry for Muslims in America, a climate denier at the head of the EPA, a tacit affirmation of White Supremacy at the highest level of national government, Trump selecting Supreme Court justices—are happening. The fox is in the henhouse, and no amount of good intentioned hand wringing will take it out again. For a hopeful people—Idealists, Liberals, Progressives—we need to grieve, and accept reality. Not submit to it, but accept it.

As an environmentalist, I have long been reconciling myself to the reality that we cannot go back in time, that the damage of climate change is irreversible, that all the best energies and efforts cannot hold back the tides already risen and still rising. We can mitigate the damage, we can build for a more sustainable and resilient future, but we cannot erase what we have done. And, we have done this, but failing to understand the perspectives of those who see the world differently. Everyone can embrace the alternate realities of Harry Potter and Westeros, but we cannot understand our own families, our own fellow citizens, and how they world and their eroding or aspirational place in it differently than our own values and experience?

We cannot change the past, we do not get a do over. Instead, we go forward with the best that we can, we do all the things—protesting, rallying, running for office, stepping down from privilege to let others step up, listening and understanding. And this includes understanding why Trump won—because many people were scared of losing what they have, losing who they are, and finding their beliefs unrepresented in government.

I believe that same fear of loss of identity and power is at the root a lot of the Progressive angst and sorrow this week—we thought the world was leaning one way, our way, and it tilted over “against us.” This may be the most uniting force in our country at present—if we can remember that most of us aren’t evil, we just want to be seen and heard, to have a place and a purpose, and the pride of our families. 

Dear Anne Frank

I spend a lot of time thinking about the scrap of Anne Frank’s diary where she writes that:

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

I think of that, hoping for the kernels of goodness in all our hearts to flourish, and I read and re-read Jill McDonough’s poem “Accident, Mass. Ave.”, where I recall again and again that underneath anger is fear. I do not believe we can address violent anger unless we address the causes of fear at the roots. I think of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words that “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”And then I wake up and read that more American black men have been killed by police, that police have been killed by snipers, that no country welcomes refugees with open hearts, that LGBTQ+ friends no longer feel safe, that fear and hate and ignorance are louder than love and patience and wonder, that rather than unifying, everything seems to be fracturing.

I have spent the last fifteen months crawling out of grief, my understanding of the world irrevocably shaken by the loss of my dad. It boggles my heart than so many people are dealing with the shattering logistics of fresh losses—the families of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the Dallas officers, along with the Orlando victims and so many others, must face the somnambulant hours of determining what to do with their loved ones’ bodies, what sort of service their loved one would have wanted and when and where to have such a thing, what to do with the coffins or ashes that were the hands and eyes and voices of their dear ones, which of the deads’ clothes to save and which to give away, and then how to go forward into the world without someone who they love, who has always been there.

Of course it matters how all these people died—these were violent and sudden deaths, explosions in a bitter thicket of entrenched hatred and racism and lax gun laws—but in another way, what really matters, is that they are gone today, and did not have to be. Lawmakers who do not work for gun control, individuals and institutions that perpetuate racism…I imagine many have lost family and friends, have had to call mortuaries and write obituaries, scatter ashes and pray graveside, have had to wake up every morning and freshly recall their cast of characters is altered. I can think of no reasons but laziness and greed that personal grief does not translate into wiser actions to prevent unnecessary deaths by violence and desperation. And neither of those reasons are good enough for me.

I want to believe in everything that I have ever believed in—that love is stronger than hate, that the beauty of the world outweighs, outlasts, the pain we cause it and each other, that so much does depend on red wheelbarrows and slants of sunlight on oceans and mountains and lovers’ faces, that the Zen monk who is chased off the cliff by a tiger can still savor a strawberry he plucks while falling, that all of the passion and love and effort and determination to be kind and foster joy that virtually everyone I know pours into the world every damn day in a thousand ways and scopes really will make the planet better and more habitable for all people. I want to believe this, and suspect that underneath the shock and sorrow and tears, I always will, but the evidence of the world does not easily point that way. 

Maybe it’s faith to keep going on this hope in the face of devastating news, maybe it’s stupidly, willfully naïve. And maybe it's all of that, and the best thing we've got.

To run away, to turn off the news, move to an island or deep into the woods, to live in beautiful isolated simplicity, this is tempting. However, the selfishness of the action galls me. So does taking the long view, and forgetting that each statistic is a person, with a network of loved ones. Somewhere between getting your heart broken by following every horrible event to the hilt and fleeing to the comfortable cocoon of divorcing the unpleasant, there must be a shambling balance in how to go forward.

Because, going forward, being mundane with flashes of the normal brilliance of being a human, having the ordinary ups and downs of daily life—this is the stuff of life. This is what the dead are missing. This is what we need to be doing—going on with our lives the way we want the world to be, come hell and high water and both will come. Some of going forward is staring at the sunset and falling in love with the world, and some of going forward is facing the harsh truths and remaining in love with the world.

And yet, I don’t feel better writing this. Maybe because I am still hollow-eyed and teary from recent days events which are rushing in like a too fast tide, maybe because I don’t quite see how pounding out some words fixes any of the holes in the world or my soul, maybe because I’m doubting my faith in humanity and that gives me a pain in my chest because if that goes, I'll be lost. Regardless, I still believe we have to gone on trying, straining, striving, failing, falling short, and howling into the abyss because, goddammit, people and the world deserve the best we can muster together.

Roses

Especially for the babies of my friends and the friends of my parents

From V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Today, I packaged up several baby blankets to send to friends’ babies. While it is far from a traditionally pastel and bland baby greeting, as I write cards and addresses, as I tidy up edges and seams for these unknown little babies, I have the doomed prisoner Valerie’s letter from V for Vendetta running through my head as a sort of cheery promise and blessing to them:

“It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it or sell it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I don’t know who you are or whether you’re a man or a woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.”

I don’t know many of these new humans who are still discovering their fingers and toes. Some, it may be years and years before I meet them. They may never know me, or I them. Some, of course, are closer by and easier to be on friendly terms with.

But it doesn’t matter. I love them all, seen and unseen, hugged and unhugged. And I hope with every word I write and each daily decision of how to be in this world as terror and climate challenges ramp up and up, that these children will grow up with love and roses. And, if I have anything to do with it, they will.

With each new human my friends produce, I can more easily appreciate how lucky I and my family are to be loved by different generations of these non-blood aunts and uncles. When I hope that nothing devastating ever happens in the lives of all these new bright babies in my friends’ arms, I can imagine my own parents’ friends feeling the same towards my infant self and sisters. And, that when the troubles do come, it is these people who never wanted hurt to touch your life who will best cushion the sharp parts.

When my dad was first in the hospital, one of the only useful things I could think to do was to get in touch with my mom’s friends. As long as I live, I will be my parents’ child, so there is a sense that they are always more adult than I or my sisters. In trying to figure out anyway to help my mom, the best thing we could do was to call her friends.

And they showed up in force. With texts and emails and letters and visits and food and prayers and vacuum cleaners and hugs, these women and men swooped in with a ready willingness to be adults and do anything that could be done. Friends hold us up, so we can hold others, so we do not have to hold everything and everyone in only our two little hands.

Similarly, I was thrilled every time I walked into my dad’s hospital room and saw his friends visiting, saw their cards and notes and pictures and flowers. I have loved hearing their stories about my dad since then, have loved joking with them about all the ways in which he was irreverent, absurd, and wonderful.

There is nothing quite as wonderful as seeing other people love your best people. That is part of what I want to send to these babies—the promise to help take care of them and their parents when the going gets rough, a promise that nothing needs to be done fully alone.

This Thanksgiving, I have been cringing and snarling at the greeting card gratitudes of being thankful for health and family. That bare human minimum has been rocked for me. My family is like a smile missing a tooth and no one’s health can be taken fully for granted I have learned. But, alongside being terribly absorbed with what is missing, what is absent, I am grateful on a level deeper than grief for all those who are present, who love me and mine and who I love with the boundless ferocity that does make the world turn, makes things better, and bring roses again.

Thank you, friends. For everything.

(Rosebud found behind my house yesterday.)