My next fear is the mainstreaming of attitudes which we thought we’d driven underground. Racism and bigotry have always existed in America; they’re written into our DNA. The slaves were here before the pilgrims, we committed genocide on the native inhabitants of this continent, and we herded Americans of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. Our hands are dirty, and the last few decades have not eliminated prejudice and bigotry; but dammit, we’d come a long way toward extending equal rights to all Americans; and those who opposed equal rights—who wanted to keep America white—were at least driven underground.
Looking back on it, we should have seen this coming. Underground, things boil and seethe and eventually erupt. Donald Trump released that roiling, bubbling lava; and it will take a long time to contain it again, if we ever can. But it’s probably a bit disingenuous for us to feign surprise. We always knew it was still there, especially during these last 8 years when the ugly vitriol of racism has been spewed every day at our black president. I knew it was there when my black friend told me he was afraid to drive through certain areas between Florida and North Carolina and another black friend is nervous about holding her white husband’s hand in public. We should have spent less time congratulating ourselves on our progress and more time seeking out and confronting the bastions of bigotry that still existed.
But now that time has passed, and what was hiding in bunkers on the fringes of society is now marching down Main Street. Churches are being burned and vandalized, children are being threatened and frightened, teachers are being defied because of their race or ethnicity, hate speech and bullying are rampant, and so are death threats. Signs are reappearing on water fountains which I have not seen since my youth. What’s next? Signs on city buses asking patrons of color to take the rear seats? And the perpetrators of all that evil are celebrating the election of a president who has legitimized and encouraged their bigotry and violence.
Those of us who fear this new normal and the results of Trump’s unleashing the forces of darkness are being told to relax because he’s going to surround himself with good advisers, so it will all be okay. That statement is not reassuring first of all because a president should not need babysitters; he shouldn’t need people to revoke his Twitter privileges at times when a careless remark could spark disaster. He’s not a 12-year-old who needs a break from screen time. He’s a 70-year-old who is supposed to be competent to execute the duties of the office to which he has, however tragically, been elected. Good presidents need good advisers, of course, because no one person can see every aspect of a situation; more minds mean a greater range of perspectives. But good presidents need good advisers to augment their judgment, not to compensate for its lack.
My second response to this most disturbing attempt at reassurance is that it’s a lie. Trump is not surrounding himself with sound advisers. Among his first appointments is Steve Bannon, his campaign manager, as his chief strategist. This one fact alone ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone with good sense. The person with the president’s ear, guiding his policy making, has been credited with creating a haven for all of the groups loosely affiliated under the umbrella of the alt-right.
According to Mother Jones writer Sarah Posner,
By bringing on Stephen Bannon, Trump was signaling a wholehearted embrace of the “alt-right,” a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee’s favor on social media. In short, Trump has embraced the core readership of Breitbart News.
“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon’s target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon’s leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an “eclectic mix of renegades,” accusing President Barack Obama of importing “more hating Muslims,” and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of “political correctness.”
(http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news)
We’re also told by many news outlets that the KKK, the American Nazi Party, and other white nationalist groups are celebrating Trump’s victory and praising his appointment of Bannon who they say will hold Trump to the promises he made them during his campaign.
Less dangerous but equally appalling are names on Trump’s short list for cabinet positions, a group who, according to Robert Reich, “reads like a Who’s-Who of rightwing know-nothings (Sarah Palin), dangerous retreads (Newt Gingrich and John Bolton), arch conservatives (Sam Brownback), disgraced hacks (Chris Christie), Wall Street regressives (Steven Mnuchin), and raving opportunists (Rudi Giuliani).”
So much for the knowledgeable advisers! Sarah Palin can’t compose a coherent sentence; the most accurate description I’ve heard of her speech is “word salad.” The good news of Rick Scott’s possible appointment is that it would get him out of Florida, but that’s small comfort when one considers the irony of appointing the man whose name became public for perpetrating the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history as Secretary of Health and Human Services. One of his first tasks would be assisting in repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he has already obstructed in the state of Florida.
This scary new normal is for me, as an old white woman, not too personal. Yes, there is an age prejudice, and I’ve seen and experienced it; yet it does not cause me to fear for my life. I am nervous about the talk of making changes to Social Security and Medicare, but I’m more frightened for my brown and black friends, my gay friends, my women friends who still work and whose work environment is bound to become more misogynistic and tolerant of sexual harassment and assault. When both the president and his chief adviser have known histories of sexual assault and domestic abuse, those facts lend a certain tacit sufferance of other would-be perpetrators’ actions.
I lived through the middle decades of the twentieth century, and I saw what life was like under the Jim Crow laws. I heard the N word spoken casually, I saw the signs on the water fountains and entrances to businesses, and I saw the signs in buses and saw them being enforced. I don’t want to return to those times. I don’t want anyone having to live in the closet and fear for their lives and their safety. I don’t want to see loving relationships ended because someone else disapproves of them. Tolerance is not based on approval; it’s based on compassion and empathy, and I want to live in a country where compassion and empathy are the norms. I fear living in a country where they’re not the norms.
I fear for those millions of people who have just become accustomed to having health insurance, and have been able for the first time in their lives to take care of their own and their families’ health, having that ripped away from them. I fear for the millions who as I write are living in fear of deportation, of having their families torn apart, of being removed from their homes and their livelihoods when they’ve been contributing members of society. I fear what will happen to our free press and our freedom of speech. I fear a further stretch of the Second Amendment to allow dangerous people to possess even greater numbers of dangerous weapons. I fear for Muslims, who have already been subjected to abuse, being further marginalized and persecuted. We interned Japanese Americans; it’s not a stretch to think an intolerant government might do the same to Muslim Americans.
I fear a president who, according to the repugnant Ms. Conway, is considering convening a special session of Congress on Inauguration Day to immediately repeal Obamacare. Inauguration Day? Go dance with your wife, for God’s sake, and enjoy the pageantry and adulation you so crave. You can start destroying people’s lives tomorrow. What’s the rush? Are you so petty and mean-spirited that you must give the finger to your predecessor before all of his personal belongings have even been moved out of the house? (http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/kellyanne-conway-trump-special-session-congress/)
A president with no respect for tradition and custom, who will destroy decades- or centuries-old institutions and practices on a whim is a frightening president. A president who steadfastly refused to honor the tradition of releasing his tax returns, who refused to be transparent about his foreign ties, who seems unfazed by FBI and Russian interference in our election because the results benefit him is a dangerous president.
I also fear the false equivalence that has prevailed throughout the campaign and now into the transition period. A simpler way of understanding false equivalence is apples and oranges. Comparing Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton is comparing apples to oranges. Comparing this election to any other election in our history is comparing apples to oranges. Expecting the same acceptance of this new president that should be accorded to any other qualified winner of the office is comparing apples to oranges. This election was not a normal election, yet it has to an alarming degree been treated like one by everyone from the media to the least informed voters.
As a result, we have normalized things that are not and should not be normal. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for a con man to become a serious candidate for our highest office and to garner enough votes to win that office. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for one of our two major political parties to allow that to happen and to use its power and resources to support that candidate. We’ve made it normal and acceptable for a presidential candidate to threaten and intimidate his opponent and anyone else who got under his very thin skin.
This is not the America I want to live in. I’m fearful and angry that I no longer know my country.
Last of all, I fear that many people will read the 5000 words I’ve written and still not understand what I and others like me are scared of. We’ll still, in their minds, be sore losers, crybabies, and hypocrites. None of this will make any impression, just as each revelation of Trump’s degenerate past made no impression. This is my greatest fear of all: the fear that we now live in an America so deeply divided that we’re not just trying to reach across the aisle any longer; we’re trying to reach across a chasm so wide that there’s no common ground for coming together and living as brothers and sisters. Bridging that chasm has to be our primary goal. It’s not negotiable; it must be done, because failing in this “great experiment” is just not an option.
“When you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies.”
Robert Kennedy