Note: This essay was written two years ago. I never published it traditionally. I share it now so we can ask if things have gotten better or worse.
On December 22nd, 2016, Predator-Elect Donald Trump tweeted, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Apparently, our existing ability to destroy the world many times over wasn’t enough. We’ve seen this movie before—Cold War ethos, Mutually Assured Destruction, cloak-and-dagger-black-ops-wetworks as diplomacy. It wasn’t fun the first time. If Trump wasn’t paying attention to politics and the global community, he could have watched Dr. Strangelove, War Games, The Terminator. A wild-west arms race protects no one. It only pushes us closer to the Last Detonation.
On Christmas Eve that year, a Facebook friend posted an article about the dangerous implications of Trump’s tweet and called for American unification in protesting and resisting yet another regressive stance. In response, someone from Europe ignored the spirit of the post and aggressively lambasted the American Left. Our problem, he said, is that the Left needs to examine its own ideas, which are, according to him, as much based on “abuse and fear” as the Right’s. He offered no examples, proof, or context—only certainty.
Where, when, and how, I wondered, have Leftists used abuse and fear as discourse, other than instances in which they are defending themselves from trolls’ direct personal attacks? Certainly, some Leftists embraced Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” concept quickly and applied it too broadly, but this one instance of belittling the opposition hardly seems like enough evidence to condemn the entire Left and its methodologies.
In response to Mr. Certainty, my friend was gracious and patient. I don’t always embody those qualities.
Case in point: later that day, on my own wall, I shared someone’s tweet about Trump’s attempt to close his charitable foundation while it was still under investigation. One of my own acquaintances, whom I’ll call Frank, responded. I have not seen Frank since high school. If he ever really knew me, he no longer does. He has no idea how I spend my time. Of course, that didn’t stop him from generalizing about me or Leftists as a whole.
“I would bet you whining liberals probably don’t give much [to charity],” he said. “You all come across as takers.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
What were we supposedly whining about? Perhaps the already-brewing CIA and FBI reports of pro-Trump Russian interference in our election. Does lamenting the undermining of democracy equate to whining?
Perhaps Frank meant the Left’s resistance to plans for building a wall along the Mexican border. Mexicans have metamorphosed into a collective El Cucuy in the Predator-in-Chief’s sick, racist imagination. Does rejection of racist generalizations count as whining?
Maybe Frank was thinking of our protests against Trump’s Muslim registry. Or the administration’s attack on the rights of women and LGBTQ people. Or their continuing fetishization with gutting Medicare. Or how millions are suffering a healthcare crisis because of Republicans are obsessed with gutting Obamacare.
Every one of these conservative positions, beliefs, and plans is a matter of public record. Add them to Trump’s mocking of the disabled, the inherent racism in GOP social contract policies, and constant saber-rattling in the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and we are faced with a major American political party without a soul. These so-called leaders have supported and extended a white supremacist, capitalist, heteronormative, ableist, allegedly Christian, nativist patriarchy. They are threatening our inalienable rights. This is what Leftists are resisting—not the loss of one election but the selling of the Right’s soul, their embracing a bigoted tyrant for political expediency. Leftists are speaking out because Trump and his administration have tried to ruin millions of lives, over and over and over again.
If that is whining, then the Founding Fathers were whiners. So were slaves and abolitionists. So were suffragists. So were Stonewall activists. So were Freedom Riders, and Martin Luther King’s followers. And on and on.
If you want to hear whining, listen no further than the most vociferous Trump supporters, like Frank, who complain about increased premiums under the Affordable Care Act but ignore insurance companies’ roles in raising those rates and the GOP senators who fight to let them. They whine about the government’s nefarious plan to eliminate guns, even in the absence of substantive gun control measures and absolutely no governmental effort to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens. They support slashing aid to millions of people because they once saw that one guy in Wal-Mart use food stamps to buy crab legs. They whine about Benghazi and Clinton’s emails, and they support spending millions of dollars on failed investigation after failed investigation, yet they dismiss hard evidence of Trump’s constant malfeasance. They whine based on anecdotal or no evidence, and they whine about overblown or nonexistent threats, and they whine about ways that helping others might lead to minor inconveniences, and yet they are willing to overlook bigotry and hatred and the threat of nuclear war. In their minds, efforts to resist such actual, real-world, public-record threats are sour grapes, fake news, treason.
As for the rest of Frank’s claim, I spend a lot of time with Leftists—at work, in my social life, in my readings and research, on social media, through activism—and a more giving bunch you will not find. Leftists spend a lot of time, money, and effort working hard for other people through online and in-person activism, donations, volunteer work, written and oral arguments, and more. Look around and ask yourself who is fighting for all peoples’ equality, and I would posit that you will find more Leftists than far-right conservatives. This is true even, perhaps especially, when the individual Leftist does not benefit. How many economically privileged “liberals” can you name who fight for income equality and tax reform? How many economically privileged conservatives?
These are things we should think about.
Later in our conversation, Frank claimed that Trump would be replacing “a useless idiot.” First, Barack Obama is no idiot. In addition to his Bachelor’s degree, Obama holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Harvard. He is a published author, an eloquent speaker, a constitutional scholar, a strong critical thinker, and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Second, anyone who believes that Obama is “useless” either hasn’t been paying attention or doesn’t care about facts. While I do not agree with everything he has done or said, Obama ended two costly, unwinnable wars, at least one of which was immoral under any sane definition of the term. Over GOP obstruction, he oversaw healthcare reform that brought first-time or renewed coverage to millions and eliminated some of the most execrable practices of the insurance industry. He helped advance women’s and LGBTQ rights. And on and on.
I wonder if Obama is a “useless idiot” to Frank because he is a black Democrat with a funny name.
The last thing Frank said before I ended the conversation was, “You [Leftists] are getting dangerous . . . I am realizing more and more that when y’all don’t get your way, you all get physical and sometimes deadly.”
This would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.
Remember all those Clinton/Sanders supporters who brought weapons to rallies and assaulted protesters? Remember all the left-wing militia groups standing outside of conservative Christian churches, ready to police and violently stop any action, word, or gesture they deemed suspicious? Remember all the liberals calling for a registration of white people or a wall to keep out white male immigrants? Remember the acts of terrorism on American soil against white Christians? Remember the liberal attempts to control men’s healthcare and reproductive rights, including threats of violence outside health clinics? Remember all the hardcore Leftists policing polling stations and harassing white straight Republicans? Remember the left-wing embrace of Nazi gestures, symbols, and ethos?
If you claim to remember any of that, you’re probably Frank—or Trump.
As usual, Frank had it exactly backward. The kind of mind it takes to see the world through such a distorted lens would beggar the imagination if it weren’t so obviously intentional—a willful ignorance, a strategic dismissal of recorded fact, a determination to cling to what he already believes because to do otherwise would mean that he is wrong, has always been wrong, has both directly and indirectly hurt millions of people.
Conservatives like Frank make it impossible to “reach across the aisle” because they will never reach back. They demand that everyone toe their line, one hundred percent of the time, and when not everyone does, it is always the Other’s fault. They are unwilling to examine their own ideas critically and change their minds, even a little, with new evidence. They are unwilling to hear and value other people’s ideas and experiences. They are blinded by their own bright, shining selves and their image of what being American means. They never acknowledge that America has always been not just a place but also a constantly evolving idea. Conservatives like Frank—who seem, more accurately, reactionary—have elected and are defending a bigot, an admitted perpetrator of sexual assault, a man who needed the help of a Russian strongman to win. In the name of their own individual “freedom,” they are falling into lockstep with an authoritarian, ignoring both that authoritarianism contradicts American democracy and that such authority can be turned upon them at any moment, on a whim.
And no one acts on his whims more than Donald Trump.
I unfriended Frank. I will only beat my head against any one wall for so long. What I will do is continue to resist his vision of America, and Trump’s. I do not reject conservatives; I will listen to and support good ideas, no matter where they originate or with whom. I understand many conservatives are good people who want what is best for everyone. However, it is not my job or my desire to placate those who consciously mischaracterize me and mine, or those who blindly follow the Predator-in-Chief. I have tried reaching them for most of my adult life. It’s their turn. And if they think of Leftists’ outspoken resistance to sociopolitical bigotry as mere whining, perhaps they need to examine their own privilege and rediscover their empathy. I would like to believe it still exists.
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