No Relief in Sight for Gaza
Image by Ash Hayes.
There is no reason to write about the election, the future, or to bend my imagination into a receptacle able to contain and contemplate the suffering ahead. The world has its own momentum, its own secrets and a collection of beating hearts that align in strange patterns. There are already lots of writers eager to analyze the particulars – how did it come to pass that 54% of Hispanic men voted for Trump? Why were so many white women content to give Trump a pass regarding his long and repugnant history as a sexual predator? We take refuge in details, as if the very act of pedantic scrutiny induces an opiate-like trance.
The platitudes will rain down on us – we will be urged to organize, to build a vibrant movement out of the ashes. We will be forced to skim over articles by pro and amateur psychologists alike with numbing titles like, “Seven Ways to Heal Yourself in the Coming Months.” Or, Lord, save us, “Bringing All Americans Together Now That the Election is Over.”
Even as I write my disorganized, confused and meaningless reflections, I am interrupted by an Email from some organization called “UltraViolet Action”:
“Now that Trump thinks he has a mandate, he will certainly begin the process of implementing Project 2025. In the coming weeks, as we face the genuine, terrifying threat of four years of an unfettered Donald Trump, we have an important goal: to channel all of our fear, anger, and sadness into fighting back against the racism and misogyny that underpin the core of Trump’s ideology.
Can you pitch in $10 to join the effort to stand up to Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans?”
I assumed that UltraViolet Action is some DNC spinoff, or just a grift mimicking the vibe of the eternally blundering American Party of vague promises. It turns out that they represent women’s rights, but maintain on unwise rhetorical spin that comes perversely close to that of the damned (and nearly dead) DNC. Are they fucking kidding me?! I don’t have $10 to invest in a past election. My family owns a Mason Hamlin piano, valued at the price of 25 AR-15’s. This is America, and if the DNC can’t protect us from fascist goons, maybe the second amendment can. I don’t know how many bullets you can purchase for $10, but I know that pissing away $10, on an organization impersonating the DNC, will leave me to confront paramilitary Christian Inquisitioners with a slingshot.
Fortunately we still have dark humor – Stephen F Eisenman wrote “The Top 10 Reasons for Embracing the Election Results.” These included – “Dormant sales of pussy hats will rebound” and “People will discover the joys of meatpacking, fruit picking and hanging drywall.”
Most of us are probably lost in tremulous worries about our spot in line for the distribution of fascist punishment. How long do I have to wait for my wooden bunk in the barracks of a Trumpian work camp? At the age of 77, will the MAGA goons take pity on me and allow me to simply peel potatoes, or will I be forced to labor in a reopened coal mine? Knowing my Holocaust history opens my mind to the hope that I, as an elderly writer (albeit, of little note) might be sent to a model Theresienstadt Ghetto style placement. Perhaps, there I can write glowing reviews regarding treatment of prisoners. UN inspectors can read my lines and brush their hands of worry. I will try, for now, not to focus on the knowledge that most of the elderly folks imprisoned in Theresienstadt were soon sent to much worse places for “processing.”
It is normal to become self-obsessed in a crises (that may be the worst in human history) but my plight will be low on the hierarchy of misery. There are people by the millions, ahead of me in line, waiting to be arrested, imprisoned and deported to lethal places. My own fears for myself, my community and my family seem self-indulgent. When the roundups of innocents gains momentum, where will I be? Some rare, heroic people always resist brutal political criminals, but what about me? We don’t fully know, as yet, what we are up against. Trump comes in two forms – stupid and inept, or brutal and cruel.
It is important to acknowledge that my worst fears for myself are a distraction. We have lived our whole lives inside the so called imperial core, living a charmed life, deluded with cliches about freedom and human rights. Even under Trump, anonymous people like myself will continue to enjoy illusory privileges. But what am I to do as a bystander witnessing human rights of others being torn to shreds? What does it mean to be a leftist in a society that criminalizes my beliefs?
Am I now a sort of Marrano, a person with a surreptitious identity? We are all in a fearful place that has been constructed incrementally since the slave owning class created a utopia named Democracy. We saw it coming, some of us, in slow motion, but I am no less devastated being run over. Life in a fascist country breaks people in half. How do we get through a day, through a week, through the eternity of Trump? Eventually, the family tree of our monarch and the climate apocalypse will converge and form a new synthesis. Until then how do we forestall suicide and protect the victims?
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