Trump: Call It What It Is

I was trying to avoid writing something about this fella. There was this, but that was just one tiny, little this. Forgive me for it.

He embodies all the parts of myself I like least. I don't know why I would want those parts leading the blind in the place I call home. The fact he embodies all the worst parts of myself also makes it a dreadful thing for me to think too much about him.

Never did I care to disseminate dissent for his campaign, because the dissent just ends up being support. He has proven wily like that. Additionally, I do not support the same people saying the same thing, ad the most vile nauseum, for why they do not support him. Narcissist, bigot, demagogue, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, etc.

I was captivated at first. Reading that stuff was a drug. But I grew quite tired of it, and began to wonder if it was ever about changing minds or hearts. Ever about transformation, or conversion. Instead, it seems to always have been about affirmation. Folks writing for other folks who will affirm their feelings, so everyone can get an injection of righteousness from the slippery syringe of judgment. Because those who hold inharmonious opinions either never catch a glimpse of these pieces at all, or read them to get the same type of high, only now from the ad hominem condemnation of those they've dubbed as liberal cretins. In the end, everyone goes on living their lives according to their truths. Now just with a little more dopamine.

And that’s all fine. I understand it. I want to connect to something, to someone, is all it ever is. I want to feel empowered. There’s an important place for that precise function with the written word. But space must be created for more than affirmation. Nothing said about Donald Trump ever transforms, and I think we’ve reached the point where a little transformation, and maybe a vote, seem more important than dopamine.

Also, I definitely didn’t think I’d end up sharing something I wrote about this fella. I sort of just explained why. Plus, I try to avoid participating on social media. Any time I do, it feels like a small part of me dies. I’m not saying that is what’s happening to everyone; I’m just saying that’s what it feels like to me. At this point, again, I’m a bit desperate. I am willing to have a small part of me die, if it is in the process of trying to speak to some sort of truth.

And there’s yet one more reason for my reticence (I may be rendering this inert with the excessive prefacing). This “truth”. It scares me. Not the identity of the truth. More the idea of it. So many complex, nuanced truths vying for vitality -- trying to coexist -- and I think the moment I lay claim to one, I become very poor at listening to and learning about the others. And the truth is, it seems the real truth almost always lies somewhere between those available, so it’s my loss when I can’t listen and learn. I know this, yet I cannot help myself. I always lay claim to one.

But finally I felt a responsibility to share something about this fella, about this truth he is speaking; namely, that it is no truth at all. The previous sentence holds the essence of all this prattling. So from here, read on only if you wish to grow more dissatisfied.

Trump’s “truth” has no right to stand and be entertained among the rest. It is a different species entirely. It is nonsense. Hogwash. Baloney. Bologna. Everything he is selling is bull shit, and it pains me that so many are buying in.

I’m not saying what you’re feeling is not real, or not true. Whatever it is, it is, and Trump is connecting to those feelings. Validating them. Turning them into something you’d rather they be. There is no bull shit there; there is a lot of power in it. You’re not stupid, either. I hope that’s not what is being implied. I hope I am not preaching, or worse yet, shaming. As an idiot myself, it’s not my place. What I'm asking is for a pause, a breath, and maybe a moment of honesty. Because that is something Trump has not given us. He is directing this whole movement with lies. He is using all the wrong words, and those words are coming together to make for lies.

Of course his fiction has been well-documented. Researchers and statisticians have found him spewing 'pants-on-fire' rhetoric at unprecedented levels. His rather obtuse racism has been equally well reported. If you've not accepted Donald Trump as a racist at this point, absolutely nothing I say will change that. The writing has been on the wall, so to speak. I would just remind you that what might be free speech to you, is for me and many, hate speech. Because when people say something is hateful, that means it is. If a fly lands on the zipper of your fly, and I wind up and kick you as hard as I can in the testicles in an attempt to kill the fly, and you fall like a redwood and proceed to writhe on the floor, I am not allowed to say it didn't hurt you because my intention was only to kill the fly. That's not how it works. There's no argument to be made. No ambiguity. But anyway, I'm not even referring to the fiction or the racism. I'm referring to Trump's more fundamental untruths. The ones that can only be fact-checked with reflection. I'm referring in particular to the words that build the backbone of his movement. Toughness. Strength. Freedom. And ultimately, Greatness.

I believe we've been hoodwinked. The old bait, and the more elderly switch. Words have definitions, and the ones he's used do not fit as descriptors for his philosophy. I simply cannot understand how, by supporting Trump, you are in favor of toughness, of strength, of freedom or greatness. To me, it is clear that Donald Trump is the personification of fear and insecurity, and his vision for the country is nothing but an extension of that person.

Ah yes, the old 'fear mongering' polemic, you may be thinking. Here we are again. We've heard this one a thousand times before. You'd be right, if that's indeed what you were thinking. It's a tired conceit. But I don't think enough has been done to note how intimately the monger identifies with the stuff he's been mongering.

What say you of this quote: “It is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”

Agree? Disagree? I don’t know where are you stand with that. I assume you agree -- noble as you are.

Before aligning yourself with Donald Trump, please understand that he disagrees. Trump lives life on his knees.

He would argue vehemently against me here, no doubt. Trump would never admit to living life on his knees. If anyone ever said he did, he would make a misogynistic joke and put some sort of disparaging adjective before that person’s name. It would make headlines from now until the moment someone else said something he didn’t like. People would laugh, people would get angry, and then we'd wait for the soul-siphoning cycle to begin again. The implication of the claim is weakness. That’s why he would deny it to his burnt end. But it is quintessential Trump—this life lived on the knees. I do hope to make my case here compelling.

Back to freedom. Trump loves it, as I imagine you do. I enjoy freedom, too. Freedom’s a key piece to the Trump puzzle that comes together to depict this landscape of American Greatness. But if his America is so free, why is his America also so afraid? Why so insecure? Why is it making everyone it's enemy? Building walls? Isolating? Keeping people out? There’s just no continuity there, between being free -- being great -- and being so damn terrified of everyone and everything.

Let's consider the idea of colonialism, for comparison. I’m not in favor of colonialism, but I understand colonialism. Colonialism computes logically. Because the actions such conquest are consistent with this idea of grandeur. It’s like you think your country is so wonderful, so superior, it ought to exist everywhere. So you march all over the world and impose your country on people who want nothing to do with you, creating your country in places where it isn't. It's supreme arrogance, but it's emanating from a sense of greatness. This, however, is not what Trump is promising to deliver. Trump just wants us to close ourselves from the rest of the world, and from the many who are necessary for our world to be "our world," given they're part of the "our." His "greatness" is nothing but constant cowering, constant defending against some perceived threat.

I once heard someone share a story about a time he was robbed. We'll call the someone Russet. He was at a gas station, and a man at the gas station asked Russet for a ride home. It was not in a nice part of town. Poverty and violence and all that. The wayfarer was a suspicious looking man -- a dangerous looking man in the eyes of many. Russet unlocked the doors and invited the man in his car. Russet put the car in drive. They turned the corner, out of the gas station, when the man pulled a gun out and pointed the barrel at Russet. The man threatened to use the gun unless Russet handed over everything he had on his person and in the car. Russet obliged because he did not want to be killed, handing over everything he had on his person and in his car. The man then got out of the car, with the gun pointed at Russet, and slowly walked away. Russet took a moment in cold silence, breathed, sweated, and drove back home—afraid, sad, and all the rest. He got back home and told his friend the story of what had just happened.

Russet's friend called him a fool for letting the man in the car. (Russet, you fool!) And said he hoped a lesson was learned from the incident. (I hope you learned you a good lesson!) Russet said that a lesson was indeed learned. The lesson, he said, is that sometimes people will betray you. But his takeaway was that next time, he will again choose to trust, and only hope he is not betrayed.

It does sound foolish on the part of Russet, does it not? But maybe freedom must necessarily be foolish if you’re to do it the right way.

The fear Russet felt in the moment of the gun was quite real. He responded to it. There was little space for freedom there. But notice how quickly the freedom returned. The freedom came when he decided he would not let the moment of the barrel keep him from connecting with people from that moment onward. He would not sacrifice the freedom with which he is graced due to the chance of an aberration from that freedom. He’d rather die free than live a prisoner. Or in the language from above, he was willing to die standing, if it meant not spending the remainder of his life on his knees. Because he knew what a sad, miserable life that would be. United we stand. Divided, we kneel.

Which life is it you covet? To me, it really just seems a matter of choosing, one or the other. Do you want to be free, or do you want to be Donald Trump?

Freedom and compassion or fear and hatred? You want a great America? You must decide which force you think is greater. Which do you find to be more powerful?

Once more, I'll be explicit. By choosing Donald, you choose fear -- a fear that keeps defending even when the threats are gone and there is nothing to defend. And when there is nothing there to defend, the energy of that resistance will have nowhere to go but inwards, because the energy cannot just disappear once it’s been created. There will be no choice but to internalize that fear, and it will not escape you, and it will eat away from the inside out, and you will then sacrifice the precious freedom that you are allotted to navigate a world that sometimes does a great lot to take it away. None of that sounds like "toughness" to me. It sounds like compensation for a lot of insecurity, and ultimately the destruction of the self. Is that dramatic? You bet. But it is a dramatic, historic moment we are in. That we can agree on.

And I think it is right to acknowledge that this is coming from someone who knows a good bit about being afraid. It's how I spend most of my day, most days. These fears have really crippled me at times. I think that's why I'm so opposed to that shit being institutionalized.

So, in summation, you can support Trump, if this is what you choose. I only ask you don't be fooled about what you're supporting. Do not dance along to the charade. Make your own music, answering this question: What is greatness to you? Fear or freedom. Name it. I wish he had the strength to call it what it is. I trust you do.

The least you can do is call it what it is.

“I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing—thereby keeping us out. Truly, God is hated here.”

Alas, this has inevitably taken the same shape as those dopamine-discharging pieces I derided at the onset, and worked so hard not to replicate. I feel I was valiant in my effort, but it seems the split is all too wide. Anyone who tries to reach for the other side, no matter how anodyne the reach may be, falls reliably down the chasm between, echoing into silence.