a new march on washington

Short version:

I imagine a massive crowd gathers on inauguration day, no violence, no noise, maybe a few anti-Trump, anti-hate signs. They stand silently, their numbers the important part, and they turn their back on the proceedings.

Americans would hardly go for that, of course. We like to make noise, like to disrupt actively rather than (deliberately) passively. It is the American way. If the current method isn't working, you're just not putting enough effort into it.

Long version:

I was talking to my ex the other day about the protests this week, how it feels like they cannot possibly accomplish anything but to maybe satisfy something a little therapeutic in those participating, and to piss off those who are not. Not that there isn't a place for (deliberately) pissing people off. But, it feels to me--and for the record I am a white male so maybe I've just got the privilege of holding off until the protest is more convenient--like something more deliberate, more thought out, more... Really, I think it's numbers that that will matter. I mean, Trump's supporters don't care about women or those with darker skin--and yes, I generalize, but so the fuck what? They just de facto supported misogyny and bigotry, turning a blind eye to it if not outright promoting it. That there are women among them, that there are people of color among them--that is not as important as the institutionalization and normalization of offensive behavior that comes from all of those votes for Donald Trump.

It seems that what matters, in the face of an executive office and both branches of the legislative (and potentially the judicial) turning to the Right, is the numbers to really make a fucking point. That is, having enough of a mass movement that they have no choice but to listen. A protest in one city might help alleviate the bad feelings of some of those involved, but what does it really accomplish? Especially right now. The election is done, but Trump is not even president yet. These protests will not stop the process. Faithless electors are unlikely. The process will continue. January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of these United States. The only choice his opponents have is to make sure that they... we are heard.

Anyway, I was telling my ex that what we should do is all show up in DC on inauguration day, make it massive, make it impossible to ignore. That very same day, the Million Woman March event on Facebook was going around. But that's just part of what we need. We need not just one million but many millions of women. And, we need men. And we need people of color. (Ignore the intersectional bit of these arbitrary divisions for the moment.) We need natives. We need foreigners. We need gay people. We need straight people. We need everyone.

I brought up SNCC while talking to my ex about all this. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We need something like that, to bring together the women's groups, the Black Lives Matter groups, the LGBTQ groups, and to get all the straight white men who should be offended by the mistreatment of these and so many other marginalized groups. We do not need--though it may feel great in the short term--scattered protests in a handful of cities. We need a singular, coordinated, focused effort to gather together and be heard.

We cannot stop Trump from becoming president, but maybe.... No, no maybes. We WILL make him listen to us. There will be no banning of Muslims, no more disproportionate shootings of black men by the cops, no more conversion therapy or talk of marriage just being between one man and one woman, no more grabbing women by, well, any body part they do not want to be grabbed by.

Donald Trump may be president, and he may have both houses of congress on his side, but this is still a government of the people, by the people for the people.

That doesn't just mean the winners. That doesn't just mean white Christian males. It means everyone.

The winners want unity? They must be forced to include us. We must stand up and demand as much.

can't we all just get along?

What to some feels like tacit approval of sexism, of racism, bigotry, sexual assault, religious discrimination, bullying, the politics of insults (as if that's new), and so many variations of the same--to others feels like a hopeful transformation of something inexplicably and surreptitiously corrupt. It feels like a chance for safety for those feeling fear... maybe as much as it feels like fear in so many others--muslims, mexicans, blacks, gays. And I am troubled.

It seems tonight--as Donald Trump has just been elected president for context if anyone is reading this later--that while the president elect ws remarkably sedate and self-controlled in his victory speech, even calling for unity, so many are drawing abrupt divides between the two sides. If any of my Facebook friends voted for Trump, you voted for hatred and you might as well delete me because I don't want you in my life--that sort of thing. Now, I find Donald Trump as a person to be fairly deplorable (and I choose that word deliberately) and the horribleness of what he stands for and what he expresses far too often and far too freely and far too publicly bothers me a great deal. Before even considering what he might do as President it disturbs me that this is now a person we've set forth as an exemplar of someone good, someone worth being... And that sounds more insulting than I wish it would... more insulting maybe than I think I mean it to sound.

Permit a change of gears.

The problem is that the fears that drove many to vote for Trump are not new. They do not originate from him and he may, and probably does, foment them out of a genuine belief in, for example, the danger of allowing too many Syrian refugees into the country. I am not even sure one could isolate a particular source for such fears beyond innate human tendencies. Certain news outlets and certain public figures definitely make such fears worse, tend to them like ugly plants in a nightmarish garden, but ultimately what matters is that too many people live in a world where it is far too easy to hate that and those which you do not know or understand. I saw a tweet tonight remarking on how we followed up our first black president with a president approved by the KKK as if the painful irony were poetry and this was not simply a more extreme version of the same partisan political reversal our nation regularly exhibits.

We should not be forcing out of our lives those who disagree with us. We should be embracing them. It is not an easy thing, and I know personally that I have little interest in it, but it seem like what we should be doing. It seems like what we need is for more people to know more people, different people, people from varied religious and cultural backgrounds, people who are queer (in regards to sexuality, if you will, and in regards to any other peculiar difference that sets them apart from anyone else)... What's that line from Bulworth? "All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open ended program of procreative racial deconstruction." He's suggesting that we can rid ourselves of racial conflict by procreating our way out of racial divides, biologically. But, take that same notion and extend it to anything.

For example, I deliberately follow some very extreme groups on Facebook that absolutely would disagree with my political ideas and with whose political ideas I absolutely disagree. My impulse when I interact with them is antagonistic. But, that is because when I am there I am the minority, outnumbered and overwhelmed. But, imagine such an interaction one on one. Imagine actually sitting down to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you, someone who grew up differently from you, someone who looks different from you. Two human beings connecting. Too much of the modern world--social media and the internet in particular--disallows such an interaction. We are forced (or force ourselves) into a public space where anyone can join the conversation and there is little room for civility except among those who are already likeminded.

I do not know how to fix that, and I wish that I did.

Instead, I participate. I lash out. I lament. I weep for a world in which we have essentially endorsed the practice of lying and insulting your way to the top... or maybe that's just what politics is and Donald Trump is just particularly good at it. But, I digress. My point here is that my impulse is to be angry, to be sad, to be disappointed. And, I saw another tweet tonight about remembering how we feel losing tonight so we can take everything back next time and that sounded to me like exactly the same sentiment Trump and his supporters have been expressing for years. We've gotten to this point--or we were always at this point and I'm merely paying closer attention--where we have this rather unhealthy proprietary possessiveness about the country and then when someone else gets to be in charge for a while it is not something civil and... I don't know. It should be something to almost welcome--the market of ideas expanding to include others and making ideaspace and democracy stronger. Instead we have this constant battle, a Cold war of political parties when we should be treating it like taking turns in a board game. The (relatively) peaceful transition of power in this country is one of those things that makes it great--

And, there's a loaded term. Great=/=good. Greatness does not necessarily come from goodness. This country may have (past tense) been great, may (present tense) be great, but that does not mean it has not had and does not continue to have numerous flaws, some of them fundamental to its very soul (I'm looking at you, slavery). A Donald Trump presidency might make America great, but at what cost? And, at what greater cost when we continue to quite deliberately and systematically divide ourselves and hate one another to do it? I mean, nevermind the immigrants for a moment, nevermind the minorities. How about all of us first, embracing antagonism like it is our dearest friend and our need to be right is all that matters. Of course we will turn away homosexuals and people with darker skin; we turn away our brothers and sisters when they express viewpoints we don't like. If we can so easily turn from those similar to us, it should be no surprise that we would turn away from, and even fear, those who are different.

So, channeling my inner hippie right now, I have got to say, fuck that. Turn toward instead of away. Embrace difference rather than sameness. Talk to those who are not like you. Work to understand rather than back away in disgust and fear. Love one another and stop all of this partisan bullshit...

What we need, as well, is many political parties. Not this bipartisan, third-party-is-a-wasted-vote nonsense we have now. Two parties dividing too evenly means monolithic beasts battling it out forever. More options means the fight cannot be so clearly drawn or incessant.

But, I do not know how we get there from here.

I do not know how we love one another.

I do not even know how we talk to one another or listen to one another.

Part of me thinks we have gone too far down the partisan rabbithole and just burning the mother fucker down is the way to go. Then again, I have always embraced the ideas of scoundrels and revolutionaries. We need a revolution of ideas. What we have, though, is inherently (rhetorically) violent even when not literally violent. Sowing hatred and pain and fear when my bleeding heart liberal core just wants everyone to get along.

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My cynical side, though--he figures we're just doomed.

Go figure.

[Trumbo - movie review] you can't do that. this is america

(Cross-posted between my daily Groundhog Day Project movie blog and my far-less-regularly updated Against the World political blog.)

The Naturalization, Alien Friends, Alien Enemies and Sedition Acts of 1798. Anti-German and anti-Irish sentiment in the mid-1800s (and beyond; is not the drunken Irishman still a staple of film?). More anti-German sentiment around the two World Wars. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Anti-Italian sentiment from the 1800s into the 1900s.

(For example, the largest mass lynching in US History was that of nine Italian-Americans who had been found not guilty of murder and let go in New Orleans, 1891. They and two other Italians held on unrelated charges were dragged from jail and lynched. Arrests followed, but not of those who did the lynching. Rather, more Italians. In a piece at cnn.com, 10 July 2012, Ed Falco describes how President Roosevelt called the lynchings "a rather good thing.")

Anti-Catholic sentiment just made things worse for the Italians.

(24 December 1806, protestors surrounded St. Peter's Church in Manhattan because of the strange rituals going on inside, i.e. Christmas Eve celebrations. Just last month, armed protestors surrounded a Mosque in Irving, Texas.)

Anti-Japanese sentiment and internment during World War II. Anti-Communist sentiment running throughout the 20th century. (Which is where today's film--Trumbo--puts us. (I have also just watched an episode of HBO's John Adams and the film version of 1776 is on as I'm writing.) But, let us not stop there just yet.) Anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-gay... Anti-Muslim of late--that's just keeping up with the usual practice.

The American tradition of Otherization.

Dalton Trumbo and many others in Hollywood were blacklisted because they were (or were rumoured to be) Communists. There was no crime committed by Trumbo and the rest of the Hollywood Ten until they were subpoenaed to Congress and would not answer the questions put to them.

The film plays that testimony scene with both Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) and Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.) almost as comedy, despite the serious implications for these men's careers and also potential jailtime that may come from being in contempt of congress. 

In fact, there is a lot of comedy... or at least comedic moments in Trumbo. The film also, necessarily takes a dark turn as Trumbo deals with being blacklisted by working even more, under assumed names, taking amphetamines and drinking and smoking (perhaps) more than before. Trumbo is a deeply flawed character, the kind of character I love. There's a moment in the film in which he will not even take a break for his daughter's birthday celebration and cake and his daughter and (nearly) his wife turns on him. The film does not shy away from his horribleness, but rather presents him as a flawed man desperate to survive in the face of adversity that has put him in jail and cost him his career (officially, but not completely as long as he is willing to remain anonymous). My pet subject--identity--comes into play, but only incidentally. But the related idea of voice is key to the story. These Communists are the Other, distrusted just for meeting together. There's a line repeated a couple times (including in a theatrical newsreel) about the conspiracy of these Communists to undermine our American way of life, or something along those lines. a) I don't have the movie handy at home

b) the exact wording is not the point because the same damn argument just keeps happening in this country. (To be fair, I would never suggest that America is exclusive in this behaviour. But, America's part in it is the one that is immediate and personal to me.) Rex Reed (who I should really cite more often than I do) ends his review of Trumbo with the hope that the film "will broaden the knowledge of young audiences today that remain ignorant about Hollywood's darkest past." The real hope, I would say, is that any audience--let alone a young one--might even go see the film. It's made about $4 million so far, and I think there were about 3 other people in the theater where I saw it today. It opened at 37th in the box office about a month ago. #1 that weekend was Spectre, #2 The Peanuts Movie. The Martian was still doing pretty well, too. (I was actually excited to see this movie but took a month to get around to seeing it, so...) It's not going well.

But, we cannot expect a film that questions the joy we take at Otherizing anyone with differing political views to do well. We prefer out entertainment patriotic, jingoistic. We don't like a film that presents us someone different who remains unapologetically different. (Some of us do, but generally speaking, not so much.) Even Rex Reed, who seems to like the film, calls Trumbo's joining of the Communist Party "naïveté."

When Trumbo eventually won an award from the Writer's Guild in 1970--a moment dramatized at the end of the film--he said, "The blacklist was a time of evil. Caught in a situation that had passed beyond the control of mere individuals, each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to." In the film (and possibly in the actual speech, though I cannot find a complete transcript), he adds, "[N]o one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil... none of us--left, right or center--emerged from that long nightmare without sin." I think of images from the civil rights movement and the violence put against it--the dogs, the hoses, the burning crosses and lynchings, and I can see the point of Trumbo's phrasing. I don't believe in "evil" but if there is such a thing, surely it is that which turns man against man to no real end.