Yesterday I posted a thing where I talked about my own trick for mitigating anxiety in the face of Trump: I try to think of “now” as “history.” I find it curiously soothing to imagine going through the upheavals of the moment, and coming out the other side, and being able to read the books about it later.
A few folks noted, though, that it might be harder to acquire that distance if you’re not a privileged white dude and you feel like there’s a real concrete possibility of your own life being devastated by the next four years. I don’t view this is a P.C. criticism (oh how I hate that tiresome term), but as an eminently reasonable critique. Although to be fair I was only talking about how I deal with my *own* nebulous fears, not the more concrete fears of others.
Still.
There’s a different way of looking at the next four years which is a lot less chill. Try this metaphor, borrowed from John D. MacDonald. We’re all on a raft together, right? On sunny days, in mild waters, it’s a good place to sit and enjoy the weather and the water. Fish all around! But we’re headed into the rapids now. All the white straight healthy guys (dudes like me) are mostly clumped in the safe center of that raft (where we’ve always been, from the earliest days of the Republic, and we got there by clubbing people off with the oars until the paddles were soaked with blood). Every one else — Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays, the disabled — are on the edges.
As we crash into the rocks, the edges of the raft may come apart. People are going to fall. If you’re in the center and you’re a functioning human being, it is morally imperative to try like hell to grab the people on the edges and keep them safe… which in practical terms means standing with them in the days ahead to add your voice to theirs when their rights, well-being, and dignity are threatened. If you’re someone on the edge, you don’t have to apologize for not wanting to drown; you don’t have to explain why you might just be a little pissed at the dudes hogging the middle; you don’t have to argue with the troll brigade online about whether or not water is wet. You fight to stay on. You’ll be able to recognize your friends, because they’ll be the people grabbing for your hand.
The great hideous shame of the nation in this particular moment is there was plenty of room on the raft for everyone and this river had other, safer branches to follow. But then the people we put in charge of the rudder don’t much care who falls in, as long as its not them and their friends; they’d even be glad to see a few go, so they have a little more for themselves.
(photo credit: Wikimedia commons)
