“Flight 93 for the Rest of Us”
The Enemy Isn’t Whom You Think It Is.
“Charge the cockpit or you die.”
- Publius Decius Mus
In September 2016, a conservative think-tank writer penned a piece called “The Flight 93 Election” comparing the stakes of the election to the heroic efforts of the passengers of Flight 93.
This piece became the battle cry for Trumpists across the country and remains the central motivation for every increasingly strained rationalization that ardent Trump-backers must use to justify the current state of affairs and the actions that got us there.
The gist of the piece was this: Unless we vote for Trump, our country is lost and with it, “we”, i.e. true conservatives, will perish along with it.
Fundamentally, the piece presents a false dilemma. Hail Mary or lose the game. There is no nuance, no subtlety, no time for thoughtful action or, worse, collaboration.
With this as the mantra of Trumpists and, now, more broadly the GOP, itself, is it any wonder that we are sinking into destructive tribalism?
Is it any mystery why the right would go all in to retain power and to quell the perceived tide of foreigners and minorities? Could it be that Hispanics are projected to be the largest ethnic minority this year (Pew Research, 2019)? Could it be that whites are projected to be the minority for the first time in 2045 (Brookings, 2018)? Or could it simply be that a black man became our President?
As a white man or woman in America who sides with Trump, it perhaps isn’t any wonder in the midst of these undeniable trends that one might feel beset from all sides by the angry, colored masses. Be afraid.
But what exactly are they afraid of? That they will lose their jobs to a minority? (Sorry, a virus and a chaotic GOP response did that with 20% unemployment and counting.)
Perhaps. But I think what they are truly afraid of is an idea:
The Other.
The “Other” takes many forms, but for Trumpists, the other is foreign, minority, left-wing, urban-dwelling. Each of these tropes is a self-contained idea of “other-ness” that then becomes personified in a Trumpists mind. It is also a key defining factor as to their own American-ness.
What makes me a “Great American”?
The fact that I am not the “Other”.
The Other may look different, speak different, think different. In those observable differences then lies a “tell” as to the quality of that group or individual. By their Otherness, a Trumpist deduces, I have therefore figured them out. They are lawbreakers, they are socialists, they are aliens. And they are therefore a threat.
In light of this, is it then any wonder that the usage of such a stark metaphor of Flight 93, rather than snap these individuals to their senses as to its obvious selective dissonance, instead became a siren song for them?
The fear and hatred of the Other, sown by decades of partisan propaganda as well as the macro reality of demographic and political trends, now hit a tipping point, allowing for a hateful, divisive and spitefully nativist metaphor to resonate more strongly than a long-valued empathy for their fellow American.
And now, we stand at a crossroads of another crisis. Whereas 2016 was Flight 93 for the Republicans. 2020 is Flight 93 for the Rest of Us.
Who are “We” you ask?
We are not just the American Other.
We are every other.
As in. Every. Other. Goddamn. Person. On. Earth.
And why? Because if we don’t we will die. Whether by virus. Whether by civil or global war. Whether by environmental self-destruction. Pick your poison.
We are at a crossroads of terminal proportions. We must take up arms. We too must, yes… Charge the cockpit or die.
And we will. We will break free of our oppressors. We will rush the aisle as chaos spreads around us. We will break through the barrier into the pilot’s cockpit.
Only to find it is empty.
But how could this be? We are the slighted masses. We are the ones who have time and time again faced injustice. We are the ones who have the right to strike back at the Enemy.
Only to find that whatever we strike evaporates into a wisp of thought. A shadow in the corner of our mind’s eye, always dancing just out of reach.
Because there will always be an Other.
We are, at once, the Other and surrounded by it.
It’s not that we are all one and the same, but that we are limited by our own perception. As an individual living in this world, we have no choice but to see all things that are not us as the Other.
And so, to mitigate this pervasive solitude, we gather with and gravitate towards those that seem to have the least quality of Other-ness. We find them on Facebook, on Twitter, at Meetups. But this is what we’ve done for centuries. And this is the cycle we must break. This idea is, in fact, the real enemy:
The idea that Other-ness has nothing to do with me.
Republicans vs. Democrats. MAGA vs. woke. 99% vs. 1%. These are all symptomatic of the same disease, that the idea of the Other has nothing to do with me. That it is completely external to me and therefore independent of my actions, my psyche and my worldview.
But this is inherently false.
This seemingly small and seductively plain assumption is the root of the societal and political dysfunction we see today. Because until you accept that any perception is necessarily a function of the observer as much as the observed, then there is no recourse. How can there be if the threat is entirely foreign to me? An externality? A logical impossibility. Unless you accept the possibility that something in you is at least partly to blame for that perception.
If the Rest of Us were to act as the Republicans and charge the cockpit, we would find ourselves perpetuating the cycle once more.
The only solution is to meet each other as we are. To see the fundamental truth that there is no Other without an Observer and that the observer is as much an actor in any negative perceptions and events as the observed.
The only way to begin to heal this gap is look within yourself first as One then meet again, not as Others but as Individuals.
Out of Chaos, Bring Peace in 2020.
