Notes Before Inauguration
The Paradox of Speaking Out Against Trump
99% of the people reading this post (as well as any Tweet, article, or commentary I write on websites that cater towards intellectual homogeneity, which is all of them) already share my opinion about the president elect. And although it might feel good to post damning op-eds on Facebook and re-tweet Trump’s absurdities, in the end what I’m doing is yelling at a mirror when I “protest” online. Worse still, by speaking out against Trump I am keeping him in the limelight, which is not what I don’t want to do to a narcissist who lives at the top of a tower.
So how do I speak out against a person who thrives on all forms of attention? It is a complicated question that does not have a singular answer, but Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes was a beautiful start. She did not say the man’s name, not once. Rather, she spoke of his “instinct to humiliate” and our collective responsibility to practice empathy in the face of disrespect and violence. This hurt him, I suspect, because it was not really about him. It was about all of us. Meryl Streep was speaking to the adult human being inside the childish caricature we know as Donald Trump. She did not engage him in a Twitter war or go on CNN to sound off. She spoke to the basic tenets of human decency, tenets which are unarguable.
So what if we followed her lead and spoke about maintaining our humanity in the face of it all? What if we participated in a week of digital silence in response to Trump’s tweets, a week in which, inevitably, he will say things that make our skin crawl? What would happen, for example, if the man lost two million Twitter followers overnight? Not because we want to hurt him, but because he is a bully and his vile words should neither be acknowledged nor tolerated. Instead of laying in wait on Twitter for the man’s latest blunder, what if millions of people stopped going on Twitter at all?
The United States of America deserves the president it elects. All of us — this author included — tacitly support the Trumpian ideal of branding oneself like cows simply by being socially engaged in 2017. Personally as a writer, this translates to social media/online presence, to writing articles like this one, to updating my Instagram account, to wanting to gain “followers” (where am I leading them, exactly?), to wanting to be re-tweeted, mentioned and “liked.” Social media and the 21st century’s Commodification of the Self are major reasons Trump is now in office. The man is the result of reality television, snap chat memes, and celebrity culture, and only now do we realize our obsession with public image has gone too far. So perhaps it is time to imagine a world in which we stopped deifying social media as the path to all success. Perhaps we should stop “following” people with whom we would refuse to share a coffee (how many of Trump’s Twitter legion, I wonder, follow him not because they like him but because they despise him?). For people like Trump, the truth is there is no such thing as bad press: those seductive notifications, re-tweets and mentions do not account for the clicker’s politics.
So what does breaking apart from the digitized herd look like when social media is not only considered an extension of our personality but remains one of our greatest tools in protesting governments? Even in writing this article, I am participating in part of the problem: I will be congratulated and receive a few likes and will hence feel better about my “activism” and then it will be done. In an ideal world, a few Trump supporters will comment on this article and we will have a genuine discussion, but even then we will continue to feel connected on the World Wide Web while Trump is actively spinning a new political reality at the top of his tower. Because the truth is this is not just about human decency: a megalomaniac is about to become the most powerful man in the world. So forget the pundits and the media’s supposed exaggerations and lies; just pick anyone in Trump’s cabinet and look up what they’ve actually said. Whichever side you’re on, many of the things these people say are unpresidential at best and at worst utterly terrifying .
What troubles me most as I search for ways to practice my patriotic duty of civil disobedience is that while I can write articles and novels in order to achieve personal catharsis, maintaining my comfortable life in Paris while I watch the goings-on from afar, there are people in America whose dignity and very citizenship will be challenged by Trump’s presidency. In order to win the presidency the man divided America as a matter of principle (with a bit of help from the Russians), and there is no sign he will stop this strategy of divide and conquer.
So how do I fight? How do I maintain hope for humanist progress? How do I, an American living in Paris, protect and support those Americans who don’t care about re-tweets or publishing an op-ed because they’re losing access to birth control and doctors, because they’re being attacked at their favorite due to their head scarf? As I search for ways to respond to and oppose Trump’s consistent lack of human decency, I must try to remember Meryl Streep’s speech and the importance of speaking about the larger truth: we could all stand to practice a bit more empathy. While I would like to call Trump an embarrassing symbol of American culture and a pathetic example of a human being, perhaps the best way to invoke the importance of presidential responsibility is to make clear that actions — and tweets — have consequences.
As a dissident of Trump’s America, what those consequences are remain unknown. But I do know that while writing articles (and novels) is cathartic, it is also insufficient … or at least it feels that way when each criticism engenders one of Trump’s vicious, gleeful responses. So whether protesting a Trump presidency means attending the Paris Women’s March on Washington (this Saturday, January 21) or limiting how often I pay attention to the man on Twitter, I must constantly remind myself of the following paradox: while it is my civic duty to speak out against the president elect, by doing so I am also fueling the ego of a historically disreputable narcissist.
