“This American Carnage”
by Lex Drennan
For an inauguration speech, it set a strikingly bleak tone. President-elect Trump spoke not about unity, but rather focused on unemployment, lack of opportunity, drugs and crime. News coverage the the following day roundly panned the speech for its darkness.
Except when Trump spoke of the rusted out factories standing like tombstones across the country, the crumbling and failing infrastructure — I couldn’t help but think he had a point.
To my mind, you can learn everything there is to know about a country simply by looking at the condition of its roads. It tells you about the quality of bureaucratic governance, the effectiveness of the rule of law, the taxation regime and the productivity of the economy.
It may not tell you how the country came to be in its current condition, but it provides a better synopsis than any Lonely Planet guidebook on the status quo.
I travelled from Michigan, visiting relatives not far from Flint, to Washington DC to watch the inauguration; from rusted out factories and poisoned waters, to the deliberately monumental capital of the country.
When Trump spoke of “This American carnage”, he was speaking directly to his base of rural, white, disaffected ‘forgotten people’. He promised to restore the country, working for the poor who lacked opportunity. And yet, like the Wizard of Oz, it doesn’t pay to look behind the mirror.
On Inauguration night, that’s exactly what I did and the sights continue to haunt me, with deep formless anxiety about the future of America.
After watching the spectacle, I took my camera and headed out to wander around DC. Since the 1980's DC has gradually shed it sobriquet of the ‘murder capital’ of America. But as a smallish woman, walking alone in a foreign city at night, the thought of personal safety was not far from my mind. And, as any Generation Y would when left to navigate without Wi-Fi, I promptly got lost.
As I walked down random backstreets, the only light available was from those of the parade route, the Inauguration celebrations and the military helicopters circling the city. Thick, low-hanging cloud blanketed DC, catching the man-made light and reflecting it back in discomforting hues of red and orange.
I crossed under Hopscotch Bridge on the H Street corridor. In this dubious shelter, which doubled effectively as a wind tunnel, I saw numerous tents established on the roadside. Some were in decent condition, others made of cardboard, and a broken shopping trolley lined with a sheet lay sideways as a windbreak. Tents hugged both sides of the underpass, and I wondered how the law of the street determined who could claim such prized land. Across the road some residents spoke quietly in groups, while an older woman, swaddled in layers of cast off clothing, yelled indistinguishably at passing cars.
I found my way onto L Street, and figuring some direction was better than none, wandered along it. Before long I’d crossed again into non-tourist territory. The absence of street lighting became an environmental yardstick, gauging my fluctuating sense of safety. In the peculiar way of DC streets, L Street disappears, only to reappear a few blocks later.
Through this unlit section I walked pasty empty blocks — fenced and vacant. Facing that, I saw row upon row of low-set terrace houses reminiscent of the public housing terraces in Redfern, Sydney. A playground sat dark and empty, save for a group of young men lounging at its entrance. I was not close enough to hear their conversations but could feel all eyes watching me pass, giving me the distinct impression of being in the wrong place. Two blocks further on the experience repeated itself as I passed by a small group of young men who had claimed the cracked and disheveled car park of a closed church as their venue for the evening.
I spotting a decent sized road and hurried towards the traffic lights. Two men jaywalked not far from me, bringing the overwhelming smell of pot wafting on the breeze. I watched them go, noting more tents spread in a disorderly fashion across the nearside of a vacant lot. A sign hung on the lot warned of vagrancy and private property, which had promptly been contested with a second sign below reading ‘Tent City’.
Oddly, although the street lighting improved, accompanied by more modern apartment complexes, the traffic entirely disappeared. The cause of this soon became apparent as fences and police blockaded the streets. I walked up and down two blocks trying to work out how to get past the fences. Their purpose, aside from keeping people out, was unclear. A solitary police officer, wearing a helmet and tactical vest, approached me to ask if I was OK. Whilst we chatted, two young women, one black and one white, walked past in high heels, evening gowns and heavy coats. Behind me, the street was entirely empty — of people, cars, police and light. Kindly giving me directions, the officer warned me to be careful as I was approaching the area of rioting from earlier in the day.
Upon circling around another barricaded block I ground to a halt, watching a spectacular and deeply disturbing social ritual unfold in front of me. The Inaugural Balls in DC are legendary. Nearby, a large sign pointed towards the Deploraball, the Freedom and Liberty Balls and the Salute to our Armed Services Ball. Outside the W Washington Hotel, a good 200–300 people formed an orderly, if seemingly static queue.
The wealth on display was staggering. By long-held tradition of attire at black-tie events, men have limited options to display money on their own persons. Instead, like inverted peacocks, women wearing sequins, dripping with diamonds and jewellery accompanied sombrely dressed men, parading their wealth. In a concession to the cold of the evening and the immobile queues, men and women alike wore heavy coats, often of fur.
The longer I stood there, the more details emerged. Of the people standing in that line, the vast, almost overwhelming majority was white. Half a block away from the hotel, past an increasingly intimidating array of police, I could see vendors on the street corners hawking Trump attire; shirts, jumpers, badges and the ubiquitous red baseball caps. Every single one of the vendors was black.
On the far side of the police barricade, I found DC’s missing traffic snarled into a truly stupendous jam. Guests continued to arrive into the security zone, some few walking, some by taxi and mini-bus. Amusingly, there appeared to be brisk demand for bicycle taxis that were better able to navigate the immobile traffic, utilising roads and footpaths with equanimity. Each bicycle-taxi owner equipped his or her ride individually, generating a discordant symphony of clashing music. Loaded down with two passengers apiece, travel was slow going. The imagery of well-dressed white men and women being transported to parties by the physical labour of predominantly black men was striking. And nauseating. DC’s slave markets seemed to echo loudly in the scene before me.
Moving away from the W Hotel, the debris on the ground increased. Given the police presence, I surmised I was passing through the earlier riot zone. Mounted riot police were flanked by phalanxes of police on motorbikes. Helicopter continued to circle overhead and a convoy of military Humvees slowly drove by.
The discordant scenes of wealth and hard labour combined with the overwhelming police presence to make me uneasy in a way that the unlit backstreets of DC had signally failed to do.
Spotting a likely looking bar, I ducked inside to warm up and gossip to anyone who sat still for too long. By chance, I’d made it to a gay bar near K Street. Soon enough, I was chatting to an English literature professor who specialised in the poetry of John Milton. A proud resident of Atlanta, he told me about his experience of growing up, a young gay man in the Deep South. His personal history was fascinating; of mixed Japanese-American heritage the US Government had interned his Grandparents, both American citizens, during World War 2. Unsurprisingly, he loathed the idea of a Trump Presidency and feared for the future of his civil rights under a Republican dominated Supreme Court.
He proudly introduced me to his husband, muttering “until they take that away”. By then a few drinks in, he told me “When the brown shirts come for me, don’t worry. In my family we know how to survive concentration camps.” I had no words to reassure him, just the hope that a constitution which has stood for 240 years, would be strong enough to constrain future abuses of power.
Not long after that I decided it was time to head home. I took an Uber.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LEX DRENNAN
Lex Drennan is an industry leader in crisis management and business continuity. She has held senior roles in the public and private sector, leading the development and implementation of crisis and business continuity management frameworks. Her broad experience across crisis management fields spans mining oil and gas, natural hazards management, critical infrastructure protection and resilience and business continuity management in infrastructure and financial services. Lex is engaged as an Adjunct Industry Fellow within Griffith Climate Change Response Program at Griffith University, researching in the field of disaster resilience.
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