Sunday, November 20, 2016

Letters from a Liberal Son

11/19/16

Mom,

Our whole family outside of my brothers and probably cousin Susan voted for Trump. Let me see my grandparents, parents, my aunt, uncle, and the rest of my cousins and their spouses probably all voted with them. Now do I know that about everybody no, but five minutes at any family gathering or any small scan of social media makes it pretty obvious.
Now whatever you and dad are not on the same page on as far as how you got to that path, whether it is glaring ignorance through apathy or willful viewership of sitting in a brown chair and absorbing Fox News year after year, I do not really care. You wanted this on some level. This to you was the better of whatever ambivalence or deliberated thought got you or dad or anybody in the family, and that choice has an impact on the world and me as a human being. It has an impact on my daughter's future in ways that you may dismiss as not important, but to me that fact that you did not care about her growing up in a world as a young woman and having Trump as the leader of the free world, our country, for not just all the obvious he is grossly unqualified, but his racist, xenophobic, climate change denying, evolution denying, misogynist spew affects ignorant people to emulate his nonsense and it causes people pain.  It also will pass and alter real laws that will damage and end people's lives.
My best friend in the world is a black gay man. I assume you have no clue about the man just nominated for Attorney General today or what that means for human rights in this country for people of color, or homosexuals, or a woman's right to her body. You and dad basically in voting for Trump told the world, not my problem, I have other things to worry about. I think Trump's agenda is a better path.
How you think it is better, maybe you could explain that to me, because I have yet to hear one supporter of the man explain to me how the policies and people who will be empowered will not lead us down a path that is both economically and socially harmful to the likelihood of accelerated climate change and the homogenization and degradation of the multiculturalism at the heart of American exceptionalism.
It hurts me that so many people in my family just do not care to want to know better. I know everyone that grew up in Grandpa's house is a racist. I know I was scared to bring my friend to the house or date a black girl who I know actually liked me who I liked in high school because I was afraid of dad's reaction. I think dad thinks Obama is still trying to take his guns.
Basically it saddens me that in my own family no one cares to read anything that I write and then tell me I am wrong or they are right or why. Trust me I read plenty of history, economics, psychology, sociology, literature, philosophy, and look at both sides of the one-party coin. I understand it is not just oh the Democrats are right, but the path out of this mess is farther left leaning than even Hillary.
Trump lied to fake that he would emulate progressive ideas with ignorant desperate people exiled by the paradigm shift in fossil fuel industries and globalization. He stole pieces of Bernie Sanders platform as talking points and twisted sound bites he plans to back up with a supply side economic agenda that will have the exact opposite effect in the long run than what people thought they were voting for.
It saddens me that people understand pieces of the story and stop reading or think that it is all about red or blue as if both don't have good and bad ideas, but this deal with Trump to me it crosses an unprecedented line in American history in the age of television and the media making sure facts do not matter because a reality television star gets ratings and that is all that matters.
Black lives certainly don't matter. Women's rights as human rights certainly don't matter. The environmental crisis that threatens to raise global temperature by another degree by 2050 doesn't matter. In case you didn't know last time in Earth's history that happened the area around Nebraska was a desert. Who gives a shit right? Who needs food? Who needs to read the consensus of scientific opinion? We have the Bible and a new executive branch who chooses the later over the former.
I on a personal level know what it feels like to lose my job working for a man who to me is like New Orleans' mini Trump because he thought he could save a few bucks. I know what it was like to sit next to his right-hand man attorney use the word nigger in front of me at lunch like I would just not have a reaction. I remember getting up immediately from what corporate culture was sitting at the top of the corporate office.  
It's easier to just listen to hate and not say anything when your privilege insulates you, when you are not the one affected, to not risk getting called out or maybe losing the little you have or your station because you held a mirror up to a powerful person’s ugliness.  I would like to think I am not the kind of person that can just stand there and not do anything. I would like to think I am not the kind of person that would not call out the ugliness I see. I would like to think that is someone you would like your son to be, but things like voting for Trump make me question that. Maybe you and dad would rather your sons to not care and not speak up, to just sit down and keep our thoughts or art to ourselves.
I know what is like to lose my job to Enron's fraud. I know what is like to go through abortion from a father's perspective. I know what is like to listen to black poets speak truth of the racism they have dealt with. I know what it is like to hear homosexual poets speak about what it is like to be gay in America. I know what it is like to hear indigenous American and Palestinian American poets speak their truths. I know what is like to hear women's poems about sexual assault. I know what is like to see the financial statements and payrolls of countless companies and see what the top people and the owners get paid while they tell some guy they can't afford to pay him more than $12 an hour.
I know what it is like to hear someone tell me she was raped repeatedly by a Catholic priest. I know what it is like to lose my faith and see the nonsense of organized religion pervert the minds of people I love to do things like think if god was real he would be on the side of a man like Trump before a woman like Hillary Clinton. This is probably because right wing America has convinced the Bible belt that abortion defines Christian political morality in this country in a one stop shop of over simplification to turn off brains.
So this as a human being and knowing things that frankly I do not think many people in our family have even thought about, and assuming the known deficiencies in the neoliberal system that is strangling this world, that Clinton also represents, that Clinton was somehow worse than the conservative xenophobic racist, supply side economics version Trump represents.
I am hurt by it because when dad eventually tries to tell me it doesn't matter, why do you get so worked up over everything. Go get laid and lighten up, I feel like my own father does not see me, respect my sexuality when he says the get laid part, that he does not understand me and just like so many people in this country does not want to know.
The family can support whatever you want, but it has consequences whether you choose to feel them or not. People will suffer from this in systemic ways that will affect this country for years to come. Will all that happen in 2017; no, but I can see the arch of history in what is forming and it scares the hell of me and frankly should scare you. 
What of your grandchildren's future; all girls at the moment. Would you feel comfortable looking any one of them in the eye when they are old enough to understand and explain how you and dad voted for the man who bragged about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their pussies or just paid $25 million to make his lawsuits about his fraudulent university go away or any of the countless ridiculous thing a billionaire born with a silver spoon who probably just had to apply for a job for the first time in his life has done to hurt people with less power than him?
It hurts me and makes me feel farther away from all of you. I love you, but to look my daughter in the eye in a world where I know she is growing up in a house and a town that probably overwhelmingly voted for Trump and will attempt to normalize his agenda, it tears me up that she will believe that crap or grow up judging poor people the way so many Trump voters do labeling takers and makers and ignoring complex systematic interrelationships in global economics caused by the very ideas they vote for. It scares me that she will think she is less than because she is female or that some boy has a right to touch her after she says no or just because he wants to see if he can get away with it. It's sick and to me indefensible.
The worst part is it is not just Trump it is the elimination of what the veto power was holding back for the agenda of the throng of the Republican Congress. Those are the anti-intellectual, supply side economic, anti-choice, white privilege denying, climate change denying, overturn Roe vs Wade wanting, non-equal pay for equal work wanting, eliminate Dodd Frank and Wall Street regulation wanting, repress voting rights legislating, register Muslims, wall building horde. A vote for Trump unleashed that flood that is waiting to widen the gap of wealth disparity and reduce human rights in America and in the world. You can try to say I am exaggerating, but if you do please back it up with facts, because all the research I have done points in that direction.
Life has given me a lot of lonely hours. I have used those to read and try to talk to people and have as many real and personal conversations in my life and I wish I could express why it breaks my heart that despite everything I have invested in that time that my family would rather escalate a commitment to some Republican fantasy camp of horrendous consequences served with a smile than explain to me why I am wrong based in a foundation of facts. At least I would know, I could live with that. I would be happy to be wrong.
I am not saying that Republicans do not have a place of importance to help our democracy, but the Party has gone off the reservation, so far so that the very swamp they hate is their own reflection. People have been manipulated for generations to do what the powerful wealthy elite want behind the idea of a cross, a flag, and fear. So many people in my family go right alone with it and it just hurts. I cannot pretend it is normal or okay or does not have consequences just because people would rather not know.
I love you, but I am not going pretend I am okay or that the sphere of all of this does not hurt me deeply.
Son



Son,

I read your response. I'm sorry that you are so full of anger and hopelessness for the future of America.  I'm going to say again that I didn't want to vote for either Clinton or Trump, but I made a choice. There are lots of things that I don't like about Trump, but I have more objections about Clinton. She has been part of this country's politics for 30 years and I don't like where the country is now. I hope that the future includes some positive changes. I think Trump won because America wants change and Clinton has been an integral part of the past. I think Obama got elected because America wanted change even though the change he would support was quite different from the change that Trump supports.

I hope that human rights and/or equality for all people would not be compromised during the Trump administration. There is always hope that a lot of what you and others feel will happen under Trump won't come to pass. I have to have hope. I don't know anyone who has done the research that you do or anyone that would be interested in that level of research. I think in order to do what you do you have to be curious and believe you could make a difference. Unfortunately, I'm not that curious and would hardly know how to research. I'm sorry your family hurts you and disappoints you. Even though we are not on the same page with many things I am not hurt by you or disappointed in you. I can easily accept our differences and still like you and love you.

I think you also need to consider that all of us, no matter what we believe, will be wrong about some things. You have a very detailed agenda of what horrible things will happen under Trump. No human can know. There are too many variables that will come to play that will skew the results. You have to accept that the country has voted in a Republican congress and a Republican president just like I accepted the last eight years of a Democratic president. If you research past presidents you will find many flaws with each man even the ones that lead in the manner that you would choose. I hope that the current situation becomes less stressful for you. Had Clinton won, I would not have been happy but I would have accepted the country's choice. That's what we all have to do since this is a democracy. I don't see the positive affect of dwelling on doom and gloom no matter who is elected. I can't be intense about anything except the love I have for my family.

I love you.
Mom




Mom,

The lack of empathy in humanity is the problem.  The family being insulated so that you do not care is the point.  It is the reason a man like Trump gets elected.  It is a reason why a man like Bernie Sanders can’t make it out the primary from a woman like Hillary Clinton.  You saying, “You have to accept that the country has voted in a Republican congress and a Republican president just like I accepted the last eight years of a Democratic president.”, is a false equivalency.  Trump has a Republican majority in the House and the Senate, and the Republicans carried out an unprecedented level of obstructionism for eight years that is the pinnacle of hypocrisy of Trump saying he will drain the swamp.  The fact that you equate the two goes back to point one, which is you do not care enough to pay attention or want to know.  

Democracy is a living organism made by the people.  Accepting the reality that Trump was elected is not something the people have to sit idle and accept.  Protesting, activism, and participation are the vital blood in what makes a democracy.  It is the direct opposite of what you and dad are trying to teach your children.  You are teaching us to keep to yourself let bad things happen to people as long as it is not you.  Sure, you hope for the best, but you have to do what keeps you comfortable first. 

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."  Martin Luther King

I am disappointed and motivated to act, to take my art and poetry and try to touch people's ignorance and let them wake the hell up from the apathy and lack of empathy that is destroying our ability to talk with and see each other. One of the main things I asked for is to tell me facts, tell me why you feel you are right, tell me why dad thinks Trump is the better path. I want to know. I do not want to be brushed off like I am still a child. I want to have an adult conversation and be respected that I asked a serious question and when all you or dad have to say is I don't know, that is the mirror of the two people who are supposed to be my guides in life. It affects me more than other people would. It burrows. The answer, "I do not like where the country is now." tells me little.

Son


Son,

I'm not trying to brush you off.  I don't know what to say anymore. Perhaps your Dad can explain how he thinks and feels better than I can. I don't have facts to back up how I feel. Part of the reason I chose Trump over Hillary is because he is not a politician. Having to pick between the two my consensus is I want to give someone who is in business and not politics a chance. I know that this is probably a weak reason for you, but it's reasonable for me. You are a grown man with your own thoughts and ideas and I respect that. You are probably right about some things and wrong about others as all of us are. I don't think we can predict what is going to happen.

I love you, Mom

Mom,

Thank you for giving me your reason as you believe Trump is not a politician and he is a business man. I wish you did your research on Trump as a business man or dissected the idea beyond a catch phrase or further contemplating electing a human with zero political experience to run the largest government on the planet.

If you find out what I am wrong about please let me know. I will rely on the mathematical realities of economics you and dad raised me to study and learned in college and in professional accountancy and the humanity I was born with and cultivated as a poet.  You may not be able to predict what will happen, but in my research of history I know what happens when you alter tax rates and civil liberties in the way Trump has promised. That is not a prediction. That is what is promised and what has the majority of Congressional approval.  How you assess this as we cannot predict what is going to happen is to me patronizing. People have records whether in business or politics. Those records are how we assess future events in context to the contextual prisms of the now. Based on the records of tea party and traditional Republicans that agenda should be easily passed. The Senate requirement to pass veto is gone. This to me is a sober assessment of the realities of government.

I love you. 
Son

No comments:

Post a Comment