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.
I love you.
Son
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