Another Dreadful Day In The Age of Trump

The soundtrack to my life today

I remember the feeling of fear and hopelessness I felt the morning after Trump's election quite vividly. There was a sense that everything was spinning out of control, that the future was both unknown and frightening. In the aftermath of the election I threw myself into political action as a way to guard against that day.

However, there are always days when those efforts melt away, when I feel completely powerless to do anything, and hopeless that there is any way that things will get better. The day I heard about family separations was one of those days, as was the day Trump cancelled DACA. These are the days that when I must face the reality that a completely bigoted, corrupt, capricious, would be tyrant has a tremendous amount of power to subject others to his cruel will. 

I've been trying to come up with a name for these days, so that all of us in opposition can have a language to share our feelings with. I could call it a "malignant reality day" in honor of my friend Chauncey DeVega, but I don't want to steal his phrase. I think I will call these days "dread" days, since dread is an emotion I feel most acutely in the age of Trump.

Today is a dread day because it has brought the news that the Supreme Court has allowed Trump's ban on transgender soldiers to stay in place. The Supreme Court seat that was robbed yet again reveals its awful potential to hurt people and take away their rights. We can probably expect more of the same in coming years. 

Today is also the day when the news media displayed its utter and complete failure. It is treating the smug boys who taunted Nathan Phillips as the wronged party. So desperate not to be accused of bias, the media is responding to the awful day to day manifestation of the hate that is endorsed from on high by shielding whiteness. The white supremacy that Trump represents in its most craven and vulgar form is getting an excuse from editors and producers who are upholding the racial order in subtler ways. To top it off, Trump will be inviting those boys to the White House, celebrating the kinds of kids who have been taunting and harassing the same victims as him, and much more intimately. 

As far as the shutdown goes, it seems like the last election is meaningless. It drags on, the Republicans safe behind their gerrymandered walls, the president unwilling to compromise. I get the feeling that Democrats are going to give in to the hostage taking. What came before is a horror, what lies ahead is worse. And yet where are the protests? Where is the action? I only see stasis, paralysis, and cowardice. I so desperately want to mount the barricades, but there aren't any, and no one is leading the way. I fear the dreadful days are about to happen with greater frequency.

Lana Del Rey, "Brooklyn Baby"

Alex Sayf Cummings, internet buddy and proprietor of Tropics of Meta (where I often write) has made me a Lana Del Rey convert. He had talked so long with such great affection for an artist who I'd never really listened to, or just assumed was the usual vapid pop.

Oh no friends, far from it. Recently I was listening to a playlist I made of moody 90s pop songs, and was kind of shocked about how depressing so much of that era's top 40 music was. For example, Sarah McLachlan's "Adia" almost makes me cry every time I hear it, and it was the kind of mainstream "adult alternative" song you'd hear everywhere from the radio to the dentist to the bank.

So much pop music today seems like it's trying too damn hard to have fun. It's written entirely for fun loving teens, not sad sack depressives of an older vintage. It is perhaps fitting that when I sat down to listen to Lana Del Rey today, I did it while grading, a task that hardly fills my heart with happiness.

I have to admit I was transfixed by her voice, which can be both husky and fragile at the same time. It comes from a bygone world of torch singing, and reminded me of nothing less than Marlene Dietrich and Weimar Germany. This is modern day cabaret singing for a decadent society in decline. Her lyrics seem to revel in the decadence, but she also sounds like she's crying on the inside.

I often use pop music to make me feel OK about feeling bad. And these days I must admit that I am feeling bad all the time. This is not so much in my personal life, but in looking out at the hopeless situation my country is in. I have no faith in the future, and knowing that my children will have to live in that future fills me with an awful dread.

So instead I put on "Brooklyn Baby," a song about a hipster doing what hipsters do best: burying their own dread behind their tastes. This song and its torchy singer are made for these dark times. 

The Grim Reality of Our World-Historical Moment

A lot has changed since 1989

I am at home sick today, and I am feeling energetic enough after some hours of rest to do some writing. Getting sick is something that clears my mind, mostly because it gives me a break from my commute, job, and parenting responsibilities. This has allowed me to think about our current era as it relates to larger world-historical trends, and the thoughts aren't good.

The revolutions of 1989 and the international community's response to the genocide in Bosnia made me feel for a time in the 1990s that though we had certainly not reached an "end of history" that the future of the globe was going to contain plenty of conflict, but generally be more peaceful and democratic than it had been in the past. After 9/11, it seemed that I had been very much wrong. The international policing imperative that had been used to save the people of Bosnia and Kosovo from mass murder was used to justify the disastrous war in Iraq. Likewise, I once saw anti-globalism as an important corrective from the left against the ravages of capitalism. The 1999 Seattle protests were, to me, a sign that the excesses of the post Fall of the Wall neoliberalism were about to be pushed back. Now anti-globalization is the currency of a resurgent, international neo-fascism which has captured the presidency of the United States. The 1990s held out the prospect of international agreements arresting the advance of global warming, now they seem doomed.

I have been feeling whiplash about the world historical moment since the Brexit vote last year. As I said at the time, it appears that the whole post-World War II order, which the leaders of the West tried to extend after the of the Cold War, is falling apart. International institutions of that order like the EU are shaking. The United States is abdicating its global leadership role, leaving a massive power vacuum that states like China and Russia (and now perhaps Germany) are yearning to fill. Similarly, the Middle East looks to be breaking down into a general conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Nationalism and chauvinism are on the rise everywhere, bringing with them authoritarianism. On top of all of this, climate will bring greater misery and cause for conflict in a world where the possibilities of international mediation are shrinking.

Looking at the dire state of things, I am becoming more and more convinced that only revolutionary changes will be sufficient to solve the current crisis, especially in regards to climate change. However, the means for revolutionary change in many places have been broken. Take the United States, where labor unions have been broken and communal life generally is practically non-existent. Consumer capaitalism, as long as it keeps the gadgets flowing and credit available, will keep most people complacent. Independent media is being swallowed up, and ethnic and racial divisions have been doing their traditional work. Most white people still prefer "the wages of whiteness" to solidarity with people of color. Social media only reinforces these boundaries.

As much as I detest Donald Trump, he is the product of his times. After he is gone, the forces that produced him will still be here. I don't have all the answers, but I do know that any path to a more peaceful and democratic future means radically changing the fundamentals of our political-economy. I just don't see that happening, and that realization is one that fills me with dread.