MLK 2021

I had the day off today and watched the noise on Twitter, but only a little, as the Twitterverse started counting down the hours until Donald Trump leaves.

It’s been a long time coming since that gloomy, rainy day in Nov 2016 when I went to the bus station. The expressions on the black faces all around were of disbelief and distrust, all looking at me as if to say, “Did you vote for that man? Was it you?”

It’s not like women didn’t face disrespect in the days that followed from the white guys. I can remember more than once hearing muttered obscenities. This is what happens when a woman tries to break a barrier. No matter how good she is, she’s just too easy to drag through the mud.

So I marched. And I steeled myself mentally to never accept casual cruelty towards anyone. Not black people, not Muslim people, not female people, not gay people. My mind reeled at every injustice he committed and at his criminal behavior. But mostly I was angry at the fact that so many people believed his big lies and we couldn’t dislodge him no matter how bad a president he is.

Last fall, the Trumpers were saying that after Election Day, the masks would come off. That it was all an elaborate hoax. But the opposite is true and our new president will be calling for 100 days of masks. I am here for it. But what does it say about the people who would cynically take the chance of giving a disease to a stranger rather than wear a layer of fabric on their faces?

Donald Trump is a stain on the White House. Already his followers are turning away from him to the next man or woman who will lead them. They will not go away.

In a recent interview, Paul Greenglass, director of News of the World and a former war correspomdent compared the events of January 6, 2021 to the horrific mass murder of teenagers at a youth political conference in Norway. It was a connection I’d missed. He said of the insurrection:

What did I think when I watched it? The last film I made was “22 July” about Anders Breivik, who’s a right-wing terrorist in Norway who attacked the government and the young Labour group as well. You know, it was an attempt to decapitate the state. The reason I made that film was because Breivik, Anders Breivik, is a very important figure in the growth of the far-right, both in America and in the U.K. and across Europe, because he’s seen as a standard-bearer. If you look at Charlottesville, all that trouble, a lot of the language that was being used by the white supremacists was Breivik’s words from Breivik’s manifesto – same in some of the other right-wing attacks across Europe. You know, he’s a profoundly important figure.

…

I think Anders Breivik is a dreadful – dreadful – contemptible human being guilty of the most heinous acts. That said, you mustn’t ever misunderstand these people. It was not that they thought – that he felt that the people that he killed were not human. He actually understood – he’s a pretty intelligent man, Anders Breivik. What he was – and this is relevant today – was someone who believed that you needed to have a fight, that the battle needed to be waged with violence.

And that is common now. That is – the genie is out of the bottle, if I can use that expression. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, that is out there in chatrooms, in the dark Web, in the meetings all across the West. And it’s a big problem. And if you talk to anybody in law enforcement – FBI, you know, police, MI5 over here on the – you know, in Europe – the growth of the far-right and their desire to give battle is a real – it’s a reality. It’s a reality, and it has to be dealt with.

And I think you may be actually a little fortunate in the U.S. I don’t know. I mean, obviously, I’m just an observer. But it strikes me that – I suspect that there may have been some overreaching, and law enforcement may really significantly go after these people and, you know, drive them back. But it’s going to be a generational struggle, this – just as it is against, you know, violent Islamist extremism. And it’s part of the morbid symptoms of the failure of centrist politics.

What does it say about Trump and his followers that the founder of their movement was a man who murdered 77 people, most of them young adults and children?

This is why impeachment is on the table and why we can’t safely have unity until there is accountability.

That this is going to be a lifelong struggle is a bit of a depressing thought. In fact, all day, I’ve been having a feeling of anxious dread, wondering what ruin Trump and his droogs have planned for us before Wednesday. It’s even stranger that Alexei Navalny was arrested in Moscow when his flight was diverted. How convenient would it be for Trump if he descended his plane to be met by a state attorney general with an indictment. How would that look to his hordes? He would deserve it. We need to hold him accountable. But the optics are too close in a weird and unsettling way. It almost seems… planned.

Did he leave his mark on the White House? Destroy valuable national treasures? Trash the place like a rockstar with a sense of invincibility? We’re about to find out.

And that gives me a little bit of hope. Because there were more of us to say enough last November.

We held out. We didn’t succumb to the money or the pettiness or the corruption or the injustice. With these small cumulative acts of resilience we waited him out.

The arc of the moral universe bent and did not break.