President Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama at CBC Foundation Awards Dinner
It's a daunting prospect, four long years without an American
president and first lady who have been a joy in every way and a constant
reminder of the true nature of integrity, dignity, compassion, understanding,
courage, sanity, coherence, brilliance of mind.
First Lady Michelle Obama spoke to OprahWinfrey in June this year about the next
generation of women. When Oprah asked what single piece of advice she could
give to young women, Michelle Obama's response, and she included young men, was
that "We can never be complacent... The work always continues…We have seen
in recent times how quickly things get taken away from us if we aren't
vigilant."
Indeed. And that was in June. From then on the nightmare has just
gotten darker and darker, as every decent human value has been assaulted by
Trump and his cohorts.
Do we even know how to be vigilant enough anymore? Did we ever?
Conservatives are very good at vigilance because they're often driven by anger
and fear, which are the most powerful motivators to action. Liberals aren't so
good at the kind of vigilance that's necessary to stop sociopaths from getting
into power. Too often they try to see the best in everybody, which is good as an
overarching philosophy, but not if it blinds you to the reality of what
people's anger and fear will drive them to. And it's not much of a
motivator. Let's all try to get along. If somebody is abusing
your child, do you try to get along with them?
Don't sweat the small stuff. People say it a lot, but the small
stuff is the early warning signal, it's the hairline crack. Small cracks never
go away, they always widen, and if you catch them early, not much damage is
done. The more you ignore them, the less sensitive you become to them until you
only wake up when your house has collapsed.
Throughout the lead-up to the election, every intelligent person
and journalist with a conscience and the capacity to separate media-driven
hysteria and fake news from reality was shouting warnings about Trump. But it
was too little too late.
Where has everybody been during Obama's terms, where the GOP has
done everything it could to obstruct him and not do its job? Where was the
liberal media outrage at Obama's unpopularity when he was doing a sterling job
despite the obstructions? Where was our outrage at the vicious racism that was
directed at him and the First Lady and at the up-swelling of racism and white
fear of losing status quo that led to a burgeoning of white supremacist groups?
That's not where it all started, but it's where it could have been
stopped. The GOP got away with not doing its job. It got away with the
gerrymandering, with targeting minority voters, making it harder for them to
vote. Those were some pretty sizable cracks.
It was small step from there to a candidate who would campaign on
enabling hatred and assault on human decency in every aspect and encourage
Russian interference in a presidential election and was too stupid to
understand how that would imperil American democracy. A small step to millions
believing fake news and to the main social media platform through which it was
disseminated not identifying it until it was too late. The mainstream media
didn't identify it either. From there it was easy for an FBI director to
'innocently' release a statement that would sway the election and hand it to a
sociopath.
Yesterday, apropos apparently of Putin's speech to his military
leadership that Russia needed to upgrade its nuclear capacity allegedly so that
it could penetrate sophisticated defense systems, Trump tweeted that the US
needs to increase its nuclear capacity until people come to their senses about
nukes. When I saw the news last night my blood ran cold. So best buddies
Putin and Trump are in stand-off already.
Two out-of-control narcissists, hungry for control and desperate for affirmation, and both with the power to set off another world war. The alarming thing is that Putin is a terrible man but he's intelligent. The same can't be said of Trump, who is frighteningly gullible and manipulable.
Two out-of-control narcissists, hungry for control and desperate for affirmation, and both with the power to set off another world war. The alarming thing is that Putin is a terrible man but he's intelligent. The same can't be said of Trump, who is frighteningly gullible and manipulable.
This is what happens when an over-enabled cheat, obsessive liar, a racist, a sexist and a bigot with an over-sized ego is elected with the help of a partisan FBI director and Russian
intervention.
From the Obama Administration to this. Pave paradise and put up a
parking lot. Vigilance; we need to upgrade our idea of what it entails. I've
seen a huge outpouring of frustration on Twitter and Facebook from people who
were vigilant, and who did speak their mind, over and over. Who turned out for
the vote. But it was too little too late. Even as a non US citizen, I could
have done more. A whole lot more.
Because this isn't just America's problem. It affects all of us.
The racist bigot who is about to take over the White House has enabled white
supremacy in the US, which has a ripple effect around the world. He will
happily screw up international trade agreements and relationships and create
massive uncertainty in the global economy. It would thrill him to increase nuclear
capacity and give the order to bomb the shit out of a country at three in the
morning because somebody in that country told the truth about him, or because
he read something on a fake news site, or because he realized that the hair he
has left is thin and straggly.
Before the election, I went to a lecture given in Cape Town by a
visiting US professor, a passionate Democrat, unequivocally damning of the GOP
and Trump. He said that up until recently his only involvement in politics has
been to vote, but it's not enough anymore. It's not enough for any of us.
How did America go from the best to the worst? While we were sleeping. We thought we were awake but we were dreaming. Now we've woken up to a nightmare. What's left to do?
— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) November 11, 2016
