So the results are in. I have a longer post planned, explaining why this would have been quite shocking to me a few years ago, but is now kind of normal. America’s a lot more racist, misogynist, and stupid than I like to remember. That’s for later.
For now, let’s focus on what we can do. Not just drinking all the wine and angry crying about what the next four years have in store for us. More.
A lot of people are reminded of Hitler’s rise to power and for good reason. Trump sounds a lot like Hitler. Very xenophobic and focused on return his country to a previous state of greatness that many even now are still trying to identify. And the people who follow him are more into his cult of personality than actually analyzing any other part of his plans. “Something great” is not a plan. It’s an excuse to sell out the people stupid enough to elect you to the highest bidder.
I am more so reminded of The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution of 1960s China, in which Mao believed that Western learning and thinking were undermining communism, so the country became divided between Red and Expert. Being well educated, especially educated abroad, was unpatriotic. Doing such could get you killed or sent to a re-education facility where you did hard labor until you understood that your intelligence was worth nothing. You were a communist now. Only communism mattered. Universities and other schools were closed. For years. Ancient cultural artifacts were destroyed. Anything old of foreign was cast out, burned, hacked, or otherwise destroyed.
What I remember from this section of modern Chinese history class was that the people divided themselves into bands and fought it out for who was the better follower of the word of Mao, and Mao ate it up.
This is after the Great Leap Foward, where Mao decided that they could make steel out of household metals and had whole communities rounding up all the metal in town to smelt and smelting it poorly. Rampant corruption and high quotas meant inflated figures on how much usable steel was being made. In the end, the steel was shit and at least 15 million people starved to death (scholars think it closer to twice that) because the farmers were busy creating mostly worthless steel instead of farming. Read more here.
I have a feeling that’s what we’re looking at here, because it’s not just about a few more people supporting one guy over the other. It’s about more than half of the country thoroughly believing in Trump despite all evidence that his list of sins include things like child rape. Many only believe with the capital B, the way they believe in God, which means there’s no critical analysis of the person, their qualities or their abilities.
It’s going to be a dark few years here. It will be unpopular to be accepting or loving of differences. It will be unpopular to be anything other than a straight, cis-gendered, white, Christian misogynist male.
So, if you are not all of those things or not all of those things and an asshole, I beg you to be different. Be like the guy in the famous picture of the Hitler speech, standing in the crowd, arms folded, not accepting the hatred and bullshit. Be the people who fought for their Jewish countrymen during the Holocaust. Do that now, for our Muslim friends and neighbors. For the refugees who just want a chance to live. For the people who grew up beside you with their only difference being the color of their skin. For anyone LGBTQA. For anyone.
If you see someone getting hassled for being different, help them. Stand up for them. Use whatever you can to help protect them. Don’t antagonize and provoke, but help. As much as you can, help.
I foresee this being a dark time for intellectuals, for differences, for ideas. I really think the next few years are going to be horrible, but do what you can to help who you can. Speak out. Let your hardships be known if any help can be granted.
Help yourselves and each other.
Be the change.
Don’t let the bastards get you.
Fight for Standing Rock.
My last 2 thoughts on the subject for today:
1) I’ve never been so happy to be raising a child abroad.
2) This would happen the year David Bowie (and so many talented others) died.
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