Fare Thee Well, Democracy: A Lament, A Plea

“This is so fucking bizarre.”

It was an appropriately stormy San Diego morning when Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. I watched that xenophobic, misogynistic, delusional, fake-tan dingus speak as the leader of my country, easily making the Top Three Worst Moments of My Life Without Pants. The moment I’d been pretending so hard could not happen… folks, it fuckin’ happened.

The trees bent and swayed; leaves, wind and water swirled against the window screens.

I was in denial.

I was frightened.

The use of mind altering substances was inevitable.

I.

A casino is an institution where people spend money and expect nothing in return. Consumers literally hand over cash without demanding any sort of product or service.

Donald Trump failed in that industry, and he failed often – with a million dollar head start.

This is called “foreshadowing.”

I.I

I couldn’t understand how friends back home in New Jersey supported Donald for the simple fact of the existence of Atlantic City.

Atlantic City, “The Camden of the Sea,” used to be gaudy and cheap, a purposely off-brand Vegas, where after a raucous weekend of booze, drugs and strippers one could, basking in the glories of modern medicine, start your Monday as good as new – albeit with less money in your pocket, and maybe a little more dingle on your dongle. Somebody even built a direct highway, a never ending pipeline of Joey’s and Tony’s in Zubaz sweatpants, desperate to escape the irreversible dreariness of Philadelphia sports fandom.

AC was the scrappy kid brother to Vegas, where one didn’t expect Frank Sinatra, but no weekend was complete without provoking one of his bastards’ cousins from Hoboken into defending ol’ Franks’ honor with a broken bottle. Atlantic City had “charm,” in that it mostly sucked, but you wouldn’t, like, die.

I grew up about 30 miles from Atlantic City and, up until about 18 months ago, my overwhelming memory of Donald was as a joke. He was a failed sleazebag who did sleazy things in the sleaziest of sleazy AC, and then he was an orange caricature of every waitress’s nightmare on that shitty TV show, for some reason, and now he’s suddenly President of the United States? Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck happened? For years, whenever I heard the words, “Atlantic City,” I immediately thought of Donald and all of the seediness that Atlantic City implied. Now, that Pavlovian response elicits our President.

I.II

Donald is a significant contributor in building Atlantic City into what it was, or at least how it was perceived. He is also significant to its current state: a ruin of its former self, broke, dangerous. You can go to the casino’s, and the boardwalk, but there isn’t much else.

My best friend got married in 2014 and for his bachelor party we went out in AC. We did the regular stuff: casinos and gambling and smoking weed in parking garages, so I shrugged and shuffled in a forward direction when some dude on the street said to follow him to a strip club down the way.

None of us wanted to go to a strip club at all but it was a bachelor party, so, strip club, and this guy personally offered – personally! – to escort us to the fine establishment after I looked at him like a blind and especially stupid monkey upon his shoving a business card in my hand. This Coconutz sounded promising, so I followed the guy until I got yanked back by various hands on my collar. We went to another strip club and it was terrible and the next day I found the card in my pocket and flashed back and my friends were like, “Dude, no. There were no streetlights on that street. It was fucking pitch black. You’re an idiot.”

Obviously, the only thing that was dangerous in that scenario was me, but the point is that there were lit areas and unlit areas. It was like playing The Floor Is Lava, staying in streetlights from casino to casino.

A whole lot of money packed up and left the town to fend for themselves, and the result hasn’t been pretty.  

This is also called “foreshadowing.”

II.

Nothing would make me happier than for Donald to tear down the system without destroying this country. In my fantasy, he goes rogue and just fucking crushes Wall Street and the lobbyists, and causes general but mostly harmless mayhem with his lack of patience and understanding of how most things work, but falls short of infringing on human rights; at which point the country is so fed up with him that he is thoroughly banished from all elections henceforth and the next candidate that collects the most votes from the people of this country wins the presidency.  

But I just don’t see it, for a few reasons. One is that nothing in Donald’s history speaks of an ability to succeed without bankruptcy, be that moral or financial, so there is no precedent to rely on. Another is that I watched his campaign, and for “Not Being A Politician” he really does have the whole, “Not Answering a Direct Question Thing” dialed. Donald has a plan that he won’t specify, a great plan that will blow other plans out of the water – let me tell you about his plan, see, his plan is gonna be a huge success, the best plan ever – no thanks to Obama, who wrote the worst piece of legislation ever besides NAFTA, and crooked Hillary, and also jobs and China.  

Most damning of all, he hired the same goons, the ones that talked shit about him all campaign and refused to support his candidacy until he was literally the only option left, to be in his fucking cabinet.

My friend says that this is excellent, that watching them run around like frightened dogs is what they deserve and that Donald is just fucking with them.

My friend isn’t wrong.  

But it’s not exactly comforting that Donald has them bent over a table when he clearly has no idea what he’s doing and could use a little education on how a government operates. Watching Paul Ryan (who is the one who you can actually thank for the version of “Obamacare” that passed legislation and thus has “ruined” so many lives across America) verbally tongue the butthole of the glassy eyed sycophants at the inauguration luncheon with the social grace of an preteen baboon on laughing gas was enough to make anyone sick. That was the moment I lost hope, because if Donald truly wanted to “drain the swamp,” then he would have tossed those fucking chumps to the curb.  

He didn’t.

Fuck Steve Bannon.

Fuck Mike Pence.

II.I

Vince Lombardi, legendary NFL coach and winner of 5 championships, once said, “When you get into the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.” The point was twofold: one was to show good sportsmanship and generally not be a dick. The other was to portray a quiet confidence in your abilities:  “Ah, yes. This is my home, where I spend all my time. I am comfortable here, so there is no need to get riled up. I will be back here, often.”

Freddie Mitchell, former NFL receiver, once said, “I just want to thank my hands for being so great,” after catching 5 passes for 65 yards. The point, I think, was to purport himself as magnificent when in fact he was a crappy football player who washed out of the league in four years.

Donald Trump is Freddie Mitchell.  

Sorry, Freddie.  We’ll always have 4th and 26.

II.II

Speaking of sportsmanship, let’s talk about the Electoral College. Those who complain about the Electoral College tend to be the losers, as the winners reap the benefits. This is true of any competition. As such, the complaining feels whiny and pathetic.  

Any contest that has 65,844,954 points or tallies versus 62,979,879 declares the one with 65 million the winner. That’s flatly indisputable – unless the 62 million points are given more value.  

The argument for the Electoral College is to benefit those who lived in rural communities – before everyone had radio and TV and Internet – and couldn’t make it to speeches or buy a newspaper to hear or read what presidential candidates had to say. In theory, this method gives voice to those who might not be able to speak.

Well, those days are fucking gone. We have radio, we have TV, and we have the Internet. Game over. In three seconds I can Google everything that Donald has ever said on cheetahs (nothing concrete, but apparently his sons have hunted leopards and elephants, because why not) so everyone, everywhere, has the resources to be informed on any issue.

Hillary won California by something like 3.5 million votes. She needed less than 4 million to beat you, Donald, and got almost 7.5.  None of those millions of voices mattered? Get the fuck outta here.

And shut the fuck up about voter fraud, you fucking idiot.  

III.

Eventually I put pants on and went to the store. The important parts of the inauguration seemed to be over, and if I didn’t move my truck before noon I would owe the City of San Diego money again. I put the key in the ignition and was blasted with The Beatles, “Carry That Weight.” I was almost overwhelmed, having just watched Donald Trump give his first speech as President of the United States of America.

Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight,
Carry that weight for a long time

Over the past two months I’ve had many sobering conversations (in decidedly un-sober conditions), about the state of the country and what the future holds. I’ve gone from “We’re Totally And Unilaterally Fucked, ” to “Nah, We’re Fine, It Can’t Be That Bad,” and all the way back again. The needle was pegged down that end for a while.  

Where I stand today is this:

Like any other supposed rational human being, I don’t want the leader of our country to fail. That’s fucking stupid. It’s a tired metaphor, but he’s the pilot, and wishing ill of him is counter-productive and dangerous. With that in mind, this moment, for those who support human rights for the people on this earth regardless of gender and race (or whatever other discriminatory ways we can categorize humans), fair wages, fair taxation, rational law enforcement and foreign policy, and everything that at one time or another (though rarely simultaneously) has made America great(ish, sometimes), this is our last moment of complacency. The time for fucking off and getting in arguments on Facebook is over.  

[2020EDIT

Do as I say not as I do.

END 2020 EDIT]

Rather than write a shithead comment, write your Senator and Congressman. Vote locally. If you think that NBC, Fox, Breitbart, The Huffington Post, or your local crazy person is full of shit: pay for a subscription news service, so that investigative journalists can make a living writing about real things that happened and not give rise to the bullshit memes and fake news that, inex-fucking-splicably, decided a Presidential Election in the United States of America. Remember: it is the reporters job to report the facts, and it is your job to form an opinion.

Our parents’ generation had their battles, fights, and movements. They saw the Civil Rights Movement, assassinations of leaders across the the nation, Vietnam, all under the blanket of the Cold War, with a nuclear apocalypse looming over their heads. One way or another, they navigated their way through the fear and chaos and survived.

It’s our turn. We should be taking inspiration from people like Martin Luther King, Jr, a man who handled his shit with nonviolence and grace. We should read Hunter S. Thompson, who glimpsed the dark soul of our nation and rather than cower he grimaced, snorted some drugs, and left a wide swathe of righteous destruction in his wake. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 remains as true today as it was then.

Take a stand. This is still a democracy. People are still decent. Sure, the oppressing forces have evolved, but so have we. Learn from mistakes. Adapt. It’s our responsibility to maintain a livable country and fight for rights because, otherwise, why bother? What was the point of any of it?

IV.

Mass hysteria in an age of delusion. 
Intellectualism surrenders to ineptitude. 
No love lost, no love gained, no common understanding. 
Head strong and determined, self obsessed with calloused indifference.

How can we heal these bitter divisions?
How can we overcome our mutual distrust?

-Against Me!, “Bitter Divisions”

I’ve been sitting on this “essay” for a while now, but I was always able to blow off my self-imposed deadlines because “Donald wasn’t really in charge yet.” In a very real way, this is a response to various postings I’ve seen on Facebook since last spring, all in one nice and sort of tidy place. That’s hardly an inspiring start but, whatever, here we are.  

I wrote this because this is what I believe. I don’t mind if you disagree; I turned 30 last week, what the fuck do I care?  

I marched with tens of thousands of people the day after the election, not because I thought it would accomplish anything, but because I watched that asshole be President on Friday morning and I vowed to myself, if he’s forcing himself into my living room, then I’ll force my way into his.  

Things are changing and our responses today will dictate the next decade or more of our lives. It’s vital that we ask ourselves, “Where do we go from here?” Was this election cycle an anomaly, one that we will never, ever, ever repeat under penalty of government-sponsored mass suicide? Have we learned a lesson? Have we learned anything? Or is this the new norm that will repeat every four years until we kill ourselves, one way or another?

We don’t need to be afraid of each other. We shouldn’t be afraid of each other. I think it’s important to remember that we’re all immigrants to this arbitrarily mapped plot of land. It wasn’t too long ago that the people who made the people who made the people who made my family got on a boat and started a life in America. Like any emigrating folk, they endured hardships and various forms of bigotry. They fought for themselves, and for each other, to build their lives. It’s up to us to keep the same values that allowed our ancestors to thrive, or at least die less, while making progress for ourselves and others.

It’s up to us to remember that, however begrudgingly, the doors were kept open for our families. As the world shrinks, we don’t have the “luxury” of looking after only our own communities. We’re closer than ever to each other, whether we like it or not, and ignorance is no longer a valid excuse for being an asshole to your neighbor because they look different from you. You want to Make America Great Again? Let’s start there.

Say Hey Johnny boy, the battle calls
United we stand, divided we fall
Together we are what we can’t be alone
We came to this country, you made it our home.

And the boys on the docks needed Johnny for sure;
When they came to this country, he opened the door.
He said, “Man, I’ll tell ya, they don’t like our kind;
Though is starts with a fist it must end with your mind.

-The Dropkick Murphy’s, “Boys on the Docks”