I got fired 3 years ago yesterday from a job. The firing was exceedingly personal and I just spent some time re-reading my personal blog posts written in the immediate aftermath… there was a lot of soul-searching and trying to figure out what happened. One thing really stood out, and that was the pure meanness with which I was treated. Meanness has always been incomprehensible to me, I tried it once in 5th grade, tripping a girl less popular than I was *on purpose* in an attempt to curry favor with the popular girls. I am not proud of this; I still wish I could find that girl and apologize to her. It was mean, it was wrong, I knew it immediately, but trying to explain that to her could never heal her wounds… of being bullied & betrayed by me, someone who was supposed to be her friend. I have carried that lesson with me ever since. I didn’t like the person who tripped her, I didn’t feel bigger or better, I felt small and mean… I have tried never to go there again.
What I see in this current political climate is very triggering for me. I was a bullied kid, an easy mark, as in: someone who expressed emotion by crying. Once blood was in the water, it was like a stink that couldn’t be washed off… they would tell all their friends about it, so everyone knew. The pack mentality took over, and they tried repeatedly to weed me out, to silence the “weak” one, the different one. In retrospect, I view it as a visceral reaction to something that they didn’t like or fought to suppress in themselves, a form of projection.
I see the same mentality with Trump and his cronies. They only want the tough guys, the ones who don’t cry, the ones who are loyal without question, et cetera. If you don’t toe the line, if you don’t fit, if you nay-say (or just tell the truth), you will be weeded out with ruthless efficiency. They seem to be projecting their own insecurities onto others, just like those bullies in school. They don’t want to be reminded of their own weaknesses and mortality.
They are bullies, just like the I tried exactly once to become, just like those that tortured me all those years. No matter what they call themselves, they are mean & insecure. They don’t really don’t have a point to their meanness, except to attempt to remove the reminders of their deepest fears and failures from their own sight. They also seem to be attempting to fill something inside themselves that is apparently missing. The childishness, vindictiveness, and indifference of the Trumpistas is stunning. Children do these horrible things because they are learning, but some of them never learn, especially when they never have to face the consequences of their actions. Nobody challenges them because they are afraid of them and their parents are usually in the “my dimpled darling can do no wrong” mindset.
To make matters worse, we have Bannon, who is like some cartoon villain made flesh. He generally seems to hate everyone (including himself), but his motivations are unclear. He has been quoted as saying that he wants “to burn it all down”, but he never says why or what he expects/wants in the aftermath of the bonfire. He’s like the frat boy lighting things on fire just so he can watch it burn. There is something deeply, psychologically wrong with this man. He is, however, cunning enough to have found his hand puppet in Trump. Bannon isn’t really a good “front villain”, he does better playing the Wormtongue role from the shadows. He benefits from staying out of the limelight, mostly. Reading the tweets from the Rogue POTUS (@RoguePOTUSStaff) group has been pretty instructive, illustrating the rise of Bannon & Kushner, while more traditional political operatives represented by Priebus & Spicer are being increasingly shut out and marginalized.
Unfortunately, a group of people let Trump incite their fears of the other (whether true or not) and got just enough of them, in the right places to eke out a win. 25% of the eligible electorate voted to take all of us on this dark ride. We resistors have to fight back, we have a good start, but we have to keep fighting. We are going to get tired, because they are going to try and wear us out. If the first 2 weeks have seemed bad, it’s just going to keep coming and it’s not going to get any better. We may not see as many victories as we would like, but we are having them…
One of the best quotes circulating again currently is from Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I believe it ties in well with an article I read about (and cannot find the link for) that basically said the problem with the rise of Hitler was that the liberals of the time spent their time trying to correct the lies and not enough time listening to what the Nazis were saying…. Upshot is, then and now, that what are were saying is what they are going to do, no matter how preposterous it seems at the present moment. We resisters need to tighten our focus, or at least divide into those who fight for the truth, and those who keep us alerted to the implications of what they are saying/doing. Both of these are important, and need to work in concert.
We also need to stand strong, while working from a place of love. There is a lot of schadenfreude for us liberals reading @Trump_Regrets on Twitter, but that is like me tripping that girl in the 5th grade, momentary burst of power, followed by regret. We need to reach out to those starting to understand what they voted for. I’m with most of the Hilary voters (who did vote/weren’t prevented from voting)… I’d like to talk to these folks and understand why they voted the way they did and help them see beyond the Faux news. I am angered by their seemingly high levels of ignorance and fear, but I want to seek to bridge that divide and help prevent them from repeating those mistakes. I’m not saying we should let them off the hook, but unity is a better goal than sitting in judgmental schadenfreude… we are all in this together.