I’m Stepping back, to gain a little perspective.
Please listen with me to “From a Distance”. (audio file)
(Seriously, I mean really CLICK on the audio link above and listen to the song while you read)
Breathe.
Shortly after the election, gasping for air, feeling as if I were turning to stone like the woman at Standing Rock, I flew to the Yucatan. In the air, I wrote a blog post on my iPad, which I never posted. Events over the last two months have paralyzed my writing muscles. I’ve spent hours emailing and phoning senators, going to meetings to defend our tenuous anti-fracking victory from Chevron /Exxon, and meeting with newly-formed resistance groups like Indivisible; tweeting, facebooking, watching Democracy Now and Thom Hartmann, and staying up ’til 2 and 3 in the morning, sifting through fake news in search of the truth.
Last week, on that day that Betsy deVos’ nomination for Secretary of Education was confirmed despite massive protests, on the same day that the Army Corps of Engineers announced it was going ahead and building the pipeline under the river, in defiance of orders to wait until a proper Environmental Assessment could be completed, on that day – I hit bottom. Something broke inside me. Hope still wakes me each morning, but it’s a dim light.
Here’s what I wrote in the air, raw, rambling, unedited. Forgive me. I’m still in shock ~ 
November 11, 2016. I’m in the air, flying to Mexico in the hope of gaining a fresh perspective. It’s been three days since the coup d’état in the USA. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote for President of the United States, but Trump stole the election with gerrymandered electoral votes, rigged voting machines, suppression of voters, hate, fear, and lies.
On election night, my partner Joe went without me to a celebration of our Measure Z fracking ban victory in Monterey County – an initiative we worked hard to help win. I couldn’t bear the thought of being out with a crowd, so I stayed home alone to watch election returns on TV. When Hillary phoned Trump at about 2 am to concede, I couldn’t believe it. Numbness. Disbelief. Anger. Rage. Grief. Fear. Exhaustion. Depression. The impulse to run. To leave. To save myself, distance myself from the apocalypse that I fear Trump is going to bring on.
For the first two days after the Trump election announcement, I spent toxic hours on Facebook and Twitter, my mind running in circles like the little hamster on the treadmill in its cage. I vented my growing outrage by writing inflammatory posts with bad words. I tweeted attacks on Trump’s stupider-than-a-slug, slutty nude girly mag illegal immigrant plagiarist wife, and on the dumber-than-red-bricks voters who chose an “it’s-okay-to-‘grab-my-pussy’-if-you-buy-me-lots-of-things” virtual illiterate as our national role model for girls and women, instead of the highly intelligent, professional, qualified and capable, gracious Hillary Clinton. I felt sick as I watched the announcement of Hillary’s concession on TV and then watched the mainstream news pundits and so-called leaders of the democratic party begin to spin the theft of my country with sugar coated assurances that it is “such a surprise” but “we’ll just have to make the best of it. Everything will be alright.” “No!” I shouted out loud, startling my sleeping dogs. “This is a mistake! Stop this!”
Since election night, scenes from the movie, The Pianist have been playing over and over in my mind. If you haven’t seen the film, I recommend that you watch it now. In the film, Hitler has just seized power, and nice middle class families try to sugarcoat it, to continue with business as usual, try to “make the best of things” because “it can’t get that bad”. But it does. It gets worse and worse, and nice people continue to make compromises with their ideals, make excuses and look the other way. Until it’s too late. Until what is left of the family is sitting on crates in front of the train ready to take them to the gas chambers. They could have saved themselves by getting out of the country when the first signals sounded. (Or by organizing and mounting a strong resistance?)
I’m thinking that things in the US may get that bad, that it may be time to leave my country, while borders are still open and American citizens are not yet in concentration camps. My family immigrated to what is now Maryland in the late 1500’s, before Maryland was designated a colony. My people have been here ever since. Over 400 years. I am a patriot. (and I am an Immigrant) The men in my family served America as soldiers in every war since the Revolution. I have Native American blood in my veins. THIS IS MY COUNTRY. But I keep thinking about how so many Jews didn’t try to save themselves when Hitler moved in. Trump is going to be worse than Hitler, I’m pretty sure. I love my country. What if I have to leave?
He has said he thinks it would be fine to use nuclear weapons against other countries. I remember the Cold War. Now nuclear holocaust has suddenly become a very real possibility, again. The Russians, recently our arch enemies, may have actually helped to get Trump elected.
He doesn’t think climate change is real so he plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and go full steam ahead developing coal, oil, gas, fracking and pipelines. He has said he plans to close down the EPA and the National Parks and overturn the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. And he plans to encourage all manner of “pussy grabbing” while taking full control over women’s bodies. And he wants to start rounding up all his enemies, including Muslims, African and Mexican Americans, gays, immigrants (except for his law-breaking immigrant wife), and dissidents (teachers, scholars, artists, scientists). He intends to greatly increase funding for the military and use the military against American citizens, and he’s promised to authorize forms of torture worse than water boarding. “I can’t breathe.”
Inspired by their leader, Trump neo-fascist thugs around the country have already started perpetrating acts of violence against everyone they perceive as different.Heil Hitler.
Where can I go? Somewhere the people are still relatively civilized. Somewhere I may be able to survive financially after the US currency collapses. Someplace where the effects of a nuclear holocaust will be less. Someplace where it may still be possible to find potable water and grow food after the final climate apocalypse. Tasmania? Chile? Norway? Apparently I’m not the only one thinking these things.The Canadian government’s Immigration website crashed the night of the election and has crashed several times since. Sales of Orwell’s 1984 are soaring.
Today, day three since the death sentence of my country, the tone of the social media chatter has shifted. Courageous leaders are stepping into the light on social media. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, and the Sierra Club have openly defied Trump.Put him on notice that this will be a battle of epic magnitude, a struggle the likes of which has never been seen before – a war for the very survival of life on Earth. Progressive leaders are calling for people to take courage, resist, and mobilize. I feel heartened that there will be an active resistance. But I’m afraid, too. Afraid for the beautiful Native Americans trying to protect our nation’s water at Standing Rock and afraid for the crowds of citizens demonstrating in the streets against a Trump presidency. Afraid for all my beautiful fellow humans with different colors of skin, different ways of worshiping, different ways of speaking.
Trump is a pathological abuser. Abusers don’t stop; they always escalate. ABUSERS ALWAYS ESCALATE. Thinking, hoping, praying that it will get better never makes it better when an abuser is in control of your life. The only thing that will stop an abuser from hurting you is when someone more powerful than him makes him stop.
I still think I might run away, before the borders close and it’s too late. But hopefully someone with the power to stop Trump from ending the world will stay and fight. I’ll do all I can to help, from a distance.