I’ve been watching the incoming US administration flood the zone with shit mostly with my hands over my eyes, like a kid at a horror movie. The level of idiocy on display has been mind boggling, and I’m finding it impossible to imagine where this continuing for (at least) the next four years will leave us.
Dawnise and I used to say “stupidity should be painful,” and it occurs to me that maybe we should have been more… specific in our ask of the universe.
‘Cause this stupidity is painful. But it’s painful to the wrong people.
What’s really getting to me, above all the jaw-dropping stupidity, is the casual cruelty.
I can’t say I’m surprised. Groups tend to adopt and exaggerate attributes of their leadership. That’s true even when the group isn’t a group of toadies, and when the leader isn’t an unhinged narcissist. And this group is, and their leader is. And that chosen leader has been openly casually and repeatedly cruel for decades.
So this is very much what was asked for by those who asked for it.
And that’s the part I think I’m most struggling with.
That America has decided it’s ok to act like a prick.
To tell those who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others that the people who attacked them were patriots, were heroes, when those attackers were observably and objectively criminals. To jump around on stage like a ketamine addled teenager who never got past the idea that it was all about “winning.” To decide that the president is above the law.
To take actions while ignoring, or being incapable of predicting, likely consequences that will affect millions.
And I come back to the deeply depressing thought that it’s entirely possible that America has always been this way. Any marginalized group will tell you this isn’t new. There’s just an ever shifting set of scapegoats.
Still, I think something fundamental, and dangerous, changes when enough of us lean in to darker instincts. When we encourage our deamons to step out of the shadows and into the light, to stand proud. When we decide that it’s ok to openly exclude or subjugate the “other,” ignoring that we’re all an other to someone.
History shows us that over the long term these shifts are temporary. Sometimes it takes decades. Sometimes it takes generations. Sometimes it takes tipping into open conflict.
But ultimately things change.
They don’t go back to where they were, they converge to some new thing.
Until they change again.
Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.