![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Politics is Scary Right Now
Jan. 9th, 2018 09:46 amThe state of government in my country predisposes me more and more to the idea of leaving if Danae were to get a position outside of the US. Maybe even to more actively seek one.
We have one of the worst presidents in history right now. Moreover, his election has ushered in an age of absurdity in politics. Now people are seriously discussing Oprah Winfrey as a presidential candidate. I've never watched her show nor otherwise paid attention to her, and I have nothing against her as a person. I just can't believe the the appropriate answer to electing a president with no political experience is to elect another president with no political experience. I know it works sometimes. Arnold Schwarzenegger was ok I guess. Jesse Ventura seemed decent. I don't know a lot about either of their terms of office. It's a gamble.
I would have loved to see Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the office. I don't think I can get behind Oprah Winfrey. (I'd still vote for her if she were the Democractic nominee. I don't feel that I have any other helpful choice.) Moreover, I'm very worried about what it means that these are the kind of candidates we're seriously looking at now. If nobody cares about the experience necessary to make good decisions about policy and, perhaps more importantly, understand the function and importance of various agencies, and perhaps even more importantly, work within the unwritten framework of arcane wheeling and dealing within the system, I fear for the long-term future of the country.
And that's completely aside from the authoritarian bent that so many US citizens seem perfectly fine with either ignoring or actively supporting. Friends have pointed out that, at this point, signing petitions against presidential policies or buying copies of Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" are essentially adding your name to a ready-to-use enemies of the state list. That once would have seemed ridiculous to me as a legitimate fear. The current administration's attempt to put together a very similar list by bringing legal forces to bear against anti-Trump websites strips that concept of the absurdity it may have once had, at least to me.
Some of my fears may be premature, but so much has become reality in this last year and a half that I couldn't imagine coming to pass. How do you know when a government crosses a line from having an honest intent to protect most of its people (however awfully that may be done in execution) to an intent to protect only those who fit into the imagined stereotype of 'real' citizen while persecuting those who do not? Right now, it seems to me that the only thing keeping a lot of people of people (including followers of Islam, Sikhs, and Latinx and Hispanic people, among others) safe from legal, and possibly physical, harm is their status as US citizens. Even that isn't enough for a few people who've been deported anyway, or singled out for harassment and overly zealous law enforcement. It's also not enough for the many children who will no longer have medical care through CHIP thanks to political posturing.
Stories of people who stayed and fought against injustice are inspiring. I'd like to be brave enough to have gone into the South with the Freedom Riders to register Black voters, or to have ridden with John Brown to fight slavery in Kansas (though his methods were...questionable) and at Harpers Ferry, or to stand with Nat Turner in his unsuccessful rebellion in Virginia. We are far, far from those points right now, but the closer we get the scarier it is to think about.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. If that's true, then that kind of stand will make a difference in its time and place. Things will always get better, and fighting on the side of good speeds that progress along. But the thought is worryingly teleological. Things don't always get better. Sometimes, especially when analysis is constrained to specific geographical areas, like countries, things sometimes get far, far worse. And whether or not the sum total of whatever we think of as goodness increases across the world, we have to deal with our immediate reality.
My immediate reality could be worse, but I'm very uncomfortable with the arc it's taking right now. I wish I knew what I can, should, or will do about it.
We have one of the worst presidents in history right now. Moreover, his election has ushered in an age of absurdity in politics. Now people are seriously discussing Oprah Winfrey as a presidential candidate. I've never watched her show nor otherwise paid attention to her, and I have nothing against her as a person. I just can't believe the the appropriate answer to electing a president with no political experience is to elect another president with no political experience. I know it works sometimes. Arnold Schwarzenegger was ok I guess. Jesse Ventura seemed decent. I don't know a lot about either of their terms of office. It's a gamble.
I would have loved to see Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the office. I don't think I can get behind Oprah Winfrey. (I'd still vote for her if she were the Democractic nominee. I don't feel that I have any other helpful choice.) Moreover, I'm very worried about what it means that these are the kind of candidates we're seriously looking at now. If nobody cares about the experience necessary to make good decisions about policy and, perhaps more importantly, understand the function and importance of various agencies, and perhaps even more importantly, work within the unwritten framework of arcane wheeling and dealing within the system, I fear for the long-term future of the country.
And that's completely aside from the authoritarian bent that so many US citizens seem perfectly fine with either ignoring or actively supporting. Friends have pointed out that, at this point, signing petitions against presidential policies or buying copies of Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" are essentially adding your name to a ready-to-use enemies of the state list. That once would have seemed ridiculous to me as a legitimate fear. The current administration's attempt to put together a very similar list by bringing legal forces to bear against anti-Trump websites strips that concept of the absurdity it may have once had, at least to me.
Some of my fears may be premature, but so much has become reality in this last year and a half that I couldn't imagine coming to pass. How do you know when a government crosses a line from having an honest intent to protect most of its people (however awfully that may be done in execution) to an intent to protect only those who fit into the imagined stereotype of 'real' citizen while persecuting those who do not? Right now, it seems to me that the only thing keeping a lot of people of people (including followers of Islam, Sikhs, and Latinx and Hispanic people, among others) safe from legal, and possibly physical, harm is their status as US citizens. Even that isn't enough for a few people who've been deported anyway, or singled out for harassment and overly zealous law enforcement. It's also not enough for the many children who will no longer have medical care through CHIP thanks to political posturing.
Stories of people who stayed and fought against injustice are inspiring. I'd like to be brave enough to have gone into the South with the Freedom Riders to register Black voters, or to have ridden with John Brown to fight slavery in Kansas (though his methods were...questionable) and at Harpers Ferry, or to stand with Nat Turner in his unsuccessful rebellion in Virginia. We are far, far from those points right now, but the closer we get the scarier it is to think about.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. If that's true, then that kind of stand will make a difference in its time and place. Things will always get better, and fighting on the side of good speeds that progress along. But the thought is worryingly teleological. Things don't always get better. Sometimes, especially when analysis is constrained to specific geographical areas, like countries, things sometimes get far, far worse. And whether or not the sum total of whatever we think of as goodness increases across the world, we have to deal with our immediate reality.
My immediate reality could be worse, but I'm very uncomfortable with the arc it's taking right now. I wish I knew what I can, should, or will do about it.
