A Summer Without Trump (kinda)
A Summer Without Trump (kinda)
by David Perry
Well….he’s still here.
When my husband and I left the United States in late June for a summer working abroad, I made myself a promise: NO TRUMP. Eschewing all social media and reading only non-American news, I had hoped to gain not only a greater insight into my own country, but also to hear how Europeans felt about the United States and its new president. It worked – for a while. It worked – until Charlottesville. As a native Virginian, for me the weekend of August 11, 2017 was a Trump too far. For four days, I fell into the rancid rabbit hole of news from that hideous event: Nazis, KKK, an innocent young woman mowed down by a car, the President of the United States equating proactive racism with reactive protest. I wrote an editorial. It was published several places. Ditto for hundreds, if not thousands – millions of others – around the globe, crying out in Facebooked outrage and Twittered angst over the 45th President of the United States.
Nothing changed. I went back into my Internet-less closet: an elitist monk lucky enough to travel and write and work and worry abroad while my nation and its much-vaunted values slid further into the abyss. I drank a lot with lots of expats: all very “Aperol Spritz with Mussolini” if you will. I nodded seriously when approached in bars and bistros and cobblestoned streets of Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain with the questions: What IS going on your country? How LONG will Trump be President? My usual answer: Don’t trust anything I say. I said it was impossible for Donald Trump to be elected president.
To whit: why should anyone listen to me? Who should care what I have to say? I used to care, but after this summer, I found the energy even to care-to-write or write-to-care dwindling with every day that Donald J. Trump remained in office. TFS (Trump Fatigue Syndrome) had replaced TMG (Trump Must Go) in my lexicon of reactions to DJT.
And…he’s still here.
So what did I learn from my sojourn to the Continent? With one exception – a pro-Brexit taxi drive in Plymouth England who encouraged me to surf websites devoted to “geo engineering” and “chemtrails” – every European who approached me upon hearing my unmistakable US accent was as horrified by Trump, if not more so, than me. “Well, for once, there’s a country more in the toilet than us,” opined a barista in Wells, England. A hotel clerk in Rome – whom I last saw before last year’s election – grabbed me as I entered and pinned me with a gaze: “You promised! You said it wasn’t possible!!” Then, she proceeded to show me anti Trump MeMes in Italian and headlines from Trump’s visit to the Eternal City earlier this year: punctuated with a massive “RESIST” video projection onto the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. “Isn’t that illegal?” I queried with equal parts respect and surprise at the daring protest. “Didn’t the police make them stop?” My friend behind the reception desk just smiled, in that way that only a Roman can (they have, literally, seen it all): “Eventually.”
Indeed: in Rome, Belfast, Florence, London, Dublin, Madrid and Barcelona, they have seen it all. As I write this, the streets of Barcelona teem with anger and violence – yet another example of this current, splintered and splintering globe. No one seems happy. No one wants to “unite.” Everyone wants it all, and they want it immediately, selfishly, incoherently and they want it Instagram ready and retweetable.
Social media may have made us more social, but it has not made us more civil.
As I dip back into the pool of the online world, I do so with a little more care, and a lot less enthusiasm than I did a few months ago. My anger, disgust and horror at the Presidency of Donald J. Trump has not diminished. But, my desire to swing at every brickbat launched by his insidious narcissism has. I have only two tools with which to fight: my words and my vote. Both take strength. Both take commitment. Both need time and rest to be effective. I am, as they say in the military, marshalling my resources. If what the United States – nay, the world – is now going through is not a civil war for the Internet Age, it is certainly an uncivil discussion: shared and reshared and faked and refaked as news until anything approaching “truth” is polluted beyond all comprehension…beyond all usefulness.
And…Donald J. Trump is still here.
However: so are we. Even at my lowest points, I am quite certain of one thing: “WE THE PEOPLE” will be here long after Trump is gone. We will survive this – in all the continuing, continuous and continual nastiness and incompetence unique to Donald Trump.
These past few months, looking at the United States from Europe has made me more committed than ever to my citizenship: my citizenship in THE WORLD. We will get through this – all of us. But, we will not get through it by giving into fear, or violence or bigotry. We will get through it by realizing one thing, at long last: we are not Americans, or Catalonians, or Spaniards, or Republicans, or Democrats, or Christians, Muslims and Jews. We are humans.
I likely will not live long enough to see that dream realized – one, true, human family, united in love of justice and peace. But, it is a dream worth dreaming. It is dream worth waking up from.
by David Perry
Well….he’s still here.
When my husband and I left the United States in late June for a summer working abroad, I made myself a promise: NO TRUMP. Eschewing all social media and reading only non-American news, I had hoped to gain not only a greater insight into my own country, but also to hear how Europeans felt about the United States and its new president. It worked – for a while. It worked – until Charlottesville. As a native Virginian, for me the weekend of August 11, 2017 was a Trump too far. For four days, I fell into the rancid rabbit hole of news from that hideous event: Nazis, KKK, an innocent young woman mowed down by a car, the President of the United States equating proactive racism with reactive protest. I wrote an editorial. It was published several places. Ditto for hundreds, if not thousands – millions of others – around the globe, crying out in Facebooked outrage and Twittered angst over the 45th President of the United States.
Nothing changed. I went back into my Internet-less closet: an elitist monk lucky enough to travel and write and work and worry abroad while my nation and its much-vaunted values slid further into the abyss. I drank a lot with lots of expats: all very “Aperol Spritz with Mussolini” if you will. I nodded seriously when approached in bars and bistros and cobblestoned streets of Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain with the questions: What IS going on your country? How LONG will Trump be President? My usual answer: Don’t trust anything I say. I said it was impossible for Donald Trump to be elected president.
To whit: why should anyone listen to me? Who should care what I have to say? I used to care, but after this summer, I found the energy even to care-to-write or write-to-care dwindling with every day that Donald J. Trump remained in office. TFS (Trump Fatigue Syndrome) had replaced TMG (Trump Must Go) in my lexicon of reactions to DJT.
And…he’s still here.
So what did I learn from my sojourn to the Continent? With one exception – a pro-Brexit taxi drive in Plymouth England who encouraged me to surf websites devoted to “geo engineering” and “chemtrails” – every European who approached me upon hearing my unmistakable US accent was as horrified by Trump, if not more so, than me. “Well, for once, there’s a country more in the toilet than us,” opined a barista in Wells, England. A hotel clerk in Rome – whom I last saw before last year’s election – grabbed me as I entered and pinned me with a gaze: “You promised! You said it wasn’t possible!!” Then, she proceeded to show me anti Trump MeMes in Italian and headlines from Trump’s visit to the Eternal City earlier this year: punctuated with a massive “RESIST” video projection onto the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. “Isn’t that illegal?” I queried with equal parts respect and surprise at the daring protest. “Didn’t the police make them stop?” My friend behind the reception desk just smiled, in that way that only a Roman can (they have, literally, seen it all): “Eventually.”
Indeed: in Rome, Belfast, Florence, London, Dublin, Madrid and Barcelona, they have seen it all. As I write this, the streets of Barcelona teem with anger and violence – yet another example of this current, splintered and splintering globe. No one seems happy. No one wants to “unite.” Everyone wants it all, and they want it immediately, selfishly, incoherently and they want it Instagram ready and retweetable.
Social media may have made us more social, but it has not made us more civil.
As I dip back into the pool of the online world, I do so with a little more care, and a lot less enthusiasm than I did a few months ago. My anger, disgust and horror at the Presidency of Donald J. Trump has not diminished. But, my desire to swing at every brickbat launched by his insidious narcissism has. I have only two tools with which to fight: my words and my vote. Both take strength. Both take commitment. Both need time and rest to be effective. I am, as they say in the military, marshalling my resources. If what the United States – nay, the world – is now going through is not a civil war for the Internet Age, it is certainly an uncivil discussion: shared and reshared and faked and refaked as news until anything approaching “truth” is polluted beyond all comprehension…beyond all usefulness.
And…Donald J. Trump is still here.
However: so are we. Even at my lowest points, I am quite certain of one thing: “WE THE PEOPLE” will be here long after Trump is gone. We will survive this – in all the continuing, continuous and continual nastiness and incompetence unique to Donald Trump.
These past few months, looking at the United States from Europe has made me more committed than ever to my citizenship: my citizenship in THE WORLD. We will get through this – all of us. But, we will not get through it by giving into fear, or violence or bigotry. We will get through it by realizing one thing, at long last: we are not Americans, or Catalonians, or Spaniards, or Republicans, or Democrats, or Christians, Muslims and Jews. We are humans.
I likely will not live long enough to see that dream realized – one, true, human family, united in love of justice and peace. But, it is a dream worth dreaming. It is dream worth waking up from.
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThank you! You were my inspiration to start blogging! :-)
DeleteIf you need some inspiration, go see This Bitter Earth at New Conservatory Theatre Center. The writing is stupendous and I think you will be very moved.
ReplyDeleteFight for every vote! Did the Russians forget to change the votes this time?
ReplyDelete