Proactive Hope

January 22, 2018

By this point in the calendar, the Holidays have faded from the rear-view mirror of memory. The first three-day weekend of the year has paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and given everyone a brief “whew”: an extra day to digest the reality of 2018.  By now, meetings are being set for the months ahead, and ads for Memorial Day will soon start appearing. We are solidly in the midst of an annus novus.  We humans need time to let reality sink in. The reality of 2018 took three weeks to settle over me – in part due to a nasty flu which descended upon my body and my sinuses on new year’s eve. The reality of Donald Trump: that has taken a year. This morning as I awoke with the dawn, for the first time in weeks, my flu seemed to be in retreat. The reality of Donald Trump: not so much.

In the previous year, there has been much made about “normalizing” Donald Trump,  as if somehow accepting the reality of his existence is to make him normal. I understand that resistance, and I accept that moniker: The Resistance. Never Trumper, Not My President, #impeachtrump, etc.   I embrace them all. For, there is nothing “normal” about the Trump presidency if “normal” means how a head of state is supposed to function: with dignity, with respect, without vulgarity. But, while “normal” might not be the right word, “reality” is.  Since I am a great believer in facing things head on, it’s time to face the fact – past time – Donald Trump is President. Too much ink and angst have already been wasted – and I’m speaking for myself here – bemoaning that fact. It’s understandable that many of us – I – have been obsessed with the perversion of a presidency that is Donald Trump. My thesaurus has been strained for new words so that I could nonrepetitively chronicle the nightmare of this last year. And yet, as 2018 creeps further along into our overly scheduled, and relentlessly newsfed lives, the stock market roars, tax cuts loom, the economy hums and Trump’s approval ratings grow.

It was Bill Clinton who said “it’s the economy, stupid.”

It is true: for many people (not me) the grotesqueness of Donald Trump is a small price to pay for a sense of “strength” and a macho foreign policy.  His racist, nativist rants, his vile narcissism, his utter ignorance and good taste are ‘trumped’ by deregulation and bread and Wall Street circuses.

It’s a fact: there are people who would still vote for Donald Trump, and that’s my point.

This year, I’m going to try – try, I said – not to get sucked down the rabbit hole of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed or the media’s slavish response to every fresh hell thrown at our dwindling attention spans by the Covfefe in Chief. It’s exhausting, and it’s reactive. Proactivity is what we need now – in this country, and in this world – not reactivity and “likes” and “comments” and smiley faced or red-hued-angry-faced emojis at every Facebook post – and God, there are so many Facebook posts.  In the last two months, I have drastically cut my personal social media use (while maintaining work-related forums) and I have not missed it a bit. In fact, I feel better and more informed for toning it down. We need to stand for, and write about, “what we’re going to do” not “what we’re railing against.” That is my commitment for the months that cometh.

For several years, I had an Eastern teacher: Isana Ma. Though now deceased, she continues to be an inspiration in my life. She was not a warm, fuzzy, sort of gal. No: her teachings were often harsh, and patience was not something, well, for which she had a lot of patience.  She offered me many wonderful lessons that still serve me today. One, in particular, was the weekend of a big “Gay March on Washington” (which one, who remembers, there have been so many). I had already committed (a big word for Isana Ma) to being with her for that weekend. But, “The March” seemed so important – clearly, an exception could and should be made. She smiled, and said: “One day you will learn that it is more important to march in support of something, than in opposition to something else.” I went to the March, and opposed whatever nightmare-of-the-moment was coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or the Capitol. Whether my presence was noted or made a difference – who can say.

I tell this story not to make light of such protests. I have marched in more than my share, and will again. Nothing this new year filled me with more hope than the hundreds of thousands of people – women and men – who took to the streets this past weekend to oppose Trump. More importantly, those marches spoke up in solidarity for positive change.  They were not lifeboats pulling away from a sinking ship. Rather, they were vessels of hope pulling towards a better shore.

It’s more than a semantic shift, although to paraphrase the Bible, “in the beginning was the word.” So, this year, while I continue to resist and confront and use my words in ways that stand diametrically opposed to the reality of Donald Trump, I am going to do my best to remember that loves truly does trump hate, and that proactivity – being for something – is more powerful than being against something. 

This year, now fully formed and wrapping around us, will sweep past with a blinding speed, I promise. Election Day will soon be here. And so, in preparation for that, let us not advocate, and vote, and march and give to candidates because “we loathe Donald Trump” and know him to be a danger to our republic and our world. Rather, let us gather our wits and our fellow voters to get to the polls because we stand for something: something better than Donald Trump.  Let us remember, that Trump, too, will pass (and soon may that be). More importantly, A.T. (after Trump), the country – and our souls – will need all the optimism and proactivity we can muster.