Outside of the United States, the period from Nov 1 to 11 honors “Remembrance Day,” and along with it comes the moral injunction “Lest we forget.”
In that spirit, I implore future history teachers to contextualize the racist fascist who got elected president in 2016, not as some sort of isolated foolish aberration but as a synergist metastasis of the worst evils that have lurked within the American ethos for centuries.
I’ve noticed the term “Trumpism” appearing more and more. It hits some internal notch with me, where I can hear a future version of my late, great, 11th-grade U.S. History teacher talking about “The Know-Nothings, Eugenics, and Trumpism.”
I remember, back in 1990, when my 11th grade US history teacher required all the students to come into school at 8pm to watch “Birth of a Nation” and then discuss it. Like typical teens, we were all grumpy about having to go to school at night (I guess there was an important episode of “Wings” or something). The movie was a shock: to the contemporary eye, it was absurdly overacted and transparently racist. But it was clearly a blockbuster movie-styled piece of propaganda, a reminder of the racist infection with the hearts of American ancestors and the entertainment that stirred them.
Below is a supercut of Trump appropriating and perverting a song written by 60’s era civil rights activist Oscar Brown, Jr. Trump has turned it into a nativist battle cry. Hear and see how the invective in Trump’s voice brings the house down in venue after venue. Every time, for years, there has been wild and unbridled enthusiasm. This terrifying approbation was the lesson my history teacher tried to teach his class.
Although there are calls for national healing: convalescence is a part of healing that can vary significantly from individual to individual. Lest we forget the symptom of our national sickness that has obnoxiously presented itself: Observe the cheering crowd delighting in this sneering monster at the podium with his brazenly racist aggression, and try to be realistic in your expectations for such ardor to fade.
In the long days, months, and years ahead, you will face defenders and apologists who try to push transparent and infuriating lies like “People looked past Trump’s rhetoric because they liked his economic policies.” Understand that your appeals to logic and reason are simply not going to sway that person. Neither will this person be moved by your appeals to some universal sense of humanity. Expect this person to shrug and just refuse to acknowledge a substantial portion of the 69 Million people who voted for Trump did not do so despite his racism; rather, these people voted for Trump because of the racism.
I hope that such apologists will eventually confront the truth and then deal with the shame alone. Then there can be remorse, amends, and reconciliation. Yet, I am resigned to the expectation that many will never make that journey and that the healing of this nation’s soul is a process not of several weeks, but of many more generations.
In the meantime, there is the teaching of history.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” Pr. 18:21
Because evil is relentless, so too must be the struggle against it.
...All my darkest hours talking like this... 