One down, three to go.

    

Photo by Ashlee Rezin

     “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
                                                                  ― Haruki Murakami

    January 20. Whew. The optimist in me wants to point to one year, done and gone, as of today. The first year of Trump 2.0 in the bag! Yippee! We made it through. We're still here, sorta.

     Are we? Not everybody, of course. Renee Good is no longer here. Plus hundreds of thousands of people who were living among us, neighbors and colleagues and employees, bosses and friends and relatives, working, raising families, snatched off the street by masked men, dispatched to unknown fates outside the purview of law. No celebration for them. Or their loved ones. Or anybody who cares about things such as the Constitution. And the dignity of human beings. And decency.

     One year ago, he signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" — that sweet spot of arbitrariness, insularity, isolationism and nationalism where he would dwell — and was off to the race. Two hundred and 24 executive orders followed, more than his entire first term. And the other two branches of government fell in line without a murmur. It's hard to grasp what happened last week, never mind tally the toll for the first year.

     Besides, even if we came off the first year, unscarred, or not all that scarred anyway, there are three more to go. How many children will die due to our secretary of health's delusional policies? A hundred? A thousand? More? 

     Based on the damage being done, the standards eroded, the precedents set, the reputation soiled, even then, even if there is an election, and someone not committed to imposing a cult of personality fascist state wins, the foundation is cracked, the rot exposed. Not to forget the growing legion of imitators, with their red ties, their collagen puffed lips. Many will weather vane into whatever new wind blows. But others will persevere, following their master, even when absent. It worked for him...

      The rich, always powerful, consolidated their stranglehold on our society, aided by the omnipresent social media that gave them their wealth. Government, once a counterbalance, became a hand maiden. That will not be easily undone. Elon Musk has all your most sensitive data on a hard drive.

      We will never be free of this. I am certain of that. We are changed or — to be negative — our true national self is revealed, undeniable. We can't be free, because we weren't before — as I've said many times before, Donald Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and his nationalism and malice, prejudice and self-regard, stupidity and violence were all there before, giving us the Vietnam War. Jim Crow. McCarthyism and the Red Scare. The internment of citizens of Japanese ancestry. The war against labor. Racism and sexism, cruelty, greed and indifference. Once you start looking for bad stuff in the American past, there's a lot waiting. Donald Trump didn't plant it; he harvested it.

     That isn't defeatism. The starry eyed look toward some transformative miracle, that will make everything right, justice and decency showing up at the last moment, like the officer in white at the end of "Lord of the Flies." That is a recipe for failure, and disappointment. No bucket of water is going to melt the Wicked Witch and inspire the castle guard to take a knee and all hail Dorothy. Only in the movies. In real life, the guards see their mistress melted, and hack Dorothy apart in a fury.

     If there is one — and I'm reluctant to use the word — lesson in all this, it is that there is a darkness and a hardness and a meanness in all people, just waiting for the right pied piper to play the right tune and draw it out. That was true before the arrival of the current administration. And it will be true long after it is gone, replaced by ... God knows what. How can good hope to prevail if it doesn't even recognize the game being played?

     That is not a recipe for surrender. There is also goodness and fairness and decency. We see that too. Americans did not look away when their neighbors were being hauled off. They did not cringe. They stood up, some of them, and fought the fight that has always be fought. Chicago repulsed the slave catchers in the 1850s and did no less now. It was a centuries-long struggle to arrive to the state that our current leader has ripped apart so easily. We rose up before, from worse. We can rise up again. But don't kid yourself. It won't be easy. It wasn't before, this struggle that started 10,000 years ago and never ends, never can end. 

     Not a truth that makes anybody feel good but, another lesson many Americans can't seem to stomach: the truth doesn't exist to make you feel good.