Yes, This is America
The promise and potential of America cannot be fulfilled so long as we refuse to face reality.
Storytelling is one of the greatest gifts we have as humans. Stories are how our brains try to make sense of our experiences from one moment to the next. They can imbue us with a sense of hope and excitement for the future, spark our imaginations and inspire our creative genius to spring forth. Stories can connect us to our histories, provide perspective, guidance, help share information, and teach us important lessons. Stories can also sow discord and destruction. They can act as barriers to truth or even as weapons. Narrative is powerful.
If 2021 me were to go back in time to 2015, when Tr*mp began his campaign for president, to tell my Before Times self how things would unfold, my response would have been, “Yeah, no shit Sherlock.” We then would make our way to a cute bar in Park Slope to angrily knock back a couple of whiskeys and cry. It’s not that I would have been able to predict every single detail of the destruction the Tr*mp administration would inflict, but the moment he stepped onto that escalator, I could read the writing on the wall. Though he’d been trying to push a narrative of being a successful business man for decades, the actual and painfully obvious story, was that this was a man with a documented history of major business failings, racism, antisemitism, sexual assault, ableism, fatphobia, xenophobia, bold-faced lying, cruelty, and other behaviors that point to pathological narcissism. There was no way that this was going to go well or even just ok.
The insurrection to overthrow Democracy by gleeful white supremacists on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, incited by Tr*mp, was a direct result of years of his documented rampant and baseless lies that kindled the flames of disinformation and hate. Those flames have continued to be fanned by members of his cabinet, a majority of the GOP, law enforcement, and the right-wing media. Based on the ideologies all of these culprits tout and the despicable and disgusting behaviors they engage in as well as the fact that the insurrectionists publicly made their plans clear, did not make any of what went down surprising. I, and many many others who were willfully ignored and dismissed for years, fully expected something like this to happen. Tr*mp has, time and time again, told and shown us who he is. And, time and time again, the people that have worked for him and members in the GOP (all of whom should be immediately removed from their positions as well as 45 himself) who have and continue to support him, his narcissism, and his lies for their own political gain have shown us who they are. As well as the 74 million+ people who voted for him. That vote was an act that said, dishearteningly loud and clear, “this is acceptable.”
Still, there are those who feigned shock when these embodiments of entitlement stormed and, as some footage shows, were let in to the Capitol. That reaction of actual American human adults was also predictable. There hasn’t been a single devastating event that’s gone by in the last 5 years where there hasn’t also been a resounding and, quite frankly, violent response of
“This isn’t us,”
“This is terrible, but checks and balances will take care of it,”
“Give him a chance to grow into the office,”
“We need to hear both sides,”
“Economic anxiety,”
“Not all cops,”
“Not all men,”
“Not all white people,”
“I stay out of politics,”
“We need to unify,”
“This isn’t who we are.”
Actually, IT IS WHO WE ARE. This moment is not a blip in our history. It is ballsy, deluded, and abusive to continue to proclaim that THIS — white supremacist violence encouraged by law enforcement, Republican leadership, and the right-wing media — is not who we are when THESE — armed and entitled white men and the white women who uphold them — display acts of violence, with little to no consequence, happens all the time in THIS — The US of A — very country and happens to be exactly what THIS country was founded on.
Whether people like it or not, this country was founded on atrocious and brutal acts against humanity. This land was occupied via committing mass genocide of Native Americans. It was built on the backs of enslaved Africans who were stolen from their homes and families. And it was built to keep in place an ideology rooted in centuries upon centuries of antisemitism. Our current foundation cannot hold the structure of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” because that’s not what it was built for. Our foundation is weak because it was built with the tools of destruction. If we want to change the course of this country and be the United States of America from the fairy tales that were told to us, then we have no choice but to really see and take in the stuff we’re made of.
You can’t make necessary repairs if you refuse to see where the structural problems are, and then act surprised when the whole thing starts to cave in on and around you.
The story of American Exceptionalism is a fairy tale.The idea that we are a superior nation (sounds a lot like colonialism and white supremacy to me)or inherently different from other nations is laughable, especially right now. Sure, a national ideology based in liberty, equality before the law, individual responsibility, etc. sounds great. It would be great! If it was actually applied in practice. To willfully ignore how we are not living up to our standards but continuing to purport that we do is delusional.
Clinging to delusions is passive, cowardly, and is a choice. It is a choice that lets those who do enormous amounts of harm off the hook. It is a choice that ok’s the path for a noose to be erected outside the Capitol building as Confederate and Nazi flags are flown inside said building. Passivity is a choice and choices — all choices — have consequences. If those who currently hold leadership positions as well as those who have tried to distance themselves from the violence they’ve either been dismissing or used to their advantage don’t respond differently and swiftly to this very vulnerable moment, this will just be another instance of normalizing the autocratic environment we’ve been edging closer and closer to. Democracy in America will not survive or actualize until our behaviors and thought patterns around how we respond to white supremacy in our country changes. Democracy is not something that’s just going to be there. Democracy is a verb. Democracy requires embodied action.
Democracy doesn’t work if we don’t put in the work.
My hope for the next few days — and further into the future — is that we all learn to take this work of reflecting on who we actually have been seriously. That we fully integrate it into our lives and make space for tangible change. I hope that we learn to take what people say seriously and to take what people do even more seriously so we finally know how to respond accordingly. I hope that we realize that our story is not something that happened long ago that we can open and close at our leisure and then set back on the bookshelf to gather dust. We tell and create our stories through how we live them. And this moment requires that we live bravely.
We’ve also seen how living bravely can work. On the same morning of the insurrection on the Capitol, Georgia elected their first Black senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, and their first Jewish senator, Jon Ossof. Their wins, with the decade of work of Stacey Abrams and many other activists and organizations, are proof that we can make the ideals of America’s story a reality. We can fulfill those promises, we just have to actually be willing to do it.
