The morning after and the luxury of ignorance

Wednesday morning came anyway.  I envy the birds wheeling around in the cloudy sky over my head this morning because they don't differentiate their days by what they fear or worry over, only by what actually happens to them when it happens.  They react when they must.  We people, on the other hand, parse the changing world around us in a much more granular and nuanced way, through complicated layers of what we think it all means for tomorrow.  This is one of those mornings, as palpable as a hangover, that feels not unlike the loss of a loved one.

How do we sort through this year's presidential election?  The pundits and analysts have been doing their best to make sense of it all since late last night, but for me it so far resolves into a couple of core thoughts:

First, never underestimate the willingness of people to enthusiastically vote against their own best interests when the issues become more complicated than their ability to follow them.  Like Hagrid says of the giants in Harry Potter, "...overload ’em with information an’ they’ll kill yeh jus’ to simplify things."

Second, closely related to the first, is a passage (the emphasis within is mine) from Charles Dickens, in A Christmas Carol:

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” 

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here. 

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost. 

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit, are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. 

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.”

We cannot maintain the greatness of this nation (or, in the words of the man who we have apparently elected to be our next President, "Make America great again!") by continuing to vilify education and intelligence. The luxury of ignorance runs deep in the veins of institutionalized oppression, but it doesn't ever preserve or build. We grew to economic dominance as a nation on the G.I Bill and the educated workforce it created. Now?

Imagine, if you can, that you are one of the women who came forward to point the finger at the man who sexually assaulted you and that you have just now seen your assailant become the most powerful man in the nation and, arguably, the world despite his own recorded admission of sexual predation. This same man who threatened to sue you, if elected, is now President elect.  What does that mean for Title IX investigations of alleged sexual assault taking place across college and university campuses all across our nation at this very moment?

Imagine, if you can, that you are not a Southern Baptist with, as Bruce Cockburn says in Gospel of Bondage, a "mouth full of righteousness and wrath from above."  Where does your faith now fit into our national dialog when other religions have been so vilified by the man now our President Elect?  I saw a bumper sticker the other day.  It was the common "Co-Exist" sticker written with religiously inclusive symbols as per usual, but it had a Christian cross standing alone to the right of the word and a sword was crossing out the word co-exist. A sword!

so i find out what the luxury of hate is
as exciting maybe as doing the dishes
face toward window -- light received
you walk away to see a film see some
people see a man
stab in throat twist in gut all too clear
not too new -- all been done before
planet breathes exhaustion
staggers on
enemy anger impotent gun grease
too many thoughts
too dogshit tired
one small step for freedom
from foregone conclusion
   - Bruce Cockburn, from You Get Bigger As You Go

Imagine, if you can, you are not a white midwestern or southern male.  You have likely been viciously and ignorantly profiled throughout this campaign by the man who is now our President Elect. He has promised to build a wall to keep some folks out of our country, to enforce a religious litmus test for all immigrants, to keep women marginalized and objectified and, in the words of what I thought was a prior era, "in their place."

It will be (darkly) interesting to see how this new Republican party handles what I suspect is a worst-case scenario for many in the party.  It's easy to obstruct and throw rocks when you are not in control of all three branches of government.  Now they are (or very soon will be) in control and suddenly the threats they have issued either have to be carried out (for which I think there will be significant consequences) or they have to find a way to back down.  And with their new leader in the White House, that's not going to be easy to do. Unfortunately, this is a train wreck we're watching from seats on the train.

We've really done it to ourselves this time, and now we'll have to see what the consequences shape up to be in the coming months and years.  We will have to find a way forward.  Maybe this will finally bring the majority coalition together tightly enough to get us over this last-gasp ass-clenching of the formerly-entitled.

Just as it is for the birds above me this morning, each day will follow the last and we will respond to each situation as it emerges.  Maybe we'll learn something more about ourselves in the process, something we can use to start moving forward again.