I haven’t felt inspired to write…or even focus since I returned from my trip abroad. I tell people they should be keeping a journal of events, a record of the crimes being perpetrated on a daily basis by the Trump administration, yet I’m not doing it myself. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, so here I am. Writing.
This week was a doozy! Two days after I left Italy, Pope Francis died. The so-called ‘president’ attended the Pope’s funeral in a blue suit (the least of his offenses) and embarrassed us on the world stage by falling asleep during the service. World leaders refused to shake his hand. His wife looks at him with disgust. We understand Melania. You’re just as awful as he is but it must be damned near impossible to pretend to tolerate him every day.
Trump’s administration has gone next level fascist by arresting a judge in Wisconsin who was doing her constitutional duty. They’re deporting American citizens, young children born in the United States who have cancer, to Honduras of all places, with no redress, no notice. Completely illegal. His justice department proclaimed they can go into people’s houses without a warrant if they suspect Anne Frank is hiding in the attic. Fucking fascists. His senior advisor, Stephen ‘Adolf’ Miller said the president’s authority reigns supreme and we’d all better get on board with the illegal deportations. That’s a hard no, asshole.
So basically the president and his band of corrupt sycophants are saying, fuck due process, fuck the first amendment, fuck the fourth amendment. Fuck the constitution.
I believe this will only get worse. I know too much about history to believe otherwise.
I had a conversation with a lovely woman this week, a woman who is always smiling, who I’ve dubbed Miss Suzy Sunshine. She’s kind and sweet and hardworking. Just delightful. I’ve worked with her since September and we’ve never had a real conversation before Thursday, certainly never about politics. In my line of work, it’s sometimes better not to know where your colleagues stand.
Turns out, she isn’t a Trumper, but she is an ostrich, burying her head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge that our democratic way of life is lying in tattered pieces at her feet. That’s where the majority of Americans are at, in my experience. They’re ostriching. If they ignore the problem, it doesn’t exist, and they believe it will simply melt away. I’m sure the Germans felt the same way when Hitler came into power.
This week, Suzy Sunshine and I had our first real discussion. We started off talking about the weather. It was a perfect day to get outside for a walk, something I’ve found difficult to do since the election. I told her I haven’t been walking much lately, that I’ve been in a funk since November. She was so innocent, like a baby, in her ignorance. Whatever could have happened in November to make me depressed? Are you okay? Did someone die? Yes, Suzy. Something died. Democracy.
I told her the outcome of the election and everything that’s happened since has deeply affected me. She was like, oh! I see. You poor thing to let such things get you down. She nodded, then explained her daughter, who is gay, is very upset about Trump’s presidency. That it’s difficult to have a conversation with her child who is afraid of the attacks she’ll experience in this political climate, because Suzy will not discuss politics. Not even with her daughter. Because there’s nothing she can do.
Eyebrows raised, I listened to her rationalize her ostrich position, trying to deflect the sand being expelled from her mouth as she spits out a political sentence. Let’s just say I now understand why she always has a smile on her face. Part of me even envies her daily exuberance while I’m dragging ass, trying to focus on work instead of our dying republic. The happiest people I know are the most ignorant and sometimes I think it must be nice to be so privileged and clueless you don’t even worry about your own daughters rights being stripped away.
I can even understand where she’s coming from, to a minute degree. It sucks being depressed, watching the car crash in painfully slow motion, knowing what’s ahead for this country and trying to figure out how to stop the looming disaster.
I smiled and wished her a good night, leaving our conversation feeling disappointed with my fellow citizens. She is merely the physical embodiment of the millions I’ll never encounter. A representation of the majority. The ostriches.
The next day Suzy approached me and said she was thinking about our conversation, about how depressed I’ve been (though she never caught on to my funk before I told her) and she said our lives were too short and we have to make the best of things. We should choose happiness and focus on the good. I closed my eyes and held up a hand to make her stop, which to her credit, she did. I explained it would be impossible for me to turn my head away from what’s happening to the country I so deeply love, even if I wanted to. I said, as kindly and emphatically as I could, “I don’t attend protests, call my representatives, write letters, and organize for myself. I do this for my children and future grandchildren. I fight for my neighbors who can’t fight for themselves.”
Her eyes opened wide with surprise, like this was a new concept to her. Was she surprised she hadn’t thought about her own grandchildren? Her gay daughter fighting depression and fear daily? Or was she surprised a person would put the needs of others above their own peace of mind? I don’t know. She is a lovely woman. But oh, so blissfully ignorant.
That’s the moment it really sunk in. Something obvious yet filed away. There are two types of people.
Those who do things because it makes their lives better, who will only speak up if it affects them personally. In her case, literally herself…because the decisions of this administration directly affect her daughter.
And there are those who fight for the rights of others, the collective ‘we the people’, the downtrodden, the people who don’t have the rights and privileges they are due. We fight for others because if the shoe was on the other foot, we hope they’d fight for us. For me. For my rights. Because it’s the right thing to do.
Does this make me a better person? I don’t know. I’ve done shitty things in my life and on balance, I’m probably pretty average. The avalanche of horrific events occurring on a daily basis overwhelms me. Sometimes I want to curl into a ball and cry. Sometimes I actually do. But what I’m discovering about myself during Trump 2.0 is that I’m a fighter. I won’t back down in the face of injustice.
I remembered an event that occurred during Trump 1.0. I had flown down to DC in 2019 with about 20 students, a few of whom were immigrants going through the legal court process. Because they were over sixteen, they needed proof of identity to fly. We did our due diligence and were assured by lawyers it was okay for them to fly with a foreign passport. This was after Trump’s failed Muslim ban, but immigration was then, as it continues to be, a hot button issue and I was afraid we might encounter some idiots. We didn’t have an issue on the way to Washington, so I thought we were in the clear.
Boy, was I wrong.
Our group was boarding and I was at the end of the line, another chaperone at the front. Everything was going smoothly, until my last student to board was pulled out of line by a TSA agent who told him his foreign passport wasn’t proper identification. This young man speaks English, but the terror he felt in that moment rendered him mute. I felt white hot rage engulf my body, and stepped between my student and the agent, a mama bear protecting her cub. With nostrils flaring and my jaw set I told the man, “We flew to Washington as a school group and we’re flying back together. All of us.” I’m all of 5 foot 3 inches tall. He had about a foot on me, but he looked…intimidated for lack of a better word.
A group of agents gathered and I kept my hand on my student’s arm, my body a barrier between him and those who wished to detain him. One of the agents said they wanted to question him away from the crowd. I shook my head and said, “Not without me. He’s not going anywhere without me.” Another stunned look, then agreement. “Fine, you can come with us.” I replied, “I wasn’t asking.”
He took us to a private area and said they were going to go through his luggage which consisted of a backpack. My student nodded, so I said to go ahead. I knew they’d find nothing incriminating. Then they said they were going to do a “search” of his body. My student turned to me, visibly shaking, and I said, “Anything you intend to search will be done in my presence.” I could tell by their body language and the look in their eyes that my statement changed their plans. They did have my student remove his sweatshirt and patted him down thoroughly, as I watched, jaw clenched the entire time. I wanted to punch the bastards.
Some may say they were “only doing their job.” Well, I was only doing mine. The guy in charge turned to me and we stared each other down for a minute. He finally said, “You can take him.” I raised an eyebrow, nodded, grabbed my student’s backpack and hand and walked away without another word. We boarded the flight without further incident.
Would I have gotten away with my defiant stance today? In 2025? I can silence a room of teenagers without saying a word, but the Trump 2.0 administration has emboldened small-minded, weak people with visions of dominating others to do horrible things. ICE is synonymous with Gestapo in my mind. Snatching people off the streets, shoving them onto planes without due process and deporting them to foreign concentration camps. That’s Nazi bullshit right there and one day there will be a reckoning, as the Germans faced in Nuremberg after WWII. Document every evil act. Document everything.
To answer my own question…no, I don’t think I’d get away with my actions in the DC airport in 2019 now. Not in this hostile, inhumane climate. But I know my reaction would be the same and they’d have to drag me kicking and screaming away from a child in need of protection.
A meme or message, I don’t really know the difference, has been circulating on social media that says, “If you wonder what you would have done during the civil rights movement or in Germany during the 1930s, you’re doing it right now.” That hit home for me. We don’t really know how we’ll react in a situation until it happens. I was faced with the airport situation and stood my ground.
How far would I go to protect others?
Back in March there was a rumor ICE was in our neck of the woods. My first thought upon hearing the rumor? “How many people can I fit into my house?” Our community is very isolated and we all know someone who would be targeted by the American Gestapo. The hallways were quiet but for the sound of teenagers muffling their cries, wondering if their parents would be there when they got home. We were all on edge and I felt that mama bear instinct kick in as I comforted a few kids.
How far would I go? I would hide the ‘Frank’ family.
I guess I’ll conclude by saying, we do what we can. Should I judge the ostriches? I don’t have enough time to focus on them, but history will one day. When my grandchildren ask me what I was doing during this dark period in our history, I’ll be able to look them in the eye and say I fought back. I was in the resistance.
It’s an unsettling, scary place to be, somewhere-between democracy and autocracy, waiting to see which shoe will drop next and creating a plan for every possibility. It’s exhausting. I certainly didn’t think I’d spend my 50s fighting fascism. It is what it is.
I know one thing. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.