The Many, Many Ways

Up early.  You could say up before the dawn but the sun is up somewhere, barely.  It’s just hidden behind clouds and pollution on this mid November morning.  I don’t know that I’ll see much of the sun today.  Off to Jinan, which is a fine thing.  But it means I will need to travel to the city’s south station.  How to explain?  Perhaps it’s like waking up in Washington Heights and having to take a cab out to Kennedy Airport.  So far Jingmi Lu is devoid of traffic and we’re sailing along through intersections that will be clogged like Doritto’d arteries in about forty minutes. 

Like many I’m trying to be normal.  I’m trying to write about traffic and the weather.  But there is now a metallic orange-mained elephant in the room who is not going away.  He’s here for the foreseeable.  It is often said that our system is not particularly good at picking winners, but it is excellent at disposing of all rulers, good and bad.  And that is the central pillar of our meditation for the next four years.  His rule is temporal.  There is another chance to dispose of him, in four years time. 

It is stunning to consider the many, many ways this sucks.  What is the message to the children?  Abusive, insulting, lying, ill prepared behavior, is laudatory.   We will embark on an ill-considered trade war with many countries, including China?  The Iran deal will be torn up?  OK.  How long till war?  This man with thinnest of skins will be slighted from all manner of provocateurs, internationally.  How long before he thinks to teach one of them a lesson?  How long before he tries on a nuke, just for size.  The cabinet will be staffed with the likes of Giuliani and Christie and Gingrich. His family will be . . . the first family.  Oh dear. 

Another lining, mica perhaps, rather than silver, is that the a progressive agenda will now be in the opposition.  Great art, great ideas, and new bonds are formed, in opposition.  It’s a proud and essential tradition.  And we’re lucky that there are freedoms to guarantee the safety of people in opposition.  I know we could point to COINTELPRO or one hundred other offenses and insist that this isn’t so.  But I’m influenced by a history of Jerusalem I am reading.  The Roman Emperor Hadrian came after an uprising and flattened the city, defiled the Temple and sold any survivors into slavery.  We have some things to be thankful for. 

So, let the opposition period wax to its fullness.  Young people will create a new punk rock the way we sang about Reagan.  Marches on Washington will become seasonal events.  And people will have to think very hard about how to organize, cooperate and rethink the message of what it is that the opposition is opposed to.