I had a different post planned for today. It was light and hopefully fun and talked about queer representation in pop culture – which if you’ve been paying even a little bit of attention these past 12-and-counting years and counting is my absolute favorite thing to talk about. But I’ve postponed that small joy because I basically feel like screaming all of the time. This year, I’ve started waking up around 7 a.m. every single day. No alarm clock, no loud noises. Just my body jolting awake and bracing for horror. Now I need to give you a little context, I have been throughout the entirety of my life until this point a world champion sleeper inner. I am a night owl by nature and it used to be nothing for me to sleep in until 10, 11 and even noon on a good day. I also have the luxury of a job that I do not have to go in to until mid-morning. But now I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept in past 7:30 a.m., let alone 8 a.m. Now, I know, whomp-whomp for my fucked up circadian rhythms and inability to lounge in bed all day like I used to.
But the longer the Trump administration grind on and grinds down the basic tenant of our democracy, the worse I’ve slept. I thought I’d gotten used to waking up to a new, fresh hell every day during the 2016 presidential election. But, woo-doggies, was I wrong. Nothing compares to opening your eyes every day and dreading what new, monstrous thing this administrations has done.
Ban Muslims from entering the country? Check! Claim there are “very fine people” among a torch-bearing crowd of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who ran over a woman and killed her? You betcha! Give away $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the millionaires, billionaires and corporations? Heck yes, rich people are the only ones who know how to handle money anyway, duh! Stack the federal courts with right-wing nutjobs, some of whom have never even tried a case in their lives, to serve lifetime appointments? You bet your Merrick Garland he has! Pull out of UNESCO, an organization dedicated to building “peace through international cooperation in education, the sciences and culture.” Fuck off, nobody needs culture, science or education! Pull out of the UN Human Rights Council and then call it “a protector of human rights abusers.” Totally, we love using the “I know you are, but what am I”-defense in international relations, we just used it yesterday!
But forcibly separating parents from their children and then putting those children in cages? Goddammit all to fucking hell, is there no end to the levels of evil for this administration?
I don’t know how you can listen to the plaintive wails of small children screaming for their mothers and fathers and not think we are at a tipping point as a nation. We currently have 11,785 children in custody. CHILDREN. IN. CUSTODY. Either we accept we are a country that rips sobbing children away from their parents or we don’t – and we stop it. We have to stop it.
The prevailing policy philosophy of the Trump administration has been cruelty, plain and simple. He is a cruel, hateful, ignorant man and we are all trapped in his narcissistic personality disorder feedback loop. And I do not know how we do not all just burst into tears at any given moment.
Rachel Maddow chokes up and cries on air as she struggles to deliver news that migrant babies and toddlers have been sent to "tender age" shelters pic.twitter.com/O6crm8cvyR
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) June 20, 2018
But then, we knew that about him before a minority of voters (by three million, ahem) in this country elected him. We were warned. Yet still, 52 percent of white women voted for him (and 62 percent of white men, thanks again, white dudes).
So what makes me almost as inconsolable, distraught and furious is that a significant portion of the American populace is not only OK with all of this, they’re thrilled. They’re downright gleeful. Or they just don’t care enough about people who are different than themselves to worry about caring. In fact, the latest Gallup poll shows 45 percent of Americans think he’s doing a great job. That’s nearly half of all American. Fuck, that’s depressing.
So what can we do? Keep caring. Give money to organizations that are fighting Trump. Call your senator and representative. Show up at the marches, show up at the Families Belong Together March. Talk to your racist relatives. Register to vote and vote for a Democrat in November. Care. Care more about your immigrant neighbor. Care more about your Muslim neighbor. Care more about your black or brown or queer or trans or whathaveyou neighbor. Care more about a crying child sitting in a cage filled with other crying children who just want their mommy or daddy than you do your own comfort. Care that we have a terrible human being in the highest office in all of the land and vow to do whatever you can to stop him. And then, I don’t know, maybe we’ll all be able to sleep through the night.
p.s. Fuck Trump, forever and always.