This past week, I was reading a book that was written by a feminist author in 2017. I suppose I had forgotten just how gutted and anxious we all felt in those days. In the pages of this book I heard echoes and almost felt those emotions again. We all thought the world would end. It didn’t. Not only that, but not much actually did happen, for all the bluster coming from certain quarters. Nonetheless, we breathed easier when the White House changed occupancy.
I found this book a stark contrast to today. When Trump was campaigning, his disgusting life was shoved in our faces every hour of every day with no respite. There were few headlines that did not include his name — but still nobody thought he would win. In fact, even as late as September, it wasn’t apparent why he was running. Was it an elaborate farce? He, himself, didn’t seem to know what was going on most of the time. We all learned later that this is how he works when nobody is carefully scripting what he has to say. And no, it was no joke…
When the news reported his election, it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the country. How were we going to survive with our rights, our dignity, even our bodies intact? I read Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here and was mightily disturbed by the similarities. I started plotting escape routes. Just in case. However, there was not an intelligentsia mass exodus for Europe and Canada, threats notwithstanding (though Neil Gaiman did pull up stakes and leave…). But nor did a wall ever get built either. Instead, it was one long period of head shaking and indigestion and wondering when it will happen…
And, as I said, not much did happen beyond general degradation and a fast exponential rise in assholery as a way of life. A number of my friends lost their jobs as various public agencies were hollowed out and research grants vanished. I knew a few people who vanished into the Water Protectors. It became difficult to fund libraries. As I was on the board for my town library at the time, this became a focus of my life: farm all summer, motivate donations and matching grant funds all winter. But life, more or less, went on… right up to COVID and the 2020 election — which were even more hysterical, in the darkest sense of the term.
Reading the book reminded me of the media feeding frenzy over every last stupid and appalling thing Trump did. I still blame television for the Trump presidency. He didn’t have to create publicity or pay for attention. All he had to do was be his idiotic self and they broadcast it on every channel, repeated at 5pm and 10pm. Just in case anyone might have missed it. Maybe I’m not the only one who blames the media for giving us a case of the Trumps, because it seems like the election was the final nail in the main stream media coffin. After Trump there was no hegemony on news. It was all fractured and prismatic screen snow. In any case, the media are not united now. And they are rather easy to ignore… if they’re saying much of anything at all.
Maybe they learned their lesson. Push an asshole onto America and lose the White House press corps pass. In any case, they are not hanging on Trump’s every antic. And there have been some doozies… Turns out, he was just practicing the first time around. Amazingly, he somehow just keeps getting worse. (Makes one wonder if there are not, in fact, limits on stupid…) But we are not having it shoved down our throats this time. And perhaps because of the quiet, we are not protesting this campaign as much as we might have done in 2016 — if anyone believed he stood even a slim chance of leading the country.
The frightening thing is that he stands a rather good chance of being elected again. And we are just acquiescing. Proves that humans will sit in that pot of boiling water, declaring that everything is fine, apparently until our skin melts off. Baseline shift and new normals can be deadly. Or maybe we’ve all just given up and it doesn’t matter anymore.
Whatever the cause, we are not wringing our hands like last time. I would be happier about this calm if it didn’t feel like catatonia.
In other news…
Vermont went all Vermont-y on Tuesday. We stepped out of line after all. Nikki Haley handily beat Trump in the Republican primary. This primary was her only state primary victory, and she has since suspended her campaign. Which is unfortunate, because it was working. Not to get Haley elected, of course, but her “never Trump” harsh light was obviously making Republicans think twice before casting a ballot. Her campaign has shown that he could lose even his own party. But let it be said that Vermont did not toe the line.
Well, halfway anyway. Biden carried something like 90% of the Democrats.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
There’s an old cliché that keep coming back every four years, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I guess that come November I’ll be listening yet again to the song written by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson.
Everybody Knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows
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