Must I Care?

Now that the presidential election is officially certified (miraculously violence-free!); now that the moving trucks are booked; now that Santa has closed up shop for the season and the new year has dropped its saggy ball upon our heads; now that Orange Julius is set to march back into our nation’s capital with his army of rapacious legionnaires set to retake the office he once desecrated, the question I’m left with is this: must I still care?

What is the cost of apathy? And what is the price of activism?

Must I devote myself to defiance? Or is it better for those of us who oppose this administration on every front to welcome the barbarians through the gates, and, then, to decamp for greener pastures?

The idea that we must “fight” seems somewhat foolish to me. Fight what? Fight whom? For what purpose? It’s not as though we’re in Red Dawn. No foreign invaders parachuted from above. We chose this.

I have no desire to spend the next four years manning the barricades against my own neighbors. Isn’t it better to - as the oft-repeated idiotic saying of the first Trump administration implored – give him a chance?

Yes and no.

First off, no chances need be given. Any charitable thoughts which I may once have extended to our incoming first family have long-since expired. I am not in the habit of continually banging my hand with a hammer. By the same logic, I see no reason to plead optimism to my fellow Americans. The hammer will hurt no less just because we had hoped for a different outcome when we swung it, once again, upon our hands. We’re in for a season of misery and there’s no use pretending otherwise.

Wish us luck.

The misery will not, of course, be distributed equally - that would be socialism. No, we’re going to mete out unhappiness from the bottom and work our way up, just the way Jesus would have wanted. Personally, I’m a relatively well-off white dude. The next four years could be a real boon for folks like me. Just think, my taxes might go down a point or two!

All I have to do to enjoy my newfound affluence is to ignore everybody further down the socioeconomic pyramid, and try not to mind too much when those above me stuff their pockets with whatever they can shake loose from the couch cushions. They will also confiscate the couch. And the house in which it is contained.

Must I mind?

Must I care when the mass deportations begin? After all, there’s no disputing the fact that millions have entered our nation illegally over the last several decades. Never mind that there’s no functioning system for them to have entered legally. Never mind that the nation turned a blind eye to the problem for decades because we grew addicted to cheap food, cheap childcare, cheap construction. Never mind that the vast majority of these people have enhanced the nation for their presence. Must I care when families are ripped apart, communities destroyed, business shuttered? They’re not my family, not my community, not my business.

Not my problem.

Must I be troubled when the trans community is punished for the crime of existing? After all, as the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on Monday, less than one in a thousand children receives any kind of “gender-affirming medication.” That’s so few children! Which means that’s so few adults! Well, it doesn’t seem very difficult to disregard the trampling of such a small number of people’s rights if doing so will keep the soccer fields free of androgynous-looking sixth graders. We must preserve the nation’s soccer fields! We must adhere to traditional gender roles for reasons which have not yet been articulated but which, nevertheless, remain very important.

Must I get too lathered up when the US threatens a shooting war with Mexico over the cartels that supply the American drug habit? Should it trouble me that, apparently, Trump looked at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and, rather than feeling outraged, felt inspired?

If my children were in the armed forces, I might be a touch concerned but that’s the beautiful thing about the US. My kids will never be in the military unless they wish to be because we staff our armed services with the nation’s underclass who see the military as their only ticket out of the growing proportion of Americans who feel as if even reaching the middle of the middle class is now beyond their grasp. We keep them poor and them give them a way out, provided they are willing to die.

Must I resist every goddamned outrage this administration has promised? Why? What good did it do last time, only to have us return to the exact same place I thought we’d left behind four years ago?

I will tell you.

Because while it is possible to close the garden gate and ignore all of those we wish to banish from our thoughts, we still have to live with ourselves. The nation may have surrendered to its darkest impulses, but I refuse to do the same. I can’t. This is still my country. The people within it are still my people. And I am theirs.

I don’t expect that I can accomplish much when I raise my voice against abuse, but I know that giving up my voice for the sake of political expediency will cost me more than I am willing to spend. The surest way for us to lose our nation is to lose our values. My values don’t allow me to sit quietly as my fellow Americans suffer (including those living here without legal status). Nor do they allow me to watch my homeland pillaged by those elected to serve it.

No, the surest way to lose our nation is for the good people within it to remain silent. I do not know if I am a good person, but I know the dictates of my conscience. It is a conscience born from over two hundred years of elevating human dignity.

The American constitution is an imperfect document written by imperfect men who shared a belief that a new nation could be molded on the ideals of the Enlightenment. Individual rights. Representative government of, for, and by the people. Separation of powers, including the separation of church and state. A rejection of monarchy. An embrace of freedom.

These are my values. I suspect many of you hold the same. I cannot detach them any more easily than I can remove one of my limbs. Yes, it can be done, but I am unwilling to give up so much for so little. A few bucks are not enough to buy my soul. While I’m disappointed that so many Americans apparently feel otherwise, they are entitled to follow the strictures of their own consciences, just as I remain free to follow mine. I will keep speaking up. I will keep making noise. Not because I think it will necessarily change them, but because not doing so would change me.