“Once More, Into the Breach” December 29, 2024 Dr. Roger Ray
Following last month’s presidential election, popular New Yorker humorist and essayist, Andy Borowitz, begged for a week off. He explained, “Dear reader, I have plenty to say about last night’s dumpster fire but today I want to take a break from jokes. Many of you are in pain and I don’t want to make light of that.
You shouldn’t misinterpret my pause, however, as acquiescence or resignation. We all deserve a moment to curl up in the fetal position. But when that moment is over, I want to do what I can to make life better for my children and grandchildren (not to mention people I don’t happen to be related to). I hope you’ll feel that way, too.
Remaining silent and surrendering to despair is exactly what fascists want us to do. So let’s not.”
I didn’t publish anything about the election in the immediate aftermath of what Borowitz fitting calls a “dumpster fire” because I didn’t need to simply repeat what nearly every progressive in the world was saying. And, I can’t think of anything to say to make this predicament OK. I can echo thoughts expressed well by others that I am sorry that Biden initially tried to run for a second term. I wish that we had been able to hold a normal primary season and select a candidate from a field of viable options but, still, Kamala Harris did an amirable job and picking her campaign apart is worse than futile.
America was presented with a choice between a well prepared, intelligent, and trustworthy candidate and a candidate who is elderly, mentally unstable, uneducated and unteachable, who is a rapist, a adulterer, a serial liar, a con artist and thief. And the majority of American voters cast their vote to return the demonstrably worse president in American history to the highest office in the land.
As one person paraphrased Robert Frost, “Two paths diverged in a woods and America chose the psychopath.”
I am disgusted, disappointed, and, honestly, I don’t like Americans very much right now. Germans, after Hitler, often excused themselves saying that they just didn’t know what he would really be like. American voters cannot claim that excuse. We have seen Trump at work and worse, he has told us what vile and immoral things he plans to do in a second term. No one gets to plead ignorance this time. Now, it remains for persons of good will to decide how we will respond to this tragic event.
There are very few people of my generation who are not familiar with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy so I trust that most of you will remember that bleak moment when Frodo and Sam are facing an impossible task of destroying the ring of power within the confines of Mordor, when Frodo has all but lost the will to go on, he asks Sam, “What are we holding onto Sam?” And Sam, brilliantly replies, “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”
I will tell you, honestly, that in the immediate days following Trump’s re-election, I didn’t have much fight left in me. I am in a committed relationship with a wonderful woman in Thailand. Hui and I have been making plans for her to come join me here in the United States. In fact, we are deep into the process of getting her visa and bringing her here.
But I had already planned to go spend a couple of months with her in Thailand this winter while we wait for the slow visa process to work its way through the government bureaucracy, but I started to reconsider our plans.
I never wanted to live in Thailand until the evening of November 5th, but that night I started looking at houses for sale in the southern regions of Thailand on the Andaman Sea. The scuba diving there is much better than it is here in Florida and housing costs are half of what they are here. But, again, as Andy Borowitz said, giving up, despair, is exactly what fascists want from us and I’m not going to allow myself to go down that path.
The majority of Americans voted against democracy, against civil rights, against progress, fairness, decency, and character, and a part of me believes that they deserve whatever Donald Trump is going to do to them, but I am not going to vote against America.
We progressives know the ropes when it comes to being the loyal opposition. We have spent most of our lives kicking against the darkness of prejudice, greed, and privilege, and so we know how to do this.
I woke up about 20 years ago to the realization that I had been seduced by prestige and recognition. I was the pastor of a prominent church in Springfield, Missouri and many civic and not profit organizations had recruited me to serve on their boards. I was on the board of mental health agencies, charities, the community foundation, and many others but while they printed my name on their stationary and put my picture on their websites, it finally dawned on me that they had consistently ignored nearly every suggestion I had ever made.
I was being used. They wanted my reputation to lend credibility to theirs, but they had no intentions of actually being effectively in service to the values I represented. I resigned from all of those boards, accepting that I had cuddled up to closely to money and power and that if I wanted to be prophetic, I could do better standing on the sidewalk and shaking my fist and the palace and the temple than I could by enjoying a free lunch at the conference room table.
I wish that Harris had won. I wish that Democratic candidates in Florida and Texas had won. I wish that the house and the senate had been returned to democratic majorities. And, I wish that the executive and legislative branches of government had been able to team up to fix the judiciary by either impeaching half of the current supreme court or by expanding it to outnumber those who are trying to make America into a Catholic monarchy. But, as my father used to say, “If frogs had wings, they wouldn’t keep bumping their butts on the ground.” We didn’t get many of our wishes this time, but we are back in familiar territory.
The German/American poet, Charles Bukowski, always gets my attention with his sometimes brutal honesty. One of his first collections was titled, “Poems written just before jumping out of an 8th story window.” He once said, “We must bring our own light to the darkness. Nobody is going to do it for us.” Folks, this, I believe, is where we are.
In 2016 I consoled myself with the knowledge that Trump would surely be impeached . . . and he was, twice! But he managed to skate. We had faith in the Mueller investigation, then we allowed ourselves to be seduced into some confidence that surely, he would be found guilty in the classified documents case in which we had all seen undeniable evidence of his guilt.
We believed that the Georgia election tampering case would surely put him in prison, we heard the evidence with our own ears. And how could he escape being convicted in the January 6th insurrection case? We all sat in horror and watched his assault on American democracy play out for hours on TV!
What I think we must all learn from this is the unavoidable fact that the American judicial system does not have the power to convict wealthy and powerful men. It just doesn’t. There is no cavalry that will come charging over the ridge to save us. And in spite of all of the commentators who had said that, in spite of Trump’s best efforts, America’s institutions have survived, you know that they have not. Has the Supreme Court survived? Do we have justices making decisions based on the constitution? Certainly not the American constitution!
Everything that was said by Trump’s family members and former government associates is still true. He is still a fascist. He still represents an existential threat to American democracy. The future of NATO is now uncertain. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine may now end with Ukraine being defeated, and the island nation of Taiwan is now at much greater risk of being invaded by China. The global environment is now much more threatened than it was two months ago, and immigrants of all stripes, legal or illegal, have reason to be fearful.
Farm workers will be deported and farm owners will go bankrupt. The civil rights of women will continue to be eroded. As in all circumstances, it is better to be rich than it is to be poor . . . persons of means can still fly to Europe to access abortion services when needed and the poor will be forced to raise their children of their rapists and incestuous family members in abject poverty.
But still, folks, you have to bring you own light to the darkness because no one is going to do it for you. We will have New Year’s Eve celebrations in a couple of days, or, at least, it will be New Year’s Day on Wednesday, whether you celebrate it or dread it, 2025 will see the whole world holding its nose as Donald Trump returns to the White House.
I grant anyone the right to grieve this turn of events. Anyone and everyone has a right to think about moving abroad or just checking out of the news and, as one of my close friends has done, vowing to watch sports and movies and refuse to give any more time or energy to the disgusting turns of politics. And, I’ll tell you now, on the day when Trump is inaugurated, I will be lying on a beach in Krabi, Thailand with my girlfriend. But, I’m coming back. Because I am not going to surrender my faith in democracy.
We have made a lot of progress on many issues over the last century but, sadly, progress never marches forward in a straight line. Sometimes progress pauses, sometimes it takes some steps backward. I am an old man and I may not outlive the likes of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong- Un, or even Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, but I will not become indifferent to what they represent.
Over the past 4 decades and more, it has often been both my duty and my honor to stand at the graveside of someone that I just wasn’t finished with yet, and to commit their remains to the earth.
Often, in that moment, I have quoted a passage from Edna St. Vincet Millay’s "Dirge Without Music" where she says:
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
With the end of 2024, many of us are grieving a kind of death. In 2008, when Barak Obama was elected, we saw the beginning of an era of progress that brought us close to universal healthcare, to marriage equality for the gay community, to greater fairness for women in the military, and serious reform in issues like sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Now we must recognize that the first term of Trump was not merely an anomaly. Not a brief reactionary blip on the moral radar of our culture. The Obama era is now over. I know. But I do not approve; and I am not resigned to accepting an era of American fascism.
I could wish for some kind of Deus et machina that would turn the world around. I wish that Michelle Obama would announce that she will run for president in 2028 and that she will appoint Willie Wanka to be the new Supreme Court Chief Justice; but I know that here on Earth 1, the task of bringing light into the darkness of 2025 depends upon you and me.
Break down the walls of your isolation. Get out, meet other progressives. Collaborate, organize, encourage one another. Find your voice. Resist the decay of civil rights and demand justice, and please, don’t give up or give in.
