I’m lucky enough to have a wise old friend to call whenever I need a long rambling think about what it means to be human. During and after the Trump era, we’ve needed a lot of time on the phone.
In the 1970s, when my friend and I first met, we were both hard-working young mothers. It was still possible to live well on $800 a month back then, and we did. We ate natural foods, wore Birkenstocks, rather sporadically tried out new forms of meditation and yoga, and endlessly discussed the best way to deal with each phase our children went through. We volunteered in schools, were important forces in our neighborhoods, juggled home life and careers. Idealistic and optimistic, we believed that the world was changing for the better, and would keep changing for the better, while the musicians we listened to assured us that love was all we needed. That war was a bad thing. That peace was possible. That all we had to do was imagine a better world.
Fast forward to 2021. Instead of living in the 70s, we are 70, and it’s obvious that love is not all we need.
In 2000, when a Republican-majority Supreme Court gave the election to Bush before all the votes had been counted, my friend and I both thought we were going to die. The process took weeks, with the final count going back and forth and back and forth between candidates, and by the end of that time we were both physically ill. Disappointed and outraged enough to be physically ill. How in the world could an undemocratic power grab like that happen in the United States of America?
Fast forward to 2021, with Donald Trump flat out saying he’ll do whatever it takes to stay in power as he urges his followers to violence, while those who hope to benefit politically or economically (Fox News) from his fan base spread scandalous, traitorous lies about the election results.
What is going on here? Whatever happened to peace, love, and civil rights? Whatever happened to democracy?
For one thing, a failure of imagination. But not a failure to imagine good things happening, ala John Lennon. A failure to imagine how many truly frightening varieties of human nature there are.
In any given population, 4% — or 1 in every 25 people — will qualify clinically as sociopathic if tested. (i.e., devoid of compassion for others, scornful of the rules, driven only by power.) Then add in borderline personalities and narcissists and all the other destructive psychological tendencies in the human dictionary, and what you’ll end up with is the realization that there are real kooks out there, folks. Lots of them. And real kooks are often charismatic enough to sway others to their cause.
Real kooks do not listen to John Lennon or CSNY. They are not swayed by beautiful lyrics or concern for others. Real kooks are only out for themselves and will happily break any law they can get away with breaking. While the rest of us form an orderly line to do the right thing, real kooks cut in front.
My friend and I are both glad the era of ‘peace and love and hope’ is over. We’re tired of feeling disappointed and disillusioned to the brink of madness. We’re both ready to move on to the era of ‘examining the cold hard facts.’ And one cold hard fact is: human beings are much closer to animals than they are to angels.
What, exactly, is the difference between Donald Trump and a bull elk during mating season? They each have elaborate head gear. They each bellow and strut and butt competitors out of the way. They each want sole control of the babes and the territory no matter what. The only real difference is that no one will ever call Donald Trump majestic.
And who, having ever been around a blue jay, could doubt that self-promotion is one of the calling cards of creation on this planet? What could possibly be more bent on world domination than the common dandelion?
Human beings are just one small part of an unimaginably old and incredibly complicated evolutionary process, and judging by the mess we’ve made, very possibly a dead end. A slight mistake in the never ending process of creation, on a little blue planet with a unique but fragile atmosphere whirling in a spiral galaxy among millions and millions of other galaxies. Smarter than the elk or the dandelion, but still too greedy, bull-headed and selfish to share power or resources, hence most likely doomed to extinction. But if you get a chance to watch stars and planets cross the sky on a dark, clear night, it may occur to you that such an outcome would be perfectly OK. It’s a pretty big universe. We won’t be missed.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be appalled at Trump and the whole Republican party in the here and now. Certainly we should be! We should be doing all we can to make our country more just and fair, all we can to make this world a better place, all we can to remedy the evil we’ve caused… all we can to make ourselves better people. But it’s become clear that the extent of my disillusionment during and after the Bush/Gore debacle — and many, many times since — is directly proportional to my naive belief that people are basically good and that love will prevail.
Get over it, girl! It just ain’t so. (And it never has been so. Any perusal of any period in human history will make that perfectly clear. The Tudors and the Borgias poisoned or beheaded people who got in their way.)
I’m saying that ‘hoping everyone will play nice and that things will turn out for the best’ merely leads to outrage and disappointment in good people while it allows the brutes to take over.
The Republican Party does not have a majority. It hasn’t had a majority in decades. So why are Republicans still in power? By continuing to embrace the outdated electoral college, by gerrymandering, by filibustering, by voter suppression, by lying shamelessly about their opponents, by lying shamelessly about whatever just happened, by turning what ought to be personal decisions (whether or not you have children; whom you can marry) into divisive political issues. The Republican minority is still in power because the rest of us have failed to keep it in check.
So my friend and I have decided that we don’t need any more hope, thank you very much. Nor peace, nor love, nor anything touchy-feely, pie-in-the-sky, airy-fairy, or PC… None of that, thanks.
What we really need is a hard look at human beings as they actually are, and laws about governmental standards and election procedures with real teeth in them.
Harder shells and sharper claws.