Because there is so much vocal opposition to the Trump presidency, it is creating the conditions that force the object of opposition. Trump himself is being pushed to build an even more impenetrable barrier to criticism, investigation, and accountability, let along simple, normal operational transparency.
Is there a right strategy to not get mired in the Trump propaganda circus? Reporters have been chiseling at the cement ramparts like Kurt Eichenwald from Newsweek, and lots of others who are now coming to the realization that flat out taking and dealing with the deck the way it’s being dealt goes nowhere. The press must start calling out the truth for what it is: Trumptocracy. The problem is that Trump is keeping a magician’s hand on his band of followers by making them the only object of his perorations. How long can he keep them mesmerized remains to be seen, but fault lines are appearing certainly. Many who received the relief of Obamacare are alarmed by his call for it’s repeal. Welcome to the “post-truth” era.
What is truth anyway? Why do we need it? We’re still in a state of shock and the opposition is out there mulling and watching, standing up in remarkable ways, perhaps looking for that “Occupy” moment when we can coalesce around a clear message and demands.
We know what it has to be. The country acquiesced to outright theft of normal democratic functioning. Don’t tell yourself we didn’t. How long it will take the country at large to realize the theft will determine how difficult it will be to retrieve the truth. Reversing the tide of narcissistic, narcoleptic, nepotistic misgoverning will take solidarity, commitment and faith in each other to hold it up to the truth. There is no shading our eyes from the egregious theft of America for the benefit of the one percent.
The dark arts have usurped the stage and no number of Trump popular rallies can assuage the fact that his message is undying obedience and messianic adulation. We’ll fix the problems or we’ll go identify and find as many potential or imagined problems we can to propel the illusion that the great Trump engine is chugging to glory. It simply gets more and more impossible to believe. The followers succumb to the dark arts ingenious, unscrupled, unapologetic, unforgiving, unyielding, unconscious, superficial, supercilious slight-of-hand tricks, their fears and shortcomings exploited for their momentary usefulness.
No super hero is going to drop to our rescue. No magic Achilles heel pierced, and down comes the Trump Tower of Babel, no machinery of the gods or deus ex machina will intervene on our behalf.
Romanticism is dead.
But we need a common signal, sign, metaphor for the resilience we’ll need. The post-truth era is a free for all, a scramble for the water’s surface from below. Truth, a vessel always fraught by leaks and shifting winds, has been rent asunder by the storm of lies — a fury whose only truth is that its waves bury us, drown us. We’re abruptly reminded that we all have to start kicking again, reach for the surface and the light of day, grab a floating plank or cushion, a floating suitcase of some one’s dream of freedom.
For the post-truth world, we who reached the surface must rescue those still struggling and cling to our broken dreams and dampened sails, hearts gasping for air. We will welcome the refugees of a world unmoored. We will swim on each other’s backs if needed. We will preach brotherhood of the spirit than cannot be assuaged or alloyed to anything but what it is: the belief that love and true faith, without exclusion and discrimination can and well be the life raft to a better shore.
Sounds possible to me, not easy, but when we stand up in every way at every chance, get the message across, we will define what democracy, peace, and true equality really looks like and means.
A playwright, Alan Harris has been a well-known chef for 40 years in Franklin County. He lives in Shelburne Falls.