(Excerpted from VERY FINE PEOPLE, 1st published October 2020)
We now know that—even though Trump is a disruption to the status quo in some ways—he isn’t only a disruption to the status quo. In many ways, he is a part of that status quo’s inevitable progression.
He’s the result you can expect to see, in a society which believes that we have no shared society, that life must be earned, that profit is how you earn it, and that violence redeems.
We can see that Trump isn’t a disruption to business as usual, but rather a purified concentrate of that business. Even though he spread supremacy's virus, Trump isn’t a virus. He’s the first unignorable tumor—for those of us comfortable enough to have ignored previous symptoms.
Yes, he’ll have to be removed completely, but afterward things are going to have to be different. If they aren’t, then we’ll find ourselves here again.
Even many opposed to the spiritual virus of MAGA aren’t interested in quarantining or vaccinating against it. Some remain opposed to radical transformations to our lifestyle. Some want only to remove the tumor of Trump, then return to the exact situation that allowed it to grow.
We’ve heard all the justifications for this, because we know them. We often are them. These complacent masses aren’t strangers, any more than the cheering red-capped throngs are strangers.
Happy, smiling, friendly, many of them. They love their kids. They go to church. They work hard. They pay their taxes. They walk their dogs. They love us, some of them. Yes, and we love them, many of them.
And if we seem so angry, perhaps the reason is that the anger we feel toward these friends and family and neighbors, while appropriate and honest, is easier than the deep sorrow and mourning, that those we love would so eagerly or complacently align with the pursuit of atrocity.
I see two questions we have to face, in the teeth of this new knowledge. These questions sound simple, but aren’t. They will be the same questions after the election as before, no matter the result—and so will the answers.
I’ll get to the second question eventually.
The first question is about awakening, conviction, and confession.
In both cases, aligning against the spread requires active, persistent, determined, informed, and transformative action. In both cases, aligning with the spread requires only passivity, which will prevent the needed transformative action.
With a virus, the challenge is keeping it out of the system entirely, and guarding against mutations.
With a cancer, the challenge itself is systemic. The remedy can be targeted to preserve what is healthy about the affected organ, but eventually it must consider the system from which it grew.