Normal is inevitable.
I don’t mean that “President Trump” will ever sound or feel right. I mean that our days will return — are already turning — to something close to what they were before. Red-hot fury cools a little, enough to make it through almost an entire workday with no commiserating side conversations, or awkward broachings with colleagues with unknown political leanings. To go see a movie and actually pay attention to what’s happening on screen.
One of the ones I went to see was Arrival. I really liked it, which for right now is kind of beside the point. It touched on something that I think about after certain kinds of movies and TV shows where Big Things Happen in a world that is pretty much the one we’re living in. Which is (and don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything here): What happens next? Not to the world, or our government, but to people. Once you get over the initial shock, how do you feel about going to work the week after the aliens have landed? For the sake of argument, orange-haired, short-fingered aliens?
I guess the phrase is “new normal.” In this context, it’s what happens when something momentous happens that changes everything — and then, even after everybody recognizes that everything has, in fact, changed, we look around and see that nothing looks very different. We all have to figure out how to just get through the day.
And the easiest, most friction-free way to do that is to pick up where we left off. Resume our natural rhythms. Go about our business, knowing that something is terribly wrong. Knowing that there’s got to be a way to fix it, but it sure seems pretty out of focus at the moment. Not really not understanding the disconnect between the new order and our old, familiar ways.
Part of the problem is that I want the real-world reaction to be equal to, as powerful as, the original big-screen action. I want the grand dramatic gesture. I want Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum to blow up the damn mothership. I want the Hollywood ending, where truth and justice prevail.
But this is not Life During Wartime. This is big, but it’s mostly invisible to me.
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I use the word luxury a lot when talking about white privilege. It’s the luxury of not having to think. The luxury of ignorance.
It’s a luxury, on one level, of not having to think about what people are thinking about me when I’m standing in line. As described by the actor, rapper, musician Donald Glover (creator of the show Atlanta which everyone should go find a way to watch right now):
We were in the airport and I was waiting in line at the ATM and there was a guy in front of me getting money. I came up and he got nervous, so I went to the side and waited for him to finish. I said to my group of friends, “I don't think white people know how much effort in my day is put into making them feel comfortable.” In general, people don't know how much of my time is dedicated to making them feel comfortable. Maybe it has to do with being older, but I just didn't want to do it anymore. I don't want to make people comfortable all the time. Plus, we just feel like we're going to die soon. (h/t)
It’s a luxury on a whole different level not having to think about the implications of separating racism (or other isms) from economic oppression. As Ta-Nehisi Coates spelled out in an eye-opening (for me) tweet storm, excerpted here:
The notion that, say, racism is non-economic oppression is rather incredible.
The Ferguson report revealed an entire scheme of municipal plunder. Anti-black policing was an economic model.
Marriage discrimination isn't bad because simply because it makes people "feel bad."
It's bad because it bars them from entering into a contract to protect--among other things--the fruits of their labor.
There's nothing "non-economic" about sexual harassment. If you're boss is demanding favors in exchange for a raise, that's economics.
Notion that white dude's issues are "economic" and everybody else is just trying to discuss their feelings is, well, sorta deplorable.
"Non-economic oppression" and "Identity politics" are basically phrases people are using obscure old and trenchant problems.
This is not a case against making a strong pitch to wwc voters. It's a case against the idea that economics is irrelevant everywhere else.
It's easy to perceive these systems as people just being mean to each other. More disturbing to process the idea that someone is benefiting.
It’s ultimately the luxury of getting to be all righteous and Hollywood-y and believing that “go big or go home” gives me the license to do just that: to take my energy and attention and go home if the situation doesn’t seem big enough or important enough or immediate enough to me. And to suffer no repercussions for that decision.
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There was a scene in the premier of a new SyFy series called Incorporated (which I don’t recommend you rush out and see) that represents one answer to the question, What Happens Next.
It’s 2070-something, in the aftermath of the stereotypical Corporate Takeover Of The World (generic sci-fi plot #5). There are the haves who live in Green Zones and the haven-nots, who live in Red Zones. We’re along for the ride as our Green Zone-living hero goes off to work in his self-driving car and heads down a lightly trafficked highway toward a shining city, zooming past verdant forestland.
Then the point of view shifts, and the camera rises upward, showing that the greenery is a video projection, there to block the view of the teeming, walled-in, refugee camp-like Red Zone. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s pretty much the same answer we have in 2016, only with better special effects.
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This era that we’re starting to live through right now isn’t a full-on alien invasion. It is, however, Standing Rock (and hey, look at that — sometimes you can win the battles). It is the Klan, small and pathetic as it is, marching in North Carolina. It is the Pandora’s Box of toxicity being unleashed by certain subsets of Trump supporters. It is the people for whom the new normal is the freedom to proudly and publicly declaim their racism/sexism/homophobia/Islamophobia. It is the people who are, on a daily, debilitating basis, on the receiving end of that hate. And it is people for whom none of that was enough to sway their vote. Who didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t see what electing Trump would mean for their fellow citizens.
The least-worst I can do is stay the hell out of the way. Better is to wake up to everything I don’t know, have never experienced, and will never understand in my bones. To learn from people who aren’t like me, and people who know a lot more than me. To wipe the Hollywood out of my eyes, forget the grand gestures and deal with boring, difficult, insidious day-to-day reality. As one of the speakers at the large Klan counter-demonstration said:
“We do not have to start new organizations from scratch. We have experienced leadership, we have historical lessons that we can and must learn from, the struggle for justice and unity demands deep listening and humility, and more than anything a commitment to show up and do the work.”
This may not be life during wartime. But we are Living With War. We’ve been living with all kinds of wars, for a very long time, whether I only woke up to that fact recently or not.