Incredulous

I haven't written one of these Civic Duty columns since February 12, when Trump's second impeachment trial was underway.

 

I was winded – sad, and mad, too -- but mainly exhausted after four years  of rooting in the scummy detritus of Trump's presidency.

 

I really have no right to this luxury of silence because there is seemingly no end to the evil that he unleashed. It spirals on in so many ways. Civic duty did not end with his defeat. I see that now, and I also see that I was a little bit punch-drunk, and that I had to wait for my vision to clear enough for me to understand how I'm actually feeling now.

 

How I'm feeling is incredulous. First, I am incredulous that so many Americans have bought the Big Lie that Trump was cheated out of the presidency by mass election fraud, contrary to every ruling by every court where this lie was tested. It shouldn't be a surprise. He tapped deeply into the darkness that has always lurked in the American soul, a darkness of racism and misogyny and willful ignorance that is now openly manifesting itself.

 

Needless to say, the entire Trump saga was and is incredible in the worst possible way. How could this functional illiterate, a criminal to his core, have become president of the country that I never realized how much I loved until I saw him try to destroy it? Terror capitalism whelped him in all his monstrosity and he willfully has let a half million Americans die in the wake of his madness. 

 

On January 6, the entire civilized portion of America was incredulous at open insurrection in the sacred chambers of American democracy. Where were the police, the authorities? How could this happen? Incredible. At least as incredible was that so many of the men we had entrusted with protecting this country and its citizens filed back into those shambled halls and went about the business of supporting a man whose crazed minions had threatened their very lives scant hours before. Incredible. 

 

I am incredulous that Asian-Americans are being attacked day after day by white men – get that, white men – who have taken Trump's repetition of the Chy-na virus as gospel and acted upon it in the most violent and hateful ways.

 

I am incredulous that mass shootings have resumed as the country struggles to emerge from a pandemic that was aided and abetted month after month, death after death, by its president. 

 

I am incredulous that the state of Georgia has brazenly flown the Confederate battle flag again in its assault on voting rights. Beyond that, I am totally dumbfounded that Georgia has made it a crime to give waiting voters any kind of sustenance – water included. Madness.

 

I am incredulous that the governors of so many states have ignored and defiled rational mandates from health officials and have gone about the business of prematurely opening their states, leading to resurgence Covid outbreaks – and countless deaths. 

 

I am incredulous that so many of the young people in America have ignored any well-founded restrictions and flocked to maskless, crowded Spring Breaks across the country, particularly in Florida, whose craven and clueless governor has welcomed them, despite pleas from mayors of places like Miami Beach, where South Beach was swamped to the point of police intervention to enforce a desperate curfew.

 

 I guess I am naive to  be so incredulous about what has become so commonplace in this tottering country. But in my naivete and incredulity, there is the core of belief that we shall, indeed, overcome.