“If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly. But nobody’s been treated badly like me.” – Donald Trump (ABC NEWS, 2019)
“Life doesn’t work that way.” – Donald Trump (ABC NEWS, 2019)
“These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you’re lying, they’ll tell the world even if you prove you’re telling the truth. Because it’s the kind of lie they want to hear…” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Recently the president gave 30 hours of interview access to the mainstream media. The resulting interview was chock full of Trumpian quote gold. One section of drivel that the “drive-by-media” mined for rich clickbait was Trump’s indignant confession that he would in fact accept dirt, intel, opposition research from a foreign actor or country. This admission was followed, as is customary, by plenty of outrage and disgust from the usual suspects (I think that’s us). They all focused on the first half of Trump’s verbal diarrhea—very few, if any, dug into the last line of that exchange. When asked if he would inform the FBI, when pressed about following the law, when the interviewer pointed out that Al Gore did in fact call the FBI when he was presented with “the dirt,” Mr. Trump responded:
“Give me a break; life doesn’t work that way.”
Trump acts with impunity not because all of a sudden he can but because that is who he has always been and he is that way because that is how his world has always worked. His life works that way. It is not impunity when it’s the truth. And it is the truth if your world works that way. And for once I’d like to give him credit for telling the truth.
Trump can count on several truths: the nastier he is the more his base (originally the New York print media, and now White rubes with million dollar dreams) loves and follows him. Other politicians can’t touch him—the truth is none of them can or are even willing to get down in the dirt like he is, and the truth is they also love it when he is a dick. Lastly, there is the truth that he is constantly shoving in our face every chance he gets: He IS the president, you are not, and more importantly there is nothing at all we, the losers, can do to change that. He won, we lost. He is the one in charge.
In that same ABC interview he scolded his interviewer: “I’m in charge of a very, very special gift. It’s this incredible country.”
These truths, along with the other Trump truths, when taken together, form the Teflon shell protecting that this moronic goon which he flaunts in all of our faces (yes, even you MAGA zombies out there). Coated in this Teflon (think of it as spray tanner) Trump can force himself on any situation, and force people to act in ways they would normally not behave. Kind of like rape (read: exactly like rape).
Trump has taken much from us and he will continue to take. In the process, he is depleting our morale, our energy, our ability to envision the future—and, in the end, he will have us questioning our own morals, our own red lines. And when this happens we will begin to question what is “just” and what are people “entitled to” and then we will engage in this because he will convince us that WE (you!) are the only one that matters. But it’s never been about what works for people in red states, those supposedly forgotten patriots. It’s never been about US. It is not about nationalism. It has always been about what works for Trump in order to keep his life and world intact, and if some suckers in MAGA hats get a win here and there that’s OK too!
This garbage of a human, this plague on our emotional wellbeing, this idiot con man, has proven over and over again that nothing matters except for his truth. Tax fraud (as detailed in the New York Times) = nope. Rape (literally detailed in a fucking book and a court case featuring one of his immigrant ex-wives) = nada. Lying in the face of literal evidence (responding “I did not say that” after literally being played a tape of his own voice saying his own words) = zip. The list goes on and on and these are just examples of what he did BEFORE he was in office. While in office he has doubled down and turnt it up on all three of those examples—more fraud, more rape, and of course more lying.
Keep in mind I have chosen to highlight only those three “categories of crime” if you will. I could just as easily chosen ANY other three other categories and it would be the same: Trump’s life “doesn’t work that way”
In Trump world these crimes are not crimes. He reminded us of this several times during the debates with Hillary Clinton. His actions are not crimes; they are in fact the actions of a “stable genius!”
Over the course of his life he has convinced literally millions of people that it’s OK because it IS how the world works, and he promises if you stick with him, you too can live in this world. This is the “frustrated millionaires” quote on steroids.
But I want to bring it back to OUR world. And remind us that it is not Trump we are up against in the fight for our future. It is the zealots who internalize his messages. It’s the folks who are involved in a transactional relationships with our Nazi-in-chief. It is your next-door neighbor who is starting to believe what he is hearing from his Dear Leader.
I think it’s important for us to keep in mind that many of the Trump zombies live in a world that does not value restorative practices and justice, human rights, protecting the weak, advocating for the abused—it’s about revenge and pain. Trump has somehow convinced these people that “owning the libs” is a better reward/return than having a not-boiling planet; it’s better to piss off a snowflake than having healthcare and social security.
“…He knows how to irritate people. He’s very intelligent. He knows how to get to them,” said Michelle Best, a Brandon, Fla., resident who traveled [to this] Trump rally, in a recent article. “Trump knows weaknesses, and he knows how to exploit them. Is he the nicest guy? Nice doesn’t get things done. I don’t want a nice president. I want a president that gets things done. And he’s getting things done.”
Best (oh the irony…) lives in a world where exploiting other’s weaknesses is a “good” thing. A world in which “nice” does not work.
That’s not the way my world works.
In my world people, are treated with dignity and respect. We fight for human rights. We stand up for those whose voice has been diminished. I am not interested in living in the world that Trump is trying to bring into focus. But I am worried that the onslaught is having a negative impact on my fellow social justice warriors. I am worried that the messages from Trump’s Upside Down are creeping into our normality.
Victor Small, Jr., a middle school administrator in Oakland, Calif., has been using restorative practices for several years and supports other teachers through his work with the Restorative Justice League chats. Victor says “Say you stole a car, Instead of you necessarily doing jail time, really what you would have to first do is make sure that you restore the situation to the person who you actually harmed, which would be the person whose car you stole, right? So you would have to restore that in some way. Either you’d have to get them their car back or get them a new car and apologize or something like that. Basically, the debt that you owe to society is to that person that you harmed.”
He also says “Everything that a kid does shouldn’t have to have a consequence … if a kid gets angry and says something to another kid, and that kid gets mad, do they need detention for that, or do they need to just fix the problem and not be mad at each other? Probably just fix the problem, not be mad at each other, and go on about their lives. If they didn’t do anything wrong to the class or the community and they just did something messed-up to another student, they can handle that between the two students. You could facilitate that. It teaches them, hey, you have to be accountable for your actions, because your actions do have impact on other students, without having them sit in detention, right?”
Most of the people in Trump’s Sunken Place believe that both of Small’s statements are ridiculous. In their life they have been taught that justice looks like payback and revenge. Both the student and the thief should be punished. They should be shown exactly how the world works.
I tend to work with mostly liberal folks, in what appear to be mostly liberal settings. I find that in these circles people have an easier time internalizing Small’s first statement than they do the second one. While I might get some pushback on the first statement, most people in my world will eventually agree we will get nowhere if we continue to just punish without restoring.
Here is where my worry comes into focus: when it comes to the second statement, I have heard teachers say “but something has to happen! How else will that student learn?” And then the inevitable “that’s not how the world works”
But what are we trying to teach about how the world works?
What are the connections we are trying to make? Which world do we want to live in? Either we reject the entirety of the Trumpian world view or not.
Opposing Trump is no longer the most important thing in my world. Fighting back the creeping advancing mentality that his actions are normal, while not losing our humanity, is what I am focused on. Maybe you’ve struggled with the idea of restorative justice, or immigration issues, or LGBQT rights in the past—it’s time to get yourself in order and figure out where you stand on these and the other issues that Trump is using to foment his worldview on our lives.
I hope that we can focus on maintaining a world that values truth, science, love, and redemption. I stand fast that our focus should be on solidarity, and that we invest in practices and structures that focus on raising and supporting empathetic youth.
If we do this we can change the way the world works for so many of our brothers and sisters. We can bring them out of Trump’s Sunken Place to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”
Moises “Mosart” Nunez is an educator, activist, and Ph.D. dropout with a master’s degree in education. Mo’s professional focus is on issues of teen violence, at-risk-youth intervention, the social-emotional education of teens, creating inclusive school environments for students with special needs, school redesign, community engagement, and dismantling racist practices in public education. Mo currently designs and leads community engagement based anti-racism and implicit bias workshops for district and school leadership across the country. Mo has taught English, social studies, and special education across the Northeast in public schools, alternative-education programs, private independent schools, and several universities. Mo has also designed and served as director for several successful at-risk-youth programs, most notably at New Beginnings in Rochester, N.Y.—an alternative education school that focuses on educating and reintegrating recently incarcerated youth. Mo has served as administrator, program director, and program manager for several alternative education, day treatment programs, and public schools in New England and the tri-state area. Mo recently won The Phoenix magazine’s Hip Hop DJ of the Year 2018, and released an album of original music under the name “mosart212.”
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