Beware of Darkness, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

November 11, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 2 Comments

Well, that wasn’t any fun at all.

Someone on Facebook noted that, walking around Manhattan on the day after the election, people had the same stunned look of despair that we had after 9/11.  I was on the phone, talking some of my friends off the ledge, starting at about five in the morning.

It’s okay.  We need a few days to express our shock and disappointment.  We need to acknowledge our fears and our grief.  We need to feel all the feels, as the kids say.

And when we’ve calmed down, and feel heard, we need to get it together.

Having Donald Trump as our president for four years (or Mike Pence, no improvement) is not going to be any fun.  I, myself, a media junkie, have not been able to watch the news since Wednesday morning.  Those Bones reruns on TNT aren’t so bad.

Still, it’s an opportunity for us.  Whatever your political preferences, every election is a chance to make things better.  However, since this is my column and my soapbox, you’re going to be stuck with what I think if you decide to read further.

My friends have sent me lots of good ideas and perspectives over the last several days, and I expect that we will continue to burn up the Interwebs with more.  Some of these ideas have inspired me, and some have me snorting a derisive “As if,” but not so anyone hears.  We need to be brainstorming.  We need to consider everything.

Donald Trump promised a lot during this campaign.  He promised to build a wall.  He promised to bring back manufacturing jobs.  He promised to revive the coal industry.  He promised to replace the Affordable Care Act with something “much better.”  He promised to destroy Isis.  These were not random thoughts but things he said over and over again.  I am not a fan of some of these promises, but I think he should be held to them.  If there isn’t significant progress within the first 100 days, I say we define him as a failure.

Donald Trump also described Hillary Clinton as “corrupt.”  We’ve had a quarter century of (some) Republicans demanding an investigation of the Clintons for one thing or another (investigations that have never found Hillary to be guilty of any crime).  Trump has two court cases coming up before he takes the oath of office, and dozens of lawsuits in the pipeline.  I think he should be held to the same standard.  A Republican Congress isn’t going to do this, but perhaps there are reporters out there who could?  I’d be happy to donate to a fund that would back such an investigation, and I’d be willing to sign whatever kind of disclaimer is necessary to show I would accept whatever the facts prove.

Donald Trump may have won the Electoral College (and I accept, grudgingly, that this is the law of the land) but the people wanted Hillary.  We can’t let him claim to have a mandate.

My antipathy to Trump aside, there is still more to do.  This election shows that we, as a nation, are horribly divided.  One half thinks the other is made up of stupid bigots, and the other thinks we are perverts and terrorists.  I think we do this because of fear, and because we want to blame some outside force for our mistakes.

I know I do.

Because I’m one of those elitist urban folk, it’s all too easy for me to think that the people of “flyover country” are ignorant rubes.  It’s their fault that my taxes are high (New Yorkers, for example, pay far more in federal taxes than we receive in federal funding).  Their lax gun laws make it too easy for criminals here to get weapons.  Their inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims makes my city a target for terrorists.

While I suppose it’s possible that my stereotypes fit a few people, they are not helpful.  No more helpful than those other people thinking that people like me are all transgender homosexual socialist Islamic terrorists who want to force all women to abort their pregnancies and gay marry.

The world changes and even when the changes are good, we get scared.   That’s when we turn against each other.  Instead, let’s try to notice what we share.  We might have to get down to really simple things.  We all like to be well-fed and able to sleep and wear warm clothes when it’s cold out.  We want to have homes where we can keep our stuff and have our own bathrooms.  We all want neighborhoods that are safe and don’t smell bad.  We all want to go about our days without being robbed or stabbed or elbowed.

From there, we can, perhaps, find other areas of agreement.  I would guess a majority of us love our families and friends.  A lot of us enjoy children, sometimes even our own.  We like to be entertained with books and movies and television and music.

Let’s start there.

On Wednesday, as I was finishing my weekly volunteering at the cancer hospital, I was putting away my supplies, when I noticed a woman trying to use the computer in the recreation area.  I said, “Hello,” and she said, “The doctors just told me there was nothing more they could do for my son.”

I sat down next to her.  “How do you prepare for this?” she said.

“I don’t think you can,” I told her.  “And even if you could, you would steal feel terrible right now.”

Her son is 21.  We talked a bit about clinical trials and alternative treatments.  I know almost nothing about those things.

And then I taught her to knit.  She chose a deep turquoise yarn, and soon we were concentrating on how she held her fingers and what mistakes were important and what mistakes were not.  It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to her son’s condition, but it gave her something to do with her hands.

I don’t know where she was from or what her political affiliations might be.  We were two moms.  We were two humans with fingers that took pleasure in color and texture.

We were doing what we could to get through the tough times.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is grateful that her cat is recovering from an ear infection.  Thanks for asking.