Who Will Describe the New American?
What the emerging Resistance looks like
In the eyes of the world, Trump’s takeover has changed the definition of an American. “Like it or not,” as he has said about women.
It’s not the first time we Americans have had a bad name. After 9/11 when the free world offered us sympathy and aid, President Bush ignored them all and started a war in the Middle East. My friends who were overseas at that time told me the Europeans criticized them personally.
Just last week, someone shared with me a photo of an Australian couple expressing incomprehension at the results of our Election.
Also, remember The Ugly American? The dictionary defines one as “an American in a foreign country whose behavior is offensive to the people of that country.”
Let me work this out. Trump fans just cast 50.2% of America’s votes. So it seems I’m offended by the behavior of more than half of my fellow citizens. Therefore, I must be living in a foreign country.
I refuse to be stuck in this mental wilderness, so I’ve been looking for trail markers. Surely someone has been this way before. The French, for example.
Once I was hiking in the forest and came to a place where the trail branched out. I had no idea which path was the way back down. I was disoriented and frightened. I needed to find a name for where I was, and a signal for how to get to where I wanted to go.
Before the Election this November 5th, our long American “mountain hike” wasn’t entirely carefree, though toward the end we had joyful hope for a scenic overlook. Then on November 6th storm clouds darkened the trail. On the 7th, I discovered a marker showing the way home. It turns out there are several.
On November 7th, The New York Times began to imagine moving forward. They said,
The election is over, but our democracy endures. … There is work to be done.
On November 14th, the Western North Carolina political blog Watauga Watch emerged after a week’s silence, with the word resistance and an organization named Governors Safeguarding Democracy.
Then on the 17th I found on Watauga Watch news about the organization Democracy Forward and their project, Democracy 2025, which they say is “a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration.”
Unlike in 2017, when Democratic lawyers were unprepared for the onslaught of conservative policies, the intent is to be ready to unleash a flurry of lawsuits immediately.
“We’re leveling up and lawyering up,” Skye Perryman, the chief executive of the organization, said. “This wasn’t something that just everybody woke up the day after the election and started to plan.”
So that pounding you hear isn’t your heart, it’s the sound of signposts being hammered in the ground at a new trailhead.
As for myself, I’m trying to decide whether to get new hiking boots, or to rent a lakeside cabin stocked with books.
But I guess you know me by now. I’m in town at the outfitters’ store looking for boots. And a bookbag.
Beautiful! Thanks so much.