To be clear

Mariame Kaba is an activist, a thinker, and a writer I have long admired, and she has been giving exceptionally great advice lately on Blue Sky, including this, which I will paraphrase: 

For a whole range of reasons, people are not well-informed about what is taking place right now in America. To address that problem, create a one-sheet explainer that can be printed and distributed at in-person protests or other events, as well as online.

Now mind you, she gave this advice weeks ago, and all that while, I have been sitting with it, possibly on it, sometimes beside it. Because who am I to explain things?!  I am not an economist. I am not an attorney. I am not a historian or a sociologist or an ex-KGB agent with a closet full of cocktail gowns and trench coats.

After reading the comments on a friend's Facebook post about Ukraine, however, I decided that it does not matter. It does not matter that I am not an expert; it matters that I am as intellectually honest as I know how to be and that I know how to do research.  

To that end, here is a one-sheet explainer on Putin and Ukraine. 

Please use it as it best serves you - to improve your own understanding, to hand out at a protest or other event, to send to your Uncle Marvin who is retired.  It is intended to be shared. It is intended to be helpful. 

My name is not on it. I created a gmail address so that people can give feedback, ask questions, make corrections, or scream at me. I therefore introduce . . . To Be Clear.

 

Go forth, little one-page explainer!

Bad Tyrant?

Donald Trump is good at a very limited number of things. A month into his second term, I'm not sure being a successful authoritarian is one of them.

Since I am definitely not an expert on authoritarian rule, however, let's turn to historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat to find out some of the things strongmen typically do, starting with the original Fascist, Benito Mussolini: "Strongmen probe the sore spots of the nation, stimulating feelings of humiliation and anxiety and offering their own leadership as a salve" (Strongmen 70). Ben-Ghiat goes on to explain of Mussolini that he stoked feelings of humiliation and anxiety tied to Italy's recent history - and having even the most cursory understanding of that history turns out to be informative. Ready for a very breezy overview?  Grab a blanket.

As you surely know, during the 19th century, European nations began claiming parts of Africa for themselves.  In 1884, European men representing more than a dozen nations gathered at the Berlin Conference to "negotiate questions and end confusion over the control of Africa." As the illustration below suggests, and as Elias Wondimu makes explicit, this was done "without any African representation" or respect for its sovereignty, let alone "existing African political or cultural boundaries."

Before the Conference, Italy had not kept pace with the invasive, empire-building projects of other nations in Europe, and this was reflected in the relatively small quantity and size of the lands they "controlled" when the Conference ended.  From their position in Somalia, Italy had designs on neighboring Ethiopia (or Abyssinia on this map), and war broke out.  In 1896, at the Battle of Adwa, Ethiopia won. Ethiopians still celebrate this victory as a national holiday. (I doubt that Italians do anything now, but at the time, according to Wikipedia, they rioted.)

Thirty years later, these matters were still very much front of mind.  In 1927,  Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, Mussolini told Fascist politicians, "If we shrink, gentlemen, we won't make the Empire, we'll become a colony!" (Strongmen 70). To be a colony, of course, was to be placed in the conquered and feminized position, but in the white supremacist imagination, it was still worse: It was to become Black, lost in a sea of Black fecundity. 

To save "[t]he white race, the Western race," Mussolini sought to boost the white birth rate.  Thus, as Ben-Ghiat says, he "banned abortion and contraception" (Strongmen 71). He promoted marriage and "imposed an additional tax on bachelors" 26 and over.. He "encouraged the right kinds of Italians to multiply."  He practiced eugenics. And predictably, he tried to make Italy great again: "Mussolini promised to restore the glory of ancient Rome while also modernizing Italy, correcting stereotypes about the country's backwardness." He invested in Italy's infrastructure, which in turn created jobs. In 1935, he also turned his sights back to Ethiopia, conducting an invasion both to avenge Italy's defeat and to showcase "Fascism's remarking of Italy and Italians" as strong, white, European makers of Empire. Ben-Ghiat notes, "His May 1936 announcement of victory [over Ethiopia] and the establishment of the Italian East African Empire marked the peak of his popularity."

All these years and decades later, as the demographics in the United States have changed, Donald Trump remains quite good at playing on white supremacist anxieties among certain (many? most?) Americans. He also worries about members of "the white race" disappearing, both individually, from every visible position of power, and en masse, as the numerical majority.  That's why he and his entire administration keep attacking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, as a pretext for the violent reassertion of white supremacist, patriarchal employment standards in our government. 

His anxieties about America's whiteness also help to explain his otherwise incomprehensible desire to "make Canada the 51st state." As he worries that America is becoming brown and Black, he worries, like Mussolini did, that it will become a metaphorical colony, effeminized, shrinking, and weak.  And Donald Trump is not about to be a member of a feminized minority.  He will be masculine, a colonizer who simply takes from each land what he wants: Rare earth minerals from Ukraine, location from Greenland, and from Canada, an instant bounty of what he is sure are white people.

For Trump, however, the problem is that he wants these things, but the American people, not so much. We have no Battle of Adwa that we need Donald Trump to avenge. He believed somehow that January 6th counted, but happily, it did not. Opposite. Very few people want to make a national hero out of Enrique Tarrio, and even fewer want to invade freaking Canada. Tragically, he can feed his base with attacks on trans athletes and "DEI hires" - but they won't feel full unless the price of eggs is also falling. And it isn't. Trump isn't investing in infrastructure or creating jobs; in fact, he's destroying them - or letting the richest man in the world and his little minions destroy them, while meanwhile giving every appearance of stealing our persona data.  Destroying Biden's progress with respect to insulin?  That's not popular.  Neither is gutting Medicaid to extend a tax break to the rich.

Trump doesn't want to create anything; he only wants to rage and destroy. That might be an effective short-term strategy for winning an election, but it's not a long-term strategy for controlling a country, let alone running one (something I'm not sure particularly interests him - another reason, perhaps, that he seems more interested in international acquisitions than domestic improvements).  

Trump's power right now lies in speed, lies, Republican fealty, and not much else.  The courts are catching up to him, and the Republicans are getting yelled at - in their voice mails, in town halls, and I hope on the sidewalks.  The American people are pissed. Literally no one elected this man to stop us from finding the cure to Alzheimer's. No American wants their private data seized.  No American wants to be abandoned by the federal government when their area is devastated by hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.  Trump is making massive withdrawals from the national bank of good will without putting anything back in, and if things continue apace, I believe we'll soon see him floundering.

BLost and Found

This morning, I got an email from an old friend about an old art blog, one where I have not posted in perhaps seven years. She sent screen caps of her comments, friendly little greetings and remarks that she's been making this entire time, which is sweet and funny and hurts my heart. In between my omg and my oh no and my wait, do I even remember the password for that blog, I found this blog, which - wait. What?! I forgot about this blog. How in the Coke-Pepsi wars did I forget about this entire blog?!  Writing is one of the ways I mend my boat - plug holes, seal cracks, protect the wood. If I don't write, I don't float.

(And then I remember.  Alzheimer's. The pandemic. Cancer. My father, dying. My body, erupting with chronic pain. I've not been floating anywhere; I've been half-drowning, slowly, over years. There are probably a number of people who could blog that, eloquently and in real time. I, as it turns out, was not one of them.)   

It is a deeply different world now than when the first COVID case hit America. Donald Trump is back in office for the second time now, his administration operating like a racist tennis ball machine, pelting us with ICE raids; crashing planes; nominees so unqualified for their posts that they are actively dangerous to the country; South African billionaires who want to see the US government pulled apart like pizza bread; unconstitutional funding freezes; unconstitutional executive orders, anti-trans horrors, bizarre fantasies of taking control of Canada, Greenland, and Gaza, and the most zealously racist and irrational attacks on DEI, where "DEI" clearly just means Black Americans, and where "attacks" means writing with the big font that everyone who is not a white man is by definition less than. Less qualified. Less intelligent. Less competent. Less human.

Every single tennis balls hits painfully. Every one is violent. The relentlessness of them, the unstopping, uncaring, unfeeling barrage of them, is almost impossible to bear. And as hundreds if not thousands of people have observed, that, of course, is by design. Indiana's Jim Banks - one of my Senators - told CBS before Trump's inauguration that it would be "shock and awe," which really drives home the degree to which Trump is waging a war:

He's making it very clear that Republicans in the Senate and the House, we have a short window of time to get the things done that we need to get done. That's a different attitude than 2017. There were a lotta things that President Trump wanted to accomplish in those first two years that we never got around to. He's not gonna miss the moment this time.

The rush, Banks goes on to say, is the upcoming midterms.  Not everyone agrees that we will continue to have elections, but I am hoping we will retain a strong enough memory of ordinary democracy to insist upon midterms, which are less than two years away. I guess we'll see.

Republican Senators and representatives, meanwhile, are not really getting anything done except confirming Trump's appalling slate of nominees.  They certainly have little to say about Trump seizing their powers for himself, in violation of the law and the US constitution, even as Elon Musk is killing programs and people at the same time, even as the vice president is all but foaming at the mouth to have a true constitutional crisis, where the Supreme Court rules and the the president extends his middle finger.  

There are many organizers out there posting about the actions that we can take - that we must take - to mitigate the harm he is doing and to protect all those being targeted. I seek that wisdom every single day.  To participate in actions, however, we need our boats to stay in good order.  And that means we have to keep mending, plugging, sealing, charting a course, scanning the horizon, and checking the weather while also hydrating, getting enough sleep, working a job or two, making a meal or three, and keeping life going.  How are we meant to manage all of it at once? 

I read an essay last night by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg called "Fortify Inside: Why Spiritual Practice Matters During the Rising Authoritarian Tide." (I also literally just realized, looking back at her essay, that she is the one who pushed Jim Banks's "shock and awe" quote back to the forefront of my mind.) 

I appreciated at the deepest level the Rabbi's phrasing of this sentiment: "They are deliberately attempting to trigger a trauma response so that we are less able to respond from our whole selves and more likely to just go along with whatever's happening." I am grateful to her for this clear naming of what is happening to me and to millions of others. I am traumatized. I am out of my boat and down in the water, which I know must be deathly cold because my teeth have been chattering - not in the metaphor, but in reality. My teeth are chattering, rattling against my will or calling, for minutes at a time, sheerly from stress or anxiety. It's incredibly unnerving. I'm not of any use in that state.  I need back in my boat. 

I need a piece of her advice, too, which is to plug into a "big" source of energy - God, the universe, love, creativity, journaling, yoga - and engage in spiritual practice, whether by that name or by another, so that we can develop real resilience. (Read her essay for more on that.)  For me, this definitely means writing, and it means creating. I am finishing a crocheted blanket for my family, and I need to prioritize that over playing Tears of the Kingdom, which is more like spiritual Novocaine than spiritual practice, more like shutting down than charging up.

All of the things we need to do are active, including rest and self-care. Make. Build. Meditate. Stretch. Read. Brew tea.  Don't shut down. Charge up. 

We need you.