The Tower is Falling

Thoughts at 11:59:59

It has only been three months since Inauguration Day and already it’s clear that this administration is everything that we¹ had feared it would be and more. What’s worse is that some people chose this, and while I suspect they will end up suffering under his policies as well (if they aren’t already), they will not be the ones most severely harmed. All attempts to reason or plead with his supporters were met with rejection, either due to delusion, ignorance, or perhaps worse, indifference.

I remember reading once that the biggest indicator of a relationship being doomed to fail was if one partner felt contempt for the other. After the first Trump election, I wondered how we as a country could ever survive when we felt such contempt for one another. How could I respect my fellow citizens when they had voted for him? How could I respect their moral judgment when I thought their views and actions were amoral? How could I respect their intelligence when they eschewed critical thinking and rejected facts, spreading misinformation and hateful rhetoric? I frequently see conservatives online complaining that their left leaning or progressive friends did not want to hang out with them over a difference of opinion. Quite frankly, I could not care less about the opinion of someone who either actively or passively supports colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, or capitalism through their political choices.

For years, the Republican party has used rhetoric that devalued education, emphasized the individual over the collective good, and embraced an alt-right fringe movement which ate away at the veneer of the Republican party and exposed it for what it had always been: a corrupt, cheating, racist, sexist, classist party of con-men. By leaning into the fringe and riling up their base using racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and transphobic dog whistles for years, they reaped a president like Trump and likely the end of the United States of America as we know it.

I am exhausted. I do not have the energy to waste on trying to convince anyone who voted for Trump why they were morally and intellectually wrong for that choice. This president did not hide his agenda. Project 2025 was available for anyone who wanted to read it. The plans were clear. He has been saying the “quiet” part out loud for a long time now. I’m sick of arguing about whether or not climate change is real or if caring about other people is important. I’m done. Either grow up and stop being such a selfish person that you believe that a world with slavery and genocide and rape and cruelty and poverty and hunger and houselessness are acceptable as long as you can do whatever the fuck you want and call that freedom. You would gleefully celebrate people I love being put into concentration camps, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, or killed because of who they are, and you’re upset because we can’t be friends? If this is the ideology you support, I can’t respect you or trust you; how could we possibly be friends? It’s not that we aren’t on the same page and just need to compromise or agree-to-disagree; we aren’t even living in the same reality. There is no middle-ground between freedom and concentration camps.

This website is for those who want to create a better world for everyone; I have no interest in arguing with anyone who is looking to destroy and hurt rather than build and heal.

But Trump’s presidencies have had a secondary consequence: the Democratic party has been exposed to an ever-growing number of people as a weak, ineffectual, spineless party which could do no more with their power than to say, “Trump bad, we good, vote for us so you can stop thinking about politics so hard”. Worse, they have continued to do little of substance even post-inauguration.

Democrats (the voters, not the politicians), in particular those of you who are white moderates, I need to you to pay attention to this: you have got to stop waiting on the Democrats (the politicians, not the voters) to save you. You have got to stop under-reacting to what is happening right now because you believe the system will correct itself. The system we have was primarily created by wealthy white men who thought of other people as property and didn’t want to pay taxes; the system is what created this problem in the first place, not what will solve it. As Audre Lorde wrote, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (1979).

For too long, too many of us have believed that if we are good and play by the rules and work hard or do the right thing that we will be safe. This is the same trap we have set for victims of rape (if do or don’t do xyz thing you will be safe and he will rape that other girl instead). You believe that if you keep your head down and vote blue no matter who that eventually the ship will right itself. Even as you watch government institutions fall and more and more awful and inhumane things happening day by day, you continue to wait for someone who will take the lead and steer the ship backwards. We have been raised in a culture of superheroes and white saviors and the exceptions to the rule, but don’t you see my darlings: we are the ones we have been waiting for. We must save each other in order to save ourselves.

Wanting to return to the halcyon days of 2012 because you felt safer and happier then, and because you’re afraid of a future that is outside of what you’re comfortable imagining, is myopic, self-centered, and cowardly. Everything you’re afraid of happening if you stand up and demand a better world is already happening to someone else. By accepting a world where slavery is a fact of life, you are consenting to the possibility that you are or may one day be enslaved yourself. By accepting a world where poverty is allowed to exist, you are consenting to the possibility that you are or may one day be thrust into poverty yourself. By accepting a world where people are abused, raped, tortured, and murdered because of the color of their skin, the religion they practice, their gender presentation, sexuality, or any other factor you can categorize and label, you are consenting to the possibility that you are or may one day be abused, raped, tortured, and murdered. You surely must understand that even if we could return to 2012, we would still end up in 2025.

You have to stop thinking of Trump as the problem, when in reality he is merely the symptom of a sick society built on rotten foundations.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. said

I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

The truth is, we have been living at 11:59:59 for so long, that just like the frog in the pot of boiling water, we have become accustomed to a “new” normal step-by-step over time, and never realized that climate change and fascism and war were no longer part of some distant future, with plenty of time for us to fix them and finally do the right thing. This is our reality. Now.

Every time there was a school shooting and we did not demand gun reform, we paved the way for more school shootings, until school shootings became a fact of life. Every time we chose convenience over our conscience, our ethics, and our better judgment, we allowed corporations and politicians and billionaires to control every aspect of our lives. Every time we heard a racist joke and didn’t call it out to avoid confrontation, we tacitly gave permission to racists to continue being racist. Every time we took our dogs for a walk and didn’t pick up their poop and throw it away or went to a National Park and littered, we were telling everyone around us “I don’t give a shit about you or this community or the environment.”

There is no going backwards. Rather, we have a choice to make. How shall we shape the future? The tower is collapsing and the old world is falling away. The foundations were rotten and we’ve built and rebuilt with the same tools and materials again and again, yet somehow we are always surprised when it falls. Clinging to the past, to nostalgia, to a system that has been a source of terror and devastation to citizens and non-citizens alike, will not save you. We cannot continue to fall into this trap; it is time to build something new, with new materials, and new tools. It is time to build something without hierarchy or oppression. Life should not be a zero-sum game where you are either the winner or one of the losers.

The truth is: I’m terrified. The world is falling apart — worse, it’s being ripped at the seams intentionally by those who have more power than humanity. It’s a kind of sickness, that sort of power. How could it not be? Like a drug where you always need an escalating amount to feel good, the wealthy must always acquire more wealth, because in a capitalist world, wealth is power. And what is the ultimate form of power? The power to control people. People are dying. PEOPLE ARE DYING. All over this planet, every day, because other people are killing them and the rest of us are more afraid of falling further down the pyramid scheme that is the class hierarchy than we are of the cost to our souls if we don’t help those being crushed below us.

For several years I had found it increasingly difficult to believe in humanity and the potential of building a better, more decent society. There are before and afters in life, where you see that the world was one world and then it wasn’t, it was new, and there was a clear distinction even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on what it was. One crisis after another where instead of coming together, we split further apart, chose selfishness over empathy, fear over love, and money over our humanity.

Capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism are the four horsemen that have heralded the end of the current form of the world and we have a small window of opportunity to grab hold of the steering wheel and move the ship in a new direction. But doing so will take education, agency, self-healing, unlearning, activism, discomfort, growth, and a belief that a better world is possible. We need only act according to that belief. This means that if we want to create a kinder world, we must be kind ourselves, but further, we must be willing to act to hold others accountable when they are unkind. If you want to create a world where all people have equal value regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, etc., you must act in accordance with that belief and stand up to those who would harm others, whether they are your relatives, your lovers, your friends, your co-workers, or even a stranger.

This website is (one) way for me to advocate for the things I believe in; it is also a way for me to reach out to connect with others who believe a better world for everyone is possible, because, “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free” (Maya Angelou).

Finally, I want a place to freely share my passions, skills, and knowledge with anyone who would find them useful or helpful. The skills I teach in my courses about communication, research, and critical thinking are necessary if we are going to create a just and equitable society, but often locked behind the exorbitant paywall of a college degree. Education should be free; not because it will help you to get a better paying job, but because a comprehensive liberal arts education is necessary for a functioning free society. I will create a curriculum here that will provide lessons on the skills I teach (and was taught) in my writing, speech, and literature courses, and with a focus on the ethical questions we must ask and answer if we are to move forward in a new direction.

“Belief
Initiates and guides action—
Or it does nothing.”

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

1. A disclaimer about the use of pronouns like “we” and “us” and “you” in my writing: I’m using these pronouns to show how we are all collectively responsible for the world we are creating together, regardless of individual actions and inactions. As a species, as a people, as a country, we have created this situation, even if individually we may have varying degrees of responsibility in accordance with our privilege and context. I am not using “we” and “us” to assign blame, but rather to ask that we take accountability for the world we live in and where we need to improve if we are to create a better one. ↩︎