Bleak Beauty Blog

Fear has come to America. Not the fear of a Mexican family being divided. Not the fear of an African American couple for their son. Not the fear of a queer being harassed when he leaves thevsafety of his city. This is a fear much greater and more profound. It is the fear of the collapse of our democracy.

What have we done? How did this happen? The Democratic Party has failed us. As a defense of liberal democracy, the Democratic Party has collapsed. Ambition is endemic in all politicians, and in Hillary, the party was hitching its star to a loser, and when the winner was there all along. This calamity was not accomplished by racists and people obsessed with xenophobia, but by voters that have for decades seen the quality of their lives erode as other Americans enriched themselves. Bernie Sanders could have won the election that Hillary lost. The ambition of the Clintons did not stand aside for the good of the party or the nation. And we have just begun to pay for it.

And what now? Most of what I know about America and power I learned as I witnessed, close up, the SNCC and the southern civil rights movement. Don’t count on the law courts to save us. Don’t count on the local and municipal governments. Only we can save ourselves. “Democracy is in the streets.” That means in the streets, not on your IPhone. Is this cancer in American history going to result in quasi military forces trying to round up Mexicans that don’t have proper papers? They will not allow this in Albuquerque. The community will resist. And if they resist in Albuquerque, they will resist in many places. And are they going to shut down medical facilities for women? And no one will resist? Of course they will resist. And they will open new pipe lines? Open coal mines? And you don’t think there will be resistance? Look at Standing Rock right now at this moment. I have been to Cannon Ball. Sitting Bull is buried on the Standing Rock Rerservation. Sitting Bull died resisting arrest at Standing Rock. And they don’t think anyone will resist?

One, two, three, Standing Rocks! That is what I say. And if these quasi military forces shoot down demonstrators because that is where this is going, see if this country doesn’t rise up. Americans are a complicated and at times an infuriating people. But there is such a thing as an American. And they are most of us. They will never sit on their hands and watch three centuries of civilization thrown out the window by some clown who is good at tweets.