#seeing gerald's journal in full has given me a couple ideas

[wereh0gz]

Hm

What if I made Rue's journal

[siouxempirepodcast]

Stranger Things: The First Month of the Trump Era

I wanted to complete and turn in this article more than two weeks ago, but I’ve been struggling. Struggling to understand, struggling to accept what is happening in our country. In fact, it seems like every time I wrap my mind around what is happening and sit down to chronicle it, it all blows up with the latest press release, the most recent executive order, the newest accusation, the latest Twitter war. In Part One of this Blog Series (Orange is the New Black: The First Week) I listed, by day, what the Trump Administration had done during those first seven days. This blow-by-blow account began on the Saturday after the Inauguration, when Trump went to CIA headquarters, stood at the wall that bore 117 stars (for each intelligence officer killed in the line of duty) and claimed that attendance at his swearing-in was the YUGEST ever. It ended with the following Friday, Holocaust Remembrance Day where Trump failed to mention the word “Jews” at all in his tribute. I knew, for the second installment of this series, that I wanted to talk in broader terms about the first full month of Trump’s presidency but that’s where I’ve been stymied. Instead, my mind is going to some pretty dark places. Areas of confusion and disorder, anger, and dismay. It’s been nearly impossible to navigate my way through this. We can joke about how dystopian fiction has become ALL the rage again. Stories like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Stand,” “1984” and Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” (which I am currently re-reading). In “The Stand,” novelist Stephen King wrote: “Afterward Larry felt as if he had been through a long pillow fight in which all the pillows had been treated with a low-grade poison gas.” That, my friends, is how I feel. There are times I can clearly see what is happening and how to fight it and other times that I feel like I’ve lost my everloving mind. I’m beginning to think that is the intention. When we are confused, we do not fight. When we are uncertain, we do not protest. And this administration has been masterful at inciting doubt in the most fundamental of certainties: Truth itself. Truth has always been a wascally wabbit. Just ask any married couple what happened on any given night, and you’ll get two wildly different answers. But usually, you can find the full truth somewhere in between. In between our account of what is real and what we’re being told is a dark and murky place. A land of “Alternate Truths.” A place where somewhere around half of all Americans are quaking in fear and the other half are gleefully celebrating. And if you want to feel like your half is somehow losing this battle, somehow much smaller in numbers than you believe, just start looking closely at your neighbors. This past Saturday night on a random search on Twitter for #rapidcity (hey, I’m a writer and a blogger – I just try to stay apprised of what’s happening around my community…) I discovered the other half. They were triumphant. They were determined. And they are Neo-Nazis. Yes, real Nazi’s. Not just the kind of derpy-derp redneck, backwater, ignorant white folk who think black people and Jews and Muslims are inferior. I mean the kind of individuals who say this: “ROFLMAO it’s going to get very very bad for #jews & sooner than they think. You’ll be licking Goyim boots very soon Kikes.” Yes. This “human being” lives amongst us. He follows people like David Duke, Richard Spencer, the Europa Project and other white supremacists. He also follows a bunch of dominatrix-related profiles. I was surprised that he didn’t have a frog picture on his Twitter profile (in fact he doesn’t have a pic at all – he’s got the ubiquitous, anonymous, chickenshi… egg). And no, I’m not going to name him. It’s like someone poked a sleeping beast and awoke it. It’s like someone opened up the tar sand pits and poured some black and foul substance on the ground. It’s like we’re living in the Upside Down. “You swear, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth – so help you God?” – statement of Sworn Testimony, American Justice System. What is truth? Remember when, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, nearly 16 years ago we declared that perhaps Irony was dead? We also thought back then that truffled macaroni and cheese and Foie gras hamburgers were going to become the norm, but both ideas proved unsustainable. Today we have to ask the question “Is truth dead?” Like the understanding that this administration believes that the American public will develop “protest fatigue” I believe that they think they can continue to manipulate the facts and steer us toward the conclusions they wish us to have and that eventually we will tire and give in. If nothing else that many fighting so hard on the left will stop their public gatherings and head home, leaving those in power to tinker with our freedoms willfully. To have our national media sources declared “the enemy of our people” is a shocking statement. We are nothing without an impartial, even hostile media. There are Republicans who have made statements to the contrary. That even some of our previously most-divisive GOP leaders understand that key to a free society is a free press. Last week on “The Today Show” former President George W. Bush responded “I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. That we need the media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive, and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the press to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.” Other presidents, throughout history, have spoken at length about the need for truth and transparent democracy. Our first President, George Washington, said: “Truth will ultimately prevail where there are pains to bring it to light.” “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom” – Thomas Jefferson “All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse” – John Quincy Adams “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth” – Franklin D. Roosevelt “I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot air.” “Honest conviction is my courage; the Constitution is my Guide” – Andrew Johnson “Tell the truth, work hard and come to dinner on time” – Gerald R. Ford Cleveland’s flowery language aside, each of these men spoke to the notion that the truth is a fixed and inflexible reality. Facts are what support the truth. Perceptions are the way that each sees and accepts the reality. Beliefs are the underlying structure that impacts how we perceive the reality. Experiences mold our views, making us lean in one direction or another, but truth is still truth – right? Trump is a President and an administration that is desperately trying to control the perceptions of the public and their reactions. It’s hard to comprehend how a man who spent 13% of his first month in office Tweeting (actual statistic, from the Wall Street Journal) fails to understand the transparency and connectivity of the modern world. This administration’s attempts to manipulate, debunk and deceive the public come off so laughably bad and yet every mouthpiece representing the president is so deeply convinced and entrenched in their unwavering determination that it leaves you feeling a bit befuddled. I’m not the only one who feels like I was treated with a low-grade poison gas. I’m not the only one living in the Upside Down. Am I? The first installment of this series was about what Donald J. Trump and the Trump administration had done in the first week. This second installment is what is happening to us. When we cannot see the truth, can we fight for it? Will we know when our friends, family, neighbors may be in peril? Will we even know when we are? Do we check out? Turn off the 24-hour news cycle (of all stripes) and sign out of Twitter and just focus on what is right in front of our noses? Is it better to simply NOT know that there are Nazi’s in our midst? Do we turn back to the fiction of yore, reading of make-believe dystopias while chuckling at the resonance, the reflections in our society? Do we only gather around our televisions on Saturday Night, in our Snuggies, and laugh at what is no longer satire but straight-up, the straight-forward fact (albeit with hilarious actors)? Is there a sane way to experience the Trump Era? If so, can you share it with me?

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from Stranger Things: The First Month of the Trump Era