Say No to Mars: A Journal Entry Reaction
I want to start this post by saying that the last thing a lot of people need right now is a reaction to the election from a 30 year old dude largely unaffected by it. This is more for my own processing. As a writer, my journal entries often find themselves public facing. It doesn’t mean they are always helpful or needed and by no means does it mean they are “right”. But something in me feels compelled to express them. So, for my own sense-making, here are some immediate reactions to sort through or to not. That’s up to you.
Like many people like me, I woke up distraught and loaded with sadness regarding the election results. On a walk yesterday morning, I had a deep pit in my stomach. My intuition sensed this was going to happen. Sadly, here we are.
The harsh truth of it is, I don’t directly have a lot to immediately worry about. As a white dude married to a woman, this result is built to benefit me. It doesn’t benefit my wife as much. Or my LGBTQ+ friends. It certainly doesn’t benefit those at the bottom of the hill from me that are seeking asylum. But it does benefit me. That’s a pretty gross broth to simmer in. I sense it should be.
The curious thing is that in a shift from 2016, many people who don’t fall into my demographic (larger percentage of Latino(a) voters, black men, others we’re learning about through exit polls) also seem to think this result benefits them more as well.
A few things come to mind immediately.
First, I’m genuinely curious why the people who don’t look like me that feel another Trump term is a good thing feel that way. I sense I have something to learn from that.
I’ve heard it boiled down to over the last decade Democrats have obsessed over character and Republicans have obsessed over economy. Is it really that simple? Probably not, but maybe there’s conversation there. Seems to me that as someone who isn’t as immediately negatively impacted by the results, I should be the one engaging with/having those conversations rather than my siblings who feel at risk.
Next, cultures dominant conversation and celebrity worship and person fixation being interwoven with politics is awful and gross and only makes everyone more mad and distant from each other and it needs to stop.
Hating Trump as a person can simultaneously be valid and extremely unproductive.
Caveat… obviously with a guy like Trump in office for four years — someone who obsesses over his celebrity — moving away from this is going to take time. But somehow we need to move away from character obsession.
Politics and the people it’s made up of being the one to inform art and culture makes art and the culture it creates subordinate to politics/politicians.
Yes, we need protest songs. But we also need art so good, so moving, and so powerful that it is the one informing politics, not the other way around.
Lastly, and maybe the most important to me because it encapsulates all these pieces in a way but is also possibly the most esoteric…
We can’t let Mars start to sound better than Earth.
This may sound silly, but with Mars-colonizing-fetishist Elon Musk being involved in this new administration, I’m actually serious about it. For humans to be so obtuse that we think colonizing another planet is a better option than caring for the one we currently live on… call me crass, but I think we deserve blowing up in the rocket ship on the way there more than we deserve having a “planetary second chance”, if it comes to that.
For literally billions of years, our Earth has found ways to support life. It has been a house for the sun to become creative (nod to DJD’s book Sun House). Humans have been around for less than a million of those billions of years. The narcissism of jumping ship already to feed our species-centric habits rather than learning how to participate in the holobiont (assemblage of parts that constitute a greater whole) of our home is a symptom of our illness.
I refuse.
Bury me in the dirt before that happens.
Please comment and add your take on any of my blind spots, agreements you might have, questions, corrections, additions, etc.
Thank you for such a hard thoughtful reminder!