From the Comment Files: Keeping Cool
I wrote this in a comment to a post that linked this great article on how keeping cool helps us at times like these.
I’m definitely a fan of keeping cool in the face of this situation, and I do strongly believe he was picked because he was the Republican nominee and the country is swinging to the right (in the pendulum sense, meaning it will swing back again). He can, should, and will be defeated on his policies. It’s of a piece with that position that, when his policies have a prejudicial impact on marginalized groups, on the economy, when we think he’s wrong on foreign policy, or domestic policy, or economic policy, or health policy, or any other policy, we will speak up, because we disagree. I’m fairly liberal, so that’s not different than how it would have been if it had been Presidents Cruz or Rubio. And that’s what this article is getting at.
What makes him different are two things. First is the corruption issue. This is uniquely terrible and dangerous, undermining the integrity of policy. But we can oppose this the same way. So when he appears to be using the US government to enrich himself and trading policy for graft, we cooly speak up, just as we would against any head of state doing this, and we lobby appropriately with respectful and cool calls and emails.
What I have to fight with myself over is the tweets, the statements at rallies, the off-the-cuff remarks where his ugliness shows. The angry tirades about respectful words spoken by a group of actors at a play and no ink spilled on the 900 hate crimes committed since election day (mentioned in his scripted speech in the rally last night, but never spontaneously, never on twitter, where his true self seems to show most). But this too is the challenge. If we let rage take over – and I get enraged over this every day, but I fight to keep it from taking over – then his sort of character wins the public narrative. In a screaming match he’s louder. But we can outthink him, and we can love harder. And when his golden castles in the sky don’t materialize, the country’s going to come back to our way of being again. I truly believe that.
Vine & Figtree 