I write this essay on the morning of the Clinton-Trump debates. As the possibility of a Trump presidency grows in strength, sounds of confusion and the stink of fear have begun to fill the air. How could a man who lies like a psychopath, who bullies and mocks and finds common cause with White Supremacists be our president. It makes no sense. We must be living in an altered state of consciousness.
We have been lied to before. Think back to our entry into the Iraq war, the Iran contra affair, Watergate, and the torture chambers that we transferred to foreign soil, lest they infect our own. We have had presidents who have torn down what we thought was almost sacred—the New Deal safety net—Reagan, Bush, and Clinton readily come to mind—and helped to build a world in which the 1% own 50% of our wealth and god knows what percentage of the decision-making power.
What I want to talk about today, though, is the impact of the presidential campaign on us, moderate, liberal, and Progressive Americans who wonder how this could be happening to them, feeling like bystanders to a process that is out of our control.
I have studied the European climate during the rise of fascism and Nazism. It was fed by extreme poverty and loss of life during World War 1, which, in turn, fueled the rise of Nazism and the concomitant anti-Semitism that almost wiped out the entire Jewish people. For me, just behind the actual death and destruction, the worst part was that so many people just stood by and let it happen. I don’t mean the time-worn and erroneous way that later anti-Semites described Jews as passively accepting their fate like lambs to slaughter. I mean the millions of people who did not believe in fascism or didn’t wholly believe in it, who were offended, but who did nothing to resist.
Now I am afraid that we are standing by. Almost 70% of Americans dislike Trump and much of what he stands for but—and this is the point—I don’t believe that we are taking the threat seriously enough. If we don’t, it may not be the “basket of deplorables” who are most to blame, it will be us. As Albert Einstein famously warned, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
In the face of our own fear and confusion, it is hard to know what to do. Many in the middle and on the left seem dispirited, depressed, just short of giving in to despair. Genuine hope seems an illusion. Others are in a state of denial. Hillary Clinton will surely win in the end, they say, however timidly. We are Americans. We will come to our senses. We can’t be this lax, can we? This is just how political contests go. They tighten up at the end. The forces of good will come through in the end.
Alternatively, we whisper that Trump may not turn out as badly as he seems. He’s just saying all those terrible things to win the votes of the Republican base. Look at the influence of beautiful Ivanka and her new childcare proposals. Maybe these “denials” will prove out and Clinton will win or Trump will turn out to be better than he seems. Maybe, but are we willing to take that chance?
I know that this article will seem alarmist to many, extreme to some. But shouldn’t we raise the cry, just in case? We do need to organize. We do need to fight our own despair and impotence. We need to fight our way out of this nightmare. The question, then, is how do we do that. I know that the Democratic Party will organize. I get several fundraising emails every day. The “ground” troops are hard at work. The ads are ubiquitous. But that hasn’t worked so far. The harder the Clinton troops work, the more they seem to be losing. Trump continues to gain; and he is now tied. When you continue to try one strategy—characterize Trump as an immoral lunatic who can’t be entrusted with the keys to the kingdom—and that strategy does not work, you can’t keep repeating yourself. You will lose.
We need to be heartier and more creative in the coming weeks. We need to shake our confusion and despair. Before we strengthen ourselves on the big stage, we have to raise our spirit, one person at a time. Here are some thoughts about breaking loose.
When I start down that road to despair, I generally try to make sense of what’s going on. I’ve been trying to do that for months and months now, and I can’t. It makes no sense that Trump’s popularity grows. I have written more than ten essays about the subject, trying to understand and not just condemn White working class voters, but I have failed to clarify things even to myself. The political situation just seems absurd.
So I have begun to turn to the master of absurdity, Albert Camus. Camus, who wrote in the face of fascist and communist totalitarianism, simply began with the premise that the world is, in fact, absurd. The absurdity that we face in the present day is not an aberration, it is our shared reality. We cannot grasp it logically. Theological explanations are not helpful: no amount of sin or the need for cleansing, for example, could explain the rise of Hitler. Our moral compass just seems to spin. As Camus would say, we live in a godless universe and Trump exemplifies that universe. Sociology and psychology also bring us to a kind of dead end because explaining the horror doesn’t stop it. What to do, then, in the face of this absurdity.
Camus’ philosophy is complex but here’s the simple version from his The Myth of Sisyphus that has sometimes kept me going. Sisyphus is a character in Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down again. This sometimes characterizes the experience for those of us who have tried year after year to build upon progressive values. We push the rock up the hill for a generation, then it comes tumbling down. Why, we ask, should we keep trying.
Camus tells us that Sisyphus is only freed from his despair when he recognizes the absurdity of his situation. I suppose that goes for progressives like me, who might call ourselves realistic but who have in mind an idealized future just beneath the surface of our policy proposals. What I feel when I fully acknowledge that the Trump surge may well win out, when I give up hope, even for a moment, is first terror that is soon, paradoxically, followed by relief. I can stop trying to push the rock to the top.
By pushing and pushing, I had become robotic. I had lost all creativity and, maybe even compassion for the people I want to help. It was as though I had been closing my eyes and holding my breath, hoping that the nightmare would go away. When I give up, when I stop pretending that the world is other than it is, and that includes a world with Donald Trump in it, I can breathe again. With breath, there comes relief. For a moment, I relax, as though the worst is past. Relief is then followed by a sense of freedom. There is no rock. I can do as I please. I can choose my future.
What do I choose? I still choose to push the rock of progress up the hill. But now, no gods are making me do so. And maybe, free from the constant struggle, I can find more creative ways to get that rock up the hill. A lever? Jet propulsion? I sustain my effort because there is nothing else that I can do that fits my values, that gives me a sense of meaning, that sustains my integrity. My struggle for social justice is selfish in this way.
Giving up the robotic struggle leads to freedom and freedom leads to possibilities for a better future because—and this I believe even if logic won’t verify it—the world demands that we strive towards freedom and decency, respect and equality for all. It urges us forward like a mighty river. It is the only path that is worthwhile. So we take it.
Barry Dym 