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Published: November 24th 2016
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Although this is a travel blog, not a political blog, the train wreck of the American election and the orange-haired, ass-clown elect are the antithesis of what travel is about, and why it is something worth doing. Travel is not really about touring old cities, photographing ruins, or catatonic wandering through art museums. And it most definitely isn’t about building walls and vilifying others. Rather, travel is about experiencing the vast human tapestry directly rather than relying on the television or the internet to tell you what it is and how to think about it. It is about engaging the unknown and the unfamiliar. It is about uncertainty. It is about stepping out of the cocoon womb of your own provincial existence into the messy world. It is about long uncomfortable bus rides, strange foods, and incomprehensible words. It is about re-learning how to see and listen and think. It is about the planet’s incredible diversity of places and cultures and people; people who don’t look, feel, understand, dream, speak, or know like you do. It is about wonder and awe and realizing one’s own tacit cultural assumptions and biases. It is an experience that holds the possibility of self-awareness and self-discovery. And for all that it is about difference, it is also – and perhaps most fundamentally – about the similarities that bind us despite the multiplicity of forms.
The American election was a repudiation of all this and an embrace of America’s basest instincts. The United States lost it’s mind, it’s way, and quite possibly, it’s soul. Now, the shining city on the hill has been abandoned, and the lamp beside the golden door is dark. Like the brazen giant of old, the New Colossus is being sold for scrap. Who knows what gaudy, gilded Ozymandias monstrosity will rise in her place. For the next four years, the new horsemen of ignorance, fear, lies, and scapegoating will wreak their havoc. Neither the environment nor the world, let alone the United States, will fare well. After the long night ends, the hard work of picking up the pieces begins, but it is unclear if humpty dumpty can be put together again. Though America’s bloviating tin-pot despot may indeed trash the whole America project, he is not particularly unique. He is a recurring cancer throughout the long arc of history: a shitty blowhard demagogue who calls the tune while fools pay the piper. Ultimately, however, he is a symptom not the disease.
As America’s gluttonous debaucherous holiday of giving thanks approaches, it is important to look around the table at those you ‘break bread with.’ Regardless of whether the Trumpocalypse ends in a boom or a fizzle, everyone who voted for him has sanctioned and empowered his words. They are accountable for this. They now own his words. All of them. Before you raise your glass and give thanks, remember the jackasses who brought the apple pie also sanction torture, willful climate destruction, nuclear war, and murdering the families and children of our ‘enemies’. They condone lying, cheating, scapegoating, misogyny, racism, violence, and bullying. This is what those who voted for Trump support. This is their moral compass. This is what they bring to the Thanksgiving table. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is the America they want for our children.
This isn’t the pendulum of power mundanely swinging in the clockworks of democracy-as-usual. This isn’t a difference of opinion. This isn’t an economic or a political disagreement. This is a moral disagreement. Morality is simply what is right and what is wrong, and you don’t need your own personal savior to know the difference. The mountain of outrages spewed by Trump are lacking in basic human decency and are simply morally repugnant. Those who support him, especially those craven hypocritical charlatans claiming to be Christians, are cut from the same cloth. These are your neighbors, your friends, and your family. Basket of deplorables is gross understatement. At best, they are short-sighted imbeciles, but it is more likely that they are just small-minded, xenophobic, bigoted assholes. Fuck the high road. Tell the truth.
In the end, this too shall pass. But in the end, we all die. MLK said
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” This election and what is says about who America is, and who America will become are things that matter. Sadly, America’s embrace of Trump’s ‘apocalyptic vision of an ailing America’ will have far-reaching consequences. The shit storm will spread, impacting the world and those who wish to explore it. Good luck weathering it. Though the self-immolation will be televised, I will not be watching.
p.s. If you want an actual sane evaluation of the moral roots of conservatives and liberals, and why i clearly popped the blue pill, this is excellent: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind/transcript?language=en#t-695042 - but i think it misses the point that close-minded, xenophobic, bigots are assholes.
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Kuan Yin
Karen Johnson
Can your country break your heart?
I felt gut-shot after this last election. I didn't know that this many of my fellow citizens were this exclusionary and this unable to understand cause and effect. I have always recognized and been glad of the privilege that being a US citizen gave me. I am afraid that this status has been tarnished. I am reminded of the words of the Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." I hope that as a nation we can live up to it.