There was a sign at one of the many, many marches and protests against our current regime that read something like “It’s so bad that even the introverts are here.” Well, that was me this last weekend. I am not fond of crowds. I am especially not fond of crowds of people that have strong feelings, and all agree. I am also extremely reluctant to loudly express my own political opinions. But, things were so bad that I was there.
What has taken me by surprise in this era is just how comfortable racism has become. It used to be something to be kept private, maybe the object of some uncomfortable shame. Now we have a racist president, a racist administration, and people are letting their racist flags (literally) fly. Things are being said by our leaders that are immoral; things are being done by them that would be crimes if we were sane. So we have the racist Attorney General instituting a policy that amounts to torture of children, and the racist president legitimizing this by calling humans “animals” and using words that make it clear that these people are not to be treated as human.
So, it’s bad enough that this introvert woke up early so he could finish the milking and chores, scrawl up a cardboard sign, and drive to town to join about 200 other people along Roseburg’s main drag, where we waved signs around at the passing crowds and tried to be seen and heard, to maybe prick the conscience of our neighbors.
Roseburg is Trump country. It’s very white, it’s tied to an extractive industry that is past its peak, it has a lot of unemployed labor that has fond memories of when things were really good, it has a lot of guns, and it went for Trump by two to one in 2016. Roseburg itself boasts some 20,000 residents. So it was heartening to see that somewhere between 0.5 and 1% of Roseburg was also upset enough to be there. A lot of people driving by honked and waved enthusiastically (and, yes, there were two older white men who made rude gestures). There are apparently things this president can do that are bad enough that they don’t get much support, even here.
Did the protest really do anything? Did I, with my sign, have an effect? Why was I there?
To be sure, I felt personally threatened and insulted. People were, and still are, being tortured in my name, and I sure as hell don’t agree with that, and until the situation stops, I think every American citizen should be reminded, daily, rudely if need be, that children are being tortured in their name. But I felt something beyond that. My sign, which was really not well designed for getting the attention of a passing motorist, read
America took in
“swarming vermin,”
“Scarcely above apes”
“Unlikely to assimilate,” and
“Probably loyal to a hostile foreign power”...
And made THIS American.
Why not make more Americans?
One of the other folks there asked me about my sign, and to my surprise, I got kind of choked up. Although the language is all from the current racists objecting to immigrants, the sign was all about my grandparents and great-grandparents. My dad’s father was a refugee from pogroms in the Ukraine; he and his family were described as swarming vermin and much worse. He married a woman who was the daughter of Scotch-Irish and possibly First Nations ancestry. The Irish were routinely characterized as apes, and First Nations as something worse. On my mom’s side, her mother’s family was from Germany. Many Germans in the late 1800s were fleeing wars, political instability, (or conscription), and many held on to their language; in some places, schools were taught in German, and people complained that they were unlikely to assimilate. Came the Great War, and my great-grandfather was hounded out of his job and died shortly thereafter. Somehow, these terrible threats to America produced...an American. So, when I hear people using this language about the desperate people who cross our southern border, I feel it deeply and personally.
But, again, did it do anything? Will anybody’s mind change? At the rally, we asked each other these questions. One answer we all agreed upon was that we all felt better knowing that, in this place that is so deeply enamored of the racist president, there were other people who were also not OK with things. Many of the passing motorists reminded us of this; and maybe, some voted for Trump but felt that the torture of children was too much to swallow.
Or, maybe not. The Real Doctor has a colleague, a surgeon, so at least formally not a dimwit. He voted for Trump in 2016, rationalizing that Clinton was “just as bad.” Now, many surgeons are bad at admitting human flaws such as making mistakes, so perhaps that is the reason that his support for the president seems to have solidified. I’d rather believe this than believe that he has embraced racism. At any rate, when the Real Doctor asked him, obliquely, about events on the southern border, he suggested that the images in the news were probably those of actors. I suppose that it is more comforting to believe that, however far-fetched it may be, than to believe that you voted for torturing children.
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