Love The One You’re With

In the months leading up to November 3, I found myself worn down by the repeated “bottoms” of late-night hate scrolls, trolls, and bot-blocking. I swore off one-sided arguments with those who had no idea I was arguing with them as I washed dishes. Then, one morning, while shaking off an outrage hangover, two sobering realizations struck me. The first, was that the intolerance that began as my reaction to the Trump presidency, but which had moved beyond politics, touching so many areas of my life, was no way to live. The second was that even if “we” won the election, the fighting would continue. 

So how do we move forward and live among those who bear significant responsibility for the real trauma imposed by this administration over the past four years and how can we come together after so many self-inflicted, media-exploited, and POTUS-approved divisions have frayed the fabric that have held us together, however loosely?

How can we live with those who were unwilling or unable to see the constitution they speak so fondly of tossed aside as Republicans enabled an ego-driven con man with a penchant for autocracy to push our country to the brink of collapse? 

Some days it’s a two, others it’s a four, but as Black people, our threshold is so necessarily high that you probably don’t hear about it until it’s a nine or a 10.

Honestly, I’m not sure, but in order to maintain my sanity and enjoy my life free from the algorithms that work against such pursuits, I’m weeks into practicing how to live among my enemies. Should you find that word hyperbolic, consider what it is to be a Black Jew in 2020 America, where white nationalists have occupied the White House and cabinet, set the agenda, and, with a complicit Republican Party, amplified the voices of and embolden violent extremists. 

From that perspective, how else am I supposed to see those in red baseball hats?

Sure, we’ve all had a seat to the same horror show—the unraveling of the rule of law, democracy, norms and a civil society. And while I have no desire to compete in the oppression Olympics, there has been another level to the Trump presidency for people of color. For those of us with literal skin in the game, the Trump years were a stark reminder of all our lived-in experience since the first time someone hurled a hard-r N-bomb at us, or asked if we spoke English, or were pulled over for possession of melanin, or given a quizzical look from a passenger headed to the main cabin as we ate warmed cashews from ceramic dishes in first class. To paraphrase what artist Phillip Boutte so eloquently said, it’s like that pain chart posted in hospitals to measure discomfort. Some days it’s a two, others it’s a four, but as Black people, our threshold is so necessarily high that you probably don’t hear about it until it’s a nine or a 10.

Consider, too, my heritage as a Jew. Imagine how it felt seeing the hate-filled faces of angry Incels marching, Sieg Heiling, chanting, “Jews will not replace us”, while also having known anti-Semites in the White House fueling that dangerous animus towards us. Have we already forgotten the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh Synagogue? 

The bias, bigotry, and prejudice of white America may have gone underground when a handsome lefty with a jump shot took the highest office, but it didn’t take a cold-war codebreaker to decipher the message being broadcast behind the Tea Party’s cries of death panels, deficits and socialism. For them, a Black First Family in The White House was a call to arms. 

After all of our self-congratulatory back patting following Obama’s election, we were still a nation that had never truly reconciled its past, and, as such, doomed to some degree, to repeat it. In March, when COVID first sent us scrambling for hand sanitizer, white nationalist groups had already grown by 55 percent since Trump’s inauguration. And that was before Ahmaud, Breonna, Elijah, Jacob, and George were killed and we marched for our lives while hate groups came out to fight us – sometimes with police protection. 

Now, with more than 70,000,000 Americans voting to re-elect Trump, it’s clear we’re not done wrestling. At the risk of referencing Billy Joel, Trump didn’t start this dumpster fire. It’s been burning since this land was stolen from the native people, who in Arizona were among the hardest hit by COVID, yet still came out and voted 97 percent for Biden, helping deliver the state. But he sure poured gasoline all over it.

No second helping of stuffing or slice of holiday pie will quell the bloodlust and hatred for the Libtards who Q told them are plotting deep-state takeovers with George Soros and Tom Hanks at shadowy Jew gatherings.

So, again, how do we make peace with all that’s happened when we know who’s to blame? The hats aren’t coming off, the bumper stickers will only get more aggressive, and if the ringing in our ears from the incessant chants of, “ACORN”, “Benghazi”, and “Pizzagate” are just now fading, imagine how long, “Stolen election”, and “Rigged!” will echo? What are the implications when half the country believes they’re seeing democracy in action, but rather, a coup d’état?

We are not only divided by ideology and the culture wars we still cling to, but more terrifying, by the lack of a shared, objective reality from which to base not only our opinions, but our entire existence. It’s one thing to put aside differences in order to have a peaceful Thanksgiving dinner with dad, whose social conservatism spurred him to twice vote for the human embodiment of our worst fears, but it’s something entirely different when it’s a heavily armed mob—buoyed by 30 years of rightwing media pulling their strings like mom showing them the queen of diamonds in a Manchurian game of solitaire—cosplay with camouflage and open-carry laws outside a vote count facility. No second helping of stuffing or slice of holiday pie will quell the bloodlust and hatred for the Libtards who Q told them are plotting deep-state takeovers with George Soros and Tom Hanks at shadowy Jew gatherings.

And while most of us don’t have to pass the gravy to a Three Percenter or a New-Age Yoganon riffing about The Great Awakening and the tyranny of masks and vaccines in a cloying ASMR whisper, this same anti-liberal, white-supremacist cesspool had been championed in the policies and postures of an administration that many of our friends and family have either low-key supported, or embraced with open arms.

So, if we cast aside any hope of reconciliation with the roughly one-third of the Republican electorate that thinks the Qanon conspiracy is at least partially true and throw in the Gadsden flag set along with garden-variety bigots, that’s somewhere around 34 percent of the country. But, what of the hedge-fund bro who happily voted Trump because of the tax breaks, or the Catholic with a good heart who finds him distasteful but wants to repeal Roe V. Wade? And what of the Latin Americans who fell for socialism baiting, even though the candidate they backed aspires to be as autocratic as the strongmen and dictators from which they fled? How do we find common ground when they all contributed to a perfect storm that tested our democracy and nearly broke our spirit?

The truth is, we may not. But that’s okay, because he lost and, though by too slim of a margin, the American public has rejected a culture of cruelty with the message that we’re hungry for stability over chaos, and decency over division. 

And in looking at that slim margin in the face of all the evidence stacked against him, I have a message for the strategists and consultants trying, once again, to figure out how to win back the white working-class voters (WWC’s), who voted for Obama then flipped to Trump, leaving the party, never to return. My message is: stop. Don’t. 

The WWC voters are gone, but the Democratic party keeps going back, boombox raised overhead, standing outside the house, tears in their centrist eyes, Peter Gabriel blasting, begging the white men of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio to please, take them back. Meanwhile, the brothers and sisters who carried Joe to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are sitting back, scratching their heads, and wondering why you’re not “dancing with the one who brung-ya.”

Instead of mourning the loss of WWC voters who feel the party left them behind, look at who sealed a victory that had millions of Americans taking to the streets like we’d just overthrown a third-world despot. Whether it’s Milwaukee, Maricopa, Philly, Detroit, or Atlanta, it wasn’t the steel workers, coal miners, or Reagan Dems you pine for like a jilted lover. It was Black voters who showed the hell up.

Of course, the Women’s March-galvanized liberal, white women showed up, too, but sadly, they are the minority and we have to come to terms with the fact that white women not only voted for Trump by a majority again, but did so in greater numbers. It’s time for an honest talk about how for generations they’ve voted with their conservative husbands, upholding the hegemony, patriarchy, and white supremacy that they think benefits their households and privileges their sons.  

While party elders butt heads over whether to continue a Bernie-light populist message, or gear one to winning back Ohio and Florida by abandoning identity politics, the question of who should lead the party is simple: established Black women voters who are, in fact, the base of the party. Yes, a multicultural coalition of all sorts of people thankfully helped win the race, but it was Black women who ran the last leg and proudly tore through the tape. White, liberal America, we bailed you out, and now it’s time to pay up. 

***

The Democratic National Committee needs a radical makeover. It needs to stop worrying about how its platform will be received by those who just aren’t coming back. It’s like I told my son years ago, when despite his best efforts, a friend wasn’t being very cool: “Go where the love is”. If my pre-teen son understood this, but the party doesn’t, how do we expect to do anything other than play defense every election? 

Do we need white suburban voters and the swing states? Of course we do, but if we gear a message that also benefits people of color, so too will it help the WWC voters we hemorrhage each election. If we create economic opportunity, jobs, fair taxes for the middle class, investment in renewable energy, and education, as their lives improve, they’ll see for themselves. And if they don’t, or if they continue to fixate on the wedge issues used to distract and discredit, screw it. Go where the love is.

Go where the love is.

And the love is with the Black women who carried this victory. The ones who were left out of the suffrage movement and first and second-wave feminism; the ones who were undervalued and passed over in corporate America; who taught and raised our children while Dem-backed crime laws and mass incarceration left them with broken homes; the ones who redline laws ensured would have no generational wealth to pass down; whose sons die at the hands of law enforcement; who you robo-called and spammed relentlessly to save you from Amy Coney Barrett and who could have as easily laughed under their breath and said, “Yeah, oppression sucks, don’t it?” but, instead showed up and voted blue when “the fate of the republic” was on the line, because they always do, even though she’s never been the apple of your eye, not like that white guy in Ohio. 

Yes, her. Next time; remember her. 

Because even when James Clyburn put Biden over the top in South Carolina, a whole lot of progressive Dems whitesplained how we’d made the wrong choice and should have voted Bernie, or Warren, or whatever. And just as WWC’s are sick of hearing how they vote against their economic interest, we, too, have zero time for being told what’s best for us. It is precisely this arrogance that contributes to the head scratching in focus groups while the number of those who identify as Democrat dwindles. 

Joe Biden is the right candidate for this moment, but he must be a bridge to where the party’s headed, a place that can’t be decided by Bill, Hillary, Joe, or even Barack. It’s time to let energy and enthusiasm lead. It’s time to hand over the keys. And in 2024, when Kamala Harris runs to become the 47th President of the United States, you better remember and support her. Because if America’s greatest struggle is with its racism, misogyny is running a close second, making Kamala an intersectional target for the prejudice and fears that will drive them to the polls in droves.

For now, though, let’s take a beat, let the angry mobs protest and come to terms with their defeat. Let’s pop some corn and watch as his GOP enablers jump ship or sink with the loyalists. And, as our fears go from wondering if it can still be stolen, to rejoicing over a clear victory, to just hoping he doesn’t spend the next two months trashing the country like a junkie tenant who knows he’s never getting the security deposit back, maybe now is a good time to wean ourselves off him. To unplug, and to let go of the fight. With him, and his followers. Not the fight for the country.  

And maybe, rather than doing a told-you-so-tour of social media, rather than getting the snowflake emoji ready for those who taunted us, and rather than spiking the ball beside their Trump-Pence lawn sign, perhaps we should take a page from the good man we just elected and seek to build bridges, come together and lead by example, and with love. If we do that, instead of wasting time castigating people who voted to inflict pain on us, we might have time to mobilize for the Georgia special elections that could flip the Senate and help us undo so much that has harmed us during his term. 

So, as we work through the PTSD, watch the DARVO cycles play out in those who mourn the loss, and as we get our bearings and move into a peaceful, work-filled life where we’re not constantly waiting for the Tweet that ruins our day, I would posit that the healing that really needs to take place isn’t across party lines, but within them. I can find a way to live amongst the red hats, Q’s, Karens and kooks—I’ve been managing racism, micro-aggressions, and anti-Semitism to various degrees my entire life. 

But, how do I live amongst my peers with whom I share philosophical differences? The ones for whom cancel culture is currency, who hijack message and movement, who—high on outrage, indignation and Chaga—recklessly virtue signal? How do I as a Black man suggest perhaps their well-intentioned actions are putting the very people they’re trying to help at a political disadvantage? How do I square a headstrong friend who decries Critical Race Theory and insists the word “defund” isn’t helping our cause? How do I speak to a righteous young activist who wants to double down on identity politics, but can’t see we’re fostering a climate of intolerance—that it’s possible to be a party of diversity and inclusion that protects the marginalized and vulnerable without making identity the central issue by which we campaign and govern?

These are the questions we have to face. Meanwhile, we’re still in the early days of a global health crisis. When he takes office, the coronavirus lands in Joe’s lap much like the financial collapse of 2007 did in Obama’s. We’re still as divided as ever while a lame-duck President takes a defeat-lap around the country, ginning up the base to cry foul. For the first time in history we have a defeated President unwilling to concede, let alone allow the normal exchange of information and resources needed for a transfer of power. All the while, we’re punch-drunk, facing economic uncertainty, a grueling recovery, and wondering when we can live our lives in some version of what it was before March 2020. 

To those who refuse to accept the election of Biden and Harris as the course correction the country sorely needs, I’ll do my best to forgive, but I won’t forget. Not out of spite, but so as to not repeat the past. At least not on my side. I’ll try to be more tolerant, less triggered and less resentful. It’s something women do every day side-stepping the misogyny and patriarchy that’s as baked into the American pie as Crisco and colonialism. And, as we know from a nearly unified vote cast to the sound of YG proclaiming, “Fuck Donald Trump”—one that delivered a competent, stable, good man and a brilliant, joyful, tough, full-hearted and over-qualified (Black and Indian!) woman to the White House for the first time – so do Black folks.

I wanted to write a piece about how as a Black Jew, I could find forgiveness and move forward in the aftermath of four years of heartache. About how can we heal under a post-Trump White House where Trumpism still thrives and our divides still remain. How can we live peacefully amongst those who cheered for our liberal tears while a sociopath laid ruin to our mental, physical and institutional health? But what I realized is that it’s really White Liberal America that needs to figure out how to forgive, because we’ve never stopped.