A Rant

I remember being on the subway the day that Donald Trump was elected and feeling a common sense of shock and mourning among the diverse group of people I was surrounded by. I am not exaggerating when I say that it reminded me of what New York felt like in the days after 9/11. As I watched President Obama’s eulogy of John Lewis all I could think was “how far we have fallen.”  

We tell black and Latino children that they must work hard (“twice as hard to get half as far”), master The King’s English, make white people feel comfortable with us without alienating our own, and and look respectable & presentable at all times. We tell girls that they should speak up in class, be confident and ambitious, and make smart decisions about who they partner with. And then America elects someone like Donald Trump. The irony is that Trump, the person who represents the anthesis of all of these values, forcefully asserts this country is a meritocracy and that it is we who, somehow, are not measuring up.

And after that beautiful funeral, Trump had the audacity to hold a press conference putting his mediocrity and lack of self-awareness on display. He lectures poor people about “personal responsibility” while standing at a podium talking about “its China’s fault.” He complains about immigrants who don’t deserve to be here while elevating Ivanka and Jared Kushner to positions of power in The White House. He implies that government assistance incentivizes people not to work, while giving millions in PPP loans to rich people who don’t have to work. He says that we must send our kids back to school because poor kids will “fall behind” while he has failed to produce a grammatically correct tweet on his own in the past three years. He calls people anarchists while talking about suspending elections. He criticizes the 1619 project (which he has not read) when racism, which was institutionalized in order to justify slavery, is the reason that he got elected.