I’m a white male in North America’s upper middle class.
This inglorious inheritance of slaveholders, misogynists, and war-makers shapes what I experience and, just as importantly, do not experience—i.e., what black men undergo in our country’s criminal and judicial system or even during casual traffic stops and what women of all races and classes endure when confronted by our culture’s everyday sexism and what gay women and men face in the daily bigotry (or worse in the all-too-common violence) they encounter.
My subjective preferences are rooted in unearned privilege (not to mention a particularly eccentric background, which I describe in my memoir Crazy For God). That notwithstanding I hope that at least some of what I say here in this video “America Unraveling” will exceed my glaring limitations. I dare to hope this because of what I believe binds us all together, left, right, center, black, white, male, female, gay, straight, trans, brown–and transcends our differences: a shared love for our children, grandchildren, friends, family; that vulnerability we experience when held hostage by unconditional love.
That love today is expressed by me as my resistance to Trump. My mother’s ancestors (the Merritt family) on her mother’s side came to America on the Mayflower. This is not a proud heritage. Those colonists lied and killed. (Ask a Pequot Native American!)
That said my Marine son John fought for this country. I have a stake in our history and our future. My “stake” in our future has several names—namely my 5 grandchildren’s names. It’s for them I resist Trump. It’s for them I speak out for a better future.
Please watch my 6-minute video below.
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The more and more I see trump and hear or read about the crap he is doing makes me feel even more sick. When is this all going to end? I can only imagine to what the end of the 4 year term will look like and how much the next President will have in 2020 to fix everything that Trump destroyed….
I’m continually grateful for your wisdom, encouragement, and fomenting of the dangerous new status quo. Though I fear this will be one of the worst epochs in our nations history, right down there with slavery, I hope and pray that it will stir us from the moral stupor into which we seem to have fallen. Keep fighting, and know how much your words mean to so many! Blessings.
Frank,
You have all my support! I enjoy your post. Thank you! R.O.R. all the way.
The truly terrifying aspect of all of this is not Trump, but Trumpism. Long after he is gone (and I pray that he goes, and quickly), and long after McConnell and Jordan and the rest are gone, there will remain the approximately 40% of America that thinks he’s just terrific. It is my fellow Americans who are the cause of the rot here – who are the rot. They cannot be voted out or impeached or indicted. They will remain. And it is they who cause me to despair for this country.