Facing the Truth and Code Names

Bear with me. I’m trying hard not to be someone who rants, but bear with me.

by Christine Merser

I know how I feel when I see the United States representative, while speaking with a French delegation at Versailles, telling them that the Oval Office is starting to look like Versailles. He was giddy. He looked around at all the golden splendor, all the gilded mirrors, and admired the room. I was appalled. Our America wasn’t built on gilded mirrors so people could look in and admire themselves. It was built on blood, sweat, and tears. But now I’m realizing the truth. Maybe we were never that different from France’s “let them eat cake” ruling class. Maybe most of the time, the people in power in my country haven’t been so different at all.

I don’t recognize me sometimes these days. I am filled with hatred. I think it’s hatred. The depth of feeling is new to me, and I have two ex husbands. It’s getting better as this is unfolding. I’m getting better, but it’s there, and I have never had it even when Bush and Cheney became felons right before my very eyes.

When I see DT signing that big ridiculous scroll of a signature. So phallic, so exaggerated, it’s easy to see how the man is unable to look at something and see its true size or worth. Every single thing he signs takes something away from people he considers less than himself. It doesn’t add to anything except the personal treasure of the scoundrel people around him. I am filled with loathing and rage. I want to walk up to him, stick my finger in his face, and say, “You know DT, sometimes bigger isn’t better, it’s just ridiculous.”

I start thinking about the millions of Americans who are now happily publicizing their racist points of view. A few of my friends even, who I’ve walked away from, are included in those millions. They don’t want a diversified America. They want a white America. And if giving up their personal rights will help the white men sit at the rectangular table again without women or anyone who doesn’t need the same shade of sunblock as they do, they’ll do it. A table where everybody follows the leader and no one but them has a chance to be first in anything.

I realize that all those Americans who are thrilled with the direction in which we are headed must have felt exactly the way I do all these years past. So, I think about the Obamas in the White House.

I knew they had to have extra security because there were more legitimate death threats and chatter than for any other president. I didn’t truly process it at the time.

What I saw was a hardworking, intellectual, humorous, self-deprecating family that made me proud to be an American. They dressed like most Americans. They laughed. They served the homeless on Thanksgiving, ate as a family most nights before Barack went back to work reading documents until the early hours.

I didn’t see Black or White.

I saw dignity.

I saw grace.

I felt safe.

And I am so struck by the fact that the sometimes uncontrollable dark feelings I have now, watching this White House and this administration, are exactly how those 79 million people who still stand behind him must have felt about the Obama administration. For eight years, they carried that same level of anger and disgust. I am constantly in awe of how well they hid it. I don’t hide it. I’m trying to decide which bumper sticker to put on my car as an act of courage. Maybe someone will even try to run me off the road. I don’t care. I think they’re racist losers.

Eight years they were quiet.

Actually, let’s be fair—they’ve been quiet since the 1950s and 1960s.

What were you thinking all those years? And, I guess sometimes you were talking about it behind closed doors that I was not invited to attend.

The blue-collar white people lost so much over the last five decades as America started to change to make up for the oppression that was part of the fabric of our history. They lost their stature. For the first time, their children could not rise above the heights they achieved. The middle class disappeared behind Reagan’s policies to make a richer Wall Street. It was unfair. We didn’t see what they were losing, and many of them had worked for generations to get what they had. Which, to be fair, is exactly what they think has happened with people of color now. Unearned upgrades, they think. At their expense. Take it back. It was mine before, and it belongs to me.

It’s complicated. I see that now. Their resentment didn’t come only from racism, it also came from a real economic loss and fear of downward mobility, even though many blamed others unfairly.

And their anger grew, like mine has these days, and they were silent. I am not.

When Donald Trump came down that escalator (and by the way, we really have to stop saying “walked” because he rode down. The man never walks a step more than necessary if it means others will have to stand watching him enter in his glory), he knew exactly what he was doing.

He knew that talking about immigrants the way he did would bring all that simmering hatred right to the surface.

His father taught him that.

Roy Cohn taught him that—the same Roy Cohn who was McCarthy’s rabid dog.

“You may not hear it publicly,” they told him, “but there are millions of Americans who want a white America again. You can lead them.”

We laughed when he said, “Make America Great Again.”

We said, “America is already great.”

But we weren’t. We weren’t first in anything globally except military spending and the number of citizens who believe in aliens. The white middle class got left behind. Our education numbers are in the bottom of western civilization. On and on. We just didn’t realize it. Shame on us.

Oh my goodness. How did I not know all this?

My friend Chris Wasserstein and I used to have Sunday breakfast in the Hamptons every single Sunday. She’s a thoughtful, quiet Midwesterner who thinks deeply. Smart. We laughed uncomfortably one morning, realizing we were like two ducks on a pond, (we would have preferred to be swans, but you don’t always get what you want) pointing out all the pretty little flowers and ferns growing along the banks, totally unaware of the dark waters of our fellow country-person’s plights unfolding underneath us.

Paddling furiously with our hidden, webbed feet. We didn’t see it. This America we are fighting against now wasn’t born in the last eight years. It was always here. Underneath our surface.

Most of America’s years are not what I was taught they were. We were not “good” citizens except to ourselves, those who were our mirror image. White men sleeping perfectly well after beating Black men and raping Black women for not working fast enough. For more than one hundred years, and even a century after it was illegal.

Japanese Americans stripped of their homes and businesses during World War II, while blonde-haired German Americans stayed untouched. And when the war was over, we never even returned their property. But we sat in Europe demanding those displaced during the war had a right to get reimbursed. Even all these years later, other countries are owning their sins and paying. We push them aside. Still.

McCarthy ruining lives for personal power. And politicians going along with it to make sure they didn’t lose their position and power. Knowingly going along with it. While friends and sometimes family members sank.

And today’s politicians? They are making the same choices. They’ll end up in Trump’s crosshairs too. They always do. He’s with you until he’s not. And when he’s not, it’s brutal. Already, people in his current administration—only 90 days old—are facing that reality.

The head of the IRS was sworn in on Monday and fired on Thursday. I can’t help but wonder if his wife—if he has one—said, “I told you so.”

Remember, when DT and Pence won that first election, Pence’s wife got up and walked out of the room in disgust. And then it got to the point where Pence couldn’t even trust his Secret Service detail. He believed Trump wanted him dead rather than to vote for Biden’s election.

When you read all of this together, it’s hard to stomach, isn’t it? “Too bad,” I say softly. Like any cancer that will kill you, there are plenty of symptoms along the way. You ignore them at your own peril. This is not the time for the faint of heart. Own our past and seize our future.

This is not the time for those who say, “I just can’t handle it anymore. What will be, will be.” There are days I can’t cope. I take that day off. Then I get right back to work the next morning. And I do something that makes me feel stronger. I resist.

I think about the underground movements of World War II. I pick my code name. I wonder and plot how I will participate when the underground railroad is needed again, for women seeking abortions, or sneaking banned books back into libraries, or whatever else it will take to make sure that even if we lose some battles, we don’t lose the war.

Here’s a fun fact. Ok, maybe not so fun. Obama’s code name when he was President was ‘Renegade.’ Trumps was ‘Mogul.’ Seriously? Does it mean that the ‘white’ Secret Service is not on our side?

Back to my point. We’ve lost a battle or two already. Sure, but we’re getting better. Much better, and I do know there are more of us than there are of them. Take heart neighbors.

There is no nuance here. There is right and wrong. Good and evil. Nothing in between.

So we start the week again. Pick your code name. Wear it when you are feeling lost. Try it on. It’s your super power. Find something else besides anger and rage to let in during the day. Action is a good thing.

We will win.

God bless my vision of the United States of America with my eyes wide open this go around. From the ashes, we can do it right this time.