An Emergency Call to the Citizen Brigade

I will admit that probably the kindest thing that I have had to say about Donald Trump is that I never thought he’d be the GOP nominee. And then I never thought he would be President. So often, I thought his own words would end his ambitions. This is it, I would think. The end of the line. I was wrong, and I grieved for that, and I still do. Under his direction, the bar for American discourse fell lower and lower and lower. Sound bites that would have shocked us senseless two years ago have become the second or third story of the news cycle. Even as we tag #thisisnotnormal, by default, we’ve become accustomed to it.

And then just when I thought I could not despise a man more, Donald Trump proves that my naiveté has remained intact despite his misogynistic, racist, nationalistic, hate-filled campaign and so-far short term as President. Seventy-some years ago, the world went to war over the idea of racial superiority. That is not to say that the world solved racism on the beaches of Normandy, or on the frost-bitten Russian front, or at Iowa Jima. Certainly, even in our most well-meaning dialogues, we sometimes miss the mark. Sometimes we can’t completely understand the experience of people who have walked paths different from our own, even when we have the best of intentions. But in the seven decades since World War II ended, as a nation, as a social being, as a social conscience, we’ve made real progress.

Our world is full of amazing, wonderful people, places, marvels. Yesterday, driving home, I pulled over because there was a full arching rainbow against a dark and roiling sky. It’s just refracted light. A little rain, a little sun. And yet it was the kind of sight that pulled me up short and made me breathe a little deeper, continue my drive a little more aware, a little more grateful. Often, when I have a dozen errands to do, and I’m running late, I turn onto a west-bound street in suburban Denver and remember – mountains. Gorgeous, spectacular mountains. And yesterday in an elevator, a stranger and I chatted for three floors about nothing in particular, but  we both stepped off on the first floor smiling a little, when we hadn’t been when we stepped in, connected by nothing – and everything –  more than our own rumpled but friendly humanity on a Monday evening.

But we can’t close our eyes to the fact that, despite how much our own daily lives are or are not affected by the divisive rhetoric of the Trump administration and its allies, we are only as strong as the last time we stood up for those in positions weaker than our own. For people who live or love or pray differently than we do. We are only as compassionate as the last time we let our hearts empathize with what we haven’t lived. We are only as free as the person who fears leaving their own neighborhood or school, or turf. Or who has reason for fear in their own neighborhood, their own home. When our President fails to denounce, unequivocally, for more than a day, the poison within our society, we are all smaller for it unless we are actively fighting against it.

We tend to condemn in broad strokes, but forgive and excuse in the details. Broad strokes are black and white, but like a Monet painting, we get distracted when we get too close. We are disgusted by the Brock Turner story. But we question the validity of the Taylor Swift sexual assault trial media storm. Why was her ass bare? Why didn’t she report it in the moment? Why didn’t her bodyguard take the guy out? We found Roger Ailes repugnant, but with our silence, we excuse the co-worker in our own company who stands a little too close, and who has a wife and three kids and sometimes just gets a little drunk at happy hour and says inappropriate things that we pretend on Monday morning that we didn’t hear on Friday afternoon.

We are against white supremacy and Nazism, obviously. But we cringe and turn a deaf ear when our child’s friend’s father makes a big deal about the Christmas party being replaced by a Winter Celebration, within our child’s widely multi-cultural classroom. We judge, and fret about curb appeal, but we don’t stop to explain to our children the history of racism and prejudice that accompanies the Confederate flag flying at the house down the street. Life is busy and we already had to talk about puberty and drugs with our kids, and now online predators and sexting, speaking of awkward conversations. Can we just get a pass on explaining one more difficult, disheartening thing? … Sure. Until that same flag is the backdrop of tiki torches and hate filled chants and domestic terrorism.

Lately, my daughters and I have been watching the new(ish) Supergirl series. Frankly, I love it, and so does my 11-year-old. We love the good, old-fashioned super-hero-ness of it. We love the quest for justice. We love the saving of society one disaster at a time. We love that in every episode, good is tested, and comes out on top. We love that Supergirl has the strength and power to be ruthless, and chooses to be good. We love that heroes can be hiding in plain sight.

We watched the new Wonder Woman movie with the same sense of delight. A month after it came out, we sat in a still crowded theater, next to a woman in her 50s or 60s who had already seen it multiple times. “It’s so good,” she said. “You’ll love it.”  We did.  

In the end, we are drawn to super heroes because, through them, we can envision a world where our leaders don’t hesitate to draw clear, decisive lines between what is good and just, and what is wrong and evil. Where we ourselves don’t hesitate to draw those lines. Where protest isn’t a weighted balance between conscience and expediency. We gravitate toward strength and goodness, the rightness of acting unselfishly on behalf of humanity. Cashing in on this human instinct, Marvel and DC Comics have thanked their lucky stars back and forth to the bank a billion times or so. Doing the right thing, especially in hard circumstances, is always a box office hit.

Every year, my daughters go back-country camping with their father. He loads them up with sturdy trail backpacks and water, and they have to carry their own food and sleeping bags and tent. He has taught them that they are forever capable, and I am forever grateful that they have been shown such a strong expectation of doing, and hard work, and equitable division of labor. A few weeks ago, while they were hiking in, there was a rock formation that my oldest scaled without hesitation. In recounting it to me, though, my youngest looked at the same rocks her sister had scampered up and said, “Mommy, my fear just got in front of me, and I couldn’t.”

Sometimes, children say something that is so true, and so simple, and so insightful that we feel it pierce right through our hearts. “My fear just got in front of me.” Good God, yes. We’ve been there. Yes, my brilliant child; that is exactly the problem we all face. Sometimes, we want to do the right thing. We want to do the hard thing. But for a thousand different reasons, our fear gets in front of us, and we hope someone else does the right thing in our stead.

In this moment, this decisive moment in the history of our nation, we can stand for what’s good and just, or we can duck back into our own insular houses and neighborhoods and experiences. We can assure ourselves that in 2017, we certainly can’t have slipped back into casual-use pre-Civil Rights rhetoric. That the people we know aren’t racists; they’re history buffs with deep Southern pride. Or they’re evangelicals who aren’t hateful, just strict Biblicists who, 2000 years later, take Leviticus really, really literally. Fringe elements, all, we’d like to believe. Even as we see the footage, and even as we hear the interviews.

We must remember that we keep putting our ticket money down for superheroes not because they are stronger than we are, or faster, or can fly or have x-ray vision. Those are just fun extras. Special effect perks. No, we keep these franchises alive because they speak to our hopes for who we are as society.

Far more than Wonder Woman, or Superman, Supergirl or the Justice League, we – those of us adulting to the best of our abilities –  are the heroes of our children’s childhoods. We must say aloud what we want them to hear. That’s the only way any of this works. We must say, Yes, there is evil in the world – and we shouldn’t be afraid to sound dramatic when we say so – it takes all forms, including silence and including excuses and including bleeding shades of gray into a continuum where it does not belong.

This is not normal. We need to keep saying it. Over and over, so we don’t forget. But it’s so much more than calling out the crazy. This is our chance to be our children’s heroes, and the custodians of their future.

So swirl on those capes. It’s time to save Gotham.