Acceptance

A Love Spell for America

America, you have shown your face. 

I see you. I see your raging rivers, cut here and dying, released here and recovering. I see your anger, exhaustion, division, and decay. I see your forests, racing to the sea, cut to the bone again and again, growing back thick, again and again. I see your genocidal history and your empty aching for a peaceful future. Your tangos over the definition of freedom, the acceptability of lies. I see your poppy-scented tears, your walls of fear. 

And I fucking love you.

Kick me to the ground, steal away my dignity and my financial power before I even know I have it, and I will keep loving you. Lay claim to my body, spit hatred at my DNA, vilify my lifestyle, and I will love you as I thrust my fist in your smoky air.  

Old Glory is having a grand reveal, a bold and widely-publicized showing of face. Democracy crumbles, our populace has voiced its preference for a leader who would eliminate the inconvenience of voting to one who honors a person’s pronoun choice. It’s a confusing time, a difficult  time, but also an honest time. And wouldn’t you rather it that way?

Contrary to some of my kin on the left, I don’t believe that we are witnessing some new rise of racism, sexism, fascism in our lovely US of A. Those elements have always been there, and while they may be empowered to action and visibility by a Trump presidency, they are by no means new to America. As a whole, America has made great progress towards equality in the past several decades. Trump is just permissioning extremists to let their freak flag fly, as well as their propaganda, in a way that can be unsettling. I don’t know, I guess I’d rather be confronted face-to-face than jumped form behind.

I do believe that many Americans who voted for Trump, or declined to vote for a candidate who could beat him, did so because our democracy, and the democratic party that would defend it, is in tatters. Americans are sick of a system that is not taking care of them. They are scared for their safety and security. They don’t want to pay for endless wars. They don’t want to pay $8 for eggs. Trust in government is eroded to an all-time low, and this is neither an accident, unfounded, nor inconsequential. Those very things that have served to erode the trust in our government —our dismal education system, the dismal state of relying on profit-driven news media for critical information, and the incredible lack of regulation of the internet and particularly social media— are examples of our ailing democracy. They were the tools that should have helped us create a consensual reality and comprehension of governance critical to functioning democracy—the tools that could have been used to incite change, to improve the system—and they were ailing, and failed. 

And now, we have in power a man who has already begun, and will continue to, dismantle them all. And where will we be then?

I don’t *think* that most American’s who voted for Trump actually want the world he is fit to deliver, though I absolutely could be wrong, and I’ve been wrong about these things before. They voted for the Billionaire Boys Club to drain the swamp. They voted to have business people and personalities run our country instead of those schooled and seasoned for the positions. But then, what had the alternative gotten them?

The Democrats, once the party of civil rights and unions, has become the party of thought-policing and feeding the war international machine. They are as deep in the pockets of corporate interest as the right, in a different way, but arguably more dangerous. Their obsession with “correctness” born out of well-meaning inquiry towards equality, has instead become a tool of division. Those who they claim to be fighting for: women, minorities, the working class - have abandoned them in droves. We have built ourselves as the party of progress—but towards what are we progressing?

Many Americans just voted for change, and I sure as hell can’t judge them for that.

Trump's most successful ad claimed “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.” and positioned Harris as supporting federally-funded gender affirming surgical care for prisoners.

Two people in federal prisons have received gender-affirming surgeries since the 2022 ruling that permitted them (which Kamala said she agreed with in an ACLU questionnaire) The financial cost to any American is negligent. But this isn’t about money. It’s about values. 

Trump hopes to abolish the department of education. He hopes to abolish voting. He has promised unwavering support for Israel—if Palestine stood a chance of survival under Harris, with Trump that chance is nil. Loss of reproductive rights will cost lives. His internment camps and mass deportations will cost lives and billions of dollars we don’t have and that I certainly do not want my tax dollars spent on. His tariffs will drive up the costs of everyday goods. An economy that is distinctly structured to benefit corporations and the rich will profit the few, not the majority who are most deserving, and most in need. But perhaps the greatest cost to our planet will come as a result of his belief that climate change is a “hoax,” and his not only abolishing legislation, regulations and research critical for staving off climate change, but actively investing in increasing fossil fuel availability and use. The results of this could be devastating and irreversible for all life currently enjoying the atmosphere of planet Earth.

American’s don’t mind a president who praises Hitler and his generals, as long as he doesn’t call a trans woman a woman; they prefer a president convicted of sexual assault than one who uses gender-neutral pronouns. This is America. And are we surprised?

It can be hard to keep trying to heal and change a system that seems to only find new ways to break, that grows from deeply rotten core. This is all a big experiment, isn’t it?

And at the end of the day, most people—regardless of whom they voted for—want the same thing. Security for their families. A nice home. Safe streets. The health care they need, when they need it. Whatever it is they define as freedom.

Anyways, I always like to remember that someday the earth will be swallowed by the sun. And maybe Elon or Octavia E Butler, or my ex who’s in tight with the aliens will have gotten some of us off this planet by then, along with our cats and our fungus (they are already aliens, right?), or maybe not, maybe we humans will be long long gone by then, a carbon-print memory in the great recycler of Earth. And maybe that is a good thing, not to live forever. We need death, so that something new can grow.

I see you America, and you sadden me to the bones, but I fucking love you. Things are getting real. Our government is breaking, institutions and people will die, and the pain and shame and glory and joy of being human will continue. 

May your flames stay lit. May you keep steady on forward, fighting your soul fights, enjoying your beautiful lives, loving this beautiful planet, this beautiful country. May you remember that we are not the enemy, no matter our pronouns, no matter who we did or didn’t vote for. We all got us here. May we be humble. May we be wrong. May we find a way to come back together again, to talk about the weather as well as more sensitive subjects, to reach across these widening chasms, to remember our shared humanity.

So it is, so it shall be. 

Photo by Ryan Van Duzer. In 2018 we biked across America to connect with Americans across the political divide.