A Human Shield

For the bullshit narrative

Bucky and Cheeto: A Story in False Unity

It was dark when I got home the evening after the inauguration. I pulled into the driveway and sat a moment. Two of the local feral domestic rabbits, one white and one gray, were in the cone of light from my high beams, hunkered down and poking around in the thin crust of snow covering the ground between my shed and where I park. I killed the lights and got out of my car. An advantage of this time of year is that, if it's been a long trip home with a couple stops to make along the way, I can take a leak right there in the shadow of my pick-up and no one will see me. And, it being a new day in America and I'm only going to be able to enjoy this option for a few more weeks, I thought, “Why the hell not.”

As I was completing my business, I could hear a couple great horned owls calling off in the distance. I was trying to pick out their silhouettes at the tops of the cottonwoods yonder. By then my shitrat dog Bucky, a Jack Russell terrier, was on the scene. Contained by a tall chain link fence she was racing up and down its length yapping her head off at the rabbits. They couldn't have cared less about her. I was irritated, because Bucky seemed to pick her moments to carry on just as the owls were starting up again.

"Bucky!" I moaned at the heavens. "Why won't you just let me enjoy this without all the damn ruckus!"

I woke up the next morning and realized I had the metaphor I needed. I’ll begin with some positive stuff first.

I'm happy as anyone that Trump is gone. I'm happy he doesn't have an online presence anymore either because if he did we all know he would never go away. He'd stir his shit cauldron with his big shit spoon and the media, regardless of its intention, would cover it. Nothing would get better.

I'm even more happy that we have a woman for VP and she is multi-racial. That is truly, truly wonderful. Does this put her in line to be the first woman president? It sure seems to be the case, unless the Republicans come up with a woman to run against Biden or Harris in future elections. Don't think that isn't something they are already considering either, crazy as it may sound.

I'm happy no serious coup-related LARPing shenanigans went down either, though who knows if we are out of the woods on that account yet. Time will tell.

Finally, I'm jacked that it was a poet — A POET! — who stole the show. That woman, Amanda Gorman, was poised, and smart, and talented, and everything we possibly could have wanted her to be. I admire the hell out of her courage. What a force. Fact & Fiction has already had several orders for her book, which doesn't even come out until September.

Now, the rant.

When it comes to the fascist coup the only thing different this morning is that Trump is out of office. All of those people who showed up at the Capitol—at least the majority who haven't been picked up by the FBI—are still out there, at large. The collection of "lawmakers" from the House and Senate who enabled them are still in office. They are already pushing back on Biden. What is the plan for these people? All this talk of "unity" leads me to believe we are going to let bygones be bygones and that sucks. They need to be kicked out of office and I fear that effort won't be made. One thing about the elite is that when push comes to shove they’ll go after everyone but each other.

What about all the tears shed over the spectacle? I’m sure there’s plenty to get emotional over. I cry at stuff too. But a lot of it sure smells of performative bullshit for the purposes of measuring up on social media. Meanwhile, all my Indigenous friends and colleagues were reminding people that actually "This Land is Your Land" is a fucked-up display of colonial erasure that no one ever thinks about. No, that land isn't yours, it was all stolen, and it's convenient in big celebrations in the USA to gloss over that fact.

My biggest concern is that all these tears of joy, relief, whatever, are over the idea that we are going “back to normal” now that Joe and Kamala are in charge. And what is normal? Is it white supremacy as a quiet reality rather than the overt version Trump revealed to us? Is it what we see represented as the “good old days” when we see the little group of kindly former presidents who aren't Trump all giggling and fist bumping? Those previous drivers of the bloodiest, most peace-devouring, gigantic war machine the world has ever seen? Speaking of which, when did George W. Bush, a war criminal, the guy who started a couple unnecessary wars that are still killing countless (mostly brown) people, the guy who completely botched the handling of Hurricane Katrina because RACISM, suddenly become the kindly old goofy grandpa? And that's just Bush. ALL of those guys created the world that Trump just added a little extra gilt paint and fascism to. Remember, cops didn't start indiscriminately killing brown people under Trump. Brown people didn't start landing in prisons in numbers far beyond those of white people under Trump. White collar criminals didn't start getting away with fraud and robbery under Trump. Whenever I see the full assembly of the American ruling elite I become enraged, especially at all the talk of, "Oh, I'm crying...." Yeah, so are lots of other people. Everywhere America has a boot print, in fact. Just not for the same reasons.

I'm prepared to give Biden/Harris the benefit of the doubt and support them. I'm happy they are taking on COVID. I'm pleased with the first round of executive orders. But I'm supporting them through the glare of a vicious side-eye. There is nothing from either of their careers that indicates they are going to do anything more for us than any of those previous administrations did. There might be token virtue signaling here and there, but if we want more than that, we need to push hard and push relentlessly.

And my final, least popular gripe of this entire rant is this: I have to admit I didn't even watch all of Amanda Gorman's performance. She's great. She will hopefully become greater. But I found myself bristling against a lot of the sentiment of her poem and I realized I wasn't in the headspace to handle it yet. I'm tired of the "light in the darkness" metaphor. I know it’s also a metaphor but I like the dark. I like owls and coyotes and dew in the morning and hoar frost and I LOVE the starry sky and the potential for UFOs and space goblins. I want to live the full experience of the world, not this idea of there always being one best thing. It’s all too Jesusy for me. I strive to be compassionate and I am incapable of imagining myself as a beam of light. But that's just me, a bitter, burned-out old trashcan Indian who showers with the lights off so he doesn’t have to see himself.

What really got me and made me turn off the video is that what I started to see while watching Gorman was yet another young black woman being exploited by the American ruling elite to spin their bullshit narrative. She was their virtue signal. What have any of those people done for her people that didn't require a horror show of suffering to get? And what are they going to do for her moving forward? Black women organizers gave Biden his presidency. They gave Democrats the Senate. Indigenous people too. What is this administration going to do in return? Cancel student loan debt? Black women carry more of that debt than anyone. He could have done it Day One and should have. If Biden is going to trot Amanda Gorman out there like that then he better deliver. And if he doesn't, I sure hope Amanda Gorman turns every bit of her growing power against him.

Pretty much all of the people who are responsible for how shitty everything STILL IS in this country, right up to and through January 6th, were celebrating at the inauguration ... except for Trump himself. And these people had the audacity to use Amanda Gorman as a human shield to hide how shitty the United States remains even while they ALL had the authority to change it. That is reprehensible. We have to hold them accountable.

Maybe this newsletter is me being the yappy dog spoiling your moment. I don't know. I gave it a couple days. I was already thinking this stuff before I got in the house the other night. I just hope whatever we do next inspires me to want to sit back and really enjoy Gorman's poems come September. It's already been a long year.