One Year In

There are two Onion headlines that define for me the transition from Obama’s America to Trump’s.

On Nov. 4, 2008, the Onion’s main story was “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” I remember reading it and thinking, “That’s the most accurate description of presidential politics I’ve seen in a long time.” There was a knowingness to it – the cynicism that comes from watching a young go-getter go get something and then thinking, “Let’s see what happens when he actually tries to change something.”

Eight years later, the Onion ran this headline: “Study: Depression Up Among Teenage Girls Able to Perceive Any Part of the World Around Them.” It was after the election, and it said nothing about Hillary, but it perfectly captured the world weariness that comes from watching an absurdly well-qualified woman lose to an absurdly ill-qualified clown and having the conversation revolve, inevitably, around her “likeability” rather than his proudly ignorant bully of a persona.

Next weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, and the most shocking thing about looking back on those two headlines is how thoroughly Trump has managed to redefine the job he so obviously never wanted. With Obama, there was an understanding that the presidency is a job – a difficult one, one that requires patience, hard work, diplomacy, and knowledge of both domestic and international policy.  With Trump, there is no understanding. Trevor Noah said watching the Trump presidency is akin to having a nationwide civics lesson in real-time. We’re all learning. The question is which lessons are sinking in.

I often hold up the younger generation as a hopeful sign of increased tolerance, progressive attitudes, and a willingness to break with destructive stereotypes. I’m a high school teacher. I need that belief to get through the day.

Lately, I’ve been wondering whether or not that view is far too rosy.

Two events from the past few weeks of teaching caused me to question everything I thought I knew about the progressive bubble that is Bay Area charter school life.

*Event one: On the last day of school before Winter Break, my Multimedia Journalism students were showing their completed community journalism videos. In the middle of an otherwise completely innocuous piece about the school’s mentor system, a student opens the classroom door behind the film’s interview subject, screams, “Get out of here, you goddamn Jew” down the hallway, and then shuts the door. When I question my students as to why they didn’t feel the need to edit that moment out of their video, they look sheepish. The best they can come up with is, “I forgot that was in there.” It’s clear they were so unfazed by the statement they treated it as meaningless background noise.

*Event two: On the last day of school before our three-day weekend in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a student walks down the hallway to lunch screaming “white power” into a hand-held megaphone. When questioned by a teacher, his response is, “It’s lunch. I can say what I want on my own time.” The student in question is white. I watch his friend, who is Latino, take the megaphone and hide it in the first student’s backpack. When questioned by an administrator, the student claims that there were multiple students clustered around the megaphone and that he was not the one who said “white power.” He will not say who did, as he does not want to be a “snitch.”

I hate when journalists take isolated events and try to generalize a trend from handpicked anecdotes. I do not want to do that in this piece. Our school community is diverse, and, for the most part, admirably supportive of each other’s differences. When asked to select a topic for their community journalism piece, my students decided on their own to tackle complex issues ranging from gentrification to the refugee crisis. I consider my students to be thoughtful. I also consider them to be human.

We have allowed our country to descend into tribalism, and that us vs. them attitude is infecting the way our young people view the world. The toxic bigotry of online life, in which anonymous hatred has become a reflex muscle, is seeping into our offline world. Meanwhile, our 70-year-old boy king tweets in the manor while the empire burns. He is the emperor of the trolls. He sees high ratings in the flames.

The second most surprising thing about looking back on those two Onion headlines is just how many people have caught flame. A year that began with the Women’s March taking over large cities and small towns ended with the #MeToo movement taking down seemingly untouchable men. If depression is an underwater existence, we’re now seeing what happens when women break through the surface, carrying torches.

Men are afraid, and angry, and scared to speak out for fear of being judged. That particular set of emotions feels familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to be female in a man’s world. In the midst of the black-clad Golden Globes solidarity, a group of French women issued a public statement saying the newest version of women’s lib isn’t liberating at all, but rather a step back into the days in which women had no agency or identity beyond that of fragile victim. The intra-gender civil war feels even more familiar than the gender identity swap.

It may be naive to believe that we can learn to fight fair, but I refuse to give up on the idea that truth exists. Here are a few uncomfortable truths that we must all grapple with:

*America was built on white supremacy. The white power movement is steeped in the blood of Native Americans, immigrants, and all those whose skin color made them a target. White, working class men have suffered at the hands of globalization. Their anger is the defensive, dangerous fury of those who have been led to believe that superiority is their birthright. Men do not cede power willingly.

*It has always been easier for demagogues to provoke anger than for radicals to inspire unity. Instead of uniting to challenge the inequities of our capitalist system, America’s people find themselves divided by color and creed. We elected a billionaire who promised the world to the working class and delivered tax cuts to the rich. We are not living through a populist revolution. We are watching what happens when those who already have money and power are emboldened to capture even more.

*Sexual harassment and sexual assault create an inherently unequal society in which wages are suppressed, workers are devalued, and careers are stymied. Not all men are predators, and not all transgressions are equally heinous. Not talking about it isn’t a solution – it’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Honoring the truth behind trauma isn’t the same as valuing victimhood. It takes allies of all genders to change society.

I am not a fantastically optimistic person. I consider myself a pragmatist when it comes to the workings of our flawed democracy. I work with a lot of young people who are more idealistic than I am. Want to know what disgust looks like? Try explaining how impeachment actually works and what our line of succession looks like to a kid who just wants to throw this election out and start over. It’s frustrating.

All that said, the amount of change I’ve witnessed in the short time I’ve been adult enough to be aware of politics is absolutely staggering. The energy I felt in D.C. during Obama’s first inauguration lives on in the crowds of the Women’s March. Female candidates are finally finding their collective voice. Young women are watching while powerful men face career-ending consequences for their abuses. I don’t want to tell them how long and hard the road is. I just want them to know they have every right to walk unafraid.