SENT A CHILL THROUGH ME

Sent A Chill Through Me

Never has any political event troubled me or affected me so deeply.

Future

Trump’s inauguration came upon me as a finality soon after the shock of the American people having voted him in. This person will vastly affect our world values and its future. Negatively.

A quote from one of my favourite authors. Ian McEwan:

Charles Darwin could not believe that a kindly God would create a parasitic wasp that injects its eggs into the body of a caterpillar so that the larva may consume the host alive. The ichneumon wasp was a challenge to Darwin’s already diminishing faith. We may share his bewilderment as we contemplate the American body politic and what vile thing now squats within it, waiting to be hatched and begin its meal…this unique tragedy of national self-harm whereby a suspected con-man … this narcissistic and cynical vulgarian of limited attention span becomes the most powerful man on earth, ready by his own account to begin his assault on liberal democracy, rational discourse, civil liberties, and all manner of civil decencies, which are known to him as political correctness.

Trump’s inaugural speech was one of negativity and bleakness: giving voice to his assumption that America is not great, not proud, not safe, not strong, not wealthy. This leader, well documented for twisting the truth, promised “We will make America great again”, not have this “carnage” of “inequality, abandoned factories like tombstones” and “the crime and the gangs and the drugs”, “disrepair and decay”. He promised “America First”, prompting shades of Nazi sympathizers.

His address did not invoke hope and joy for a new, greater beginning. “We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own,” says he. A well worded threat to future immigrants.

Saturday, 21st January, his first day in office. While Donald Trump was at the National Cathedral asking his god to forgive his sins and lies and to guide him in adding billions to his and his cronies’ coffers, more than a quarter of a million people came to Capitol Hill. The Women’s March called him a ‘misogynist’ and ‘reprehensible’. They marched against his immigration reform. They marched in fear of repression of minorities. They came to seek religious freedom. They declared they were against racism. They asked for protection of the environment. They were concerned about healthcare. They feared his pro-life and anti-LGBTQ-rights views. A nation divided.

For many of his followers, Trump’s  campaign slogan – “Make America Great Again”  is another way of saying “Make America White Again”.

It was at this precise time I came across how white Americans tried to keep America white in the early 19th century.

I was reading The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. A quote from the novel.

They had not traveled long when Martin stopped the horses. He removed the tarpaulin. “It will be sunrise soon, but I wanted you to see this,” the station agent said.

Cora did not immediately know what he meant. The country road was quiet, crowded on both sides by the forest canopy. She saw one shape then another. Cora got out of the wagon.

The corpses hung from trees as rotting ornaments. Some of them were naked, others partially clothed, the trousers black where their bowels emptied when their necks snapped. Gross wounds and injuries marked the flesh of those closest to her, the two caught by the station agent’s lantern. One had been castrated, an ugly mouth gaping where his manhood had been. The other was a woman. Her belly curved. Cora had never been good at knowing if a body was with a child. Their bulging eyes seemed to rebuke her stares, but what were the attentions of one girl, disturbing their rest, compared to how the world had scourged them since the day they were brought into it?