Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Tauy Creek Digest #42: We


Let's imagine that everything that objectors and detractors said about President Barack Obama were true. Let's imagine that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Let's imagine that Obama did make our country less safe. Let's imagine he undermined every value that we, as Americans, held closely, that he wanted to remake the United States into a country that is one step removed from Marxist Socialism where being patriotic and religious were egregious offenses that could get you ostracized from society, at best. If you can actually imagine this then you would probably understand why there are people who spent eight years wishing that Obama would resign, be impeached, arrested, something because he is clearly a criminal who doesn't deserve to hold the title of President of the United States of America let alone be duly elected to the office.

The ones who truly believed even just one of the above scenarios are now the ones telling the other side that they are just being crazy. That their fears are unfounded and that President Donald Trump isn't so bad. We are now the ones imagining these things. The difference is that we aren't imagining it. If even one of the above scenarios were even near the truth, Congress would've done something. The FBI would've done something. Something would've been done. Since nothing happened, at any time during those eight years, then one can assume there was no reason or precedent to even attempt to censure or remove President Obama from office. I now understand how frustrating that is. I now understand the frustration in waiting for the other shoe to drop and that Trump is forced to resign or be removed from office. I understand the anger these people felt seeing a man they don't like seemingly damage the country they love. The difference is that we aren't imagining it.

We have over 40 years of history on how Trump acts, how he runs his business, and how he treats people. We have over 240 years of how we believe politicians--good and bad--should act. We have 13 years of Trump falling prey to the fakeness of TV, conspiracy theories, and willing ignorance. It's baffling that we have people who believe Trump isn't all he says is and even more baffling that they believe that they can fool the rest of us.

When Trump was elected and then inaugurated, I had a hard time convincing myself to write. I went months at a time without writing anything but I came up with plenty of ideas. Finally, over the summer I began writing and I've been trying to make up for lost time. I'm trying to get caught up with the Story Series, Digest issues, and The Point of Beginning along with the couple of novels and collections I am currently working on. While I understand that most of my writing, and others', doesn't jab at the politics controlling our country right now, it doesn't have to.

The mere fact that people are out there, producing works of art, is enough. Whether it's acting, painting, writing, whatever, it speaks volumes. Even if you support the current climate and produce art, you are still contributing to the culture of this country--a culture that is wildly varied and more than just the sum of our parts. The culture of this country dates back thousands of years, it incorporates hundreds, maybe thousands, of different cultures. We are not just a country of one type of people, one type of art, one type of culture. We are many. We are one.