You Can Stop Hoping that Trump Won't Win--He Already Has

Tweets and Facebook posts, opinion pieces, essays, poems, signs, memes, heated discussions over our over-priced coffees, phone calls and tv spots have, for weeks, been roaring with one message:

Trump cannot become our next president.

This call seems to reverberate all around us.   And because we see it,  hear it and feel the vibrations from the voices that chant it, pray it, hope it, we think it must be so,  and that Trump won't win.

He can't win.

However this morning I woke up to find the internet once again swollen with tales of celebrated hate and intolerance from the Republican National Convention.

And I realized, with the cold, horrible stillness of certainty--

Trump has already won.

Even if he loses the election, he has won.

He has successfully achieved something that  slavery, wars, race riots, internment camps, fights for equality on all levels, corruption, depressions, recessions, gun violence, health care disasters, a slowly imploding educational system, racism, sexism, ageism, and prejudice and bigotry of all kinds  have not, separately quite managed to do:

He has brought the United States of America to the edge of collapse.  And right now, at this moment, as the Republican  National Convention spirals slowly out of control, we are watching our country's death throes.   It is ugly.  It is vicious.  It is terrifying.

Trump has become the glue for the worst of our country, bonding together a juggernaut of intolerance, ignorance and fear.

You may disagree with  me.  That is fine.  Disagreement is healthy.   Debate is vital.

But I ask you this:  no matter who becomes our next president, how can we heal from this?  How can we move on and put our country back together?  


Trump is the magnifying glass in the sun to our dry, brittle,  underlying ugliness, and the fire is burning before our eyes.

It is no coincidence that there are now innocent people being killed--mostly by guns--every day.

Every day.

And I'm not going to break it down into little packets of divisiveness--how many police officers were killed, how many black people were killed. How many liberals, how many conservatives.  It is enough that innocent people were killed needlessly.  Shouldn't this be enough to bring us together in our rage?

Evidently not.

Trump is the champion of a shockingly wide swath of primarily white Americans who have been the victims of a fractured, incomplete educational system,  a troubled economy and skewed guidance by their leaders in politics, church and school.

And as the champion, Trump has legitimized, endorsed and encouraged what has become an orgy of intolerance, hate, violence and division.

In a stunning bit of final irony, it was not--as Trump supporters would've predicted-- the immigrants, the liberals or the LGBTQ folks who are bringing the United States to its knees.

It is a swollen morass of fearful, frustrated and tunnel-visioned white folks.

Those of us watching the disaster unfold from the sidelines may comfort ourselves by believing Trump to be a singularly stupid man.

He is not stupid.

He knew precisely how to exploit the "art" of this "deal".  

And now we will all pay his price.

I Can't

I can't watch the video of
Alton Sterling
being shot by police.

I can't.

I can't join the masses who treat yet another needless death
like a reality show,
like an accident on the side of the road,
the firetrucks and ambulances somehow giving me somber permission
to stare as I pass uselessly by.

I can't hear the broken words
of Alton Sterling's wife,
the sobs of his son
and not see them as part of my own human family--
because they are mine and they are ours.

I can't pick sides
when the only sides to Alton Sterling's death
are power, privilege and fear.

Power, privilege and fear are roaring, speeding, screaming
at all of us
in infinite violent combinations
from all sides now.

From attacks on Muslims in Iraq, Bangladesh, Turkey and Saudi Arabia,
to a wild gunman in an Orlando nightclub.
From a child being accidentally shot by his parent on a gun range
to police shooting a  man selling CD's on the street.
I could go on,
and on,
and on.

Those of us who somehow think we've won the lottery
by virtue of having our power and privilege accidentally
laid upon our skin at birth...

we are fooling ourselves.

Power, privilege and fear
betray everyone in the end
and I can't believe
that my country, our world,
stands so idly by while the storm approaches
whispering "this kind of thing only happens to THEM."

Guess what?
We are all them.

So.

I can't watch the video of
Alton Sterling
being shot by police.

I can't.

Just a Little Bit Dusty

We have a dog.

Bob awoke on Father's Day this year and declared that he has waited 36 years to have his own dog again and dagnabbit, he was not going to wait another year.

So Bob started scanning the available dogs at all the local shelters.

While he still has his heart set on someday having a boxer (and/or a shiba inu), we both knew that we'd probably need to have a substantially bigger house--with a fenced yard--to have either of these.

So he was open to the whims of fate.   And eventually fate did offer him a whim, in the form of a 2 year old weimaraner mix.   The dog was adorable, sporting a huge doggie grin and from the picture didn't look too large.

The next weekend Bob and I went to the ADOPT shelter in Naperville and told the shelter folks which dog we had our eye on.  They brought us back to the kennel areas where dogs of all sizes stood at the metal gates of their kennels, some barking uproariously, others asleep or staring at us dolefully.

The shelter volunteer stopped, not at a kennel but at a small room that was reverberating with booming barks and scrabbling dog claws.  I turned my head and found myself face-to-face with the dog of Bob's choice--not a medium sized dog at all but a huge frantic, barking, running, bouncing toddler-dog that, standing on his hind legs, was taller than me.

We had no choice but to demure from seriously considering the huge dog, although we knew a big part of his boisterous behavior was probably boredom.

We walked around the kennels again, looking more seriously at each of the inhabitants.
We walked around twice.

On the third pass we stopped at an end kennel in which a salt-and-pepper colored dog sat panting, gazing up at us calmly amid the cacophony of dog noises around her.

Dusty's photo for the shelter website (http://www.adoptpetshelter.org/)

The shelter volunteer informed us that this was "Dusty", a 12 year old Australian Cattle Dog mix who was relinquished when her owner was too ill to care for her.  

We asked if we could visit with her.

So we were escorted to a small meeting room and asked to wait so the volunteer could  bring Dusty to us.   A few minutes later Dusty was led in on a leash, eyes bright, step bouncy, not looking at all like a 12 year old dog.

It was a matter of a few seconds before Bob and I were both on the floor, letting Dusty sniff at us, chew on toys  and explore the myriad of interesting smells in the room.

Bob took a picture of Dusty and sent it to Aya with the text "What do you think?"

Aya texted back. "Get her now."

Of course, it wasn't that easy.  Before Dusty could become a Moorehead we had to actually bring Aya in to meet her to make sure there wouldn't be any unforeseen personality conflicts.  And we had to broach the subject with our landlord (who not only gave us his wholehearted permission, but, as a fellow dog lover, waived the pet deposit).  And Dusty had to have her final shots and physical exam.
We were informed we could pick Dusty up the next week.

Which gave us enough time to buy all the food, bowls, toys, beds and other accoutrements we would need to add a dog to our lives.

Dusty has been with us two weeks now, and we honestly couldn't ask for a better kinda-first dog.  It was obvious her previous owner had worked with her because she    came to us knowing how to sit, lay down, shake, stay and come when called, not to mention she walks precisely at our side on her leash, only falling out of step when a particularly enticing scent reaches her nose (or when a squirrel happens by).

Our only challenge is navigating the divide between Dusty and the cats.   The shelter assured us that Dusty is good with cats, and for the most part she is, but I'm sure she has never lived with cats, and her delighted, tail-wagging galloping each time she spots one has required Bob and I to engage in treat-laden "encounter sessions", where one of us holds a clearly displeased cat and the other holds Dusty on her leash and we just sit.  And sit.  And sit.  And as Dusty calms down she receives treats and we slowly narrow the gap between the two.

And it is slowly working.

Which brings me to the gist of all this.

We started our dog search looking for a younger dog.  Pretty much everyone seems to start out their dog searches looking for puppies and younger dogs.

And this is fine.  Puppies and younger dogs are  adorable and often more cat-sized (for the cat owners looking for a dog), and there is the benefit of training them as the owner sees fit.

But equally fine are the older dogs who wait at shelters, often ending their lives at the shelters. Certainly they are cared for and loved by the shelter staff, but this is not quite the same thing as having a family and a home of their own.

I'm not quite sure if we found Dusty or if Dusty found us.  And in the end it does not matter.  Our sweet, gentle, squirrel-loving, cat-enthusiast, well-mannered and newest furry family member gets to spend however many years she has left with us, receiving probably too many treats and being given probably too many toys.

Which is exactly what life should be when any of us reach the age of 69*,  right?

Welcome home Dusty.




*http://www.akc.org/learn/family-dog/how-to-calculate-dog-years-to-human-years/