Hello, America! Welcome to Tennessee. I’ve been fielding phone calls from distraught friends and relatives from other parts of the country who aren’t taking Trump’s victory well. They are all surprised to find that I’m not more upset. But I live here, in Tennessee, which has long been a theocracy of hypocrites and dumbasses. So, same shit, different day.
I thought maybe it would be useful to provide non-Trump-voting Americans from the rest of the country with a survival guide of sorts.
Last week, Trump called Lee a 'Republican in name only' — despite the governor's long list of terrible conservative bona fides
- You are a commie now. Before the election, you may have been a moderate. You might be certain none of your beliefs have changed. But now you’re fringe left if you have such wild, socialist beliefs as “Public schools should be fully funded,” or “Hell no, you’re not looking at my genitals to see if I’m in the ‘right’ bathroom, you pervert,” or “I like libraries with books in them,” or “Is there really not anything we can do to prevent gun violence?” Hell, Trump even called our deeply conservative governor a "Republican in Name Only." Everyone, it seems, is hovering on the verge of being a communist, and now that the vote is settled, you are one. Don’t bother arguing about it, because the people calling you that don’t have a coherent definition of what it is.
- You’re also now a part of the liberal elite — one of the people who thinks they know better than everyone else what they should do with their lives and are trying to force them to conform by forcing everyone to “have pronouns.” Yes, that’s right. You are now a communist and an elitist. Those would seem to be contradictory, but I guess not. Also, bad news: There’s no money in it. You get to be called an out-of-touch elitist, but no one’s going to pay you to live like it.
- Forget ever getting any response from your elected officials. I used to have a congressman who took on the FBI on my behalf. Now I have a congressman who dislikes being a congressman so much that he tried not to run for office this year, and tried to tank his career with an extramarital affair, and he’s still headed back to Washington.
- Your elected officials, if not already, are about to become embarrassingly cowardly. Here in Tennessee, they won’t denounce Nazis, and when they do speak about them, they deflect from the issue of Nazis being here in Tennessee by talking about Israel.
- You’re going to hear a lot of things that, if you try to make those things make sense, it will drive you to drink. Like, right now, you hear a lot of analysts saying that Democrats are out of touch with the working class and how “we” need to learn how to talk like them. You might say to yourself, “I’m already completely comfortable with asking someone if they have a tampon,” or, “I know enough Spanish to ask where the bathroom is and follow the directions to get there.” But they don’t mean all the women and minorities that make up the actual working class. They mean the working class in their imaginations who are all white guys. I’ve offered to increase the number of “fucks” in my columns by 36 percent, because in my imagination, white working-class guys say “fuck” all the time. But no one’s taken me up on it, so I guess talking to this group will have to be taken up by someone else. Possibly you.
- As scary as stuff will be, and as dangerous as it will be for some people, there’s also going to be a lot of funny stuff. And you should laugh at it. Like putting Linda McMahon in charge of education. Y’all, she said she has a degree in education, but it’s really in French. Imagine if she thinks she’s leading the Department of Education, but Trump makes her the ambassador to France. She’s also been right by her husband’s side through all of the worst of the WWE’s excesses. Is it a good idea to put a person who is allegedly complicit in the systemic abuse of young boys in charge of all the young boys who go to public schools? Probably not! But what can you do but laugh?
The same day Lee signed two pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, a sign featuring a swastika and hate speech appeared near Fort Negley
Which brings me to my main point. Buck up, Buttercup. Yes, things will be bad. I too would rather not have to go through what we’re about to go through, and what the country's most at-risk and marginalized folks are going to have to go through. But like Gandalf says, it’s not up to us.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Don’t prematurely surrender. Don’t crumple in defeat before anyone has shown up to fight you. Love the people who you love. Dance when you can. Do good where you are. And help who you can help. It’s doable. I annoy the shit out of a lot of people, and I’m still here. Maybe we won’t change the world, but we can make the spaces we occupy spaces of joy and resistance.
