I’m writing this post on a Wednesday morning, after having just read a spirited debate over the meaning of the Brexit vote in The New York Times. All five of the writers and theater professionals who were invited to weigh in express deep disappointment in Britain’s drift toward isolationism; novelist Zia Haider Rahman is perhaps the most adamant of the five. (“The Brexit vote only consolidates what I have long known—that Britain is no home to me.”) The discussion then turns to an artist’s obligation to respond—and to respond quickly—to political events; director Marianne Elliott notes that she’s “seeing Brexit in everything I’m currently planning to direct, in every play I read that I might direct.” Elliott’s viewfinder makes me think about (how could it not?) Donald J. Trump.
Trump! It’s the card that beats every other card. It’s the waking nightmare that’s occupied much of my imagination for the past year or so. At first, the candidate’s rise appealed to me for its comic potential, for its value as performance art. More recently, I’ve found myself siding with George Saunders (from his piece in the current New Yorker): “I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. But I imagine it that way now.” Like Saunders, I have two daughters; I don’t want their formative memories to include whatever a Trump presidency might augur. And I don’t know exactly what to do about the possibility. (Except, of course, to vote for Hillary.) I recently contributed a short poem to an e-anthology called Poets Opposing Evil Trump—but really, could a collection with that title influence a single undecided voter? So what do we do?
Because I’m a poet who writes mostly squibs and larks, I’m granted lots of material during political seasons. But I usually share the resulting poems with, at most, eight friends; only later might I try to publish a retrospective series (after the defeat of, say, a Romney or a Cruz). Again, what do we do about the prospect of a cancerous presidency while we’re still in the watch-and-wait phase? (This morning’s prediction markets give Trump a 26% chance of metastasizing.) Do we try to nudge the electorate’s sympathies with blog posts? Of course not. No one reading this blog is voting for Trump.
But millions of people throughout the country are voting for him—including one of my more vocal students last semester. And plenty of citizens are praising him for giving voice to their anger and prejudices. (Saunders, on this phenomenon: “Above all, Trump supporters are ‘not politically correct,’ which, as far as I can tell, means that they have a particular aversion to that psychological moment when, having thought something, you decide that it is not a good thought, and might pointlessly hurt someone’s feelings, and therefore decline to say it.”) Maybe the pushback has to be left to super-PACs and comedians. And of course to the opposing candidate herself.
Which leaves me with a pretty lame conclusion: Let’s do what we can to get out the vote, and let’s hope things work out. Philip Pullman, in the Brexit exchange I linked to at the top of this post, praises the European Union for representing, at its heart, “genuine hope, the hope of a continent following two devastating wars, the sense that if we could get away from the zealotry of totalitarian certainty we might be able to build a way of living together that would be better for all of us.” He continues:
Of course, there’s a certain amount of wide-eyed naivety in that response. I don’t care. I think hope is the name not of a temperament or an emotion, but of a virtue. It’s our duty to hope.
I’m reminded of a poem by Robert Francis that used to hang in a wide-eyed nineteen-year-old’s apartment (my apartment) thirty years ago. It’s called “Paper Men to Air Hopes and Fears.”
The first speaker said
Fear fire. Fear furnaces
Incinerators, the city dump
The faint scratch of match.The second speaker said
Fear water. Fear drenching rain
Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp
Day and the flush toilet.The third speaker said
Fear wind. And it needn’t be
A hurricane. Drafts, open
Windows, electric fans.The fourth speaker said
Fear knives. Fear any sharp
Thing, machine, shears
Scissors, lawnmowers.The fifth speaker said
Hope. Hope for the best
A smooth folder in a steel file.