Same As It Ever Was

By: Cheng Tong - Nov 10, 2024

 

I woke up on Wednesday morning, November 6, to read the news and election results, and thought to myself I have woken up to a different America than the one I had woken up to the previous day.  Today, four days later as I write these words, I realize I was wrong, and that America was not different.  It had simply revealed itself to be what it has always been.

America, by a majority of those who voted, had elected a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to be the country’s president.  

Espousing racism, quoting Nazi propaganda, encouraging violence against news reporters and a former congresswoman, promoting hatred toward people of color, and promising to round up his political opponents and suggesting they should be executed for treason (against him), won the election for him.  He tapped into the undercurrent that has existed in America for its nearly 250 years – an undercurrent of racism, bigotry, and misogyny – and found it fertile and wanting to break through the thin chiffon curtain behind which it had hidden for so many years.  In doing so, he brought it out of the darkness and into the light for all to see.

Women are fearful more so than ever, and rightfully so, of what is to come.  Reproductive rights have been ripped away from them by white men who rule.  Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen is where women belong, they were told.  There really is no glass ceiling, women were told; that ceiling is impervious to their entry.

People of color were told to know their place.  Within hours after the results became clear, text messages to black people all over the country spewed the same hatred he had spoken of on the campaign trail; the sender(s) feeling freed to do as they wish with impunity.

Acts of anti-semetic violence have increased dramatically in America.  The Jewish community was told they needed their heads examined if they voted for a black woman who, according to him, had only recently become black, and according to his running mate, is “trash.”

The LGBTQ community has been cast to the coals, told they do not count as human beings, and with their rights diminished.  Grandparents were told to get off their asses and provide childcare services to their grandchildren, instead of living retirement in a manner of their own choosing.

The economic power of slavery had helped in the founding of America, however inhuman it was.  That same racism exists even today, and perhaps always will.  White supremacists  and Nazi wannabes have been empowered to come out onto the street, marching, demonstrating, and committing acts of great violence against people of color, Asian-Americans, Jews, and anyone who isn’t white and male.

In the course of forming America, native Americans who had lived on these lands for centuries were wiped out, herded onto reservations, and silenced. Their reverence for sacred Mother Earth was negated, and he wants to rape her now.

Only those who are descended from Native Americans can lay historical claim to America.  The rest of us are either immigrants or the descendents of immigrants.  The difference?  So many are white, and are the source of white nationalism, Christian nationalism, anti-semitism, anti-LGBTQism, and all of the vitriol and violence that comes from each of those isms.

We talked a good game, we Americans.  We were the shining light of the world, the hope for all mankind, the democracy experiment that sounded good and looked great on paper.  But in practice now, we’ve been revealed as phonies and charlatans.  Why be surprised, then, when we elect a charlatan as American president? 

What parent wants their child to become a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist?  And yet, that is who too many parents voted for to lead this country.  Those parents are our neighbors. He was elected to an office that is almost entirely about character, and yet he has no character, or even integrity for the truth.  

America has been revealed for what it truly is at this moment, and in doing so it admitted what it has been all these years just below the surface.  Politics had little to do with it, and reasoned solutions even less.  Racism, bigotry, hatred, misogyny, and grievance all did.

Some of the more popular videos on Youtube these past four days were those that presented information about the countries most easily migrated to from America.  Some will even pay you to relocate.  Even with passive income thresholds to prove, it is surprising how many countries would welcome American expats and make that migration easy for them.

In October of 2019 I wrote an essay on these pages about the wisdom of Zhuangzi.  He wrote about the interconnectedness of all life and everything in creation.  The essay was in response to America’s isolationism under his first term leadership, and here we are facing that once again.  There are many arguments supporting its dangers, and yet that is in our immediate future.

I would say everything about the election results points to a much different America than existed before Tuesday.  However, I now know differently.  These words may very well bring threats against me, if not actual violence, even though it is my legal and constitutional right to speak them.  But “legal and constitutional” don’t matter in America anymore. Just ask women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, the Jewish community, and anyone who does not speak well of the next president.

On the morning after the election, I woke up to an America that is the “same as it ever was,” to borrow lyrics from The Talking Heads.  I just didn’t realize what that “same” was. America had spoken, revealing its true self at this moment to me, and I am deeply saddened by what I heard.

Yet, the dynamic tension between the opposing forces of yin and yang tell me that everything changes always, in time, and that soft always overcomes hard, in time.  I hang my hope on that dynamic.  My days on earth are dwindling, but my hope is for my grandchildren and their children, that they will right the ship and make America what it was always supposed to be as envisioned in the founding documents. 

That will make America great, not the charlatan in the White House.  I cling to this hope. In the meantime, I will continue with my daily practices and walking my path, relying on them to cultivate stillness and remain steady.  That is all I can do.  That, and keep breathing.