THE YEAR IS 2020

2020 has been...trying (and I say trying with a deep and heavy sigh) for a multitude of reasons. Maybe it’s something about my experience in American where I can look danger in its face and simply not care. I’m only 27 years old, so being an adult in America has been a new experience with a steep learning curve. I look around and ask myself, how on earth did we get here? But as I think about the American experiment, I realize that America has always been crazy. Perhaps, no fuck that, definitely even crazier. But for some reason, it seems like we as a country have gone off the deep end. Maybe it’s just youthful naivete, you know...not being alive for the ‘80s and barely conscious of the world around me in the ‘90s. But since the year 2000, as far as I can see, America has been pridefully down with the fuck shit and destruction. Fast forward two decades later, and here we are. A racist reality TV show president and a deadly disease ripped from the script of an apocalyptic Hollywood horror movie looming over the economy. So here we are, some of us at home trying to keep our own lives from falling apart while others go out and work for a wage that is simply unsustainable in this present economy while risking their lives to do so. Because we all know we’re going to die one day, but we pray that that day isn’t anytime soon.

The last five years have shown me how white people act when they aren't invited to the cookout; they call the police. And most of the time, those are the friendly white people who go out of their way to try to make you feel like you’re not the token at work or maybe even love Kendrick Lamar more than you do. As annoying as being black in America can be, I’d invite a Karen to the cookout and a Becky to the bed sheets before I’d ever let a Dylann Roof into my church.

But that within itself creates cyclical problems that seem to be inescapable for black people in this country. I’m not sure if it was Barack Obama himself who made a particular type of white person in this country feel so desperate. I mean President Obama, like his democratic presidential predecessor, was pretty conservative for all intents and purposes. Maybe just a tad bit too nappy (imagine if he played the saxophone as well). And as Uncle Tommish as it sounds, I can understand but not excuse where these people are coming from. We are dealing with a minority community with a disproportionate amount of power reeling with a perceived loss of culture, meaning their views and reflections no longer being represented in the mainstream ethos as they once were. Coupled with shifts in the economy making blue-collar, union-heavy manufacturing careers a thing of the past. Pleasantville America was changing and evolving into MTV America. But when they turned off the TV, they saw a dystopian nightmare of abandoned buildings, only to be replaced by neighborhood Walmarts and Mcdonalds and eventually Amazon and Facebook. Who else other than Donald Trump would be perfect for seizing that misplaced anger and harness it into a winning campaign? It was relatively easy for him to position himself as the strongman, law & order candidate. That’s exactly what white America was yearning for. There’s a long history in America of the use of policing to oppress and terrorize black communities. Police officers who were sworn to protect and serve have been historically used as the enforcement mechanism for order and to preserve the status quo. So when a white woman calls the police because a little black girl is selling water on a hot summer day in San Francisco, why should we even bat an eye?

In a presidential timeline, it feels like 4 years isn’t enough to get anything accomplished. But in all actuality, I think most presidents' most active and consequential successes and failures occur in their first term as they ride the wave and energy of what got them into office in the first place. The second term is for tying up loose ends, if at all possible because politics is politics. Consider our state of affairs in Obama’s second term. It felt like every week there was a new terrorist attack dominating headlines. The leftovers from The War on Terror from the Bush Administration turned into a buffet. White folks were petrified. And unfortunately, fear is often a breeding ground for misunderstanding and eventual evil, an all too perfect opportunity for the 24/7 news cycle to commodify and capitalize. In retrospect maybe cable news is more harmful than helpful, especially with no fair doctrine rule. As the media waited for the next suicide bomber, ISIS grew stronger and more robust using the ubiquity of the internet to perpetuate and engender hate. Chris Rock couldn’t even predict the aftermath of having a president with the middle name Hussein (Arabic for handsome) would have on the psyche of white America.

In came Donald Trump and his trainwreck of a campaign, but America couldn’t get enough of this blundering buffoon. Hate him or love him he was and is just as captivating as Barack Obama. The personification of the rebellion against intellectuals and in my opinion creatives too. When Hollywood didn’t want to pay writers for compelling stories, we got cheap reality TV and billion-dollar action movies as replacements (a guilty pleasure of mine as well). Maybe America got what it wanted, or maybe America just ran out of money, or perhaps we just overvalue things that shouldn’t have that much value. Regardless, this sequence of events all culminated into the perfect storm of American culture. And in the end, isn’t that what the presidency has become? A representation of the American zeitgeist on the world’s stage?

So if Donald Trump does in fact (maybe defacto) win a second term in office, what does the future hold for the world’s longest-standing democracy? Will he succeed in destroying the Affordable Care Act? Will he continue to surpass Obama as Deporter in Chief in the most draconian measures? Will we face another financial breakdown as we did at the end of the Bush administration? Like every four years, this is an opportunity to reevaluate our collective values. To create a more humane society in which we further commit ourselves to combat poverty and homelessness and revitalize education. So remember to wake up when September ends and go out and vote. Not because you read this article, but because it’s essential for a healthy republic. Vote national and vote local. Even if you choose to vote for Donald Trump, just promise me you’ll hold him accountable for what you believe a fair and just democracy should be.