Simple Minds

The travel ban was a test, and not only with regard to the mechanisms of America’s judicial politics and constitutional law. It was a test of the basic ideological preparedness of a nation that has spent most of its time trying not to imagine a Trump presidency, and must now shape that sentiment, as quickly as possible, into the groundwork of a credible resistance. While our justice system appears to have passed the test, at least for the time being, our first attempts at resistance reveal a nation struggling in thought and action to frame the larger case against Trump. Obviously, such a case does exist, and there should be no question at this point that our feelings of imminent danger are justified. It’s just that the narrative we’ve been telling each other to explain and act on those feelings – the Love vs. Hate narrative passed down to us by Democratic leadership – is so grossly simplistic, so troublingly inconsistent, and so profoundly at odds with the reality of this danger, that we become ally to the very forces we are fighting against each time we tell it.--PG

Simplistic is the right word.  It is as if many people are slowly awakening from a long sleep. They are what Henry Miller was fond of calling them--somnambulists.

Unequipped to think for themselves, they haven't studied history nor developed a critical capacity to analyze the forces that surround them.  Their lives, steeped in apathy and apolitical dreams, were barren, and as long as they had good jobs and enough toys to distract them they were fine with the world.

Everything was too easy for many.  Now things are tougher and they're having to engage with aspects of existence that never occurred to them in the past. They've lost their way and remain reliant on wishes and dreams without realizing there is no easy fix.

It will take a mass mobilization and new consensus, or nothing will change inside the oligarchical system that dominates our lives.


TS