Author: stevekuusisto

“It is not me,” you say. “It’s not me who causes all the trouble in the village square.” You’re right of course. Those aren’t your nazis. Hell you don’t even know a nazi.

“I know it’s not me,” you say.“

Yes you have white privilege, or you’ve succeeded at Capitalist Parcheesi despite your origin and you take a good vacation once a year. You’ve a basement crammed full of excess stuff. You fully understand the time you’ve spent acquiring non-essential commodities is time you could have used doing something else.

“Someone else will take care of the nazis,” you think. “Someone else will clean up the environment, guarantee equal opportunity for those disabled children down the street.”

Nazis grow when you’re not awake.

It’s not your fault. You gave to the March of Dimes.

I believe nazis appear when our garages are filled with too much crap.

Marx had it right:  “Under private property … Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.”

Nazis grow when people are being swindled.

“It’s not me,” you say. You’re right of  course.

Forgive me. I know I’m being supercilious.

I have a basement filled with junk.

Sometimes if a man or woman, queer, trans, straight, tall or short, sometimes, sometimes, white or black, Asian, Latina, Latino, Indigenous—oh sometimes if “they” feel their stolid hearts about to break, sometimes, they will imagine a better future, where man is no longer wolf to man as they used to say when there was a vigorous labor movement, when solidarity was practiced and little boats rose on the tide—oh sometimes, when the heart is bruised, they must still believe in a future and don’t be fooled, it doesn’t involve racist monuments, but instead there’s Sojourner Truth in bronze on the village square, Frederick Douglas holding a book high up on a pedestal in a city park, Myles Horton beside him on the agora—sometimes they dream of public reverence for peace makers and educators, organizers for justice, a statue of James Baldwin and another of Pete Seeger, not murderers, fighters for slavery, ugly men who’d just as soon burn down the nation as see a man, woman, or child freed from bondage, sometimes, yes, the people have a better vision than a busted heart.

When you’re young it’s hard to understand how strong the muscle of state repression is.

Pop culture, whether in the 60’s or the 21st century insists, over and over, sexily, temper and performative exaggerations are enough to bring about freedom. Maybe you won’t shoot the sheriff or bring down the temples of Babylon but for a moment, a moment which sometimes lasts years, you think it’s possible.

Then one day when you’re middle aged, weakened by responsibility, you watch as a democrat (small d) like Bill Clinton, destroys the social safety net for the poor, effectively completing Reagan’s work, while proclaiming a new era of prosperity for all. Later you watch as successive presidents, Republican and Democratic, promote perpetual war. Finally you just live long enough to see an authentic fascist sympathizer take the reins of government. The songs you loved didn’t help. That poetry reading you attended where all the writers joined hands and aimed to levitate the pentagon didn’t work.

Of course it didn’t work. The world ain’t what you think it is, it’s just what it is. The line is from the folk singer Greg Brown.

I’m old. Politics are as ugly as ever. Watching today as Donald Trump doubled down on his rebarbative and shriveled opinion that there are two sides at fault when it comes to neo-nazi extremism and terror reminded me the world is never what I think it is, until it is.

Periods of progress come and go. History tells us this. Even American history. But there’s never been enough progress for people of color. Not for native Americans.  Not enough for women. Gays? Don’t make me laugh. The disabled? Many remain locked up in institutions against their wills.

Trump is working the fascist-neo-lib dial, hoping to make Nazis customary—in his version of the United States all you have to do is say they have a point, just like those people who are repulsed. God forbid you should say a fascist might deserve a punch in the mouth after shouting expletives about the jews.

“What is wrong with 45?” people keep saying. Nothing. He’s a dyed in the wool racist who won an election. He cannot lead. He can only fan the flames of discontent. That’s what his electoral base wants. They’re getting it. Don’t confuse “The Donald” with a man who feels genuine sorrow or outrage for as long as he can fan the mob’s rage he’s getting his version of the job done.