"Make no mistake about it: We are at war now..."
-Hunter S. Thompson, 9/11/01
November 9, 2016. 4:45 a.m. Waking up after about an hour of sleep. Jenna is packing the rest of her bags. I'm taking her to the airport where she'll be off on a work-related trip to Italy. Like just about everyone else in America, we thought we'd be waking up this morning to the end of an election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Last night, as we watched with horror as the poll maps went red with the fire of Trump's unprecedented campaign, we realized how much Jenna would need this trip. Good to get out of the country for a few days and detox. Meanwhile I'd be in for a weekend fortifying myself in our apartment, working from home and trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Just me and the cats.
On the 405 now, en route to LAX. It breaks my heart to look over to Jenna, taking in the wounded look on her face as she tells me she doesn't know how she's supposed to look to this person as her president, a man she would literally be terrified of if she met him on the street. If the president were anyone else, this would sound melodramatic. But it's Donald Trump she's talking about, so it sounds terrifyingly right. I'm sure women across the country feel the same way. This election has told them that their work, accomplishments, and ownership of their bodies is inconsequential under the completely unchecked irresponsibility and tyranny of the white male machine.
---
I drop off Jenna at the terminal and head back onto the freeway. I connect my phone to the bluetooth for some music. Early yesterday evening, when I still thought Hillary was going to win, I jokingly remarked to Jenna that a Trump presidency would mean a rebirth for rock n roll. Today I'd take the death of rock n roll forever over this. Nevertheless, when the chips are down I turn to rock n roll. And right now there's only one song I can think of to listen to: The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter":
Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Rape, murder! It's just a shot away
Rape, murder! It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
The anthem is appropriate, but a more cryptic, yet surprisingly more appropriate one comes up next as my phone shuffles through the album:
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Everybody got to go
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
The one that shut the kitchen door
He don't give a hoot of warning
Wrapped up in a black cat cloak
He don't go in the light of the morning
He split the time the cock'rel crows
...the vision is clear and instant. The demon spirit of the Midnight Rambler--a creeping violent specter of the night, sneaking up on unsuspecting prey and slitting their throats where they stand--
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Well, honey, it's no rock 'n' roll show
Well, I'm talkin' about the midnight gambler
Yeah, the one you never seen before
The Midnight Rambler--summoned by the exalted ignorance of America--has crept up and slit all our throats--and almost no one saw him coming.
In addition to being a colossal shit excuse for a person, Donald Trump has secured his place as the most successful con man in American history--conning his way to the top--the seat of the most powerful man in the world. Boy, we were suckered. The truth is out, folks: We are dumb. We were dumb to think there was any other outcome but this, and last night, we were dumb enough to be shocked by it. Today, Michael Moore writes:
Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You're fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
If the media will never own it, then we should own the fact that we bought into the media's shameful obsession with Trump's personality and Hillary Clinton's email non-scandal. And we need to own the fact that we were dumb enough to think that merely having progressive ideas was enough. Like the Peace & Love generation of the 60's, we have yet to learn that a communal high--whether chemical or ideological--will never bring about progress on its own. This is the kind of thing that makes the words from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ring truer than ever:
There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
The freeway veers east as I get closer to Long Beach. The sun is rising and I'm driving straight into it, no sunglasses handy. My eyes are starting to hurt, though not as much they used to hurt when I drove a floral delivery truck in Utah, setting out at dawn en route from Provo to Vernal, headed east on Highway 89 into the blinding white heat of the sunrise...
...Utah....Utah....Up until my move to California almost a year and a half ago, Utah was my home. In recent years, the state has become a cultural battle zone in its own right--the inevitable center of the war for the heart and soul of the Mormon faith. It's been a rough year for Mormons as the Church's definition of God's love appears to be narrowing. Last November, the Church introduced a policy that would label all Mormons in same-sex marriages apostates subject to excommunication, and bar children living in same-sex marriage households from baptism and other church ordinances. The policy also states that these same children may only be baptized as an adult, and only after they disavow their parents' "lifestyle". As a result of this policy, the Church is steadily hemorrhaging members--especially Millennials. The faith we were raised in has failed us and many others, shown us that our ideals, our identities, and our lives are too messy to assimilate into the main body. Historically, the pattern of the Church has been to adapt to the times, but with about a 20 to 30 year delay (as evidenced by the church's 1978 lift of a racist priesthood ban on black members). So whatever immeasurable progress is actually happening in the Church may come far too late to reclaim the rejected.
As for me, I've tried to keep one foot in the faith--largely because it's a place I've felt I can leverage my position of privilege to do some good. My congregation here in Long Beach is one of cultural, racial, and economic diversity, and it feels right that I've stuck around long enough to wind up a part of it. But after seeing Utah's polling numbers last night, the thought of sticking around to find the good among so much bad ain't sittin' quite so right with me.
Utah had an anomaly in third-party presidential candidate Evan McMullin. A Mormon himself, McMullin's "independent conservative" platform and clean-cut, milquetoast image led me to believe he might just steal the state from Trump. But as the final poll numbers show, Trump won the state with 47% of the votes, with Clinton and McMullin coming in at 28% and 21%, respectively. I guess I should be encouraged by the unprecedented turnout for Clinton in one of the reddest states in the country, but that doesn't seem like an olive branch worth extending. And if the Mormons who voted for McMullin think their vote clears them of responsibility or says something exceptional about their faith, they should think again. The truth is, McMullin's candidacy represents a morally bankrupt ideology. Clearly his voters needed a candidate who looked liked them and didn't upset their prudish sensibilities with gross hair and bad words. As for the overwhelming majority of Mormons who voted for Trump, their vote is a clear slap in the face to their Muslim brothers and sisters. Claiming to love the Muslim community and support Muslim refugees, then vote for a man who has built a campaign on Islamophobia, is a vicious and cruel act, and like the November LGBTQ policy, it shows that the Mormon version of love & charity barely even runs skin deep. If Mormonism was ever exceptional, make no mistake--today it is not. Like every other branch of American Christianity, it rests in a dark state of serious midnight.
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
He'll leave his footprints up and down your hall
And did you hear about the midnight gambler
And did you see me make my midnight call
Today the LDS church will issue a statement congratulating Trump on his win, and admonish us to pray for him and the rest of the leaders of our country. As someone who believes in prayer--not to mention a God who hears prayers--I gotta say, the time for prayer is not now, it wasn't yesterday, and it definitely ain't tomorrow. Our country doesn't need empty prayers from apathetic people. Surely I wasn't hearing things when they told me in seminary that faith without works is dead.
One of the great doctrines of Mormonism is that we have both a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (an inefficient gender binary for many, I know, but I'd like to think that the Father and Mother God together are ultimately a symbol of the divinity of all genders). Trouble is, as long as I can remember, Heavenly Father has had 100% of the spotlight. Mormonism has made Heavenly Mother a silent partner, a non-entity, an invisible God. By now it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that I'm no longer what you might call a traditionally believing member of the church, but a belief in God and the eternal progression of the soul remains the driving force of my life. Maybe it's finally time to break with the Father God and turn to the Mother--the Queen of Night, Diety Disrupter, Goddess of the disenfranchized and dispossessed--dive head first into the eternal river of her blood and ride the crest of a new crimson wave, down, down, down, all the way to the exaltation of all humans.
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
Well, honey, it's no rock 'n' roll show
Well, I'm talkin' about the midnight gambler
Yeah, the one you never seen before
The Midnight Rambler--summoned by the exalted ignorance of America--has crept up and slit all our throats--and almost no one saw him coming.
---
In addition to being a colossal shit excuse for a person, Donald Trump has secured his place as the most successful con man in American history--conning his way to the top--the seat of the most powerful man in the world. Boy, we were suckered. The truth is out, folks: We are dumb. We were dumb to think there was any other outcome but this, and last night, we were dumb enough to be shocked by it. Today, Michael Moore writes:
Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You're fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
If the media will never own it, then we should own the fact that we bought into the media's shameful obsession with Trump's personality and Hillary Clinton's email non-scandal. And we need to own the fact that we were dumb enough to think that merely having progressive ideas was enough. Like the Peace & Love generation of the 60's, we have yet to learn that a communal high--whether chemical or ideological--will never bring about progress on its own. This is the kind of thing that makes the words from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ring truer than ever:
There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
---
The freeway veers east as I get closer to Long Beach. The sun is rising and I'm driving straight into it, no sunglasses handy. My eyes are starting to hurt, though not as much they used to hurt when I drove a floral delivery truck in Utah, setting out at dawn en route from Provo to Vernal, headed east on Highway 89 into the blinding white heat of the sunrise...
...Utah....Utah....Up until my move to California almost a year and a half ago, Utah was my home. In recent years, the state has become a cultural battle zone in its own right--the inevitable center of the war for the heart and soul of the Mormon faith. It's been a rough year for Mormons as the Church's definition of God's love appears to be narrowing. Last November, the Church introduced a policy that would label all Mormons in same-sex marriages apostates subject to excommunication, and bar children living in same-sex marriage households from baptism and other church ordinances. The policy also states that these same children may only be baptized as an adult, and only after they disavow their parents' "lifestyle". As a result of this policy, the Church is steadily hemorrhaging members--especially Millennials. The faith we were raised in has failed us and many others, shown us that our ideals, our identities, and our lives are too messy to assimilate into the main body. Historically, the pattern of the Church has been to adapt to the times, but with about a 20 to 30 year delay (as evidenced by the church's 1978 lift of a racist priesthood ban on black members). So whatever immeasurable progress is actually happening in the Church may come far too late to reclaim the rejected.
As for me, I've tried to keep one foot in the faith--largely because it's a place I've felt I can leverage my position of privilege to do some good. My congregation here in Long Beach is one of cultural, racial, and economic diversity, and it feels right that I've stuck around long enough to wind up a part of it. But after seeing Utah's polling numbers last night, the thought of sticking around to find the good among so much bad ain't sittin' quite so right with me.
Utah had an anomaly in third-party presidential candidate Evan McMullin. A Mormon himself, McMullin's "independent conservative" platform and clean-cut, milquetoast image led me to believe he might just steal the state from Trump. But as the final poll numbers show, Trump won the state with 47% of the votes, with Clinton and McMullin coming in at 28% and 21%, respectively. I guess I should be encouraged by the unprecedented turnout for Clinton in one of the reddest states in the country, but that doesn't seem like an olive branch worth extending. And if the Mormons who voted for McMullin think their vote clears them of responsibility or says something exceptional about their faith, they should think again. The truth is, McMullin's candidacy represents a morally bankrupt ideology. Clearly his voters needed a candidate who looked liked them and didn't upset their prudish sensibilities with gross hair and bad words. As for the overwhelming majority of Mormons who voted for Trump, their vote is a clear slap in the face to their Muslim brothers and sisters. Claiming to love the Muslim community and support Muslim refugees, then vote for a man who has built a campaign on Islamophobia, is a vicious and cruel act, and like the November LGBTQ policy, it shows that the Mormon version of love & charity barely even runs skin deep. If Mormonism was ever exceptional, make no mistake--today it is not. Like every other branch of American Christianity, it rests in a dark state of serious midnight.
Did you hear about the midnight rambler
He'll leave his footprints up and down your hall
And did you hear about the midnight gambler
And did you see me make my midnight call
Today the LDS church will issue a statement congratulating Trump on his win, and admonish us to pray for him and the rest of the leaders of our country. As someone who believes in prayer--not to mention a God who hears prayers--I gotta say, the time for prayer is not now, it wasn't yesterday, and it definitely ain't tomorrow. Our country doesn't need empty prayers from apathetic people. Surely I wasn't hearing things when they told me in seminary that faith without works is dead.
One of the great doctrines of Mormonism is that we have both a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (an inefficient gender binary for many, I know, but I'd like to think that the Father and Mother God together are ultimately a symbol of the divinity of all genders). Trouble is, as long as I can remember, Heavenly Father has had 100% of the spotlight. Mormonism has made Heavenly Mother a silent partner, a non-entity, an invisible God. By now it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that I'm no longer what you might call a traditionally believing member of the church, but a belief in God and the eternal progression of the soul remains the driving force of my life. Maybe it's finally time to break with the Father God and turn to the Mother--the Queen of Night, Diety Disrupter, Goddess of the disenfranchized and dispossessed--dive head first into the eternal river of her blood and ride the crest of a new crimson wave, down, down, down, all the way to the exaltation of all humans.
---
I'm back in my apartment. The cats are restless and begging for food and the smell of their freshly used litter box is adding to my headache. I feed them, then I sit down and dive into my phone.
My Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of stories, stories, stories, stories of friends and strangers, already feeling the crippling effects of this infernal election. I read the words of Muslim friends who are living in the reality post-9/11 Islamophobia all over again, LGBTQ friends who fear for the ultraviolent undoing of all the basic human rights they've fought so hard to claim, black friends who fear for their lives now more than ever, I think of Jenna's latinx students who now live under the very real threat of deportation, and on and on and on. To say that all these people didn't deserve an election overwhelmingly decided by racism and misogyny is a pitiful understatement. And just as quickly as these stories come in, so do the apathetic voices of the white privileged masses, telling everyone to buck up, stop being so dramatic, you lost get over it, and so on and so on....so I engage. I start arguing, not even knowing if it's my place to argue, because I can't hold it back. And for two hours I'm posting and arguing, and arguing and tweeting, until finally I come across a Facebook post from Ty Segall, L.A. garage rock champion and one of my contemporary rock n roll heroes:
I puked my guts out last night.
And woke up this morning crying.
I never use this stupid account. I still believe that people can talk to each other how they used to. Neighbors talking to neighbors. People talking to people no matter what they look like or who they are.
But I want to say that in the face of doom, I still believe in people, and want all of you to believe in each other still. This world can still be beautiful.
I'll be seeing all of you in the streets.
The streets. Yes the streets. Go outside, get some fresh air, nurse that sick head of yours, get some food, see some faces. All this social media raging didn't do any good before and it won't do any good now. Time to sign off, disconnect, get out under the sun and embrace the world your Mother God gave you.
---
It's hot outside, and it still feels like I've slipped off into some alternate reality, leaving behind a world where we're celebrating the election of the first female president. She was far from the ideal candidate, with a great many flaws that have had negative consequences on the American people for years, but there was no question that we could have done a hell of a lot worse. Let's all calm down now and hold her under the fire when we need to. She'll be great. Love wins...
But that's a lie isn't it. Or maybe it's just a seductive manifestation of denial, the 1st stage of grief. Whatever the cause, this weird feeling of dimensional displacement doesn't change the fact that I'm living in the same reality I was in yesterday, and it's a reality I helped create. But I'll be damned if I don't help create a better future.
Ty's right. On the streets, the people are still beautiful. Strangers smile as I pass them and I feel more compelled than ever to smile back. Everyone looks as confused and whiplashed as I feel. At the moment, 11/9/16 feels like some weird mirror image of 9/11/01, and the glass between those two dates is made up of all the changed plans and all the hate and willful ignorance that brought us here. Henry Rollins writes today that "America is currently at its most transparent. The veil of civility has been shredded and maybe it’s about time. It’s a rough room, America, but at least we now know where we’re at." The next four years are sure to be rife with battle of all kinds. There will be violence, riots, and spiritual bile from all angles, but hopefully there will be much more clear speaking and civic action.
In the meantime, keep your eyes open, and keep a constant lookout for the all-seeing blade of the Midnight Rambler...
And if you ever catch the midnight rambler
I'll steal your mistress from under your nose
I'll go easy with your cold fanged anger
I'll stick my knife right down your throat, baby and it hurts!
God speed.
