One of television’s best and most underrated sitcoms was “Roc.” Well before James Gandolfini and Bryan Cranston, Charles Dutton created an everyman hero we could all cheer for. He was Shrek before Shrek, and Dutton could not have been finer. Perhaps the best episode of the series revolves around a crack house surfacing in Roc’s neighborhood and his unrelenting efforts to shut it down.
After organizing neighbors to fight the scourge, which creates a variety of frustrations and gives rise to Roc’s full host of frailties and stubbornness, the dealer himself pays Roc and family a visit to try and “work out” a solution to their “disagreement.” The gangster first tries to buy Roc’s acquiescence, and when that approach fails, threatens Roc’s family, which gets both of Roc’s hands around his neck. After our hero’s wife and father convince him to let the thug go, the dealer says they should let things cool off and talk again the next day. Roc’s reply is classic, and acting doesn’t get better. Dutton again grabs the low life and declares there is nothing to discuss. “I want you out of my neighborhood; that’s my bottom line!” Roc makes clear that he won’t rest until the dealer is gone, “even if it kills me.” As the frightening criminal heads out the door, he turns to Roc and hisses “it just might trash man… it just might.” Great stuff!
The scene serves well as a parallel to our current national nightmare. Since his inaugural declaration of America as dystopia, Trump has set up shop in our neighborhood and demanded acquiescence to a ruinous stream-of-consciousness Presidency with really no higher aims than the crack dealer Roc looked to strangle. Our block was founded on and nurtured with notions of community and relentless progress, continually nourished by lessons our mistakes have taught us. Trump has from the outset attacked those foundations on the hour and sown division whenever before a microphone, or on his Twitter feed. Those who support him are simply junkies on a stoop, destroying our block.
The latest outrage portends a new level of destructive mischief. Unabashedly putting the elbow on Netanyahu to prevent duly elected US lawmakers from entering Israel signals two new and chilling developments. One, that Trump now gives no thought to the propriety of using American foreign policy, and engaging other world leaders in his petty grudge fests. Two, that to justify his actions he will exponentially amp up his lying rhetoric and expect the same from his supporters here and abroad. The Omar/Tlaib affair demolishes whatever line anybody still deluded themselves to believe existed between Trump foreign policy and his desperate political survival.
That Trump actually relished carrying out the whole sorry mess in the open speaks to what he now believes his wretched core wants to see and embrace. His instincts in that regard have always been on the mark. His clients are that desperate for what he has to sell, addicted to the collective resentment and bigotry they ingested for decades from Fox/AM gateway providers.
Of course, patriotism is not a cut and dry concept, as today’s battle for America’s soul clarifies. That so many have fallen into the nod of euphoric militarist xenophobia now forces those of us, who, frankly, probably never previously gave the question the thought it deserved, to come to terms with how it defines who we are and what requirements it demands. We always read or listened to the news about other neighborhoods falling victim to rot from within, always glad it was the other guy. Now it’s us. The dealer is in that old white mansion on Pennsylvania Ave. and the lines are long.
Trump has bought off the 2% with a debt bomb tax giveaway. He’s bought off big business with, er, anything they want. Energy interests pinch themselves everyday as they enjoy a new opportunity they had assumed was relegated to the dust bin of history as America evolved past fossil fuel dependence. Evangelicals now believe they have the best friend they’ve ever had at the helm, the result of ambitious Trumpist initiatives to make common cause with born again nastiness toward LGBT scapegoats, and frontal assaults on Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood. Ammosexuals have been coddled through one assault weapon/mega mag-enabled mass murder after another. Trump has assured them it’s never the right time for gun sanity. Now, farmers, many pushed to the brink by arbitrary tariff regimes, are the latest to graciously accept White House/GOP bribes for acquiescence.
Incredibly, Democratic presidential aspirants are more concerned with beguiling the community with their own set of pay offs, while arguing about who is sufficiently decent, than rally cries to save the neighborhood from ruin. Fact is, near three years of this Presidency HAS divided us, and the menu of issues is down to one…. get this scum out of our lives, rid the block of its pestilence. Those on the right side of this struggle must understand and embrace the preeminence of that desperate prerequisite to anything else we can achieve as a nation. Because, you better believe student loan forgiveness will not be on anyone’s policy plate during a second Trump term. Death of American democracy will be breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In July of 1997, when Britain formally ceded control of Hong Kong to China, most simply hoped for the best. Those prayers were not answered and more than one and a half million are now in the streets making clear Hong Kong isn’t going to be Beijing. Here, way too many appear to still harbor aspirations that government by Hannity and Carlson is somehow palatable, and that 2020 is just another election cycle, even as the President and GOP lay out a welcome mat for foreign interference.
“Hate” has been assigned a new definition by Trumpie apologists: anyone out of patience with our dangerous lurch toward fascism. Well, call me a hater. My tolerance for this regime ran out long ago, and arguments about “policy” only sound like normalization of the untenable. Trump’s hourly outrages, his continuous mining of the depths his awfulness feels no shame in exploring, preclude any discussions of coexistence. To think such entente is possible requires ignoring virtually every public statement he makes. I want him out of my neighborhood. That’s my bottom line! BC