The Election—Fishing For Words

November 14th, 2016  |   

“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”

            (A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving)

 I might add one more word to that: Or subject them to an election, particularly like the one we have just suffered through. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has gotten our attention. Americans are paying attention. 

I sat down five days ago to write a response to the election. Something miserable had just happened and I went fishing for words to explain how I felt and what I thought about Donald Trump being the President of the United States.

Sometimes, however, the fish aren’t biting, the words just don’t show up in the alphabetized pool where I fish. Country music singer Reba McEntire sings it better than I can say it. “What do you say in a moment like this when you can’t find the words to tell it like it is?”

But words, like fish, are slippery. Sometimes, even after we think we have snagged a word or two, they slip away, like fish that slither out of a fisherman’s hands and slide back into the deep, from which they came.

After five days worth of listening to people fishing for words, it was time for me to bait my hook and cast my line back into the water. Stunned, even breathless over the election, and listening to others fish for words, it was finally my turn to fish for a few words.

And, lo and behold, I caught a few.

First Fish in the Boat: Donald Trump is for real, not a figment of our imagination. In fact, he is a reality that reminds us of our nation’s desperate search for its lost sense of imagination. Think about this: Donald Trump is the end product of the system that was designed, modified, and constructed to produce him.  After this election dominated by two personalities, we can now focus our attention on the systems that produce politicians, and the policies that have plunged us into a chaotic state.

Second Fish in the Boat: Don’t make Donald Trump the scapegoat for all the hateful sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and classism on display in this election. He did no more than surface what was already there, like poisonous bile in the underbelly of our nation.

Third Fish in the Boat: As a result of Donald Trump’s election, a wave of fear has swept the country. I hear it from many people in my life.  They fear for the future, their families and friends, and particularly for people who are the most vulnerable. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s says there are two aspects to consider when we talk about the future. One is the predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable future. You know, the sun rises, we brush our teeth, get dressed, and go out the door to a scheduled day. The other future, however, is (l’avenir, “to come’), the unexpected, unforeseeable people and events that surprise us. Which means, we should not get ahead of history. The l’avenir, which is beyond our control, will come in its own good time. Whether it bends toward justice or terror, we, by our responses, will have to address whatever takes place.

Fourth Fish in the Boat: Liberals and progressives that voted for Hillary Clinton will now face a difficult task. They will be challenged to put into practice their core values of diversity, inclusiveness, and multiculturalism. That will involve attempts to better understand people who voted for Trump.  They have a narrative unbeknownst to many of us.

As a boy, I remember my church rolling out a red carpet for a visiting black African priest, but unwilling to welcome the black families moving into the neighborhood. By way of analogy, we might very well welcome and embrace foreign students, visitors and refugees from other cultures, but how about the people down the road, over in the hollows of Appalachia, and the rural parts of our nation, including those white men who voted for Trump? They will test our stated beliefs about diversity, inclusiveness, and multiculturalism. 

That ain’t no walk in the park, no piece of cake, no slam-dunk, that’s for sure, because it will mean stepping across some of the lines that separate us from people we may not know or understand. I want to say more about those lines next time I go fishing for words, because the lines that divide us from one another, not only define us, they also, too often, confine us.

Entry Filed under: A Fig Just Dropped Archives