The arc of history

Justice is no more natural than injustice.

Last night, Kesha and I drank two glasses of wine each and cooked a steak. Her husband was next door helping the old man that the rest of the neighborhood hates. He gave us instructions before he left - oil on the steaks, butter in the pan, sear for 3 minutes, then put it in the oven for 5 and a half. More butter when it comes out. Kesha only remembered how long it should go in the oven, and I supplied the rest. It was rare and delicious.

We spoke about how anxious we were, trading complaints and the worst of our fears. The newspaper page she and her husband framed and hung on the wall, from the last time there was an election and the Democrats won, haunted the corner of the room. The kids were jumping off the walls and Kesha apologized, telling me their dinners were never like this. The boy was under the table with a babydoll, asking us to pretend we couldn’t find him and neither kid would eat their food. We tried to refocus the evening but it was impossible. 

This morning I found myself wondering if the children were picking up on our stress and trying to provide us some relief in their own way. It is a failure to forget that they can hear us.

I’ve been finding myself thinking about the “arc of history” that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about. He said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I have always accepted this as true, even without realizing it, until two days ago in my class about Japanese American Incarceration. I have always thought privately, “things are really bad but they’re getting better. By the end of my life, this world will be more just and people will have more rights than when I was born into it.” Now I’m realizing this may not be true. 

My roommate Bella made a point in class that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. She said that we fall into the fallacy that fascism is a fluke, rather than accepting it as the outcome of modernity. We believe that extreme conservatism will all fall away eventually because we are on a teleological track toward equality and freedom. I have long thrived on this belief that my naive liberalism has granted me and now that it is being taken away from me, I realize it’s absurdity. How obvious it is now that utopia is no more natural than fascism – that the arc of history bends nowhere without a constant weighting of the scales in favor of one future versus the other.

In the last 24 hours I have felt a sharp return to my 14 year old self – the little girl who watched the 2016 election results come in in disbelief. I remember writing in my journal every hour or so as we saw what was happening, asking the question: how can this be happening? I felt betrayed and disappointed. Looking back, my concerns were basic and in some ways unimportant: I felt ashamed that someone who was so immature and innapropriate could take on the role of the presidency, I felt certain Trump would embarrass our country, I hated how outwardly racist he was, and to my horror it seemed that some people simply wouldn’t vote for a woman. The moment was representative of how false my ideals about America were.

Now, I feel no fear of the shame that Trump will certainly bring our country, because I have no sense of pride that says America is above this. We are not. Our government has funded endless wars abroad, imprisoned its own people during World War II, and continues to separate families and traumatize innocent children on our borders every day. We don’t come close to providing the basic resources and rights that all people deserve and it doesn’t seem like we will anytime soon. We deserve judgement and scorn. I have no ideals left to be crushed, but I am also not angry with the American people like I was in 2016. Rather, I am angry with our hateful government, with the Democratic party who fails to take fascistic ideology seriously, with the deadlocked state of our governing branches who are too busy fighting to make a real difference in people’s lives. We should be angry and exhausted, and no one should be surprised that a cult of personality, with the real promise of dismantling aspects of the status quo despite (and in fact maybe because of?) his lies, has taken hold. Absolutely no one should be surpised today. We have to do better. 

There is no arc of the moral universe that we do not create. Today, my friends and I joke that there will be more employment for us over the next four years in nonprofit organizations. People are going to need a lot more help, because while people have flocked to Trump to get away from the establishment Democrats, his policies will never support his base. His policies will continue to feed anger and resentment and will skapegoat us all as “the enemy within” if he can help it. If I stop for a moment and remember all the things that Trump and the people around him have promised his base over the last several months, I feel extraordinary fear well up inside me. I am holding space for grief but I am trying to gear myself up for the fight. I will not easily rely on party politics again anytime soon. It’s time for difficult conversations and grassroots organizing. 

There will be sun in the morning, but no, fascism will not go away because it is “unnatural.” Have you looked around? It makes perfect sense.