Trump's name in my mouth

When Trump was first elected, I never said his name in front of my children. It wasn’t a deliberate decision; it was more like a sacred, subconscious pact with myself. I was so profoundly sad that he was my country’s commander-in-chief. It seemed like keeping his name out of my mouth, and his influence out of my household’s consciousness, was one way to revolt. He had so much airtime in the public sphere, I reasoned; he would have none in our little home.

I look back at that decision now and realize that it was naive. For one thing, my kids live in the world--they go to school, they interact with friends and neighbors, they catch snippets of NPR from time to time. They make meaning of what’s happening out of a million sources, many of them far beyond my control.

It was also a product of privilege. Not mentioning Trump inside my house was as illogical as not mentioning race--something so many White parents do thinking that they will somehow shield their kids from racism’s existence, or that kids aren’t already processing racial differences and the “hierarchy of human value,” as Angela Glover Blackwell calls it, from a teeny tiny age.

I didn’t have to mention Trump, because my family was in no danger from ICE agents raiding our home or workplaces. I didn’t have to mention Trump, because the racial rhetoric he stokes wouldn’t endanger my White children. I didn’t have to mention Trump for so many reasons.

I remember the first time Stella, three-years-old at the time, said Trump’s name in our house. It was after sheltering in had started, when his lack of respect for science and human life was finally endangering our own family. She was heading up the stairs and she said, “Trump is a bad guy. We don’t like him, right?”

Stella expressing the national zeitgeist. Pic by John Cary.

John and I were caught flat-footed. We had no idea that she knew who Trump was, by name, much less that she had heard he was a “bad guy.”

In her question, as usual, was everything I was struggling with. I pride myself on being a person that doesn’t believe in unilaterally good or bad people. I don’t go in for “evil.” No such thing. I like to believe that I can be curious about every single person on earth, no exceptions. If for no other reason, I can usually get myself interested in why someone became the way they are; better understanding, not excusing but understanding, the origin of a person’s dysfunction or cruelty is usually a balm to me (the reason I almost want to read Too Much and Never Enough. Almost.)

But this moment, and this man, have really tested some of my most foundational belief systems. About good and evil. About the people of this country. About truth and reason.

I now understand that keeping Trump out of my mouth in front of my children was not a revolt, but a retreat. And this is not the time for retreat. Not in front of my children. Not in font of my conservative relatives. Not in front of you. Not in front of anyone.

I don’t know if Trump is evil. But I know that Trump is representative of an evil that has poisoned our country for hundreds of years. I want him out of power yesterday. I don’t want him to ever make another decision that affects real and beautiful people.

I am not afraid to say that in front of my children anymore, just as I am not afraid to tell them about slavery or the prison industrial complex or the continued existence of segregated schools.

The other night at dinner, when Stella brought up Trump again, John said, “Donald Trump cheats, and that’s why we don’t like him. He cheated on his partners. He cheated on the election. He cheated on his taxes. He doesn’t seem to care about other people or his own promises. We think that’s wrong.”

It was language the girls really understood. They don’t like cheating either. They are outraged--a pure, instinctual outrage--when people don’t follow through on their promises. (Let’s just say, I know from first-hand experience.)

It’s not about partisanship. I was raised among Republicans all my life. I married into a family chockful of them (Hi Cary family! Love you! Miss you!). I know so many of them (of you) to be truly decent people who care about poverty and opportunity, who believe in the sanctity of playing fair, even when you know you’re going to lose, and speaking truth, even when it isn’t convenient or pretty. We disagree about important things, but we have broad moral convictions. We are invested in dreams for our communities and our nation, not just ourselves.

I so look forward to a time when I don’t have to think about Trump every day, but until then, I will not keep his name out of my mouth as some empty exercise in civility. My Republican friends and family members don’t need me to do that to honor them. If anything, they seem to desire progressives to say it plain.

Here’s the truth: I have had fantasies of Trump dying from COVID. I know it’s wrong and I’m not proud of it.

But I realized that the truest part of me, the mother bear part of me, doesn’t want him to drop dead. I want someone (Kamala would be great at this) to sit him down in a chair in the corner of this proverbial country, and make him listen and watch in eternal silence as we undo the damage he has wrought and build a beautiful new nation in its place for the next 100 (1000?) years.

Weird drawing I did while listening to the “debate” last night.

I want potato vines to grow over his feet, and for a giant, regal Bald Eagle to come pluck the toupee from his head, leaving it vulnerable to the elements. A Santa-like beard will grow over his fading orange skin, his trademark suits will grow torn and shabby. Birds will come and pluck threads away for their nests. He will watch as his towers crumble to the ground and we melt down the gold-tinted glass and steel to create a gorgeous bridge across our southern border. His golf courses will be transformed into highly diversified ecosystems where sophisticated natural reciprocity, not small men, reign. Everything he built his personal brand around--unlimited wealth and toxic masculinity and an anemic sort of freedom defined by individualism--will become compost for the new world we grow. His worldview will become so archaic as to be understood as the twisted mythology that it is.

I want him to sit silently in the corner of a classroom where his great, great grandchildren are in little desks side-by-side with mine, and they are talking about how broken this place once was, how strange the sense of caste, how toxic the air and media.

I want him to live forever so he can see just how shallow his ideas about what matters really are and just how deep this country’s soul actually runs.

Triple-check that you are registered to vote and do it as early as possible.