Written 09-17-20

Up until now, I haven’t used this space to write about what is going on in our country these days. I’ve written about my response to being almost entirely locked down socially, about using art to survive hard times. In other words, I’ve focused on my personal, subjective experience. I am a memoirist, by nature, and writing about my inner life comes naturally to me. I take it as a matter of principle that if I write with insight and accuracy about my inner life that you will be moved. Our common humanity ensures it.

But, more and more, I can’t sustain that. I think of my dear friend, remarkably gifted fiction and short story writer Zarina Zabrisky, who has all but abandoned her personal writing at this time in favor of political journalism. Why? Because she grew up and was educated under the totalitarian Soviet regime and she feels that nothing could be more important than to sound the alarm. I think of Carolyn Forche, the great exponent of a poetry of witness, who, with others, has founded “Writers Against Trump” and seems to have turned her attention from her lyrical poetry (and recently published new book) to more focused activism.

I didn’t require much persuasion to join “Writers Against Trump” but, until today, I haven’t written against Trump, really. Now I think that BEING a “writer against Trump” is not enough unless I am actually “Writing against Trump.” I must go from being to doing. Why?

Because I’m scared shitless, that’s why.

Are you scared? No? THEN I THINK YOU ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION. I think about what’s happening every day. I’ve always been a guy who thinks about what’s happening. When I was just a little boy, I heard stories of people whom my own family knew whose fathers, brothers, sisters had been killed during the last hot Civil Rights Movement. As a white family, this made us unusual. If we had been a Black family, knowing victims of police brutality and examples of race slaughter would not have been unusual. Not then, not now. When I was eleven, the Vietnam War was escalating and death was everywhere, including the horrible series of political assassinations. Were innocent people slaughtered? Hell, yes. They were slaughtered. This is history. Our country in those years tipped precipitously towards Fascism but the momentum was slowed when Richard Nixon resigned from the White House. Slowed, my friends, not stopped. It continued through the horrors of Ronald Reagan and into the nightmare of the two Bush Administrations until the Left in this country had disappeared. Even the putative leftists—the Clintons, Obama—were right-wing.

Listen to me, friends. This is not a game. This is not a matter of differing opinions. We are in the position of the good Polish citizens who lived adjacent to Auschwitz. If you don’t smell the stench, you are surely in denial. The secret police are here, they are torturing our brothers and sisters in the basements of urban police headquarters. Donald Trump is consciously promoting a policy of encouraging increased rates of infection of the COVID virus, in the name of “herd immunity.” This means, as a matter of policy, encouraging people to die. But not any people. Specifically, the elderly, working-class factory workers (think of the multiple deaths in the meat packing plants), persons of color, indigenous people. This is no longer just “like” the Nazis. This is, for practical purposes, a policy of extermination. The Nazis are us. But we’re not talking about six million dead in concentration camps, you protest? Don’t exaggerate, you say? I say: what the fuck are you, an accountant?

We now have vigilante militias on the streets of our cities, conducting police actions with official tolerance and even encouragement. Killer Kyle Rittenhouse was not a confused teenager who wanted to be a hero who deserves sympathy and concern. Kyle was a member of a death squad and acted accordingly. It will get worse.

We have political prisoners and torture chambers in the basements of many city police departments. The horror stories presently coming out of ICE detention facilities are all too believable. Already, ICE officials have been trying to spirit witnesses out of the country. It is a mere baby step to the killing of witnesses.

We are living in a movie “thriller” that has invaded real life.

I have never been a “Truther” of any sort; conspiracy theories are anathema to me. I am a pacificist. I have spoken (and been harshly criticized) for arguing that nobody, not even Nazis and fascists, are beyond the reach of my empathy. Nor should they be. I believe these things.

But this is not the time to write about that.

If you read what I’ve written here and disagree, or think I’m alarmist, or exaggerating, or being overly-influenced by “fake news” and propaganda, political ploys, and Russian bots—I’m not writing for you. Not that I disrespect you (I honestly don’t), but our experience and perspectives must be so divergent as to make meaningful discussion impossible.

I am writing for those who agree. It is time to speak up. Make these matters part of your daily writing practice and put it out there. Talk about it. Don’t turn off the news. Pay attention and respond.

Silence is denial. The house is burning.

If all you can do is shout “FIRE” — well, then,