When Social Justice Goes Flat, America Becomes A Sparkling Place - Donald Trump And The Real Meaning Of Social Reform

Bob Muzelle couldn't face the day, the day he had been dreading, the day of reckoning - the one day that was never supposed to happen, couldn't happen, but did; and to a parade of glory and pageantry Donald Trump once again became President of the United States. 

For many lifelong progressives, the Trump victory was not just a political event, but an existential one.  Progressives believed as a matter of canon, faith, and absolute belief that the march to a better, more peaceful, more verdant, and compassionate world was inevitable, an ordained blessing.  Once the progressive movement gained momentum and traction, it gained inevitability. The foundations had been laid, the tenets, doxology, catechism, and rites had been officiated, and the final stage of universal love was - or should have been - at hand. 

So it was with shock and disbelief that the very embodiment of everything wrong was in the White House.  A man of presumption, defiling intentions, proponent of codes of behavior, justice, and social organization that had been assumed long dead, gone, and forgotten was to lead the country.  

Bob fumbled into his bathrobe and slippers and looked out the early morning still empty streets, soon to be filled with white, blonde, blue-eyed Republicans, a cavalcade of the very people Bob and his colleagues had hoped would be consigned once and for all to the closets of history.  Yet here they were, pretty young things frolicking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue without a care in the world while the death knell for the black man was tolling, a final dirge, the music of the final, somber, march to the end of history. 

Bob, an old man now, had walked arm-in-arm with Martin and Ralph across the Pettis Bridge, had endured the whiplashes and beatings of Bull Connor, had fought off George Wallace's attack dogs, and stood proud and defiant with sharecroppers and orphans.  

Social Justice had been in his blood since his first epiphany, a ringing sermon by the Reverend William Slough Crayton, Yale Chaplain, civil rights hero, peace advocate, anti-nuclear champion.  A man who, despite his privileged New England upbringing, a direct descendant of both Cabots and Lodges, historical heir to John Davenport and the New Haven Plantations, shipbuilding magnates of New Bedford and Nantucket, had turned progressive social reformer  In a moment of clarity in Harvard Yard, deep into the Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Crayton saw his life's work. 

They were all dead now, and in one fell swoop their legacy and that of a thousand other deeply committed men and women had been erased.  It was as if they never existed, as if their struggle for a better world never was; and it was that unconscionable improbability that faced Bob that cold January morning.  It was a dark, depressing, inconsolable moment. 

On the other side of town, life was never brighter or happier.  These same legions of bright young things were taking their places everywhere in the corridors of power, and unceremoniously expunging, removing, and consigning the miserably overwrought and unsightly remnants of their predecessors until the city shone again, sparkled, and glittered. 

 

The whole country smiled as the curtain came down on the cant and dismal vision of the past.  No longer would Americans have to hear about the woeful plight of the black man, the horrible emotional closeting of the other-gendered, the abuse and dismissal of women, and the predatory mining of the poor by the neo-robber barons of Wall Street.  Ronald Reagan's promise of A Shining City On A Hill had finally come to fruition. 

No more whining, moaning, and breast-beating, insistent guilt, shame, and opprobrium.  It was time to look up, look lively, and look to a bright future of prosperity, freedom, and patriotism.  

In one great defining moment, all the fizz and pop of the progressive elixir went flat, an unappealing, tasteless, grey, and unappetizing offering.  Social reform - the confected, hyped, and overblown term for neutering the American ethos - was dead.  There was nothing to reform.  The heart and soul of America had not changed a whit despite decades of badgering, hectoring, and insult. 

If the black man in America was still mired in deep inner city dysfunction after sixty years of civil rights and transactional investment; if crime, abandonment, drugs, and irresponsibility were still the memes of the ghetto, and if black men were on every basketball court and football field but nowhere in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the power corridors of technical innovation, so be it.  

The world had prospered under imperial, capitalist, Machiavellian rule.  The kings, emperors, shoguns, mandarins, czars, and shahs of history had created, built, and extended high civilization to most corners of the world.  Patriarchy, the Vatican, the divine right of kings, and bloodline legacy had provided the context for victory, longevity, and impact. 

 

Inauguration Day was all that it had been promised to be - a jamboree of beautiful white, straight people without a trace of diversity, equity, and inclusivity.  It was not just a changing of the guard but a reversal of ethos, philosophy, intent, and fortune.  Finally, and at long last, the absurdity of radical politics became abundantly clear - the gender fol-de-rol was seen as the freak show that it always had been; the raising of the black man to the top of the pinnacle of society was no more than fabulist castles in the sky; the glorification of racial pastiche was seen as cover for lack of intellectual, creative character; families were no more the brutally compromising sweat shops of women. 

The Inaugural parties continued into the night and long afterwards.  The doors of Mar-a-Lago were thrown open, the affair was Gatsby-esque and thrilling.  Youthful exuberance and energy, and a happy new zeitgeist was America's new world order. 

 

Bob shuffled out the walk to pick up the morning papers, all filled with the hateful news of the new president and awful things to come; but American flags were sprouting up all through the neighborhood, the presumed liberal unity belied and exposed by these symbols of conservative patriotism.  Despite the mournful wailing of the defeated, the existential cries of the newly hung out to dry, the delight of most of America was palpable. 

Censored, politically incorrect speech was gone in a flash, and the anything-goes, come-what-may flourishes of Donald Trump became the new normal.  Whiteness and straightness were in, doom and gloom was old, scraped wallpaper,  internationalism meant American supremacy, and big ol' gas-powered Ford 350s were back!

Bob and his colleagues huddled and conferred, but the Musk/DOGE juggernaut was unstoppable, uprooting the old bureaucratic shibboleths of Independence Avenue and tossing them aside like so much nuisance.  From Day One, the country was being returned to its originalist beginnings.  The precepts, principles, and orders of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and Jeffersonian wisdom were the new doxology. 

 

In progressive cabals, long faces prevailed.  Never a humorous lot, Bob and his colleagues were pitifully somber and dark.  There was bleakness at noon, and midnight was a black hole of despair. 

The rest of the country gave a great, big sigh of relief.  The Dark Ages were over, the days of censure, guilt, and emotional penury gone.  It was a time of optimism and dancing. 

Bob hung up his spurs, and at his wife's urging, moved to Florida. 'Go with the flow, Bob', she said, a far more adaptable, complaisant, and happy person than her husband - a woman who could wiggle her toes in the warm sand and feel good about it.  

Bob could never get over the ignominy of defeat, cancelling decades of thankless commitment spent in airless, ugly rooms while others were having fun.  Where were Martin and Ralph when we need them most, he wondered? 

He took a sip of his pina colada, straggled down to the water's edge, and watched as a pretty young thing, all ribbons and flounce, jumped into the water and shouted.