When Social Justice Goes South - Donald Trump And The Education Of A Hopeless Idealist

Bob Muzelle looked out the window of his tidy suburban house, noticed the fading roses, the brown patches on the lawn, and the loose stairs on the porch; and wondered whether repairs and renovations could wait.  He had given his whole life to the poor, and now he was ironically skating far too close to them. 

'I don't regret one moment of it', he said to his wife Corinne, herself a social justice advocate who had also given her best years to the betterment of others, but who had recently, like Bob, suffered some reverses.  She had been the Deputy Director of Women For Social Responsibility, a modest non-profit whose charter was unequivocally feminist - the glass ceiling, sexual abuse, abortion, etc. - and had linked the cause of women with that of racial and gender injustice.  As such a black lesbian woman had leapfrogged her into the position of Director, saying that 'no white bitch belong here', and within a month of her appointment had cleaned house. 

The staff and board of directors were all tough ghetto femmes, happy to be out of the closet, out of the miasmic slum neighborhoods of Anacostia, and finally earning some real money. 'We ain't no ho's and pimps', LaShonda Williams announced upon assuming her post, and 'we out to show that we n--ga dykes goin' pump up the volume'. 

 

Women for Social Responsibility was a respectable organization founded on the progressive principles of Eugene Victor Debs, Louis Brandeis, and Lafollette,  the racial awareness of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, and the suffragettes of the Twenties.  It had maintained this political rectitude since its beginnings in the Sixties, refused both radical feminism and insurrectionist black power, and had kept on a steady keel though years of shrill divisiveness and inchoate anger.  In its own way it was a very patrician organization led by women from Shawnee Mission, the Main Line, and Beacon Hill - women whose sense of fair play never diluted their passion for women's rights. 

But this lily white gentlewoman's redoubt was to be no longer, and with the leadership of LaShonda Williams, its demise was assured, for the self-proclaimed 'welfare queen' ('I gots mine, honey'), black tout and pussy hound was taking no prisoners.  Passed over, marginalized, and given a windowless office, Corinne was on the curb before she knew it.  

Nonplussed, dazed, and confused, she never knew what hit her - she of all people who had given heart and soul to women, her sisters in the struggle for equality, and had sacrificed leisure, a new stove, and decent shoes for them; and now here she was tossed out like moldy bread, disconsolate, lost, and feeling totally abandoned. 

None of this mattered, for in an ironic twist, one of sweet revenge, Donald Trump came into office dismantling everything that smacked of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, pulled all federal grants for any organization in the business of social reform and forced the closure of Women for Social Responsibility.  No sooner was Corinne on the curb than that big bull dyke Williams was sitting there next to her. 

So, Corinne was of no help whatsoever when Bob came to her lamenting the Trump Administration's reactionary putsch, his wanton destruction of the very instruments of social change. He was no less than a Hitler, a genocidal maniac, a brutish, ugly, man arrogantly dismissive all that Bob and his fellow progressives were able to accomplish.  In one fell swoop and one flourish of the pen, their hallowed policies and programs were no more.  

Bob had been President and CEO for Scientists for A Sane Climate Policy, an organization committed to fight global warming and with in the capitalist engines which fueled it.  Socialist by upbringing, progressive by inclination and moral suasion, and political activist by a homely need for camaraderie and companionship, Bob had been a tireless fighter for social justice.  Having cut his teeth on civil rights, jumped through the hoops of feminism and gay pride, and now well-established as a leader against climate change, he had been through it all. 

He and his wife had made a formidable team - knights in the same crusades, partners in purpose and holy commitment, colleagues, warriors.  The had stopped sleeping with each other years ago, so heady and all-consuming was the political struggle. Carnal desire simply had no place in their lives, a tedious distraction at best, and an easy way out of full engagement with the cause; so when it all came apart, Bob could only remember the lines of Anton Shugur in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, as he is about to kill Carson Wells, 'If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?'.

No vacations in St. Barts, skiing in Gstaad, Lambo in the garage, Bel Air dinner parties; no Armani, Gucci, or St. Laurent, just two-pants suits from K-Mart, a shabby rambler in the suburbs, a twenty-year old Corolla, and an abstemious relationship with an increasingly sour wife. 

Bob winced as he saw the blonde, blue-eyed gorgeous Trumpists frolicking on the South Lawn of the White House, carefree, wealthy conservatives with yachts and mansions.  Not an ounce of compassion among them, nothing but careless abandon; and yet, he felt cheated.  If all that he had worked for, all the energy, time, and passion invested, was gone as quickly as a fly shooed from the potato salad, his life had been worth exactly nothing. 

'Involvement is the alley of the blind', said the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.  'A man of true belief and the irascible passion to fuel it, is doomed to dismal unhappiness'. Progressives are an unhappy lot because they are convinced that the world can be changed for the better, and that the struggle to make it so is so important, any deviation is tantamount to dereliction, they are not allowed to be happy. 

Conservatives who believe the world simply is the way it is, a product of human nature, serendipity, circumstance, and good or bad fortune are always happy.  What's there not to like? So Bob cursed the fate that made him such a dour, hectoring, insufferable man.  'Goddamn it!', he shouted to the holly bush, 'Goddamn it again!' but there was no solace or refuge available.  The dice had been thrown decades ago, and as much as he had quickly and summarily learned that idealism and progressive Utopianism get you absolutely nowhere, he could look out the window and realize that the birdbath was empty.