Tag: politics

So it’s revealed via the New York Times — on a Sunday morning, no less — that the current administration wants narrowly define gender as what you were born with, essentially eliminating any definition of transgender.

The biggest WTF line in that article:

For the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.  [Emphasis mine.]

I say FUCK THAT.

And I say FUCK YOU, Don.

So why am I posting this here?

Let’s just say ever since this complete sham and embarrassment of an administration came into office — before that, even — I’ve been tempted to write a specific novel on how I feel about what they’ve been doing to the country over the last few years.  It’s similar to the idea I had with the “Noah and the Schoolyard” story that I trunked sometime ago.  I’d come to the realization that the actions and words of this administration were sadly and pathetically similar to the worst of our own childhoods; the jocks and the popular crowd that vilified you for not fitting into their narrowly defined social norms, the teachers that couldn’t find the time or the ability to provide extra mentoring, the elimination of creative extracurricular groups (sometimes at the cost of maintaining a solid sports foundation), the path to ignorance when information is simply not provided, and of course the appearance of an ‘underground’ crowd that decided to say fuck all that, we’re doing our own thing.

I mean, yeah, it sounds like a John Hughes version of Lord of the Flies or Catcher in the Rye, doesn’t it?  That’s why I found I couldn’t work on this story.  It just felt far too personal for me to be able to handle it.

Now I’m not so sure.

It angers me that anyone, presidential administration or not, would go this far.  It angers me to hear ignorant morons gleefully follow this path, all the while saying ‘fuck y’all, you’re on your own.’

Sunday’s news was a big fucking slap in the face for me, on multiple levels.  I’d almost forgotten what this kind of directed hatred felt like.  And it bothers me even more that I don’t always remember that others still get that on a daily basis.  [Well, actually I do remember, just that I often have the privilege of avoiding thinking about it.]

As Charlie Jane Anders tweeted later that day:

It’s easy to feel helpless when bigotry and bad science are becoming the law of the land, and our government is trying to dehumanize so many of us. But we have the power to make noise, to make ourselves heard, and one of the most powerful ways we can do that is thru storytelling.

To that I say ‘AMEN’, and to that I say, I think I might have a new project to work on.

I’ve said it before: I really don’t want to wax politic here, I really don’t.  This blog is about writing.  It’s about my love of writing, the things I’ve learned that I want to pass on.  It’s a part of my lifelong career.  I don’t want to wax politic because a) that’s not what this blog is about, b) I don’t want to bore you/chase you away, and c) I try to avoid said waxing as much as possible these days for health reasons.

So I’m just going to say this about Shakespeare in the Park’s recent interpretation of Julius Caesar:  to be honest, when Shakespeare is reworked and set in a more current context, quite often it’s bloody fantastic.  We saw a recent version of Hamlet that took place during an extremely paranoid Cold War that worked perfectly.  West Side Story (aka Romeo and Juliet, of course) is one of the best musicals ever made.  The Globe Theatre’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in present time that we saw last year was absolutely hilarious.  So a version of Julius Caesar in which JC is a very clear interpretation of Donald Trump?  Totally makes sense to me.  [And yes, it is true that the same troupe did a version some time ago using Obama, to little or no controversy.]

The issue here is not using a sitting President (a term I presently use with a bitter taste in my mouth, natch) in a play in which a major plot point is that he snuffs it.  I mean, come on — remember Primary Colors (the book and the movie), which was supposed to make Bill Clinton look like a moron?  LOLs for days from the right wing, as I recall.  I saw the movie myself — it was pretty bad quality, but its ham-fisted attempts at cleverness didn’t give me the vapors.

The issue here, at least for me, is the willingness to be so incurious, so impassive, so willing to blindly idolize a person to the point that logic flies out the window.  Or as Darrin Bell’s comic strip Candorville put it so wonderfully yesterday, “I’m starting to think you’ll say anything just to win an argument.”  The vocal backlash was boggling.  Blessedly short, but boggling.

On the plus side, it’s ridiculous situations like this that empower me even more to keep on writing.  I don’t need to fight against pointless agruments like this.  These voices may be loud and have a network megaphone, but they’re also a shrinking base.  The longer this play goes on, the less comedic it becomes.  There’s the unfortunate byproduct of all this, in which certain people will find this claptrap as God’s Truth and hurt someone, and I do sometimes fear that will escalate if this keeps up.

BUT — I refuse to lay down my quill because of it.  More to the point, I want to pick it up more often.  To keep sanity alive and kicking.