It is time to pick a fight. I had submitted another column earlier this week, about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – but then I took my daughter to a protest rally at a Trump appearance in Wilmington, North Carolina, where we are visiting family and generally having fun.
As Trump is unlikely to make it to Hamp or even Massachusetts, it was a great opportunity to bring my teen to a genuine protest against a genuine threat to our union. We made some signs, “Dump the Chump,” “Hate is Bad,” and made our way to the University of North Carolina, where the protesters numbered few indeed, while the line of Trumpistas snaked on forever. Some 10,000 had showed for a venue that held half that.
The cops put us on one side of the street, Trumpistas on the other. And it was fun! There was the guy who kept shouting “You support a murderer,” so I kept shouting, “Yes! Hillary and the Loch Ness Monster killed Lincoln, indict them both!” until he moved on.
There was hostility, but nothing violent. More than a few Trumpistas came to take our photos and give us the finger, to which we’d shout “Is that your IQ, or number of friends!” Some would just walk over and point at their Trump T-shirts and we’d shout, “It’s made in China, fool!”
Then a reporter for the local Star News came by, live streaming on Facebook, and asked my daughter why she was there, to which she spontaneously replied, “Trump is hateful and his tiny hands make me uncomfortable.”
Did my heart swell with pride or what!
And then there was the guy in a banana suit with a sign that said “This S— is Bananas.” He started on the Trump side, but the police moved him over to our side, so they at least knew which “s—” was bananas.
Finally, there was my cousin, with whom I’d spent the day before at our beloved aunt’s house out in Burgaw. While in line to get in she took pictures of the protesters — and it turned out to include her own family members!
But what became clear as we shouted back and forth is that there is no common ground whatsoever between Trumpistas and the rest of us. There is no America with crumbling infrastructure in desperate need of repair; there is no America that needs a $15 minimum wage; there are no schools that need building; no internet privacy that needs protecting.
There is nothing, to them, but an election that pits Trump against a “murderer.” Really, that’s it. (Although one guy did shout, “Don’t any of you have daughters?” and when I pointed to mine and said, “Right here!” he replied, “So you want her raped?” His logic was apparently that Bill Clinton’s job as first spouse will be to rape our daughters. Though I have to say, when I replied, “What did you say?” the shocked look on my face actually seemed to deflate him and he wandered off.)
But none of that is why it is time to pick a fight.
When we got home we read that Trump had made his crack about “Second Amendment people” taking care of Clinton in case he loses and she comes for our guns.
And I thought, bull@%!t. That does not mean that Trump’s deliberately violent mutterings cannot kick some lone nutcase loose, and I’m sure Clinton’s Secret Service squad knows it. But Trump supporters do not have the nerve, the courage, the dedication to actually take to the streets to bring down the government because he and they lose.
What will happen when Trump loses – and loses big – is that about 35 percent of America, 99.9 percent of it white, will retreat to their corner and mutter darkly about how the system stole the election from their savior – the biggest charlatan since, well, Sarah Palin. And my money is that Trump will pull a Plain – if he loses big he’ll retire to his penthouse and lob the occasional Twitter mortar, but he lacks the conviction, as she did, to actually put in the Herculean labor of sustaining a movement.
And that is where the Trumpistas need to go – off to some dark corner to nurse their conspiracies and racially fueled resentment while the rest of us get on with actually trying to govern a modern nation. For they, while still citizens, have declared themselves no longer Americans if an American is anyone who has any loyalty at all to our founding principles: that we are all created equal and endeavor only to make a more perfect union.
They no longer do, so they no longer are.
As a teacher, I never thought the sun would rise on the day when I did not believe that knowledge could cure anything.
But that day has dawned. Trump must be beaten and beaten badly, we’ve known that from the get go. What Wilmington showed me is that his supporters cannot be brought round by politics and policies – talk and ideas – they are nihilists who would see this country burn before they would accept the self-evident changes the millennium has brought us.
Those are the stakes. That is the fight.
Joe Gannon is a novelist and teacher who lives in Northampton. His column appears monthly.