A friend managed to beat my quarantine against “the news” by getting a column in front of my eyes written by the always-civil Charles Blow in the excessively civil New York Times. It was advice on what a concerned citizenry should do under the dark shadow of the Trump Ascension. It was just the advice you would expect: write letters to your congressional representative, donate to causes and candidates that oppose the insanity (or inanity as the case may be), stay informed by reading newspapers (D’oh!)…all the good stuff that I learned about as a conscientious young American in 8th grade civics class. Blow’s most radical suggestion was a call for non-violent protest marches (here’s betting that the NYT editorial board wrestled long and hard with that one before assuring itself that it was not an invitation to civic unrest).
I’m really on the outside looking in these days. It’s not that I don’t hold a warm place in my heart for such displays of participatory democracy…I’m especially heartened by the many friends I’ve heard from who will be participating in various anti-Trump marches throughout the country on January 21. Mass marching strikes me as the necessary albeit minimal starting point for citizen response to this rise of American fascism. But in the months since our (ho-ho) informed citizenry elected this transparent fraud and demagogue as leader, I’ve spent far more time watching The Simpsons than reading The New York Times. As such, I now find myself less inclined toward a Henry David Thoreau approach to civil disobedience than to Bart Simpson style uncivil disobedience. I imagine that if Bart were an op-ed columnist for The Old Grey Lady, he’d be making her hair fall out with a list of suggestions that would go something like this:
First, he’d probably take my suggestion from my last blog post more seriously than I did that The Resistance unleash a bed bug attack on Trump Tower. Bart being Bart, unrestrained by my personal sense of decorum, might take it further…perhaps calling upon anti-Trump guerillas to check into Trump hotels worldwide with champagne bottles full of cat urine. They pour it all over the mattresses, then immediately check out...but not without leaving a complaint about the smell in the room and a demand for refund. (In lieu of cat urine, horse piss will do.)
Similarly, it would not be beyond Bart’s imagination to suggest that legions of The Resistance throughout the land embark in an airborne assault by sending packages of wet garbage, old meat, and dog poop to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The onslaught should be so shocking and awesome that only Trump’s most desperate sycophants (I’m looking at you, Kellyanne) would be willing to open the packages. And even then the call would go out for undocumented Mexican immigrants to do the dirty work. To which a mighty chorus of Dreamers would raise their voices as one and roar, “We don’t need your stinkin’ packages!”
Speaking of Mexicans, I can see Bart driving the xenophobia point home by calling on The Resistance to smear their tax returns with Trinidad Scorpion T-Butch chili pepper before sending them in. (Other hot peppers can substitute, but the T-Butch is best because it looks like Trump). In case the message is too subtle for our overworked IRS, Bart would advise including a Post-it that says, “Build your damn wall with this!”
Bart would never suggest this himself…he’s only a kid after all…but any number of adults in Bart’s world—Mayor Quimby, Sideshow Bob, Krusty the Clown—would probably be OK with uncivil disobedience that called for grabbing Melania or Ivanka by their pussies.
Which brings to mind a number of other protest activities directly inspired by Trump himself, so these acts are far beyond mere Bart mischief:
- Start a university. Let’s have more phony universities than Starbuck's on every street corner in America. Promise anything and deliver nothing. And if they want their money back, tell them to sue you.
- Stiff contractors. Get that new bedroom addition you always wanted, remodel the kitchen, build the world-class Olympic swimming pool of your dreams…goldplate your frickin’ front door and your name on your roof, and then refuse to pay for any of it.
- And phony charities too! Go on Facebook or Kickstarter and announce you have a deformed child…a child cursed with puke orange hair, a self-satisfied smirk, and a walk like he’s always high on the smell of his own farts. Then take the money and spend it on whatever feeds your hopelessly starved ego…giant self-portraits, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, castrated Nubian throne bearers.
- Tweet…day and night…about every little insult, insipid insight, or petulant impulse that crosses your addled mind.
- Open fire on people walking down Fifth Avenue. (If you’re non-violent, use a paint gun.)
- Fly the Russian flag on the Fourth of July.
- And lie…Do Not Forget to Lie…about everything to anyone at anytime. And then deny it, even if you’re caught on camera.
Oh, I’m sorry. Is that all a bit too juvenile? Too irresponsible? A tad too Marxist in the Groucho sense of the word?
How about if Bart added a suggestion about putting Indian war paint on, busting into Whole Foods in the dead of night, and dumping all the very expensive gourmet tea down the toilet?
Fact is, the only thing that separates mere vandalism from political protest is political purpose. So here’s the purpose, The Resistance engages in all this crude behavior until Donald J. Trump releases his tax returns for the past 10 years. That’s it. Doesn’t have to resign. Doesn’t have to make a confession. Doesn’t have to appoint Hillary to the Supreme Court. Just do what every other modern president has done—show us yours since we ALL have to show you ours.
So many shocking political things have happened in my lifetime: The Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination; Nixon’s resignation, 9/11; Trump. Not in a league with any of those, but still pretty unbelievable and impactful from my point of view is how the Republican Party has become the philosophical heirs of the neo-anarchist Yippies of the 1960s. The Yippies’ disdain for American institutions, law, and order freed them to engage or threaten to engage in any activity no matter how outrageous that would bring the whole edifice down. Born in the anti-Vietnam War protests, one would’ve thought that it would have been the American left that would’ve been the keeper of the Yippie legacy, but it is the American right with its appetite for shutting down government, ignoring institutional traditions, wild conspiracy theories and outright confrontation with the Federal government (Cliven Bundy is Abbie Hoffman with a six-shooter). The craziest thing is how well it’s all worked out for them. The anarchists have taken control of almost the entire governing apparatus of the US by systematically breaking it down. The more dysfunctional it is, the better they like it because the bottom line is they hate government and have everything to gain and nothing to lose when it fails.
This is a reality for The Resistance to consider as it moves forward. We’re not facing an opposition moved by calls for civic responsibility or patriotism or any of the other earnest virtues we’ve long valued. These are now con artists, vandals and scofflaws in charge. The sometimes too-adult-for-his-own-good Barack Obama once unfortunately quoted this famous line from The Untouchables: "They pull a knife, you pull a gun." Everybody knew Mr. Obama would never bring a gun to a knife fight…beer maybe. Same goes for most of The Resistance. The guns and the will to use them are clearly on the other side. But it’s not a gunfight anyway. It’s more like a food fight, and you have to be willing to make dirty to win it.