I Wish It Need Not Have Happened in My Time. Or, the Worst Timeline.
On Black History, the Fall of the American Empire, and the Rise of Fascism
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
January 20th, 2025. Today is both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and inauguration of He Who Shall Not Be Named, the Orange Cheeto, Putin’s Greatest Asset, the Man with a Congealed Heart. That the two events should fall on the same date feels particularly cruel (but not entirely unexpected) in the grand story or history of United States. There’s something here about the two sides of the same country. Heads and tails. A small percentage of votes determining the fate of which side the coin will land on. How we never fully repented from our own history. I know, we’re all tired of politics. I wish I could write about other things.
February 2025. My six-year-old daughter has been learning about Martin Luther King in her first-grade classroom. She is learning the real, adult story and not the kiddo, Kindergarten version. She is learning about segregation and racism. That King was shot from a hotel. That someone threw a bomb in his house. I want to shelter her from this knowledge, not that King himself was assassinated per say, but even the simple truth that there are bombs and guns in the world and people who kill others. She learns about Rosa Parks and Mae Jemison. Her favorite is Mary Jackson, the mathematician and aerospace engineer.
My three-year old daughter learns about Dr. King in her preschool also. “Luther Martin King” she calls him. “Luther Martin King wanted everyone to be kind,” she tells me.
My girls are learning about the values and principles I also learned as a child that, as of now, seemed to have made little difference to adults of today. If I ever became President, I would make every adult re-learn the lessons we used to teach our children. That it’s important to be kind. That we need to share things. That everyone might look different but deep down we are all the same. That we are all beautiful and deserving of dignity. That we need to use our words to solve problems. I’d require adults to rewatch Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood once a year.
When I was in elementary school, the black and white photographs made the Civil Rights movement seem like ancient history. I couldn’t believe such a world existed. Thank God we were in the colorful, neon Nineties and didn’t have to worry about all that stuff anymore. Thank God we could elect Barrack Obama in the 2000’s and step into the true future of a multi-racial, diverse America in 2008. Thank God that, whoops, oh, I see now. None of this was really not that long ago was it? It’s still here. Our white education, our white grievances, our inability to look beyond them, our own liberal party failed us. Now they are repealing the last century. There might not even be a black history month next year. Will teachers be able to teach the same black history month lessons my daughters are learning in a few years? Who knows at this point.
Last year I was taking my youngest daughter to swim lessons at the North Portland community center when I passed a wheat pasted poster on a telephone pole that read: “If you’ve ever wondered what you’d do during the rise of fascism, you’re doing it now.” I guess I am taking my daughter to swim lessons during the rise of fascism I thought. In that moment, I thought of the movie The Zone of Interest, how a Nazi commander’s children played in a pool on the other side of a wall from a concentration camp. The film shows how compartmentalized we humans can be, enjoying our lives on one side of the wall, worried about the details of our little lives, while also inflicting great suffering on others. I thought of how much of life and good and evil resides in the banal, just people trying to get through their day.
If one can still be optimistic, we are merely taking two steps back before we can move forward again. That perhaps this is the last dying breath of a nationalist and patriarchal protest against American turning more diverse, against the empowerment of women, queer folx and people of color. Or perhaps this is the fall of our Empire itself as Musk and Trump dismantle our government and sell it off to the highest bidder. It’s not just them. It’s all the people who support them. Also, Democrats, who burned Bernie in 2016. The Liberals would also have kept “business as usual” for our Imperialist nation, kept the money flowing from their corporate sponsors. Obviously, people wanted change. Things might have to get worse again before they get better, if they ever do get “better.” Maybe we will never get that next step back. While terrible things have happened to our country before—threat of nuclear war, terrorist attacks—the threat is now coming from inside the house as they dismantle government to enrich their private pockets. That they are doing this all under the guise of Christian Nationalism is disgusting.
But now is not the time to despair. The most important thing we can do is build community resilience. We will need to rely on our immediate community—whether that’s neighbors, family, friends, schools, churches—more than we’d thought possible. We can protest in the streets but also with our wallets. Do you really need another package from the blue vans owned by the billionaire who also owns a newspaper that just recently revamped their opinion section for propaganda? Shop local and support people and companies who have not already bowed their knee to appease the current administration.
We’re still living in a democracy, so far, and that means we have to respect that half the country apparently wanted all of this to happen. None of this is unprecedented, it’s just that it’s happening here for the first time.
Love,
Levi