Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 836
March 13, 2016
This is why Donald Trump’s winning: The GOP thinks their base is backward — now they’re showing them who’s in charge
The Republican Party elite have long seen their conservative base as backward. This attitude has contributed to that base’s revival—aka The Rise of Trump. Starting with the Reagan era, this long-coming revival has shifted the entire American political debate far to the right—to the delight (until now) of the party leaders. But a split has been long growing between those who believed they could manipulate the attitudes of the base and those who actually live them, the people so often dismissed by their “betters” as “hillbillies.” The hillbilly is the repository for all the negative attitudes in sophisticated quarters for the poorer, less educated part of white America. At the same time, the hillbilly has become a thumb in the eye to the coastal elites—both left and right. Donald Trump, for all of his wealth and New York sophistication, has made himself into the archetypal hillbilly—or, at least, is now so seen in the eyes of many. He has become the champion of the defeated “worst” of America as well as the symbol of its rise from the ashes. Ignoring people or dismissing them as “hillbillies” and “rednecks” when their beliefs and lifestyles do not conform to the dominant media pattern has proven to be insufficient for excluding the mass of discontented white Americans from active participation in the decision-making of the political realm. Trump has become the hillbilly vehicle for revenge upon the elites who have manipulated them for decades. After 52 years of abuse by their rulers, this “base” has finally turned on its leaders. The irony is that the only option for the now-former dominant Republicans is going to be to fall in line with them behind Trump. They have no place else to go: They will follow those they had so easily manipulated for so long; they will support Trump. If they don’t, their influence will disappear. In its rise from its own ashes after the 1964 Goldwater debacle, the American conservative movement made effective use of the resentment of the defeated, much as Democratic politicians in the South had done almost a century earlier. Unfortunately, the movement’s successes have exacerbated American divides (red state/blue state, conservative/liberal, rural/urban, black/white, immigrant/native-born) even as it renewed the strength of an older but battered vision of America. As we are now are seeing, even the base lies on a different side than does the elite. The media, too, are on that other side. Through fascination with the “star” (Donald Trump) at the expense of the cast (his vast army of supporters), the media have been complicit in an attempted theft of white middle-American identity by an elite with no interest in the culture they were taking away. Paradoxically, that theft and media complicity have helped increase many of the resentments that the conservative movement leaders had once harnessed so effectively. It has solidified the line. It was always dangerous to dismiss the poorer white conservative as hillbilly, and not simply because the hillbilly, figuratively (and literally), hangs around the edges. The hillbilly is no simpleton, no bumpkin, though often dismissed as such in popular culture. The hillbilly image, as embraced by the people so designated and ignored, is also a rebuke to the elitists of both parties who have controlled American society at least since the end of World War II. In many media and coastal-elite eyes, poorer and lower-middle-class white communities are seen as debased or, at best, wrongheaded—instead of as people of a threatened and shrinking culture in search of a savior. The people themselves, in the elite view, are the enemy of all “right thinking” Americans—both on the left and on the right. The hillbilly is the other side of the American coin, the tail to the head shown in contemporary media. As a result of hillbilly derision by the elite, instead of becoming the person who rises above the crowd, the hillbilly deliberately falls below. Just as Trump, to what should be no surprise, is doing. Today’s hillbilly is a rebuke to elite attitudes, taking sloth as a badge of pride—again, witness Trump. Though the elite have long claimed to want to “help” poor whites, the words they use for them make one suspicious: knuckledraggers, rednecks, know-nothings (harkening back to an older time), and, of course, hillbillies. This is not new. Small-town Americans had fallen completely out of media favor by 1960. Filmmakers, for example, could no longer see a way of making the white small-town people seem worthy of protection without being accused of a naive and, eventually, racist viewpoint. For many of the elites, also, the McCarthy era of blacklists and low-level persecution, among other things (including the growing civil-rights struggle), had soured them on the “everyday” American (though most have continued to maintain their protective posture in terms of an idealized America and the rest of world). With this increasing divisiveness, American intellectuals and artists and the rich felt more and more alienated from what had once been considered the small-town “backbone” of America. In their eyes, the veneer of acceptance and toleration had been stripped away, revealing hate and venom beneath. There were two main reactions to this by members of the elite: Turn away or try to utilize those emotions for one’s own purposes. One’s political position generally determined which. The mass of the white population of the United States has learned to hate both those who ignore them and those who try to manipulate them. In their eyes, Trump is the only leader they can trust, a real individualist, the ideal for many of them, the person with such confidence that he does not need the approval of anyone else. To them, he is the one person who can disdain the machinations of the elite. The coastal elites often see the political conflict today as one between themselves as contentious individuals within a monied and educated and responsible elite. The mass of the people, stupid and owning little, are only to be manipulated—in this generally unarticulated view. The people of America (of all sorts—this isn’t exclusive to any one group), however, hear it anyway, and they see this elite (both right and left) as lying to and manipulating a gullible populace—as con artists. The elite, on the other hand, are unable to see who the real villains are and, right now, are blaming anyone but themselves. The elite do not understand the white population of America (not that they understand African-Americans or Latinos either), nor do they really want to. It is no wonder the elite have a hard time reaching out to “average Americans.” It’s no wonder that the Republican Party, which has drifted far away from connection with its “base,” has now come under the sway of that self-styled individualist supposedly beholden to no one, the snarling image of the worst of a hillbilly, Donald Trump. The only surprise is that the same thing has not happened to the Democrats. Yet.The Republican Party elite have long seen their conservative base as backward. This attitude has contributed to that base’s revival—aka The Rise of Trump. Starting with the Reagan era, this long-coming revival has shifted the entire American political debate far to the right—to the delight (until now) of the party leaders. But a split has been long growing between those who believed they could manipulate the attitudes of the base and those who actually live them, the people so often dismissed by their “betters” as “hillbillies.” The hillbilly is the repository for all the negative attitudes in sophisticated quarters for the poorer, less educated part of white America. At the same time, the hillbilly has become a thumb in the eye to the coastal elites—both left and right. Donald Trump, for all of his wealth and New York sophistication, has made himself into the archetypal hillbilly—or, at least, is now so seen in the eyes of many. He has become the champion of the defeated “worst” of America as well as the symbol of its rise from the ashes. Ignoring people or dismissing them as “hillbillies” and “rednecks” when their beliefs and lifestyles do not conform to the dominant media pattern has proven to be insufficient for excluding the mass of discontented white Americans from active participation in the decision-making of the political realm. Trump has become the hillbilly vehicle for revenge upon the elites who have manipulated them for decades. After 52 years of abuse by their rulers, this “base” has finally turned on its leaders. The irony is that the only option for the now-former dominant Republicans is going to be to fall in line with them behind Trump. They have no place else to go: They will follow those they had so easily manipulated for so long; they will support Trump. If they don’t, their influence will disappear. In its rise from its own ashes after the 1964 Goldwater debacle, the American conservative movement made effective use of the resentment of the defeated, much as Democratic politicians in the South had done almost a century earlier. Unfortunately, the movement’s successes have exacerbated American divides (red state/blue state, conservative/liberal, rural/urban, black/white, immigrant/native-born) even as it renewed the strength of an older but battered vision of America. As we are now are seeing, even the base lies on a different side than does the elite. The media, too, are on that other side. Through fascination with the “star” (Donald Trump) at the expense of the cast (his vast army of supporters), the media have been complicit in an attempted theft of white middle-American identity by an elite with no interest in the culture they were taking away. Paradoxically, that theft and media complicity have helped increase many of the resentments that the conservative movement leaders had once harnessed so effectively. It has solidified the line. It was always dangerous to dismiss the poorer white conservative as hillbilly, and not simply because the hillbilly, figuratively (and literally), hangs around the edges. The hillbilly is no simpleton, no bumpkin, though often dismissed as such in popular culture. The hillbilly image, as embraced by the people so designated and ignored, is also a rebuke to the elitists of both parties who have controlled American society at least since the end of World War II. In many media and coastal-elite eyes, poorer and lower-middle-class white communities are seen as debased or, at best, wrongheaded—instead of as people of a threatened and shrinking culture in search of a savior. The people themselves, in the elite view, are the enemy of all “right thinking” Americans—both on the left and on the right. The hillbilly is the other side of the American coin, the tail to the head shown in contemporary media. As a result of hillbilly derision by the elite, instead of becoming the person who rises above the crowd, the hillbilly deliberately falls below. Just as Trump, to what should be no surprise, is doing. Today’s hillbilly is a rebuke to elite attitudes, taking sloth as a badge of pride—again, witness Trump. Though the elite have long claimed to want to “help” poor whites, the words they use for them make one suspicious: knuckledraggers, rednecks, know-nothings (harkening back to an older time), and, of course, hillbillies. This is not new. Small-town Americans had fallen completely out of media favor by 1960. Filmmakers, for example, could no longer see a way of making the white small-town people seem worthy of protection without being accused of a naive and, eventually, racist viewpoint. For many of the elites, also, the McCarthy era of blacklists and low-level persecution, among other things (including the growing civil-rights struggle), had soured them on the “everyday” American (though most have continued to maintain their protective posture in terms of an idealized America and the rest of world). With this increasing divisiveness, American intellectuals and artists and the rich felt more and more alienated from what had once been considered the small-town “backbone” of America. In their eyes, the veneer of acceptance and toleration had been stripped away, revealing hate and venom beneath. There were two main reactions to this by members of the elite: Turn away or try to utilize those emotions for one’s own purposes. One’s political position generally determined which. The mass of the white population of the United States has learned to hate both those who ignore them and those who try to manipulate them. In their eyes, Trump is the only leader they can trust, a real individualist, the ideal for many of them, the person with such confidence that he does not need the approval of anyone else. To them, he is the one person who can disdain the machinations of the elite. The coastal elites often see the political conflict today as one between themselves as contentious individuals within a monied and educated and responsible elite. The mass of the people, stupid and owning little, are only to be manipulated—in this generally unarticulated view. The people of America (of all sorts—this isn’t exclusive to any one group), however, hear it anyway, and they see this elite (both right and left) as lying to and manipulating a gullible populace—as con artists. The elite, on the other hand, are unable to see who the real villains are and, right now, are blaming anyone but themselves. The elite do not understand the white population of America (not that they understand African-Americans or Latinos either), nor do they really want to. It is no wonder the elite have a hard time reaching out to “average Americans.” It’s no wonder that the Republican Party, which has drifted far away from connection with its “base,” has now come under the sway of that self-styled individualist supposedly beholden to no one, the snarling image of the worst of a hillbilly, Donald Trump. The only surprise is that the same thing has not happened to the Democrats. Yet.
“He’s a pretty scary dude”: “House of Cards’” Michael Kelly on another season as political fixer Doug Stamper — and why he’s supporting Hillary
Michael Kelly, the actor who plays Doug Stamper on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” is a really nice guy. He barely ever cracks a smile on-screen, where he hovers behind Frank Underwood with the grim visage of a perpetually irritated butler. The past few seasons have revealed Stamper to be a particularly terrifying political fixer, who snuffs out both political opposition and inconvenient lives without much hesitation. But on the phone with me, he laughs constantly, and is apt to stop and say that something that happened on the show was “so cool” or that he was “freaking out.” When he met President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle, the couple—who are big fans of the show—joked that he did not seem “nearly as diabolical in real life.” Kelly said to me that he was mostly in shock: "I couldn't believe they knew who I was." To fans of the show, it is not that surprising. Kelly’s Stamper has become a pillar of the show, even though in this fourth season, Stamper lives a bit on the margins, as Frank (Kevin Spacey) and Claire (Robin Wright) duke it out. But his story is, fans often tell me, what keeps them hooked on the show; all of the characters do awful things, but they feel for Stamper. I spoke to Kelly about his character’s charisma and foibles, as well as his own political leanings and whom he’s voting for this November. I just watched you kill someone! [Laughs.] I was just watching the season 3 finale, and it is a scary episode, and you are very scary in it. He’s … a pretty scary dude, really. [Laughs.] One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because a lot of people tell me that Doug Stamper is, for them, the emotional heart of the show. I’ve heard that, but I’ve also heard other people say they can’t get enough of Frank, or they can’t get enough of Claire. It’s funny how everyone sort of has their own character that they identify with or that they love or whatever. It’s like any successful television show—take “Friends,” for instance, everybody had a different one that they loved. How do you feel about Stamper? I love him. [Laughs.] This is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. I can remove myself while watching it—my wife and I love to watch the show together. When I’m watching him, it’s funny—it’s a big range of emotions. I respect the hell out of his work ethic. I find some of the things that he does despicable. But at his true core, I understand the guy. I’m not saying that I would do any of those things, but I understand him. And maybe that’s because I’m playing him, but I completely understand he’s a complicated guy, with that crazy, addictive personality that a lot of alcoholics have. And it applies to everything for him. That’s what makes him tick. My editor Erin Keane has a theory that Stamper’s feelings for Frank Underwood are the only truly unconditional love in the series. I completely agree. My wife and I finished [episode 7] last night and she turned to me and she’s like, “Jesus, you’re really the only one he can count on!” [Laughs.] Why do you think Stamper is so loyal to Frank? It’s a combination of a lot of things. To go back to talking about the addictive personality that’s in him: There was Rachel [Posner, played by Rachel Brosnahan]; he became obsessed and addicted to that. His job, though, too. He loves what he does, it’s what makes him tick. When we saw this failing character of Doug in season 3, you saw him be quote-unquote “happy,” you saw him living a pretty normal life. OK, you also saw a lot of crazy shit. But you saw him test those waters. What it’s like to have a normal relationship with a girl, what it’s like to have family involved in his life for the first time. What it’s like for him to consider taking a job that’s not going to be so taxing on him. But it doesn’t make him tick. What makes him tick is what he does. It’s what makes him go and gets him up every day, and has him apply that insanely admirable work ethic. On some levels, I know he loves Frank. They’ve been together for a long time, they’ve come up together. So part of it is that. But part of, I think, his loyalty to Frank, on top of the love, is also a byproduct of his addiction to his job. And wanting to be the best he can be at his job. That’s what makes him drive. In this fourth season, Stamper’s marginalized both by Claire’s manipulation and by her new hire, Leann, who behind-the-scenes you dubbed “Lady Stamper.” What was it like to be diminished in that way? It was tough. Especially when Frank’s gone or is out of the picture for a while when he’s incapacitated. That was hell. I found myself like going to work and feeling—you know, I like everybody at work and I’m pretty sure everybody likes me. We have a great time there. But it was weird, because I did sort of feel outside the box of everything. For that period of time I felt lonely, isolated, while we were filming that. And it was bizarre. It was great for the character to fuel that, but it was very uncomfortable, to be honest. And Claire! It’s like, come on! That’s the last person you want to go against. But then I thought, what I just saw last night [in episode 7]—I thought what was so interesting about what Beau [Willimon, showrunner] did is that even Doug knows that she is a formidable foe. She is not someone you want to mess with. But he has to. Even when he finally goes at her at Frank’s bedside, and says, “You left him.” You did this, you did this. She says, “Take it outside in the hall” and then she says something—I’ll paraphrase—like we need to work together now. I need you. We need to do this together. And he’s finally welcomed back in and everything’s going to be OK. And he’s like, no. I’m staying with Frank, that’s more important. I think the line is, “I’m staying with him.” And points a finger back at her, and put her back at odds with him. [Laughs.] I was like, This is crazy, Doug. But that’s why I think Beau is a genius. Those writers, you know? I mean it’s crazy. When I first got this job, I didn’t know anybody, but I was like, wow. They’ve got a group of people here who—every single one of them I admire. Kevin Spacey, someone who I’ve looked up to. When I got the job I didn’t know how big of a character Stamper would become, certainly I never dreamed that. I was doing a lot of “Yes, sirs” and opening doors and whatnot, but I was like: I’m watching Kevin Spacey work every day. I’m gonna learn so much. [Laughs] That, to me, was so thrilling. And then everything that this has become has just been a great bonus on top of that. What does it take to follow Stamper to his dark places, and to get into his mind-set? I am so blessed. I have an incredible wife, children I adore, I’m a very happy man. I’ve got a great mom and dad and brothers and sisters and stuff, so I’ve always been happy. And I never stop smiling. So to go to that place ... To go back to the beginning of the show, it was Beau Willimon who—before I ever set foot on set, before we ever met—he just called me to congratulate me and he was like, “Hey, do you have any questions about Stamper?” I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so excited.” He was like, “Well, what you did in the audition was great, and you just nailed the character, but I think for season 1 if you just want to think about this: Don’t emote. I want everyone at the end of the season to say, what the fuck is up with that guy?” I was sort of on that line in my audition, but that locked in so much for me. By going to that—out of that came his voice, and the way he stands and speaks. All of it just came out of that, which was really interesting. I had done my research on politics and had enough of a background there to begin with, and that was good. But really a lot of it came from that. So season 1, really I just said the words while thinking of those things. [Laughs.] And then the writing is just so brilliant on this show, that I was able to go into that mind-set and just say the words. There’s a lot to Stamper. I mean, he has a heart. You saw the way he treated Rachel. I’ve said this before, but Arthur Penn, who I came up under at the Actor’s Studio, he said something to me: “Always bring as much of yourself to the character as you can.” So although Stamper does all of these despicable things, I brought a lot of myself to the character, in order to ground it in a sense of reality for me. So I think buried underneath is a lot of me. Of course it’s going to come through. So I think that’s why people are like, “Ugh, he’s fucked up, but I can’t help but root for him!” [Laughs.] There’s just something about him. You want him to do well. But you can say the same for Frank and Claire and many of the other characters who do despicable things. You want to see these guys win. These writers are brilliant. Just brilliant. The “House of Cards” writers seem to have predicted a lot of what we’ve seen this election cycle. There’s the KKK thing, the brokered convention, which we’re looking at right now ... It’s crazy! Were you a political person before you got involved with the show? Has it changed the way you think about politics? I studied political science, and when I fell into acting in college—it was just a total fluke that I became an actor. I ended up changing my degree and went for a double major and missed political science by two classes. So I had that foundation, and I’ve always been interested. There was a time after college when I was playing in bands in the city and I sort of lost all interest in anything other than trying to be an actor and having fun playing rock ‘n’ roll and just having too much fun. [Laughs.] Everything else kind of went by the wayside for a while. I’m pretty sure it was President Bill Clinton who brought me back into politics and following it. In a negative way or a positive way? Positive. My son is named Clinton. He’s one of three reasons for that—that’s one of them, and certainly a big one. I admire the hell out of that man, and think he did a great job as president. So I very much am into politics, and I’ve been able to have a voice now, because of people in D.C. Going to D.C. is probably the craziest place I ever go—with selfies and everyone taking pictures and wanting to talk. And I’ve gotten to know a lot of people there. Just this year I started lobbying for the Older Americans Act and I’m actually making some real progress, trying to reauthorize this bill and get it through. You’d be amazed at how many doors that Doug Stamper can open. [Laughs.] It’s pretty crazy. We went in on our first day with, I think five meetings? And we ended up going nonstop the whole day. It’s been really exciting. People sometimes see a parallel between the Underwoods on “House of Cards” and the Clintons in real life, so it’s interesting to hear you speak so highly of Bill Clinton. It’s very Stamper. [Laughs.] Do you also see the Clinton parallel? Do you think Claire is like Hillary? It’s really that that they’re both politicians and both ambitious, and the Clintons, their detractors think they are too ambitious. I’ll give you the two very strong women parallel. You could draw that. [Laughs.] Two people who would be or could be or are very great political figures. But I think you look at Hillary and I don’t think Claire has done nearly as much good to the world as Hillary. [Laughs.] But would they both make effective leaders? Yes, I’ll give you that. Do you want to tell the readers whom you’ll be voting for in the upcoming election? I have no problem sharing that. I am definitely a Hillary, a Secretary Clinton supporter. I think that she’s got the experience and the leadership capabilities to be the next president—and most importantly, her understanding of domestic and foreign policy and social issues. I just think her ability to work with what is most likely going to be a Republican House and Senate—that’s not to slight Sen. Sanders, I think he’s a great man—but just like President Bill Clinton, who was able to pass five balanced budgets, I feel very confident that we are probably going to have a House and Senate that’s in Republican control, and I think that she’s the best person to get things done there.Michael Kelly, the actor who plays Doug Stamper on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” is a really nice guy. He barely ever cracks a smile on-screen, where he hovers behind Frank Underwood with the grim visage of a perpetually irritated butler. The past few seasons have revealed Stamper to be a particularly terrifying political fixer, who snuffs out both political opposition and inconvenient lives without much hesitation. But on the phone with me, he laughs constantly, and is apt to stop and say that something that happened on the show was “so cool” or that he was “freaking out.” When he met President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle, the couple—who are big fans of the show—joked that he did not seem “nearly as diabolical in real life.” Kelly said to me that he was mostly in shock: "I couldn't believe they knew who I was." To fans of the show, it is not that surprising. Kelly’s Stamper has become a pillar of the show, even though in this fourth season, Stamper lives a bit on the margins, as Frank (Kevin Spacey) and Claire (Robin Wright) duke it out. But his story is, fans often tell me, what keeps them hooked on the show; all of the characters do awful things, but they feel for Stamper. I spoke to Kelly about his character’s charisma and foibles, as well as his own political leanings and whom he’s voting for this November. I just watched you kill someone! [Laughs.] I was just watching the season 3 finale, and it is a scary episode, and you are very scary in it. He’s … a pretty scary dude, really. [Laughs.] One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because a lot of people tell me that Doug Stamper is, for them, the emotional heart of the show. I’ve heard that, but I’ve also heard other people say they can’t get enough of Frank, or they can’t get enough of Claire. It’s funny how everyone sort of has their own character that they identify with or that they love or whatever. It’s like any successful television show—take “Friends,” for instance, everybody had a different one that they loved. How do you feel about Stamper? I love him. [Laughs.] This is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. I can remove myself while watching it—my wife and I love to watch the show together. When I’m watching him, it’s funny—it’s a big range of emotions. I respect the hell out of his work ethic. I find some of the things that he does despicable. But at his true core, I understand the guy. I’m not saying that I would do any of those things, but I understand him. And maybe that’s because I’m playing him, but I completely understand he’s a complicated guy, with that crazy, addictive personality that a lot of alcoholics have. And it applies to everything for him. That’s what makes him tick. My editor Erin Keane has a theory that Stamper’s feelings for Frank Underwood are the only truly unconditional love in the series. I completely agree. My wife and I finished [episode 7] last night and she turned to me and she’s like, “Jesus, you’re really the only one he can count on!” [Laughs.] Why do you think Stamper is so loyal to Frank? It’s a combination of a lot of things. To go back to talking about the addictive personality that’s in him: There was Rachel [Posner, played by Rachel Brosnahan]; he became obsessed and addicted to that. His job, though, too. He loves what he does, it’s what makes him tick. When we saw this failing character of Doug in season 3, you saw him be quote-unquote “happy,” you saw him living a pretty normal life. OK, you also saw a lot of crazy shit. But you saw him test those waters. What it’s like to have a normal relationship with a girl, what it’s like to have family involved in his life for the first time. What it’s like for him to consider taking a job that’s not going to be so taxing on him. But it doesn’t make him tick. What makes him tick is what he does. It’s what makes him go and gets him up every day, and has him apply that insanely admirable work ethic. On some levels, I know he loves Frank. They’ve been together for a long time, they’ve come up together. So part of it is that. But part of, I think, his loyalty to Frank, on top of the love, is also a byproduct of his addiction to his job. And wanting to be the best he can be at his job. That’s what makes him drive. In this fourth season, Stamper’s marginalized both by Claire’s manipulation and by her new hire, Leann, who behind-the-scenes you dubbed “Lady Stamper.” What was it like to be diminished in that way? It was tough. Especially when Frank’s gone or is out of the picture for a while when he’s incapacitated. That was hell. I found myself like going to work and feeling—you know, I like everybody at work and I’m pretty sure everybody likes me. We have a great time there. But it was weird, because I did sort of feel outside the box of everything. For that period of time I felt lonely, isolated, while we were filming that. And it was bizarre. It was great for the character to fuel that, but it was very uncomfortable, to be honest. And Claire! It’s like, come on! That’s the last person you want to go against. But then I thought, what I just saw last night [in episode 7]—I thought what was so interesting about what Beau [Willimon, showrunner] did is that even Doug knows that she is a formidable foe. She is not someone you want to mess with. But he has to. Even when he finally goes at her at Frank’s bedside, and says, “You left him.” You did this, you did this. She says, “Take it outside in the hall” and then she says something—I’ll paraphrase—like we need to work together now. I need you. We need to do this together. And he’s finally welcomed back in and everything’s going to be OK. And he’s like, no. I’m staying with Frank, that’s more important. I think the line is, “I’m staying with him.” And points a finger back at her, and put her back at odds with him. [Laughs.] I was like, This is crazy, Doug. But that’s why I think Beau is a genius. Those writers, you know? I mean it’s crazy. When I first got this job, I didn’t know anybody, but I was like, wow. They’ve got a group of people here who—every single one of them I admire. Kevin Spacey, someone who I’ve looked up to. When I got the job I didn’t know how big of a character Stamper would become, certainly I never dreamed that. I was doing a lot of “Yes, sirs” and opening doors and whatnot, but I was like: I’m watching Kevin Spacey work every day. I’m gonna learn so much. [Laughs] That, to me, was so thrilling. And then everything that this has become has just been a great bonus on top of that. What does it take to follow Stamper to his dark places, and to get into his mind-set? I am so blessed. I have an incredible wife, children I adore, I’m a very happy man. I’ve got a great mom and dad and brothers and sisters and stuff, so I’ve always been happy. And I never stop smiling. So to go to that place ... To go back to the beginning of the show, it was Beau Willimon who—before I ever set foot on set, before we ever met—he just called me to congratulate me and he was like, “Hey, do you have any questions about Stamper?” I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so excited.” He was like, “Well, what you did in the audition was great, and you just nailed the character, but I think for season 1 if you just want to think about this: Don’t emote. I want everyone at the end of the season to say, what the fuck is up with that guy?” I was sort of on that line in my audition, but that locked in so much for me. By going to that—out of that came his voice, and the way he stands and speaks. All of it just came out of that, which was really interesting. I had done my research on politics and had enough of a background there to begin with, and that was good. But really a lot of it came from that. So season 1, really I just said the words while thinking of those things. [Laughs.] And then the writing is just so brilliant on this show, that I was able to go into that mind-set and just say the words. There’s a lot to Stamper. I mean, he has a heart. You saw the way he treated Rachel. I’ve said this before, but Arthur Penn, who I came up under at the Actor’s Studio, he said something to me: “Always bring as much of yourself to the character as you can.” So although Stamper does all of these despicable things, I brought a lot of myself to the character, in order to ground it in a sense of reality for me. So I think buried underneath is a lot of me. Of course it’s going to come through. So I think that’s why people are like, “Ugh, he’s fucked up, but I can’t help but root for him!” [Laughs.] There’s just something about him. You want him to do well. But you can say the same for Frank and Claire and many of the other characters who do despicable things. You want to see these guys win. These writers are brilliant. Just brilliant. The “House of Cards” writers seem to have predicted a lot of what we’ve seen this election cycle. There’s the KKK thing, the brokered convention, which we’re looking at right now ... It’s crazy! Were you a political person before you got involved with the show? Has it changed the way you think about politics? I studied political science, and when I fell into acting in college—it was just a total fluke that I became an actor. I ended up changing my degree and went for a double major and missed political science by two classes. So I had that foundation, and I’ve always been interested. There was a time after college when I was playing in bands in the city and I sort of lost all interest in anything other than trying to be an actor and having fun playing rock ‘n’ roll and just having too much fun. [Laughs.] Everything else kind of went by the wayside for a while. I’m pretty sure it was President Bill Clinton who brought me back into politics and following it. In a negative way or a positive way? Positive. My son is named Clinton. He’s one of three reasons for that—that’s one of them, and certainly a big one. I admire the hell out of that man, and think he did a great job as president. So I very much am into politics, and I’ve been able to have a voice now, because of people in D.C. Going to D.C. is probably the craziest place I ever go—with selfies and everyone taking pictures and wanting to talk. And I’ve gotten to know a lot of people there. Just this year I started lobbying for the Older Americans Act and I’m actually making some real progress, trying to reauthorize this bill and get it through. You’d be amazed at how many doors that Doug Stamper can open. [Laughs.] It’s pretty crazy. We went in on our first day with, I think five meetings? And we ended up going nonstop the whole day. It’s been really exciting. People sometimes see a parallel between the Underwoods on “House of Cards” and the Clintons in real life, so it’s interesting to hear you speak so highly of Bill Clinton. It’s very Stamper. [Laughs.] Do you also see the Clinton parallel? Do you think Claire is like Hillary? It’s really that that they’re both politicians and both ambitious, and the Clintons, their detractors think they are too ambitious. I’ll give you the two very strong women parallel. You could draw that. [Laughs.] Two people who would be or could be or are very great political figures. But I think you look at Hillary and I don’t think Claire has done nearly as much good to the world as Hillary. [Laughs.] But would they both make effective leaders? Yes, I’ll give you that. Do you want to tell the readers whom you’ll be voting for in the upcoming election? I have no problem sharing that. I am definitely a Hillary, a Secretary Clinton supporter. I think that she’s got the experience and the leadership capabilities to be the next president—and most importantly, her understanding of domestic and foreign policy and social issues. I just think her ability to work with what is most likely going to be a Republican House and Senate—that’s not to slight Sen. Sanders, I think he’s a great man—but just like President Bill Clinton, who was able to pass five balanced budgets, I feel very confident that we are probably going to have a House and Senate that’s in Republican control, and I think that she’s the best person to get things done there.
Noam Chomsky: “I have never seen such lunatics in the political system”
Professor Chomsky was interviewed in Boston by the writer and activist Simone Chun for the Hankyoreh newspaper. Here is the English translation of the interview, courtesy of Ms. Chun. She was accompanied in her first meeting with Prof. Chomsky in November 2015 (pictured) by Christine Ahn, the founder of Women Cross DMZ, which led a historic march across the North-South Korean border last May (full disclosure, Ms. Chun, Ms. Ahn and myself are all affiliated with the Korea Peace Institute). Ms. Chun’s interview recently took place, at Professor Chomsky’s office at MIT. Here is the Q&A. Chun: Do you feel that there will be any significant change in the foreign policy of the United States after President Obama? Chomsky: If Republicans are elected, there could be major changes that will be awful. I have never seen such lunatics in the political system. For instance, Ted Cruz’s response to terrorism is to carpet-bomb everyone. Chun: Would you expect that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy would be different from President Obama’s? Chomsky: Judging by the record, she is kind of hawkish—much more militant than the centrist democrats, including Obama. Take for instance Libya: she was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East. It’s a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter. Look at the so-called global war on terror. It started in 15 years ago with a small cell in a tribal sector in Afghanistan. Now it is all over, and you can understand why. It’s about comparative advantage of force. Chun: How about Bernie Sanders–what do you think his foreign policy will be? Chomsky: He is doing a lot better than I expected, but he doesn’t have much to say about foreign policy. He is a kind of New Deal Democrat and focuses primarily on domestic issues. Chun: Some people in South Korea speculate that if Bernie Sanders gets elected, he may take a non-interventionist position towards foreign policy, which would then give more power to South Korea’s right-wing government. Chomsky: The dynamics could be different. His emphasis on domestic policy might require an aggressive foreign policy. In order to shore up support for domestic policies, he may be forced to attack somebody weak. Chun: Do you believe that Americans would support another war? Chomsky: The public is easily amenable to lies: the more lies there are, the greater the support for war. For instance, when the public was told that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S., this increased support for the war. Chun: Do you mean that the media fuels lies? Chomsky: The media is uncritical, and their so-called the concept of objectivity translates into keeping everything within the Beltway. However, Iraq was quite different. Here, there were flat-out lies, and they sort of knew it. They were desperately trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Chun: Do you think that the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing? Chomsky: I don’t think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it–by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants. Iran has been calling for it for years, and the Arab countries support it. Everyone except the United States and Israel support it. The U.S. won’t allow it because it means inspecting Israel’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. has continued to block it, and in fact blocked it again just a couple of days ago; it just wasn’t widely reported. Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. intelligence points out, is deterrent, and the bottom line is that the U.S. and Israel don’t want Iran to have a deterrent. In any case, it is better to have some deal than no deal, but it’s interesting that Obama picked the day of implementing of Iran deal to impose new sanctions on North Korea. Chun: And do you think that the same can be said about North Korea? Chomsky: You can understand why. If North Korea doesn’t have a deterrent, they will be wiped out. Chun: What is the most constructive way to address the nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula? Chomsky: In 2005, there was a very sensible deal between the U.S. and North Korea. This deal would have settled North Korea’s so-called nuclear threat, but was subsequently undermined by George W. Bush, who attacked North Korean banks in Macau and blocked the North’s access to outside the world. Chun: Why does the United States undermine efforts to reach an agreement with North Korea? Chomsky: I don’t think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons. Chun: Can you elaborate? Chomsky: If you look at the record, the United States has done very little to stop nuclear weapons. As soon as George W. Bush was elected, he did everything to encourage North Korea to act aggressively. In 2005 we were close to a deal, but North Korea has always been a low priority issue for the United States. In fact, look at the entire nuclear weapons strategy of the United States: from the beginning, in the 1950s, the United States didn’t worry much about a nuclear threat. It would have been possible to enter into a treaty with the one potential threat—the Soviet Union—and block development of these weapons. At that time, the Russians were way behind technologically, and Stalin wanted a peace deal, but the U.S. didn’t want to hear the USSR’s offer. The implication is that the U.S. is ready to have a terminal war at any time. Chun: What do you think about U.S. “Pivot to Asia” policy? Chomsky: It is aimed at China. China is already surrounded by hostile powers such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Guam, but the United States wants to build up more tension. For example, few days ago, a B-52 nuclear bomber flew within a couple of miles of China. It is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire. Chun: What do you think about Japan? Do you think Japan is remilitarizing, and if so, does this pose a threat to the region and the world? Chomsky: Yes, Japan is trying very hard, but it is not certain that it will succeed. Take for instance Okinawa. There is no actual military purpose, but the United States insists on maintaining a base there. Chun: As you know, part of my work centers on supporting individual activists in South Korea who do not tend to receive media attention. Your statements of solidarity in support of them enable them to receive much-needed attention by the Korean media. It has been very effective. Chomsky: I hope that my support has been helpful. Is there any hope or mood in Korea in support of Sunshine Policy? Chun: It is difficult due to the incumbent right-wing government. Chomsky: How about South Korean public opinion? Chun: As you know, successive conservative governments have obstructed engagement with the North, and this has greatly deflated the public mood on the matter. Opposition parties remain divided and ineffective, and the current government exercises tight control over the media and represses any activists who would express criticism. South Korea appears to be heading back to the authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s. Chomsky: Part of the reason why the United States doesn’t care about North Korea is that the North Korean threat provides justification for the right-wing conservative regime in the South. Chun: Yes, many people argue that the biggest obstacle in dealing with North Korea is South Korean right-wing politics. Chomsky: Relaxation with North Korea would mean conservatives losing power in the South. That’s why, for instance, we have to keep the war on terrorism. Chun: Professor Chomsky, thank you again for your time and your support.
Professor Chomsky was interviewed in Boston by the writer and activist Simone Chun for the Hankyoreh newspaper. Here is the English translation of the interview, courtesy of Ms. Chun. She was accompanied in her first meeting with Prof. Chomsky in November 2015 (pictured) by Christine Ahn, the founder of Women Cross DMZ, which led a historic march across the North-South Korean border last May (full disclosure, Ms. Chun, Ms. Ahn and myself are all affiliated with the Korea Peace Institute). Ms. Chun’s interview recently took place, at Professor Chomsky’s office at MIT. Here is the Q&A. Chun: Do you feel that there will be any significant change in the foreign policy of the United States after President Obama? Chomsky: If Republicans are elected, there could be major changes that will be awful. I have never seen such lunatics in the political system. For instance, Ted Cruz’s response to terrorism is to carpet-bomb everyone. Chun: Would you expect that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy would be different from President Obama’s? Chomsky: Judging by the record, she is kind of hawkish—much more militant than the centrist democrats, including Obama. Take for instance Libya: she was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East. It’s a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter. Look at the so-called global war on terror. It started in 15 years ago with a small cell in a tribal sector in Afghanistan. Now it is all over, and you can understand why. It’s about comparative advantage of force. Chun: How about Bernie Sanders–what do you think his foreign policy will be? Chomsky: He is doing a lot better than I expected, but he doesn’t have much to say about foreign policy. He is a kind of New Deal Democrat and focuses primarily on domestic issues. Chun: Some people in South Korea speculate that if Bernie Sanders gets elected, he may take a non-interventionist position towards foreign policy, which would then give more power to South Korea’s right-wing government. Chomsky: The dynamics could be different. His emphasis on domestic policy might require an aggressive foreign policy. In order to shore up support for domestic policies, he may be forced to attack somebody weak. Chun: Do you believe that Americans would support another war? Chomsky: The public is easily amenable to lies: the more lies there are, the greater the support for war. For instance, when the public was told that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S., this increased support for the war. Chun: Do you mean that the media fuels lies? Chomsky: The media is uncritical, and their so-called the concept of objectivity translates into keeping everything within the Beltway. However, Iraq was quite different. Here, there were flat-out lies, and they sort of knew it. They were desperately trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Chun: Do you think that the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing? Chomsky: I don’t think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it–by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants. Iran has been calling for it for years, and the Arab countries support it. Everyone except the United States and Israel support it. The U.S. won’t allow it because it means inspecting Israel’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. has continued to block it, and in fact blocked it again just a couple of days ago; it just wasn’t widely reported. Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. intelligence points out, is deterrent, and the bottom line is that the U.S. and Israel don’t want Iran to have a deterrent. In any case, it is better to have some deal than no deal, but it’s interesting that Obama picked the day of implementing of Iran deal to impose new sanctions on North Korea. Chun: And do you think that the same can be said about North Korea? Chomsky: You can understand why. If North Korea doesn’t have a deterrent, they will be wiped out. Chun: What is the most constructive way to address the nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula? Chomsky: In 2005, there was a very sensible deal between the U.S. and North Korea. This deal would have settled North Korea’s so-called nuclear threat, but was subsequently undermined by George W. Bush, who attacked North Korean banks in Macau and blocked the North’s access to outside the world. Chun: Why does the United States undermine efforts to reach an agreement with North Korea? Chomsky: I don’t think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons. Chun: Can you elaborate? Chomsky: If you look at the record, the United States has done very little to stop nuclear weapons. As soon as George W. Bush was elected, he did everything to encourage North Korea to act aggressively. In 2005 we were close to a deal, but North Korea has always been a low priority issue for the United States. In fact, look at the entire nuclear weapons strategy of the United States: from the beginning, in the 1950s, the United States didn’t worry much about a nuclear threat. It would have been possible to enter into a treaty with the one potential threat—the Soviet Union—and block development of these weapons. At that time, the Russians were way behind technologically, and Stalin wanted a peace deal, but the U.S. didn’t want to hear the USSR’s offer. The implication is that the U.S. is ready to have a terminal war at any time. Chun: What do you think about U.S. “Pivot to Asia” policy? Chomsky: It is aimed at China. China is already surrounded by hostile powers such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Guam, but the United States wants to build up more tension. For example, few days ago, a B-52 nuclear bomber flew within a couple of miles of China. It is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire. Chun: What do you think about Japan? Do you think Japan is remilitarizing, and if so, does this pose a threat to the region and the world? Chomsky: Yes, Japan is trying very hard, but it is not certain that it will succeed. Take for instance Okinawa. There is no actual military purpose, but the United States insists on maintaining a base there. Chun: As you know, part of my work centers on supporting individual activists in South Korea who do not tend to receive media attention. Your statements of solidarity in support of them enable them to receive much-needed attention by the Korean media. It has been very effective. Chomsky: I hope that my support has been helpful. Is there any hope or mood in Korea in support of Sunshine Policy? Chun: It is difficult due to the incumbent right-wing government. Chomsky: How about South Korean public opinion? Chun: As you know, successive conservative governments have obstructed engagement with the North, and this has greatly deflated the public mood on the matter. Opposition parties remain divided and ineffective, and the current government exercises tight control over the media and represses any activists who would express criticism. South Korea appears to be heading back to the authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s. Chomsky: Part of the reason why the United States doesn’t care about North Korea is that the North Korean threat provides justification for the right-wing conservative regime in the South. Chun: Yes, many people argue that the biggest obstacle in dealing with North Korea is South Korean right-wing politics. Chomsky: Relaxation with North Korea would mean conservatives losing power in the South. That’s why, for instance, we have to keep the war on terrorism. Chun: Professor Chomsky, thank you again for your time and your support. 
“The first day of shooting was the day we went to the cross burning”: W. Kamau Bell on hanging out with the KKK and claiming his space with humor
Comedian W. Kamau Bell is one of the nation’s smartest, funniest commentators on race. Known for his stand-up as well as the show “Totally Biased,” he’s cutting but oddly friendly in his delivery. Bell’s new show, "United Shades of America," premieres on CNN on April 24. He says it’s dedicated to “reaching across the aisle,” and he reaches about as far as he can: The first episode looks at Bell’s trip to hang out with Ku Klux Klansmen – he even gets to witness a cross burning. (Or, “cross lighting,” as he’s told they’re called.) He’s told about “mud races,” about how white supremacists are not about being “politically correct,” and he’s warned that “we will hurt you.” We spoke to the Bay Area-dwelling Bell from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So I saw the KKK episode, which is sort of stunning. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess the premise of the show – and certainly this episode – is that you change the tone of a place? You go to places that are unlikely for you? Yes – unlikely either in, “That’s weird...” or “Noooo!” How old were you when you first got a sense that your presence changed a scene – the feeling in a room? Is that something you can notice? That was something my mom told me was gonna happen – that moment when as a young black boy you transition to being a young black man, which happens earlier than boys of other races. At the age where I was gonna be out and about by myself – maybe 10 or something, where I might go down the street and buy a comic book by myself – my mom took me out to the local convenience store/drugstore, and sort of gave me the rundown: “When you’re out by yourself, this is how it’s gonna work. That’s the store detective, he’s gonna follow you around, don’t touch anything unless you’re gonna buy it…” I had to be aware of how the world perceived me. And by the time I was in high school, I was over 6 feet tall, so I was a man even if I’m not a man… The Trayvon Martin phenomenon. I had to know that people are gonna treat me like a man, if I’m making a decision the way a teenager or a boy makes them. The show is largely about racism ... Do you think the country has gotten more racist since Obama was elected? No – I think it’s like if you’re in the woods and you lift up an old log. Those bugs were under the log, but now you can see them. That’s the case with racism in America… While a lot of black people knew that America was exactly as racist as it appeared to be, a lot of white people have spent almost eight years like, “No… no… no.” We’ve certainly had more racism discussions with Obama in office than we had with George W. Bush in office. So that’s a net positive even if it’s a painful net positive. You spent a lot of time with Klansmen in this episode. Were you frightened through much of it? Yeah, the first day of shooting was the day we went to the cross burning – or “cross lighting.” We walked around the town talking to people, asking, “Do you know about the Klan around here?” Most people were like, “No.” But a young guy was like, “Yeah, I know about them.” ... I had a lot of time to be super-anxious about it. In the car waiting to be told I could drive in, I really got myself together, and also started to sort of work myself into, “All right, gotta go in there, gotta be funny.” That episode really taught me that humor is a defense mechanism that I developed – because I’m using it to defend myself. To sort of keep everyone on their toes, show everyone they’re not gonna get one over on me ... Sort of claim my space through humor. Did any of them persuade you that the group is about morality, or whatever, and not racism? No. When your core belief is that the races shouldn’t mix, that’s … It’s like the Three Little Pigs – your house is built on hay. Kind of hard to recover from that premise, isn’t it? Yeah. They would argue that they’re good Christians, they would argue that the Bible says what they say … But we all know – you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. Anything. But when it’s built on the premise that blacks and whites can’t mix … I mean, I don’t want to mix with you guys. But I’m married to a white woman and have lots of white friends -- those people are great! The Klan was absolutely one of America’s first homegrown terrorist groups … At some point, a lot of the leadership of the country, and also of cities around the country—those guys were either Klansmen or active sympathizers of the Klan. Well, now those people know you don’t have to wear the robes anymore. As Malcolm X said, you can do it in a suit. And now it sort of exists as the most dangerous men’s group of all kinds. There’s not much difference between the Klan out in the woods burning crosses and a men’s group out in the woods beating drums and claiming their manhood. These guys may have done dangerous things, they may have done illegal things … But to me it felt like this was a lot of misplaced anger and emotion and sadness. That, you know, you guys might need some therapy or, I don’t know – a better job, a better economy? You’ve decided that your problems aren’t your own – they’re black people. After I hung out with that group in the woods … I know I left with a lot of those people liking me. Were you charmed at all by them? It’s funny – when you sit down and talk to people, it’s bridge-building … It doesn’t mean you always need to come across my bridge, or that I want to come across your bridge. But at least we recognize that we’re both humans in the world, living our lives. That’s all we need to do in this country. Maybe we become best friends, or maybe we just recognize that we don’t need to kill each other, or vote against each other. I had as good a time as I could have hanging out with those guys in the woods. Not that they didn’t say fucked-up things. But it was way more fun to hang out with them than it was with Thomas Robb and his daughter at the Klan church. Yeah, that was a little awkward, eh? Yeah. What are some other places you’ll be going as the show goes on? We went to Alaska, the top-most part of North America -- Barrow, Alaska. Which is a completely different part of this country that people don’t talk about or see that often. Solidly white? Well, the ground – the snow is awfully white. (Laughs.) But the population is 60 percent native… We did San Quentin, in the Bay Area – that’s probably my most favorite episode. It’s not that we humanized those guys, it’s that those guys are humans. A lot of times you see inmates in prison documentaries or on TV or on fictional things, and they’re not meant to be human. I think because I’m a black man around the same age as those guys, we had a real connection. I did stupid things when I was younger, just nothing that led me to jail. That doesn’t mean I’m better, it just means that I wasn’t in those circumstances. I was just amazed at how we didn’t meet one guy who said they were innocent, or “I didn’t do it.” They said, “I’m in recovery, I do restorative justice, I’ve got some skills, I write for the newspaper.” There’s a lot of good, untapped natural resouces in our prison system that we’ve locked up. They don’t get paroled because politicians don’t want to say, “Last year we paroled a lot of prisoners!” But it should be about rehabilitation ... It just sounds better for politicians to say, “I locked them up and threw away the key!” We went to Portland, Oregon. Known for its hipsters, but its dirty secret is that the hipster influx into Portland is pricing out a lot of the black residents. The question for me is, How can you be hip but not cool? I’m not a hipster – I identify as a "blerd" – but I’m definitely pro-black people. It’s a story being replicated around the country, whether it’s Brooklyn or Oakland. We also did cops in Camden, New Jersey, talked about demographics in East L.A., one in Florida where I talked to spring breakers and senior citizens in a retirement community. And we did one off the grid in Asheville, North Carolina, and also in South Carolina. Has going to all of these places and meeting all of these people made you feel better or worse about race relations in the country, or are you just weeping walking away from these encounters? There is some weeping … The thing that makes me feel good is that if we all sat down at a table across from each other, all the different people, across racial lines, gender lines, and had conversations, I would feel better about this country. And maybe this show is modeling those types of conversations. Because I wear my ignorance, my lack of knowledge, proudly on my sleeve, and try to be respectful and gain knowledge through those conversations. More "United Shades of America," less Donald Trump rallies – is what I’m trying to say.Comedian W. Kamau Bell is one of the nation’s smartest, funniest commentators on race. Known for his stand-up as well as the show “Totally Biased,” he’s cutting but oddly friendly in his delivery. Bell’s new show, "United Shades of America," premieres on CNN on April 24. He says it’s dedicated to “reaching across the aisle,” and he reaches about as far as he can: The first episode looks at Bell’s trip to hang out with Ku Klux Klansmen – he even gets to witness a cross burning. (Or, “cross lighting,” as he’s told they’re called.) He’s told about “mud races,” about how white supremacists are not about being “politically correct,” and he’s warned that “we will hurt you.” We spoke to the Bay Area-dwelling Bell from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So I saw the KKK episode, which is sort of stunning. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess the premise of the show – and certainly this episode – is that you change the tone of a place? You go to places that are unlikely for you? Yes – unlikely either in, “That’s weird...” or “Noooo!” How old were you when you first got a sense that your presence changed a scene – the feeling in a room? Is that something you can notice? That was something my mom told me was gonna happen – that moment when as a young black boy you transition to being a young black man, which happens earlier than boys of other races. At the age where I was gonna be out and about by myself – maybe 10 or something, where I might go down the street and buy a comic book by myself – my mom took me out to the local convenience store/drugstore, and sort of gave me the rundown: “When you’re out by yourself, this is how it’s gonna work. That’s the store detective, he’s gonna follow you around, don’t touch anything unless you’re gonna buy it…” I had to be aware of how the world perceived me. And by the time I was in high school, I was over 6 feet tall, so I was a man even if I’m not a man… The Trayvon Martin phenomenon. I had to know that people are gonna treat me like a man, if I’m making a decision the way a teenager or a boy makes them. The show is largely about racism ... Do you think the country has gotten more racist since Obama was elected? No – I think it’s like if you’re in the woods and you lift up an old log. Those bugs were under the log, but now you can see them. That’s the case with racism in America… While a lot of black people knew that America was exactly as racist as it appeared to be, a lot of white people have spent almost eight years like, “No… no… no.” We’ve certainly had more racism discussions with Obama in office than we had with George W. Bush in office. So that’s a net positive even if it’s a painful net positive. You spent a lot of time with Klansmen in this episode. Were you frightened through much of it? Yeah, the first day of shooting was the day we went to the cross burning – or “cross lighting.” We walked around the town talking to people, asking, “Do you know about the Klan around here?” Most people were like, “No.” But a young guy was like, “Yeah, I know about them.” ... I had a lot of time to be super-anxious about it. In the car waiting to be told I could drive in, I really got myself together, and also started to sort of work myself into, “All right, gotta go in there, gotta be funny.” That episode really taught me that humor is a defense mechanism that I developed – because I’m using it to defend myself. To sort of keep everyone on their toes, show everyone they’re not gonna get one over on me ... Sort of claim my space through humor. Did any of them persuade you that the group is about morality, or whatever, and not racism? No. When your core belief is that the races shouldn’t mix, that’s … It’s like the Three Little Pigs – your house is built on hay. Kind of hard to recover from that premise, isn’t it? Yeah. They would argue that they’re good Christians, they would argue that the Bible says what they say … But we all know – you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. Anything. But when it’s built on the premise that blacks and whites can’t mix … I mean, I don’t want to mix with you guys. But I’m married to a white woman and have lots of white friends -- those people are great! The Klan was absolutely one of America’s first homegrown terrorist groups … At some point, a lot of the leadership of the country, and also of cities around the country—those guys were either Klansmen or active sympathizers of the Klan. Well, now those people know you don’t have to wear the robes anymore. As Malcolm X said, you can do it in a suit. And now it sort of exists as the most dangerous men’s group of all kinds. There’s not much difference between the Klan out in the woods burning crosses and a men’s group out in the woods beating drums and claiming their manhood. These guys may have done dangerous things, they may have done illegal things … But to me it felt like this was a lot of misplaced anger and emotion and sadness. That, you know, you guys might need some therapy or, I don’t know – a better job, a better economy? You’ve decided that your problems aren’t your own – they’re black people. After I hung out with that group in the woods … I know I left with a lot of those people liking me. Were you charmed at all by them? It’s funny – when you sit down and talk to people, it’s bridge-building … It doesn’t mean you always need to come across my bridge, or that I want to come across your bridge. But at least we recognize that we’re both humans in the world, living our lives. That’s all we need to do in this country. Maybe we become best friends, or maybe we just recognize that we don’t need to kill each other, or vote against each other. I had as good a time as I could have hanging out with those guys in the woods. Not that they didn’t say fucked-up things. But it was way more fun to hang out with them than it was with Thomas Robb and his daughter at the Klan church. Yeah, that was a little awkward, eh? Yeah. What are some other places you’ll be going as the show goes on? We went to Alaska, the top-most part of North America -- Barrow, Alaska. Which is a completely different part of this country that people don’t talk about or see that often. Solidly white? Well, the ground – the snow is awfully white. (Laughs.) But the population is 60 percent native… We did San Quentin, in the Bay Area – that’s probably my most favorite episode. It’s not that we humanized those guys, it’s that those guys are humans. A lot of times you see inmates in prison documentaries or on TV or on fictional things, and they’re not meant to be human. I think because I’m a black man around the same age as those guys, we had a real connection. I did stupid things when I was younger, just nothing that led me to jail. That doesn’t mean I’m better, it just means that I wasn’t in those circumstances. I was just amazed at how we didn’t meet one guy who said they were innocent, or “I didn’t do it.” They said, “I’m in recovery, I do restorative justice, I’ve got some skills, I write for the newspaper.” There’s a lot of good, untapped natural resouces in our prison system that we’ve locked up. They don’t get paroled because politicians don’t want to say, “Last year we paroled a lot of prisoners!” But it should be about rehabilitation ... It just sounds better for politicians to say, “I locked them up and threw away the key!” We went to Portland, Oregon. Known for its hipsters, but its dirty secret is that the hipster influx into Portland is pricing out a lot of the black residents. The question for me is, How can you be hip but not cool? I’m not a hipster – I identify as a "blerd" – but I’m definitely pro-black people. It’s a story being replicated around the country, whether it’s Brooklyn or Oakland. We also did cops in Camden, New Jersey, talked about demographics in East L.A., one in Florida where I talked to spring breakers and senior citizens in a retirement community. And we did one off the grid in Asheville, North Carolina, and also in South Carolina. Has going to all of these places and meeting all of these people made you feel better or worse about race relations in the country, or are you just weeping walking away from these encounters? There is some weeping … The thing that makes me feel good is that if we all sat down at a table across from each other, all the different people, across racial lines, gender lines, and had conversations, I would feel better about this country. And maybe this show is modeling those types of conversations. Because I wear my ignorance, my lack of knowledge, proudly on my sleeve, and try to be respectful and gain knowledge through those conversations. More "United Shades of America," less Donald Trump rallies – is what I’m trying to say.Comedian W. Kamau Bell is one of the nation’s smartest, funniest commentators on race. Known for his stand-up as well as the show “Totally Biased,” he’s cutting but oddly friendly in his delivery. Bell’s new show, "United Shades of America," premieres on CNN on April 24. He says it’s dedicated to “reaching across the aisle,” and he reaches about as far as he can: The first episode looks at Bell’s trip to hang out with Ku Klux Klansmen – he even gets to witness a cross burning. (Or, “cross lighting,” as he’s told they’re called.) He’s told about “mud races,” about how white supremacists are not about being “politically correct,” and he’s warned that “we will hurt you.” We spoke to the Bay Area-dwelling Bell from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So I saw the KKK episode, which is sort of stunning. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess the premise of the show – and certainly this episode – is that you change the tone of a place? You go to places that are unlikely for you? Yes – unlikely either in, “That’s weird...” or “Noooo!” How old were you when you first got a sense that your presence changed a scene – the feeling in a room? Is that something you can notice? That was something my mom told me was gonna happen – that moment when as a young black boy you transition to being a young black man, which happens earlier than boys of other races. At the age where I was gonna be out and about by myself – maybe 10 or something, where I might go down the street and buy a comic book by myself – my mom took me out to the local convenience store/drugstore, and sort of gave me the rundown: “When you’re out by yourself, this is how it’s gonna work. That’s the store detective, he’s gonna follow you around, don’t touch anything unless you’re gonna buy it…” I had to be aware of how the world perceived me. And by the time I was in high school, I was over 6 feet tall, so I was a man even if I’m not a man… The Trayvon Martin phenomenon. I had to know that people are gonna treat me like a man, if I’m making a decision the way a teenager or a boy makes them. The show is largely about racism ... Do you think the country has gotten more racist since Obama was elected? No – I think it’s like if you’re in the woods and you lift up an old log. Those bugs were under the log, but now you can see them. That’s the case with racism in America… While a lot of black people knew that America was exactly as racist as it appeared to be, a lot of white people have spent almost eight years like, “No… no… no.” We’ve certainly had more racism discussions with Obama in office than we had with George W. Bush in office. So that’s a net positive even if it’s a painful net positive. You spent a lot of time with Klansmen in this episode. Were you frightened through much of it? Yeah, the first day of shooting was the day we went to the cross burning – or “cross lighting.” We walked around the town talking to people, asking, “Do you know about the Klan around here?” Most people were like, “No.” But a young guy was like, “Yeah, I know about them.” ... I had a lot of time to be super-anxious about it. In the car waiting to be told I could drive in, I really got myself together, and also started to sort of work myself into, “All right, gotta go in there, gotta be funny.” That episode really taught me that humor is a defense mechanism that I developed – because I’m using it to defend myself. To sort of keep everyone on their toes, show everyone they’re not gonna get one over on me ... Sort of claim my space through humor. Did any of them persuade you that the group is about morality, or whatever, and not racism? No. When your core belief is that the races shouldn’t mix, that’s … It’s like the Three Little Pigs – your house is built on hay. Kind of hard to recover from that premise, isn’t it? Yeah. They would argue that they’re good Christians, they would argue that the Bible says what they say … But we all know – you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. Anything. But when it’s built on the premise that blacks and whites can’t mix … I mean, I don’t want to mix with you guys. But I’m married to a white woman and have lots of white friends -- those people are great! The Klan was absolutely one of America’s first homegrown terrorist groups … At some point, a lot of the leadership of the country, and also of cities around the country—those guys were either Klansmen or active sympathizers of the Klan. Well, now those people know you don’t have to wear the robes anymore. As Malcolm X said, you can do it in a suit. And now it sort of exists as the most dangerous men’s group of all kinds. There’s not much difference between the Klan out in the woods burning crosses and a men’s group out in the woods beating drums and claiming their manhood. These guys may have done dangerous things, they may have done illegal things … But to me it felt like this was a lot of misplaced anger and emotion and sadness. That, you know, you guys might need some therapy or, I don’t know – a better job, a better economy? You’ve decided that your problems aren’t your own – they’re black people. After I hung out with that group in the woods … I know I left with a lot of those people liking me. Were you charmed at all by them? It’s funny – when you sit down and talk to people, it’s bridge-building … It doesn’t mean you always need to come across my bridge, or that I want to come across your bridge. But at least we recognize that we’re both humans in the world, living our lives. That’s all we need to do in this country. Maybe we become best friends, or maybe we just recognize that we don’t need to kill each other, or vote against each other. I had as good a time as I could have hanging out with those guys in the woods. Not that they didn’t say fucked-up things. But it was way more fun to hang out with them than it was with Thomas Robb and his daughter at the Klan church. Yeah, that was a little awkward, eh? Yeah. What are some other places you’ll be going as the show goes on? We went to Alaska, the top-most part of North America -- Barrow, Alaska. Which is a completely different part of this country that people don’t talk about or see that often. Solidly white? Well, the ground – the snow is awfully white. (Laughs.) But the population is 60 percent native… We did San Quentin, in the Bay Area – that’s probably my most favorite episode. It’s not that we humanized those guys, it’s that those guys are humans. A lot of times you see inmates in prison documentaries or on TV or on fictional things, and they’re not meant to be human. I think because I’m a black man around the same age as those guys, we had a real connection. I did stupid things when I was younger, just nothing that led me to jail. That doesn’t mean I’m better, it just means that I wasn’t in those circumstances. I was just amazed at how we didn’t meet one guy who said they were innocent, or “I didn’t do it.” They said, “I’m in recovery, I do restorative justice, I’ve got some skills, I write for the newspaper.” There’s a lot of good, untapped natural resouces in our prison system that we’ve locked up. They don’t get paroled because politicians don’t want to say, “Last year we paroled a lot of prisoners!” But it should be about rehabilitation ... It just sounds better for politicians to say, “I locked them up and threw away the key!” We went to Portland, Oregon. Known for its hipsters, but its dirty secret is that the hipster influx into Portland is pricing out a lot of the black residents. The question for me is, How can you be hip but not cool? I’m not a hipster – I identify as a "blerd" – but I’m definitely pro-black people. It’s a story being replicated around the country, whether it’s Brooklyn or Oakland. We also did cops in Camden, New Jersey, talked about demographics in East L.A., one in Florida where I talked to spring breakers and senior citizens in a retirement community. And we did one off the grid in Asheville, North Carolina, and also in South Carolina. Has going to all of these places and meeting all of these people made you feel better or worse about race relations in the country, or are you just weeping walking away from these encounters? There is some weeping … The thing that makes me feel good is that if we all sat down at a table across from each other, all the different people, across racial lines, gender lines, and had conversations, I would feel better about this country. And maybe this show is modeling those types of conversations. Because I wear my ignorance, my lack of knowledge, proudly on my sleeve, and try to be respectful and gain knowledge through those conversations. More "United Shades of America," less Donald Trump rallies – is what I’m trying to say.Comedian W. Kamau Bell is one of the nation’s smartest, funniest commentators on race. Known for his stand-up as well as the show “Totally Biased,” he’s cutting but oddly friendly in his delivery. Bell’s new show, "United Shades of America," premieres on CNN on April 24. He says it’s dedicated to “reaching across the aisle,” and he reaches about as far as he can: The first episode looks at Bell’s trip to hang out with Ku Klux Klansmen – he even gets to witness a cross burning. (Or, “cross lighting,” as he’s told they’re called.) He’s told about “mud races,” about how white supremacists are not about being “politically correct,” and he’s warned that “we will hurt you.” We spoke to the Bay Area-dwelling Bell from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. So I saw the KKK episode, which is sort of stunning. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess the premise of the show – and certainly this episode – is that you change the tone of a place? You go to places that are unlikely for you? Yes – unlikely either in, “That’s weird...” or “Noooo!” How old were you when you first got a sense that your presence changed a scene – the feeling in a room? Is that something you can notice? That was something my mom told me was gonna happen – that moment when as a young black boy you transition to being a young black man, which happens earlier than boys of other races. At the age where I was gonna be out and about by myself – maybe 10 or something, where I might go down the street and buy a comic book by myself – my mom took me out to the local convenience store/drugstore, and sort of gave me the rundown: “When you’re out by yourself, this is how it’s gonna work. That’s the store detective, he’s gonna follow you around, don’t touch anything unless you’re gonna buy it…” I had to be aware of how the world perceived me. And by the time I was in high school, I was over 6 feet tall, so I was a man even if I’m not a man… The Trayvon Martin phenomenon. I had to know that people are gonna treat me like a man, if I’m making a decision the way a teenager or a boy makes them. The show is largely about racism ... Do you think the country has gotten more racist since Obama was elected? No – I think it’s like if you’re in the woods and you lift up an old log. Those bugs were under the log, but now you can see them. That’s the case with racism in America… While a lot of black people knew that America was exactly as racist as it appeared to be, a lot of white people have spent almost eight years like, “No… no… no.” We’ve certainly had more racism discussions with Obama in office than we had with George W. Bush in office. So that’s a net positive even if it’s a painful net positive. You spent a lot of time with Klansmen in this episode. Were you frightened through much of it? Yeah, the first day of shooting was the day we went to the cross burning – or “cross lighting.” We walked around the town talking to people, asking, “Do you know about the Klan around here?” Most people were like, “No.” But a young guy was like, “Yeah, I know about them.” ... I had a lot of time to be super-anxious about it. In the car waiting to be told I could drive in, I really got myself together, and also started to sort of work myself into, “All right, gotta go in there, gotta be funny.” That episode really taught me that humor is a defense mechanism that I developed – because I’m using it to defend myself. To sort of keep everyone on their toes, show everyone they’re not gonna get one over on me ... Sort of claim my space through humor. Did any of them persuade you that the group is about morality, or whatever, and not racism? No. When your core belief is that the races shouldn’t mix, that’s … It’s like the Three Little Pigs – your house is built on hay. Kind of hard to recover from that premise, isn’t it? Yeah. They would argue that they’re good Christians, they would argue that the Bible says what they say … But we all know – you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. Anything. But when it’s built on the premise that blacks and whites can’t mix … I mean, I don’t want to mix with you guys. But I’m married to a white woman and have lots of white friends -- those people are great! The Klan was absolutely one of America’s first homegrown terrorist groups … At some point, a lot of the leadership of the country, and also of cities around the country—those guys were either Klansmen or active sympathizers of the Klan. Well, now those people know you don’t have to wear the robes anymore. As Malcolm X said, you can do it in a suit. And now it sort of exists as the most dangerous men’s group of all kinds. There’s not much difference between the Klan out in the woods burning crosses and a men’s group out in the woods beating drums and claiming their manhood. These guys may have done dangerous things, they may have done illegal things … But to me it felt like this was a lot of misplaced anger and emotion and sadness. That, you know, you guys might need some therapy or, I don’t know – a better job, a better economy? You’ve decided that your problems aren’t your own – they’re black people. After I hung out with that group in the woods … I know I left with a lot of those people liking me. Were you charmed at all by them? It’s funny – when you sit down and talk to people, it’s bridge-building … It doesn’t mean you always need to come across my bridge, or that I want to come across your bridge. But at least we recognize that we’re both humans in the world, living our lives. That’s all we need to do in this country. Maybe we become best friends, or maybe we just recognize that we don’t need to kill each other, or vote against each other. I had as good a time as I could have hanging out with those guys in the woods. Not that they didn’t say fucked-up things. But it was way more fun to hang out with them than it was with Thomas Robb and his daughter at the Klan church. Yeah, that was a little awkward, eh? Yeah. What are some other places you’ll be going as the show goes on? We went to Alaska, the top-most part of North America -- Barrow, Alaska. Which is a completely different part of this country that people don’t talk about or see that often. Solidly white? Well, the ground – the snow is awfully white. (Laughs.) But the population is 60 percent native… We did San Quentin, in the Bay Area – that’s probably my most favorite episode. It’s not that we humanized those guys, it’s that those guys are humans. A lot of times you see inmates in prison documentaries or on TV or on fictional things, and they’re not meant to be human. I think because I’m a black man around the same age as those guys, we had a real connection. I did stupid things when I was younger, just nothing that led me to jail. That doesn’t mean I’m better, it just means that I wasn’t in those circumstances. I was just amazed at how we didn’t meet one guy who said they were innocent, or “I didn’t do it.” They said, “I’m in recovery, I do restorative justice, I’ve got some skills, I write for the newspaper.” There’s a lot of good, untapped natural resouces in our prison system that we’ve locked up. They don’t get paroled because politicians don’t want to say, “Last year we paroled a lot of prisoners!” But it should be about rehabilitation ... It just sounds better for politicians to say, “I locked them up and threw away the key!” We went to Portland, Oregon. Known for its hipsters, but its dirty secret is that the hipster influx into Portland is pricing out a lot of the black residents. The question for me is, How can you be hip but not cool? I’m not a hipster – I identify as a "blerd" – but I’m definitely pro-black people. It’s a story being replicated around the country, whether it’s Brooklyn or Oakland. We also did cops in Camden, New Jersey, talked about demographics in East L.A., one in Florida where I talked to spring breakers and senior citizens in a retirement community. And we did one off the grid in Asheville, North Carolina, and also in South Carolina. Has going to all of these places and meeting all of these people made you feel better or worse about race relations in the country, or are you just weeping walking away from these encounters? There is some weeping … The thing that makes me feel good is that if we all sat down at a table across from each other, all the different people, across racial lines, gender lines, and had conversations, I would feel better about this country. And maybe this show is modeling those types of conversations. Because I wear my ignorance, my lack of knowledge, proudly on my sleeve, and try to be respectful and gain knowledge through those conversations. More "United Shades of America," less Donald Trump rallies – is what I’m trying to say.
Trumpmania was derailed in Chicago Friday, but will Trump be able to flip the moment to his advantage?
On Friday, Donald Trump brought his political road show to the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion in Chicago. The Trumpeteers were enthusiastic and ready. The cult leader was scheduled to appear and offer them blessings. The Trumpeteers waited for hours in line. They would soon be disappointed, saddened, angry and in shock. Trump would lie and say that the police advised him to cancel his rally. The facts seem to suggest otherwise. In reality, “Black Lives Matter!” “Si Se Puede!” “Feel the Bern” and thousands of other people said “No!” to Donald Trump. Trumpmania would not be allowed to run wild in Chicago. Trump and his zealots would be denied a premature victory lap in President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown.
* * *
I have written many essays on Donald Trump. However, I have never had an opportunity to attend one of his rallies. Friday’s Chicago event was an opportunity to experience what I have described as “Trumpmania” in person. I waited for several hours in a long, yet orderly line, with thousands of other people who for reasons of curiosity, support or protest wanted to attend Donald Trump’s Chicago rally. It was a political circus. The crowd was more akin to that of a sporting event. The signs and costumes were the only tell that this was a political rally; the American flags and mindless chanting of “USA” would likely be common at both types of events. The narration for my political rubbernecking was provided by a group of men from the Chicago suburbs or Indiana. They read the signs aloud of the Trump protesters, Bernie Sanders supporters, and the occasional member of the Communist Party. One, the loudest and most vocal of the brood, would make comments about lazy people on welfare, why America needs a wall, and crude jokes about a lesbian who walked by costumed as Donald Trump. “Black Lives Matter” signs were met with comments such as, “Why don’t white lives matter too?” The narrator did this while he chewed tobacco and spat it near my boots in an act of crude alpha male behavior. The wad-chewing Trumpeteer was also a militant nationalist. He argued with a fellow veteran who supported Bernie Sanders and waved an American flag in protest of Donald Trump. Apparently, the American flag is the exclusive property of Trump supporters and other conservative-authoritarians. Capitalism crosses the color line. I smiled at the 20-something black men who were selling T-shirts that somehow connected Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Donald Trump and fellatio. I took a picture of the African immigrant who spoke with a Nigerian accent while he sold “Donald Trump ‘16” T-shirts to white Trump supporters. I wondered if he appreciated the irony of making some money off of a political candidate and a public that likely has no use for people like him. There were also some sad and tired-looking white folks selling Donald Trump pins, hats and other regalia. A Trumpeteer asked the worn-down (albeit proud and dignified) man if Trump received a percentage of the sales. I could not hear the response. His body language suggested that the answer was “no.” There were likely many more protesters outside of the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion than inside. After two hours in line, I navigated the heavy security, the pat-down by the heavily armed secret service agent, and close scrutiny of my wallet and other property. There was tension in the air. A political car accident was going to occur; the rumble would soon be on. The only questions remaining were, “Between who?” and “When?” The Trump supporters, who could be featured as pictures in an encyclopedia entry under “white working class,” were concentrated near the front of the podium. The late-arriving Trumpeteers looked uncomfortable as they sat scattered among black and brown students wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts, holding protest signs, and carrying pro-immigrant and anti-racism flags toward the back of the arena and near the exits. So it began. Accompanied by a soundtrack pumped into the UIC Pavilion that consisted of the theme song from the recent movie "Joy," Italian opera and Elton John, anti-Trump protesters would stand up. The Trumpeteers would heckle and boo them with chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” and “USA! USA!” The police would surround the protesters and escort them out. From Trump’s mosh pit near the stage, to the cheap seats in the rear of the pavilion, young men and women made their grievances known. The police would swarm. The Trumpeteers would boo and cheer. The protesters would counter with, “Let them stay!” Some of the Trumpeteers were bold. They moved in a group, leaving their “safe space” near the front of the floor, and went to confront the anti-Trump protesters near the rear of the venue. The police intervened again. There was pushing, grabbing and shoving. The event had not yet begun. Cheers would erupt to greet the imminent arrival of Il Duce Trump. The cheers would rise and then quickly dissipate in disappointment. One of Trump’s spokesmen approached the podium. He announced that Donald Trump had canceled the event because of “security concerns.” The Trump protesters, black, brown and white, began to crowd the floor. They took a victory lap. They chanted, “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie”; “Black lives matter!”; and “Si se puede!” The Trumpeteers were shocked. Their hero and champion would not appear to save them. They were left to fend for themselves. The Trumpeteers would have to walk through a gauntlet of people who believe that Donald Trump is a racist, bigot and xenophobe. The Trumpeteers were angry and embarrassed. There were scuffles. A very agitated and arrogant-looking white college-age student grabbed at and pushed a young black woman who was standing near me. Her friends intervened. A scuffle took place. The police began to force people out. There were other moments of roughhousing throughout the UIC Pavilion as the defeated met the victorious. As I watched the mayhem, I was treated to a verbal epilogue from the Trump supporters sitting behind me. They were pissed and angry. Frustrated whiteness is scary; frustrated and likely a bit drunk whiteness and conservative-authoritarianism is even more so. These three young men grumbled about how the Trump protesters were “animals,” “undesirables,” and didn’t know that “the government is soon going to control all of them if they don’t vote for Trump.” The trio uttered some other vitriol and curses toward the people who were protesting the bigot Donald Trump before they skulked away. I looked at the group of Trump supporters seated in front of me--a father with his daughter and two sons. The daughter, a child of 7 or 8, looked dejected. Donald Trump, he who is a political Santa Claus for the American right wing, was skipping her house this year. The sons, a young teenager and his even younger brother (the latter wore a U.S. Navy Seabees hat and a "Star Wars" jacket that was patterned with Chewbacca’s fur and bandolier), also looked disappointed. The father was unhappy too. He had spent all that gas money for nothing. There were fights and protests outside of the UIC Pavilion. To their credit, the Chicago police showed remarkable restraint and professionalism. A large white Trump supporter who looked as if he had once been in the military before his muscle started to turn to flab defiantly held up a Trump sign. He was then surrounded by several dozen blacks and Latinos. Inches apart they exchanged words. A fight began. The Trump supporter would lose his hat. The protesters held it as a trophy. Protected by the police, the Trumpeteer unfurled a black-and-white version of the American flag. This was his statement of mourning for an America he feels is lost. In every crowd of Republicans there is almost always a black person who is auditioning for a role as “best black friend” and human chaff for the GOP. These professional contrarians are desperate for their five minutes of fame on Fox News; they yearn to be a 21st century version of Stephen in the movie "Django Unchained," for it is very lucrative work if one can get it. I saw several black conservatives at Trump’s event. One sat near me and cheered wildly at any mention of Il Duce Trump’s name. He seemed very pleased when the Black Lives Matter and other protesters were escorted out by the police. There was a young professional black conservative in training who led one of the most spirited moments of near fisticuffs inside the UIC Pavilion. He was the black chieftain for a group of white college-age Trumpeteers who tried to pick a fight with a group of anti-Trump protesters. The third black conservative was the most enthusiastic and dangerous one. He was outside of the UIC Pavilion. A former Marine, he chased away two high-school-age Black Lives Matter protesters and threatened to teach them a lesson via the thrashing he promised they would receive for being “disrespectful.” I asked him about what had just transpired. I was also curious as to why he supported Donald Trump. This well-trained black conservative responded with disinformation talking points from Fox News about a military that is weaker than it was before World War II, how Democrat-controlled cities are horrible and full of death, that Black Lives Matter does not care about “black on black crime,” young people are out of control, and no one respects the police anymore. It was all just standard 1960s-era hippie-punching. This black conservative ended with a well-practiced speech on racism, color blindness, and how just being an “American” will cure all the racial “divisions” in the country. He is ready for his Fox News prime-time slot as the go-to black conservative of the day. I felt bad for his beautiful and kind service dog, a female pitbull, whom he subjected to this chaos. Her tail was tucked between her legs. She was sad and scared.* * *
In a fitting metaphor for a Republican Party that is facing political and demographic suicide, a multilevel parking garage was the Alamo for Donald Trump’s supporters. From this redoubt, they spat at, threw objects at, and heckled the mostly young, black and brown, left-leaning college students below. The audience responded with a spirited to and fro. The Trumpeteers were trapped and outnumbered. They also could not leave because the anti-Trump protesters were waiting for them at the exits. Surrounded, the Trumpeteers waved their signs, took photos of the crowd, and hid behind police protection. The Chicago police eventually grew tired of this game. Like in the classic video game "Elevator Action," they ran up and down the various levels of the parking garage looking for Trump’s provocateurs. Small groups of Trump supporters were herded away. The cycle would repeat. After a several-hour standoff, the remaining Trumpeteers managed to drive through the crowd as the police established a corridor for egress. There were faces in the windows of the cars. Almost all of the faces were white, some young, but mostly older. They looked dumbstruck and sad. As they drove away—likely back to the Chicago suburbs or to Indiana—I imagine it never occurred to them (until that day) how Trump’s hateful and bilious language could actually have consequences, and they would be caught in the epicenter of it while their glorious leader was ensconced in luxury somewhere else. At Friday’s rally in Chicago, the members of the “silent majority” that Trump speaks for were made, at least for a few hours, to realize that other Americans actually have a voice too. Of course, this moment will only encourage their right-wing politics of racial resentment, hatred, nativism and revanchism. The Trumpeteers now have a story to tell of black and brown savagery in the evil “Democratically controlled” Chicago. This distorted version of events will resonate throughout the Fox News right-wing disinformation machine. Those Trumpeteers at his planned Chicago rally will spin tales of being imperiled by “Mau Maus” and “Commies.” In reality, they were never in any real danger. And like Trump’s other events, the fights and scuffles that did take place were mostly instigated by his supporters. Donald Trump is a wily showman carnival barker student of professional wrestling. As such, he understands that in politics, optics often matter more than substance. Given his support from open and unrepentant white supremacists, I thought it useful to go to several of their websites before attending Trump’s Chicago rally. There, the white supremacists are advancing a theory that Donald Trump was holding rallies in cities like Chicago and St. Louis with the hope that there would be violence and protests. Why? By their logic, images of “out of control” and “criminal” blacks and Hispanics would make “white Americans” who were “on the fence” regarding “the race issue” finally “wake up” and vote for Donald Trump. Il Duce Trump, the reality TV show star, and proto fascist, is a master of the staged event. Trumpmania may have been derailed on Friday in Chicago. But Trump may very well be able to flip such a moment to his advantage as he uses it to gin up even more fear among his white, authoritarian, right-wing public. Hippie-punching, racism and “law and order” rhetoric are never out of style in the modern Republican Party.On Friday, Donald Trump brought his political road show to the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion in Chicago. The Trumpeteers were enthusiastic and ready. The cult leader was scheduled to appear and offer them blessings. The Trumpeteers waited for hours in line. They would soon be disappointed, saddened, angry and in shock. Trump would lie and say that the police advised him to cancel his rally. The facts seem to suggest otherwise. In reality, “Black Lives Matter!” “Si Se Puede!” “Feel the Bern” and thousands of other people said “No!” to Donald Trump. Trumpmania would not be allowed to run wild in Chicago. Trump and his zealots would be denied a premature victory lap in President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown.* * *
I have written many essays on Donald Trump. However, I have never had an opportunity to attend one of his rallies. Friday’s Chicago event was an opportunity to experience what I have described as “Trumpmania” in person. I waited for several hours in a long, yet orderly line, with thousands of other people who for reasons of curiosity, support or protest wanted to attend Donald Trump’s Chicago rally. It was a political circus. The crowd was more akin to that of a sporting event. The signs and costumes were the only tell that this was a political rally; the American flags and mindless chanting of “USA” would likely be common at both types of events. The narration for my political rubbernecking was provided by a group of men from the Chicago suburbs or Indiana. They read the signs aloud of the Trump protesters, Bernie Sanders supporters, and the occasional member of the Communist Party. One, the loudest and most vocal of the brood, would make comments about lazy people on welfare, why America needs a wall, and crude jokes about a lesbian who walked by costumed as Donald Trump. “Black Lives Matter” signs were met with comments such as, “Why don’t white lives matter too?” The narrator did this while he chewed tobacco and spat it near my boots in an act of crude alpha male behavior. The wad-chewing Trumpeteer was also a militant nationalist. He argued with a fellow veteran who supported Bernie Sanders and waved an American flag in protest of Donald Trump. Apparently, the American flag is the exclusive property of Trump supporters and other conservative-authoritarians. Capitalism crosses the color line. I smiled at the 20-something black men who were selling T-shirts that somehow connected Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Donald Trump and fellatio. I took a picture of the African immigrant who spoke with a Nigerian accent while he sold “Donald Trump ‘16” T-shirts to white Trump supporters. I wondered if he appreciated the irony of making some money off of a political candidate and a public that likely has no use for people like him. There were also some sad and tired-looking white folks selling Donald Trump pins, hats and other regalia. A Trumpeteer asked the worn-down (albeit proud and dignified) man if Trump received a percentage of the sales. I could not hear the response. His body language suggested that the answer was “no.” There were likely many more protesters outside of the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion than inside. After two hours in line, I navigated the heavy security, the pat-down by the heavily armed secret service agent, and close scrutiny of my wallet and other property. There was tension in the air. A political car accident was going to occur; the rumble would soon be on. The only questions remaining were, “Between who?” and “When?” The Trump supporters, who could be featured as pictures in an encyclopedia entry under “white working class,” were concentrated near the front of the podium. The late-arriving Trumpeteers looked uncomfortable as they sat scattered among black and brown students wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts, holding protest signs, and carrying pro-immigrant and anti-racism flags toward the back of the arena and near the exits. So it began. Accompanied by a soundtrack pumped into the UIC Pavilion that consisted of the theme song from the recent movie "Joy," Italian opera and Elton John, anti-Trump protesters would stand up. The Trumpeteers would heckle and boo them with chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” and “USA! USA!” The police would surround the protesters and escort them out. From Trump’s mosh pit near the stage, to the cheap seats in the rear of the pavilion, young men and women made their grievances known. The police would swarm. The Trumpeteers would boo and cheer. The protesters would counter with, “Let them stay!” Some of the Trumpeteers were bold. They moved in a group, leaving their “safe space” near the front of the floor, and went to confront the anti-Trump protesters near the rear of the venue. The police intervened again. There was pushing, grabbing and shoving. The event had not yet begun. Cheers would erupt to greet the imminent arrival of Il Duce Trump. The cheers would rise and then quickly dissipate in disappointment. One of Trump’s spokesmen approached the podium. He announced that Donald Trump had canceled the event because of “security concerns.” The Trump protesters, black, brown and white, began to crowd the floor. They took a victory lap. They chanted, “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie”; “Black lives matter!”; and “Si se puede!” The Trumpeteers were shocked. Their hero and champion would not appear to save them. They were left to fend for themselves. The Trumpeteers would have to walk through a gauntlet of people who believe that Donald Trump is a racist, bigot and xenophobe. The Trumpeteers were angry and embarrassed. There were scuffles. A very agitated and arrogant-looking white college-age student grabbed at and pushed a young black woman who was standing near me. Her friends intervened. A scuffle took place. The police began to force people out. There were other moments of roughhousing throughout the UIC Pavilion as the defeated met the victorious. As I watched the mayhem, I was treated to a verbal epilogue from the Trump supporters sitting behind me. They were pissed and angry. Frustrated whiteness is scary; frustrated and likely a bit drunk whiteness and conservative-authoritarianism is even more so. These three young men grumbled about how the Trump protesters were “animals,” “undesirables,” and didn’t know that “the government is soon going to control all of them if they don’t vote for Trump.” The trio uttered some other vitriol and curses toward the people who were protesting the bigot Donald Trump before they skulked away. I looked at the group of Trump supporters seated in front of me--a father with his daughter and two sons. The daughter, a child of 7 or 8, looked dejected. Donald Trump, he who is a political Santa Claus for the American right wing, was skipping her house this year. The sons, a young teenager and his even younger brother (the latter wore a U.S. Navy Seabees hat and a "Star Wars" jacket that was patterned with Chewbacca’s fur and bandolier), also looked disappointed. The father was unhappy too. He had spent all that gas money for nothing. There were fights and protests outside of the UIC Pavilion. To their credit, the Chicago police showed remarkable restraint and professionalism. A large white Trump supporter who looked as if he had once been in the military before his muscle started to turn to flab defiantly held up a Trump sign. He was then surrounded by several dozen blacks and Latinos. Inches apart they exchanged words. A fight began. The Trump supporter would lose his hat. The protesters held it as a trophy. Protected by the police, the Trumpeteer unfurled a black-and-white version of the American flag. This was his statement of mourning for an America he feels is lost. In every crowd of Republicans there is almost always a black person who is auditioning for a role as “best black friend” and human chaff for the GOP. These professional contrarians are desperate for their five minutes of fame on Fox News; they yearn to be a 21st century version of Stephen in the movie "Django Unchained," for it is very lucrative work if one can get it. I saw several black conservatives at Trump’s event. One sat near me and cheered wildly at any mention of Il Duce Trump’s name. He seemed very pleased when the Black Lives Matter and other protesters were escorted out by the police. There was a young professional black conservative in training who led one of the most spirited moments of near fisticuffs inside the UIC Pavilion. He was the black chieftain for a group of white college-age Trumpeteers who tried to pick a fight with a group of anti-Trump protesters. The third black conservative was the most enthusiastic and dangerous one. He was outside of the UIC Pavilion. A former Marine, he chased away two high-school-age Black Lives Matter protesters and threatened to teach them a lesson via the thrashing he promised they would receive for being “disrespectful.” I asked him about what had just transpired. I was also curious as to why he supported Donald Trump. This well-trained black conservative responded with disinformation talking points from Fox News about a military that is weaker than it was before World War II, how Democrat-controlled cities are horrible and full of death, that Black Lives Matter does not care about “black on black crime,” young people are out of control, and no one respects the police anymore. It was all just standard 1960s-era hippie-punching. This black conservative ended with a well-practiced speech on racism, color blindness, and how just being an “American” will cure all the racial “divisions” in the country. He is ready for his Fox News prime-time slot as the go-to black conservative of the day. I felt bad for his beautiful and kind service dog, a female pitbull, whom he subjected to this chaos. Her tail was tucked between her legs. She was sad and scared.* * *
In a fitting metaphor for a Republican Party that is facing political and demographic suicide, a multilevel parking garage was the Alamo for Donald Trump’s supporters. From this redoubt, they spat at, threw objects at, and heckled the mostly young, black and brown, left-leaning college students below. The audience responded with a spirited to and fro. The Trumpeteers were trapped and outnumbered. They also could not leave because the anti-Trump protesters were waiting for them at the exits. Surrounded, the Trumpeteers waved their signs, took photos of the crowd, and hid behind police protection. The Chicago police eventually grew tired of this game. Like in the classic video game "Elevator Action," they ran up and down the various levels of the parking garage looking for Trump’s provocateurs. Small groups of Trump supporters were herded away. The cycle would repeat. After a several-hour standoff, the remaining Trumpeteers managed to drive through the crowd as the police established a corridor for egress. There were faces in the windows of the cars. Almost all of the faces were white, some young, but mostly older. They looked dumbstruck and sad. As they drove away—likely back to the Chicago suburbs or to Indiana—I imagine it never occurred to them (until that day) how Trump’s hateful and bilious language could actually have consequences, and they would be caught in the epicenter of it while their glorious leader was ensconced in luxury somewhere else. At Friday’s rally in Chicago, the members of the “silent majority” that Trump speaks for were made, at least for a few hours, to realize that other Americans actually have a voice too. Of course, this moment will only encourage their right-wing politics of racial resentment, hatred, nativism and revanchism. The Trumpeteers now have a story to tell of black and brown savagery in the evil “Democratically controlled” Chicago. This distorted version of events will resonate throughout the Fox News right-wing disinformation machine. Those Trumpeteers at his planned Chicago rally will spin tales of being imperiled by “Mau Maus” and “Commies.” In reality, they were never in any real danger. And like Trump’s other events, the fights and scuffles that did take place were mostly instigated by his supporters. Donald Trump is a wily showman carnival barker student of professional wrestling. As such, he understands that in politics, optics often matter more than substance. Given his support from open and unrepentant white supremacists, I thought it useful to go to several of their websites before attending Trump’s Chicago rally. There, the white supremacists are advancing a theory that Donald Trump was holding rallies in cities like Chicago and St. Louis with the hope that there would be violence and protests. Why? By their logic, images of “out of control” and “criminal” blacks and Hispanics would make “white Americans” who were “on the fence” regarding “the race issue” finally “wake up” and vote for Donald Trump. Il Duce Trump, the reality TV show star, and proto fascist, is a master of the staged event. Trumpmania may have been derailed on Friday in Chicago. But Trump may very well be able to flip such a moment to his advantage as he uses it to gin up even more fear among his white, authoritarian, right-wing public. Hippie-punching, racism and “law and order” rhetoric are never out of style in the modern Republican Party.On Friday, Donald Trump brought his political road show to the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion in Chicago. The Trumpeteers were enthusiastic and ready. The cult leader was scheduled to appear and offer them blessings. The Trumpeteers waited for hours in line. They would soon be disappointed, saddened, angry and in shock. Trump would lie and say that the police advised him to cancel his rally. The facts seem to suggest otherwise. In reality, “Black Lives Matter!” “Si Se Puede!” “Feel the Bern” and thousands of other people said “No!” to Donald Trump. Trumpmania would not be allowed to run wild in Chicago. Trump and his zealots would be denied a premature victory lap in President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown.* * *
I have written many essays on Donald Trump. However, I have never had an opportunity to attend one of his rallies. Friday’s Chicago event was an opportunity to experience what I have described as “Trumpmania” in person. I waited for several hours in a long, yet orderly line, with thousands of other people who for reasons of curiosity, support or protest wanted to attend Donald Trump’s Chicago rally. It was a political circus. The crowd was more akin to that of a sporting event. The signs and costumes were the only tell that this was a political rally; the American flags and mindless chanting of “USA” would likely be common at both types of events. The narration for my political rubbernecking was provided by a group of men from the Chicago suburbs or Indiana. They read the signs aloud of the Trump protesters, Bernie Sanders supporters, and the occasional member of the Communist Party. One, the loudest and most vocal of the brood, would make comments about lazy people on welfare, why America needs a wall, and crude jokes about a lesbian who walked by costumed as Donald Trump. “Black Lives Matter” signs were met with comments such as, “Why don’t white lives matter too?” The narrator did this while he chewed tobacco and spat it near my boots in an act of crude alpha male behavior. The wad-chewing Trumpeteer was also a militant nationalist. He argued with a fellow veteran who supported Bernie Sanders and waved an American flag in protest of Donald Trump. Apparently, the American flag is the exclusive property of Trump supporters and other conservative-authoritarians. Capitalism crosses the color line. I smiled at the 20-something black men who were selling T-shirts that somehow connected Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Donald Trump and fellatio. I took a picture of the African immigrant who spoke with a Nigerian accent while he sold “Donald Trump ‘16” T-shirts to white Trump supporters. I wondered if he appreciated the irony of making some money off of a political candidate and a public that likely has no use for people like him. There were also some sad and tired-looking white folks selling Donald Trump pins, hats and other regalia. A Trumpeteer asked the worn-down (albeit proud and dignified) man if Trump received a percentage of the sales. I could not hear the response. His body language suggested that the answer was “no.” There were likely many more protesters outside of the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion than inside. After two hours in line, I navigated the heavy security, the pat-down by the heavily armed secret service agent, and close scrutiny of my wallet and other property. There was tension in the air. A political car accident was going to occur; the rumble would soon be on. The only questions remaining were, “Between who?” and “When?” The Trump supporters, who could be featured as pictures in an encyclopedia entry under “white working class,” were concentrated near the front of the podium. The late-arriving Trumpeteers looked uncomfortable as they sat scattered among black and brown students wearing “Black Lives Matter” shirts, holding protest signs, and carrying pro-immigrant and anti-racism flags toward the back of the arena and near the exits. So it began. Accompanied by a soundtrack pumped into the UIC Pavilion that consisted of the theme song from the recent movie "Joy," Italian opera and Elton John, anti-Trump protesters would stand up. The Trumpeteers would heckle and boo them with chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” and “USA! USA!” The police would surround the protesters and escort them out. From Trump’s mosh pit near the stage, to the cheap seats in the rear of the pavilion, young men and women made their grievances known. The police would swarm. The Trumpeteers would boo and cheer. The protesters would counter with, “Let them stay!” Some of the Trumpeteers were bold. They moved in a group, leaving their “safe space” near the front of the floor, and went to confront the anti-Trump protesters near the rear of the venue. The police intervened again. There was pushing, grabbing and shoving. The event had not yet begun. Cheers would erupt to greet the imminent arrival of Il Duce Trump. The cheers would rise and then quickly dissipate in disappointment. One of Trump’s spokesmen approached the podium. He announced that Donald Trump had canceled the event because of “security concerns.” The Trump protesters, black, brown and white, began to crowd the floor. They took a victory lap. They chanted, “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie”; “Black lives matter!”; and “Si se puede!” The Trumpeteers were shocked. Their hero and champion would not appear to save them. They were left to fend for themselves. The Trumpeteers would have to walk through a gauntlet of people who believe that Donald Trump is a racist, bigot and xenophobe. The Trumpeteers were angry and embarrassed. There were scuffles. A very agitated and arrogant-looking white college-age student grabbed at and pushed a young black woman who was standing near me. Her friends intervened. A scuffle took place. The police began to force people out. There were other moments of roughhousing throughout the UIC Pavilion as the defeated met the victorious. As I watched the mayhem, I was treated to a verbal epilogue from the Trump supporters sitting behind me. They were pissed and angry. Frustrated whiteness is scary; frustrated and likely a bit drunk whiteness and conservative-authoritarianism is even more so. These three young men grumbled about how the Trump protesters were “animals,” “undesirables,” and didn’t know that “the government is soon going to control all of them if they don’t vote for Trump.” The trio uttered some other vitriol and curses toward the people who were protesting the bigot Donald Trump before they skulked away. I looked at the group of Trump supporters seated in front of me--a father with his daughter and two sons. The daughter, a child of 7 or 8, looked dejected. Donald Trump, he who is a political Santa Claus for the American right wing, was skipping her house this year. The sons, a young teenager and his even younger brother (the latter wore a U.S. Navy Seabees hat and a "Star Wars" jacket that was patterned with Chewbacca’s fur and bandolier), also looked disappointed. The father was unhappy too. He had spent all that gas money for nothing. There were fights and protests outside of the UIC Pavilion. To their credit, the Chicago police showed remarkable restraint and professionalism. A large white Trump supporter who looked as if he had once been in the military before his muscle started to turn to flab defiantly held up a Trump sign. He was then surrounded by several dozen blacks and Latinos. Inches apart they exchanged words. A fight began. The Trump supporter would lose his hat. The protesters held it as a trophy. Protected by the police, the Trumpeteer unfurled a black-and-white version of the American flag. This was his statement of mourning for an America he feels is lost. In every crowd of Republicans there is almost always a black person who is auditioning for a role as “best black friend” and human chaff for the GOP. These professional contrarians are desperate for their five minutes of fame on Fox News; they yearn to be a 21st century version of Stephen in the movie "Django Unchained," for it is very lucrative work if one can get it. I saw several black conservatives at Trump’s event. One sat near me and cheered wildly at any mention of Il Duce Trump’s name. He seemed very pleased when the Black Lives Matter and other protesters were escorted out by the police. There was a young professional black conservative in training who led one of the most spirited moments of near fisticuffs inside the UIC Pavilion. He was the black chieftain for a group of white college-age Trumpeteers who tried to pick a fight with a group of anti-Trump protesters. The third black conservative was the most enthusiastic and dangerous one. He was outside of the UIC Pavilion. A former Marine, he chased away two high-school-age Black Lives Matter protesters and threatened to teach them a lesson via the thrashing he promised they would receive for being “disrespectful.” I asked him about what had just transpired. I was also curious as to why he supported Donald Trump. This well-trained black conservative responded with disinformation talking points from Fox News about a military that is weaker than it was before World War II, how Democrat-controlled cities are horrible and full of death, that Black Lives Matter does not care about “black on black crime,” young people are out of control, and no one respects the police anymore. It was all just standard 1960s-era hippie-punching. This black conservative ended with a well-practiced speech on racism, color blindness, and how just being an “American” will cure all the racial “divisions” in the country. He is ready for his Fox News prime-time slot as the go-to black conservative of the day. I felt bad for his beautiful and kind service dog, a female pitbull, whom he subjected to this chaos. Her tail was tucked between her legs. She was sad and scared.* * *
In a fitting metaphor for a Republican Party that is facing political and demographic suicide, a multilevel parking garage was the Alamo for Donald Trump’s supporters. From this redoubt, they spat at, threw objects at, and heckled the mostly young, black and brown, left-leaning college students below. The audience responded with a spirited to and fro. The Trumpeteers were trapped and outnumbered. They also could not leave because the anti-Trump protesters were waiting for them at the exits. Surrounded, the Trumpeteers waved their signs, took photos of the crowd, and hid behind police protection. The Chicago police eventually grew tired of this game. Like in the classic video game "Elevator Action," they ran up and down the various levels of the parking garage looking for Trump’s provocateurs. Small groups of Trump supporters were herded away. The cycle would repeat. After a several-hour standoff, the remaining Trumpeteers managed to drive through the crowd as the police established a corridor for egress. There were faces in the windows of the cars. Almost all of the faces were white, some young, but mostly older. They looked dumbstruck and sad. As they drove away—likely back to the Chicago suburbs or to Indiana—I imagine it never occurred to them (until that day) how Trump’s hateful and bilious language could actually have consequences, and they would be caught in the epicenter of it while their glorious leader was ensconced in luxury somewhere else. At Friday’s rally in Chicago, the members of the “silent majority” that Trump speaks for were made, at least for a few hours, to realize that other Americans actually have a voice too. Of course, this moment will only encourage their right-wing politics of racial resentment, hatred, nativism and revanchism. The Trumpeteers now have a story to tell of black and brown savagery in the evil “Democratically controlled” Chicago. This distorted version of events will resonate throughout the Fox News right-wing disinformation machine. Those Trumpeteers at his planned Chicago rally will spin tales of being imperiled by “Mau Maus” and “Commies.” In reality, they were never in any real danger. And like Trump’s other events, the fights and scuffles that did take place were mostly instigated by his supporters. Donald Trump is a wily showman carnival barker student of professional wrestling. As such, he understands that in politics, optics often matter more than substance. Given his support from open and unrepentant white supremacists, I thought it useful to go to several of their websites before attending Trump’s Chicago rally. There, the white supremacists are advancing a theory that Donald Trump was holding rallies in cities like Chicago and St. Louis with the hope that there would be violence and protests. Why? By their logic, images of “out of control” and “criminal” blacks and Hispanics would make “white Americans” who were “on the fence” regarding “the race issue” finally “wake up” and vote for Donald Trump. Il Duce Trump, the reality TV show star, and proto fascist, is a master of the staged event. Trumpmania may have been derailed on Friday in Chicago. But Trump may very well be able to flip such a moment to his advantage as he uses it to gin up even more fear among his white, authoritarian, right-wing public. Hippie-punching, racism and “law and order” rhetoric are never out of style in the modern Republican Party.
The price of Hollywood whitewashing: How this complex drama about a Latina woman became just another Keanu Reeves cop movie
Late last year, the film “Exposed” made minor waves when its writer-director, Gee Malik Linton, took his name off the project in disgust over heavy editing that ruined his film. In Linton’s version, Keanu Reeves and Mira Sorvino held peripheral roles in a story of ordinary obscenities unfolding from the perspective of a naive Latina woman. The film released as “Exposed” made Reeves and Sorvino—a New York City cop and his murdered partner’s wife--the main characters of a standard drug-crime action thriller. It was a new twist on whitewashing, which refers to casting white actors to play nonwhite roles. “Exposed” received withering reviews, but what it actually exposed wasn’t whodunit but the fact that producers are desperately, even neurotically attached to centering white characters in stories. Lionsgate, the studio that released “Exposed,” also backed “Gods of Egypt,” the “first big bomb” of 2016. “Gods of Egypt” was also soundly criticized for whitewashing its lead roles. Out of a production budget of $140 million, “Gods of Egypt” has so far earned back $40 million. That’s a lot of money, but it still leaves a $100 million shortfall. Against the backdrop of #OscarsSoWhite 2.0, a fan started a petition for Lionsgate to release the director’s cut of Linton’s film under its original title, “Daughter of God.” But given the terrible reviews for “Exposed,” how much difference can rearranging a few scenes and adding back 18 minutes really make? When Linton sent me the film, I was eager to see what could be made of it on its own terms. As “Daughter of God” began, however, several unhappy thoughts ran through my head. Ana de Armas is too pretty to play Isabel. Her character is wearing garish, dated makeup. Keanu Reeves is miscast. He looks wrong to play a gritty New York detective. Yet I kept watching, long enough to realize that the fact of their looking wrong was integral to the psychological structure of the film, as well as to the way the narrative unfolds. Isabel and Detective Galbard are both too white and not white enough, hapless misfits in communities where justice isn’t black and white, but various shades of brown. Linton is Jamaican-American, and he tells the story from the ground up, sensitive to emotional undercurrents that betray themselves in fleeting twitches of disapproval and the whip-flicker of side glances. The people in Washington Heights might be lumped together as Hispanics, but to each other, they retain specific cultural and ethnic heritages. Isabel de La Cruz (Ana de Armas) is Peruvian. Her Dominican husband is serving in Iraq. Left vulnerable by his absence, she lives with her husband’s family, rooted to a working-class community that includes Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Among the various women, there is love and sisterhood, but also jealousy and tensions swirling around the limpid girl who seems too good to be true. Devoutly religious, Isabel is an unreliable narrator, if only because all women are unreliable witnesses to the events of their own bodies. To be a woman is to be dismissed and discounted as a matter of course-- a consequence of cultural perspectives that become twisted into internalized narratives. If “Daughter of God” feels like a foreign film, it’s not because the dialogue is mostly in Spanish, or because it’s set in a neighborhood that casual outsiders rarely access. It’s because the film refuses the familiar assumptions of “the male gaze” (which is not reducible to men, per se, as it is fundamentally about power, not sex or gender.) Instead, it shows events through Isabel’s naive and pious eyes, a point made right away in the first few minutes via a subway poster selling eyeshadow, i.e., “I shadow.” Viewers will not consciously make the connection, at least not at first, but the wide female eyes in the poster belong to Isabel. Seeing is not a passive act. “You see but you do not observe,” Sherlock Holmes sniffs haughtily when Dr. Watson cannot tell him how many steps lead up to their Baker Street apartment. Famously misogynist, the Holmesian universe fetishizes the dispassionate tool of cold logic, which brings the perpetrator to justice. By contrast, “Daughter of God” presents a nonlinear puzzle of invisible laws being broken, the kind of bodily and moral outrages that victims never report, because who believes brown and black people so marginalized that their own murders barely register as crimes? When a white policeman dies in Isabel’s neighborhood and Detective Galbard makes his sudden entry, it seems to signal the beginning of a standard police procedural, which is how “Exposed” was sold. Yet those kinds of mysteries truck in hypervisible clues that lead inexorably to socially restorative resolutions. By contrast, “Daughter of God” revolves around emotional scars that fold inside secret flesh, making the uncomfortable point that seeing is a political act, and many of us are willfully blind. Can you trace the trauma? Did you spot the signs of guilt? They are right in front of your face—except half the audience will not see them, and will walk away from “Daughter of God” shaking their heads in confusion. In many ways, this film is a cinematic “Count the Passes” experiment. The famous test (try it here) asks viewers to count the number of times the people in white shirts pass a basketball among them. What the test actually reveals, however, is the power of selective attention. [Spoiler: Don’t continue reading until you’ve tried the test.] White balls are red herrings. On account of paying attention to the moving balls, half the people watching the psychological experiment—better known as the “Invisible Gorilla Test”-- will not see the man in a gorilla suit sauntering into view, stopping in the middle of the action, pounding his chest, and resuming his slow journey off-screen. Yet the original test subjects wore eye trackers, which revealed that the people who failed to “see” the gorilla were actually looking right at him, and they protested that there was no gorilla until they saw the test played backwards. “Looking isn’t seeing,” explains Daniel Simons, the professor who devised the psychological experiment. “You have to focus attention on it for people to become aware of it.” Simons added that 90 percent of test subjects were confident that they would see the gorilla, yet only half did. In other words: “The mismatch between what we see and what we think we see, is really a profound one, and has all kinds of consequence for our daily lives.” Add the ordinary elements of race, class and gender into the mix, and it suddenly becomes obvious that “reality” really is what we make of it. No men in gorilla suits wander through “Daughter of God.” Instead, there are angels. Or demons. Possibly space aliens. The point is that Isabel sees strange beings during waking hours. She might be hallucinating, but other people in her community seem to see them too, and don’t seem especially surprised by this. From their marginalized perspectives, there’s not much difference between vaguely Asian angels speaking English in soothing tones, and Keanu Reeves as a policeman asking nosy questions in broken Spanish. (Similarly, the film “Under the Skin,” 2015, exploited the mind’s refusal to assimilate the extraordinary by showing real footage of Scarlett Johannson driving around a small town in Scotland, picking up grateful men who never place her as the movie star even as she, as her “natural” self, was playing a space alien.) Whether supernatural or too human, these sudden apparitions are equally peculiar in appearance, inherently deceitful, and endowed with dubious powers that can do more harm than good. Either way, nobody expects them to stay. Nobody wants them to. In one critical scene, Galbard sits alone in his police car, reading a birthday card made by his estranged little boy, and slowly Keanu’s famous face sheds the mask of the movie star, revealing Asian lineaments that render his features shockingly illegible. As his features blur with emotional pain, sagging into sorrow, Galbard’s own impossibly compromised position as friendless police officer comes sharply into narrative focus. Around the same time, viewers fully grasp that “Daughter of God” is not a police procedural but a drama with some policemen. Focusing on finding the cop killer is like keeping your attention on the white players in the “Invisible Gorilla” experiment and totally missing the elephant in the room. In “Daughter of God,” the gorilla is Isabel, a young woman too good to be true. I expect that some will want to compare “Daughter of God” to “The Sixth Sense,” but there are French fingerprints all over this film, and it’s not just because Hervé de Luze edited the director’s cut, or that there are echoes of “Irréversible” in a few shots. Awash in vulnerability, this film reminded me of “La Moustache,” 2005, about a man who may or may not have shaved off his mustache. It was one of the most discussed films in Paris that year, but you have to see it to understand why audiences got so worked up over the trivial. Did monsieur have a mustache, or did he merely think he did? It’s a way to pose the existential question: what defines your reality—how you see yourself, or how others see you? There is no right or wrong answer, but a lot of suffering accompanies the doubt. That film has stayed with me and so has “Daughter of God,” stuck in the back of my head for reasons I can’t quite explain. Will you see it? I don’t know. But the ball is in Lionsgate’s corner, being passed to another white shirt as they play the psychological game. The gorilla is waiting in the wings.Late last year, the film “Exposed” made minor waves when its writer-director, Gee Malik Linton, took his name off the project in disgust over heavy editing that ruined his film. In Linton’s version, Keanu Reeves and Mira Sorvino held peripheral roles in a story of ordinary obscenities unfolding from the perspective of a naive Latina woman. The film released as “Exposed” made Reeves and Sorvino—a New York City cop and his murdered partner’s wife--the main characters of a standard drug-crime action thriller. It was a new twist on whitewashing, which refers to casting white actors to play nonwhite roles. “Exposed” received withering reviews, but what it actually exposed wasn’t whodunit but the fact that producers are desperately, even neurotically attached to centering white characters in stories. Lionsgate, the studio that released “Exposed,” also backed “Gods of Egypt,” the “first big bomb” of 2016. “Gods of Egypt” was also soundly criticized for whitewashing its lead roles. Out of a production budget of $140 million, “Gods of Egypt” has so far earned back $40 million. That’s a lot of money, but it still leaves a $100 million shortfall. Against the backdrop of #OscarsSoWhite 2.0, a fan started a petition for Lionsgate to release the director’s cut of Linton’s film under its original title, “Daughter of God.” But given the terrible reviews for “Exposed,” how much difference can rearranging a few scenes and adding back 18 minutes really make? When Linton sent me the film, I was eager to see what could be made of it on its own terms. As “Daughter of God” began, however, several unhappy thoughts ran through my head. Ana de Armas is too pretty to play Isabel. Her character is wearing garish, dated makeup. Keanu Reeves is miscast. He looks wrong to play a gritty New York detective. Yet I kept watching, long enough to realize that the fact of their looking wrong was integral to the psychological structure of the film, as well as to the way the narrative unfolds. Isabel and Detective Galbard are both too white and not white enough, hapless misfits in communities where justice isn’t black and white, but various shades of brown. Linton is Jamaican-American, and he tells the story from the ground up, sensitive to emotional undercurrents that betray themselves in fleeting twitches of disapproval and the whip-flicker of side glances. The people in Washington Heights might be lumped together as Hispanics, but to each other, they retain specific cultural and ethnic heritages. Isabel de La Cruz (Ana de Armas) is Peruvian. Her Dominican husband is serving in Iraq. Left vulnerable by his absence, she lives with her husband’s family, rooted to a working-class community that includes Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Among the various women, there is love and sisterhood, but also jealousy and tensions swirling around the limpid girl who seems too good to be true. Devoutly religious, Isabel is an unreliable narrator, if only because all women are unreliable witnesses to the events of their own bodies. To be a woman is to be dismissed and discounted as a matter of course-- a consequence of cultural perspectives that become twisted into internalized narratives. If “Daughter of God” feels like a foreign film, it’s not because the dialogue is mostly in Spanish, or because it’s set in a neighborhood that casual outsiders rarely access. It’s because the film refuses the familiar assumptions of “the male gaze” (which is not reducible to men, per se, as it is fundamentally about power, not sex or gender.) Instead, it shows events through Isabel’s naive and pious eyes, a point made right away in the first few minutes via a subway poster selling eyeshadow, i.e., “I shadow.” Viewers will not consciously make the connection, at least not at first, but the wide female eyes in the poster belong to Isabel. Seeing is not a passive act. “You see but you do not observe,” Sherlock Holmes sniffs haughtily when Dr. Watson cannot tell him how many steps lead up to their Baker Street apartment. Famously misogynist, the Holmesian universe fetishizes the dispassionate tool of cold logic, which brings the perpetrator to justice. By contrast, “Daughter of God” presents a nonlinear puzzle of invisible laws being broken, the kind of bodily and moral outrages that victims never report, because who believes brown and black people so marginalized that their own murders barely register as crimes? When a white policeman dies in Isabel’s neighborhood and Detective Galbard makes his sudden entry, it seems to signal the beginning of a standard police procedural, which is how “Exposed” was sold. Yet those kinds of mysteries truck in hypervisible clues that lead inexorably to socially restorative resolutions. By contrast, “Daughter of God” revolves around emotional scars that fold inside secret flesh, making the uncomfortable point that seeing is a political act, and many of us are willfully blind. Can you trace the trauma? Did you spot the signs of guilt? They are right in front of your face—except half the audience will not see them, and will walk away from “Daughter of God” shaking their heads in confusion. In many ways, this film is a cinematic “Count the Passes” experiment. The famous test (try it here) asks viewers to count the number of times the people in white shirts pass a basketball among them. What the test actually reveals, however, is the power of selective attention. [Spoiler: Don’t continue reading until you’ve tried the test.] White balls are red herrings. On account of paying attention to the moving balls, half the people watching the psychological experiment—better known as the “Invisible Gorilla Test”-- will not see the man in a gorilla suit sauntering into view, stopping in the middle of the action, pounding his chest, and resuming his slow journey off-screen. Yet the original test subjects wore eye trackers, which revealed that the people who failed to “see” the gorilla were actually looking right at him, and they protested that there was no gorilla until they saw the test played backwards. “Looking isn’t seeing,” explains Daniel Simons, the professor who devised the psychological experiment. “You have to focus attention on it for people to become aware of it.” Simons added that 90 percent of test subjects were confident that they would see the gorilla, yet only half did. In other words: “The mismatch between what we see and what we think we see, is really a profound one, and has all kinds of consequence for our daily lives.” Add the ordinary elements of race, class and gender into the mix, and it suddenly becomes obvious that “reality” really is what we make of it. No men in gorilla suits wander through “Daughter of God.” Instead, there are angels. Or demons. Possibly space aliens. The point is that Isabel sees strange beings during waking hours. She might be hallucinating, but other people in her community seem to see them too, and don’t seem especially surprised by this. From their marginalized perspectives, there’s not much difference between vaguely Asian angels speaking English in soothing tones, and Keanu Reeves as a policeman asking nosy questions in broken Spanish. (Similarly, the film “Under the Skin,” 2015, exploited the mind’s refusal to assimilate the extraordinary by showing real footage of Scarlett Johannson driving around a small town in Scotland, picking up grateful men who never place her as the movie star even as she, as her “natural” self, was playing a space alien.) Whether supernatural or too human, these sudden apparitions are equally peculiar in appearance, inherently deceitful, and endowed with dubious powers that can do more harm than good. Either way, nobody expects them to stay. Nobody wants them to. In one critical scene, Galbard sits alone in his police car, reading a birthday card made by his estranged little boy, and slowly Keanu’s famous face sheds the mask of the movie star, revealing Asian lineaments that render his features shockingly illegible. As his features blur with emotional pain, sagging into sorrow, Galbard’s own impossibly compromised position as friendless police officer comes sharply into narrative focus. Around the same time, viewers fully grasp that “Daughter of God” is not a police procedural but a drama with some policemen. Focusing on finding the cop killer is like keeping your attention on the white players in the “Invisible Gorilla” experiment and totally missing the elephant in the room. In “Daughter of God,” the gorilla is Isabel, a young woman too good to be true. I expect that some will want to compare “Daughter of God” to “The Sixth Sense,” but there are French fingerprints all over this film, and it’s not just because Hervé de Luze edited the director’s cut, or that there are echoes of “Irréversible” in a few shots. Awash in vulnerability, this film reminded me of “La Moustache,” 2005, about a man who may or may not have shaved off his mustache. It was one of the most discussed films in Paris that year, but you have to see it to understand why audiences got so worked up over the trivial. Did monsieur have a mustache, or did he merely think he did? It’s a way to pose the existential question: what defines your reality—how you see yourself, or how others see you? There is no right or wrong answer, but a lot of suffering accompanies the doubt. That film has stayed with me and so has “Daughter of God,” stuck in the back of my head for reasons I can’t quite explain. Will you see it? I don’t know. But the ball is in Lionsgate’s corner, being passed to another white shirt as they play the psychological game. The gorilla is waiting in the wings.
Watch Hillary Clinton morph into Bernie Sanders on “SNL”: “I have constantly said we need a revolution in the streets”
Television's foremost (only?) Hillary Clinton impressionist, Kate McKinnon, introduced a new Hillary 2016 ad during last night's "Saturday Night Live" in which Hillary tries to appeal to millennial voters by slowly morphing into the candidate they clearly want: Bernie Sanders. "I, Hillary Clinton, share all of your exact same beliefs," she began. "And I always have. Since the beginning of my campaign, I have constantly said we need a revolution in the streets ... because America should be for everyone, not just a handful of millionaires and billionaires." Like millennials, McKinnon-as-Clinton, fading into a New York accent, said she's angry too, "because the top 10% of the top 1% control 90% of the wealth," adding, "I've always said that, ever since I was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn." "So thank you, millennials, for lending your support to the biggest outsider Jew in the race: Hillary Rodham Clinton," she said, dressed in baggy suit, wire-frame glasses, and a white-haired old man wig. "There's a lot of work to be done, and that is why I'm sick and tired of hearing about my own damn emails." Watch the full sketch below: Television's foremost (only?) Hillary Clinton impressionist, Kate McKinnon, introduced a new Hillary 2016 ad during last night's "Saturday Night Live" in which Hillary tries to appeal to millennial voters by slowly morphing into the candidate they clearly want: Bernie Sanders. "I, Hillary Clinton, share all of your exact same beliefs," she began. "And I always have. Since the beginning of my campaign, I have constantly said we need a revolution in the streets ... because America should be for everyone, not just a handful of millionaires and billionaires." Like millennials, McKinnon-as-Clinton, fading into a New York accent, said she's angry too, "because the top 10% of the top 1% control 90% of the wealth," adding, "I've always said that, ever since I was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn." "So thank you, millennials, for lending your support to the biggest outsider Jew in the race: Hillary Rodham Clinton," she said, dressed in baggy suit, wire-frame glasses, and a white-haired old man wig. "There's a lot of work to be done, and that is why I'm sick and tired of hearing about my own damn emails." Watch the full sketch below: Television's foremost (only?) Hillary Clinton impressionist, Kate McKinnon, introduced a new Hillary 2016 ad during last night's "Saturday Night Live" in which Hillary tries to appeal to millennial voters by slowly morphing into the candidate they clearly want: Bernie Sanders. "I, Hillary Clinton, share all of your exact same beliefs," she began. "And I always have. Since the beginning of my campaign, I have constantly said we need a revolution in the streets ... because America should be for everyone, not just a handful of millionaires and billionaires." Like millennials, McKinnon-as-Clinton, fading into a New York accent, said she's angry too, "because the top 10% of the top 1% control 90% of the wealth," adding, "I've always said that, ever since I was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn." "So thank you, millennials, for lending your support to the biggest outsider Jew in the race: Hillary Rodham Clinton," she said, dressed in baggy suit, wire-frame glasses, and a white-haired old man wig. "There's a lot of work to be done, and that is why I'm sick and tired of hearing about my own damn emails." Watch the full sketch below: Television's foremost (only?) Hillary Clinton impressionist, Kate McKinnon, introduced a new Hillary 2016 ad during last night's "Saturday Night Live" in which Hillary tries to appeal to millennial voters by slowly morphing into the candidate they clearly want: Bernie Sanders. "I, Hillary Clinton, share all of your exact same beliefs," she began. "And I always have. Since the beginning of my campaign, I have constantly said we need a revolution in the streets ... because America should be for everyone, not just a handful of millionaires and billionaires." Like millennials, McKinnon-as-Clinton, fading into a New York accent, said she's angry too, "because the top 10% of the top 1% control 90% of the wealth," adding, "I've always said that, ever since I was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn." "So thank you, millennials, for lending your support to the biggest outsider Jew in the race: Hillary Rodham Clinton," she said, dressed in baggy suit, wire-frame glasses, and a white-haired old man wig. "There's a lot of work to be done, and that is why I'm sick and tired of hearing about my own damn emails." Watch the full sketch below:
On “SNL” Ben Carson says, “Bye, America, it’s been weird,” as he endorses the Donald
"Saturday Night Live" cold-opened last night's episode lampooning Ben Carson's (Jay Pharoah) endorsement of Donald Trump (announcer and alum Darrell Hammond). "Dr. Ben Carson is a very special man," Hammond-as-Trump began. "And, for once, I don't mean that as an insult to the mentally challenged." "I am so thrilled to be here today," Pharoah-as-Carson said. "I am positively turnt." "I have learned there are two Donald Trumps," he continued. "There's the man you've seen every night onstage for eight months -- the guy who calls people losers and brags about his penis. But there's also the friendly man I had breakfast with earlier today for 10 minutes. He gave me a muffin." "OK, that's enough for now," Trump interjected. "Let's get this guy a juice box and a nap." "Bye, America," Carson said. "It's been weird." Next up, Bernie Sanders (Larry David) appeared via satellite from his hotel room in Illinois fresh off his upset win in Michigan. Asked how he pulled off said feat, David-as-Sanders said he "spent a lot of time in Michigan." "I don't know if you're aware of this," he explained. "But they give you 10 cents for recycled cans. I made a fortune." "My message is resonating with a very diverse group of white people," he continued. "I've got supporters of all ages: 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds. And that's it. The young people love me ... because I'm just like them -- I've got a lot of big plans and absolutely no idea how to achieve them." Watch the full sketch below:
March 12, 2016
Stop threatening to move to Canada: or at least learn these things before you do
If the growing prospect of President Trump scares the shit out of you, Canada might be looking like a nice cozy bolthole right about now. But it’s not just a kinder, gentler U.S. with better hockey and beer.
Hey, it’s close, civilized, a quick flight from the Northeast. They speak English.
But it really is a foreign country.
A nation almost 100 years younger than the U.S., Confederation was in 1867, creating the first four provinces. For all its vaunted socially liberal policies, it’s also a country with its own history of submission and domination – French over English, the 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children forced for decades to attend brutal residential schools, the unresolved murders of 1,200 indigenous women, prompting the recent allocation of $100 million by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to investigate and address the issue.
While Canada recently welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, don’t be too quick to assume there’s an equal welcome for thousands of panicked Americans eager to flee a political scene they find abhorrent.
Read the Canadian government website for potential immigrants and you’ll find a list of exclusions, from health and financial problems to a DUI conviction. Yes, some of you will be able to obtain work visas, but many Canadian jobs pay less than you’re used to – and taxes are higher. You’ll also wait longer for access to some medical care.
Before assuming Canada is a default lifetsyle option, read its newspapers and listen to the CBC. Read our history and some of our authors, not just the ones you know, like Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro. Talk to people who live there. In other words, before you reassure yourself that if it comes to a Trump inauguration, you can pack your bags and head to Vancouver (maybe not Vancouver – CRAZY expensive to live there), you might want to take a minute to acquaint yourself with some specific attributes of that country to the north:
Culture: You probably know that Bieber and Drake are Canadian. Maybe Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Arcade Fire. Crossing the border can be disorienting since so much of the media Canadians consume is American. But, thanks to strong public policy and government incentives, some mandating the use of Canadian talent in the production of film, music and journalism, to name three, Canadian culture thrives despite the Niagara of incoming material from elsewhere.
Unlike the U.S., where the free market reigns unchallenged, Canadian authors get royalties from the use of their books by public libraries; with fine and performing artists, we can apply for decent grants from the Canada Council.
If someone says they’re earning a living as a creative, don’t assume it’s impossible; with mostly free healthcare, it’s less impossible than in the U.S.
Language: On parle deux langues officielles. If you seethe at the words “Oprima numero dos,” stay home. Canada has two official languages, French and English. You’ll see every product and government service offered in both and, for some jobs, bilingualism is essential.
Moving to Quebec? Brush up tout de suite if you want to fully comprehend your new life there. There’s even a language police to make sure you do and a régie to oversee almost every activity.
Winter: There’s a song about it: “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.” My country is not a country, it’s winter. They’re not kidding. Canadian winter redefines cold. In some places, wearing fur can save your life – like the Inuk whose snowmobile recently fell through the Arctic ice, and who built an igloo and slid into a fox he’d trapped to keep his legs warm. Cold that freezes your nostrils shut. Cold so fierce it hurts to breathe.
Regionalism: Technically, yes, we’re one nation. Newfoundlanders, who even have their own time zone and didn’t join Canada (see: Confederation) until 1949, hate CFAs (come from aways). Maritimers wonder why people in Toronto are such workaholic assholes. Some of Quebec always wants to separate. The once-booming oil patch – aka Alberta – is now deep in the hurt locker, having once sneered at Ottawa lawmakers: “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!” Everyone wants to live in Vancouver, but no one can actually afford to; a teardown just sold for $2.5 million, $80,000 over asking. And everyone beyond the GTA hates Toronto, no matter how many times it’s touted as one the best cities in the world.
Guns: Yes, we have them. But we don’t have, or want, open carry or ranting about the Second Amendment and why Canada really needs more guns.
There are good reasons for this.
One of the worst mass shootings in recent Canadian history, a sad decade before Columbine, occurred in a Montreal college classroom, on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine hunted down and killed 14 women there.
Nor do we fetishize guns as a metaphor for freedom, or fear the government bashing in our doors to reclaim them from us.
Government: Not generally considered a scourge to be pounded into submission at every opportunity, but a source of good things – like healthcare for everyone and tuition fees for the best colleges as low as $3,000 to $5,000 a year.
But you’ll see a new passivity as well. For Canadians shelling out so much in taxes, it’s often seen as “the government’s job” to take care of things in return.
Now that the ghost of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rapidly fading and wary optimism awaits Trudeau’s next steps, some Canadians are actually feeling good again about the federal officials representing them, with a Cabinet that includes people who understand their portfolios, like a physician, a scientist and a Sikh.
Self-regard: Don’t brag. Ever. About anything. To Canadians, boasting is like farting – when it happens, we’ll pretend politely we didn’t hear it and trust you tried not to. Canadians desperate for fame move to the U.S.
It’s considered tacky to tell everyone how awesome you are; with smaller, tighter social and professional networks, if you’re really that great, we’ve already heard about you.
Risk: The biggest difference you’ll find – other than people throwing themselves into Class IV rapids, portaging solo for miles and heli-skiing – is a possibly bewildering aversion to taking risks. It’s annoying as hell, and confusing to go-getting Americans, but networking phone calls can often go unreturned and emails ignored. Ghosting ‘r us. Wary of conflict, no one wants to actually say no, so they say nothing instead.
In a small country with fewer great jobs and sky-high costs of living in Toronto and Vancouver, few are eager to jeopardize their hard-won gains by taking a chance on you or your unproven ideas.
Decisions can move at glacial speed. Someone will be paid to create a Royal Commission and produce a white paper first.
Diversity: Canada is officially multicultural, with almost 21 percent of the population consisting of immigrants, compared to only 13 percent (2013 Census) in the U.S. There are longstanding issues regarding appalling treatment of First Nations peoples, but Canadians are generally unlikely to rant on endlessly about illegal immigrants or attack Muslims and Sikhs for daring to wear a turban or hijab.
Canada also just welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, some sponsored personally by Canadians, individually and in groups.
Work-life balance: Canadians value, and use, their vacation time – with holidays you’ve never heard of, like Queen Victoria’s birthday and Family Day. On November 11, everyone wears a poppy in their lapel for Veterans’ Day, a reference to the WWI poem written in 1915 by Canadian physician John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields.”
Reserve: Yes, we’re slower to warm up to new people. We won’t exhort you to “Have a nice day!” We’re not socialized to be “real friendly” and we tend to be both wary and skeptical, even disdainful, of those who try to sell, gladhand or backslap. No one’s likely to shoot us, or slash us on the subway, Manhattan-style, so we don’t feel compelled to preemptively placate everyone around us.
The metric system: That 100 km/hr sign? It’s 60 miles per hour. You’ll be buying Swiss cheese in grams and gas in liters. (Spelled, British-style, litres.)
Taxes: Canadians do pay higher taxes, which help to pay for everyone’s healthcare and affordable college tuitions – not decades of foreign wars.
Patriotism: We don’t have a “Canadian Dream.” There’s no “Canadian people.” If you choose to become a citizen, you’ll be pledging allegiance to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. (Canada is a member of the Commonwealth.)
Our Constitution mentions not a word about life, liberty or happiness – you’re moving to a nation that values “peace, order, and good government.”
We love our country deeply and are proud of its many accomplishments, (insulin, Standard time, snowmobiles, etc.) but don’t go on about them all. If we see someone flaunting a maple leaf badge, they’re probably American, trying to pass.
Values: If a word begins with “co” – cooperation, community, collective, collaboration, commission, consensus, you’ll hear it a lot more now.
Not so much conflict, confrontation and bare-knuckled competitiveness.
We don’t pay tutors $250/hour to coach our kids to ace the SATs or ACTS to get into the best Canadian universities – most of which cost one-tenth of their American equivalent. Nor do we have ACTs or SATs or high school résumés to burnish.
Pink Shirt Day, this year held on Feb. 22, is a national movement begun in 2007 in a Halifax high school by two seniors showing solidarity with an incoming freshman, a campaign to end bullying. The Prime Minister, a former schoolteacher, wore one. That’s Canadian.
Helping others succeed is widely celebrated as a sign of strength, not foolish, naïve weakness.
And with only a handful of major cities to move to for well-paid work – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax – pissing someone off in the assumption you can move cross-country and start freshly anonymous is imprudent. With a small handful of top schools and long memories, discretion is prized and alliances run deep.
Healthcare: It’s not entirely free, but no Canadian lives with that most American of fears – medical bankruptcy. Once you’re a resident, you’ll get a provincial health care card and a number. Finding a family physician can be tougher than you like – some cities have more demand than supply.
Because of this, Canadians are generally more deferential to healthcare providers, and, for a variety of reasons, suing for malpractice is more costly and complicated.
If you need elective surgery, say for a new knee or hip or cataract surgery, you might wait weeks or months. But if your need is urgent (beyond the most remote regions), you’ll get excellent care immediately.
That’s about it: welcome to Canada!
Pop quiz! Define the following words or phrases:
Tuque, pemmican, Two Solitudes, pogey, shinny, Bunkie, Loyalist, backbencher, loonie, Hansard, les Quatorze, Inuk, Terry Fox, Roots, Giller Prize.
If the growing prospect of President Trump scares the shit out of you, Canada might be looking like a nice cozy bolthole right about now. But it’s not just a kinder, gentler U.S. with better hockey and beer.
Hey, it’s close, civilized, a quick flight from the Northeast. They speak English.
But it really is a foreign country.
A nation almost 100 years younger than the U.S., Confederation was in 1867, creating the first four provinces. For all its vaunted socially liberal policies, it’s also a country with its own history of submission and domination – French over English, the 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children forced for decades to attend brutal residential schools, the unresolved murders of 1,200 indigenous women, prompting the recent allocation of $100 million by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to investigate and address the issue.
While Canada recently welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, don’t be too quick to assume there’s an equal welcome for thousands of panicked Americans eager to flee a political scene they find abhorrent.
Read the Canadian government website for potential immigrants and you’ll find a list of exclusions, from health and financial problems to a DUI conviction. Yes, some of you will be able to obtain work visas, but many Canadian jobs pay less than you’re used to – and taxes are higher. You’ll also wait longer for access to some medical care.
Before assuming Canada is a default lifetsyle option, read its newspapers and listen to the CBC. Read our history and some of our authors, not just the ones you know, like Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro. Talk to people who live there. In other words, before you reassure yourself that if it comes to a Trump inauguration, you can pack your bags and head to Vancouver (maybe not Vancouver – CRAZY expensive to live there), you might want to take a minute to acquaint yourself with some specific attributes of that country to the north:
Culture: You probably know that Bieber and Drake are Canadian. Maybe Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Arcade Fire. Crossing the border can be disorienting since so much of the media Canadians consume is American. But, thanks to strong public policy and government incentives, some mandating the use of Canadian talent in the production of film, music and journalism, to name three, Canadian culture thrives despite the Niagara of incoming material from elsewhere.
Unlike the U.S., where the free market reigns unchallenged, Canadian authors get royalties from the use of their books by public libraries; with fine and performing artists, we can apply for decent grants from the Canada Council.
If someone says they’re earning a living as a creative, don’t assume it’s impossible; with mostly free healthcare, it’s less impossible than in the U.S.
Language: On parle deux langues officielles. If you seethe at the words “Oprima numero dos,” stay home. Canada has two official languages, French and English. You’ll see every product and government service offered in both and, for some jobs, bilingualism is essential.
Moving to Quebec? Brush up tout de suite if you want to fully comprehend your new life there. There’s even a language police to make sure you do and a régie to oversee almost every activity.
Winter: There’s a song about it: “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.” My country is not a country, it’s winter. They’re not kidding. Canadian winter redefines cold. In some places, wearing fur can save your life – like the Inuk whose snowmobile recently fell through the Arctic ice, and who built an igloo and slid into a fox he’d trapped to keep his legs warm. Cold that freezes your nostrils shut. Cold so fierce it hurts to breathe.
Regionalism: Technically, yes, we’re one nation. Newfoundlanders, who even have their own time zone and didn’t join Canada (see: Confederation) until 1949, hate CFAs (come from aways). Maritimers wonder why people in Toronto are such workaholic assholes. Some of Quebec always wants to separate. The once-booming oil patch – aka Alberta – is now deep in the hurt locker, having once sneered at Ottawa lawmakers: “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!” Everyone wants to live in Vancouver, but no one can actually afford to; a teardown just sold for $2.5 million, $80,000 over asking. And everyone beyond the GTA hates Toronto, no matter how many times it’s touted as one the best cities in the world.
Guns: Yes, we have them. But we don’t have, or want, open carry or ranting about the Second Amendment and why Canada really needs more guns.
There are good reasons for this.
One of the worst mass shootings in recent Canadian history, a sad decade before Columbine, occurred in a Montreal college classroom, on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine hunted down and killed 14 women there.
Nor do we fetishize guns as a metaphor for freedom, or fear the government bashing in our doors to reclaim them from us.
Government: Not generally considered a scourge to be pounded into submission at every opportunity, but a source of good things – like healthcare for everyone and tuition fees for the best colleges as low as $3,000 to $5,000 a year.
But you’ll see a new passivity as well. For Canadians shelling out so much in taxes, it’s often seen as “the government’s job” to take care of things in return.
Now that the ghost of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rapidly fading and wary optimism awaits Trudeau’s next steps, some Canadians are actually feeling good again about the federal officials representing them, with a Cabinet that includes people who understand their portfolios, like a physician, a scientist and a Sikh.
Self-regard: Don’t brag. Ever. About anything. To Canadians, boasting is like farting – when it happens, we’ll pretend politely we didn’t hear it and trust you tried not to. Canadians desperate for fame move to the U.S.
It’s considered tacky to tell everyone how awesome you are; with smaller, tighter social and professional networks, if you’re really that great, we’ve already heard about you.
Risk: The biggest difference you’ll find – other than people throwing themselves into Class IV rapids, portaging solo for miles and heli-skiing – is a possibly bewildering aversion to taking risks. It’s annoying as hell, and confusing to go-getting Americans, but networking phone calls can often go unreturned and emails ignored. Ghosting ‘r us. Wary of conflict, no one wants to actually say no, so they say nothing instead.
In a small country with fewer great jobs and sky-high costs of living in Toronto and Vancouver, few are eager to jeopardize their hard-won gains by taking a chance on you or your unproven ideas.
Decisions can move at glacial speed. Someone will be paid to create a Royal Commission and produce a white paper first.
Diversity: Canada is officially multicultural, with almost 21 percent of the population consisting of immigrants, compared to only 13 percent (2013 Census) in the U.S. There are longstanding issues regarding appalling treatment of First Nations peoples, but Canadians are generally unlikely to rant on endlessly about illegal immigrants or attack Muslims and Sikhs for daring to wear a turban or hijab.
Canada also just welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, some sponsored personally by Canadians, individually and in groups.
Work-life balance: Canadians value, and use, their vacation time – with holidays you’ve never heard of, like Queen Victoria’s birthday and Family Day. On November 11, everyone wears a poppy in their lapel for Veterans’ Day, a reference to the WWI poem written in 1915 by Canadian physician John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields.”
Reserve: Yes, we’re slower to warm up to new people. We won’t exhort you to “Have a nice day!” We’re not socialized to be “real friendly” and we tend to be both wary and skeptical, even disdainful, of those who try to sell, gladhand or backslap. No one’s likely to shoot us, or slash us on the subway, Manhattan-style, so we don’t feel compelled to preemptively placate everyone around us.
The metric system: That 100 km/hr sign? It’s 60 miles per hour. You’ll be buying Swiss cheese in grams and gas in liters. (Spelled, British-style, litres.)
Taxes: Canadians do pay higher taxes, which help to pay for everyone’s healthcare and affordable college tuitions – not decades of foreign wars.
Patriotism: We don’t have a “Canadian Dream.” There’s no “Canadian people.” If you choose to become a citizen, you’ll be pledging allegiance to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. (Canada is a member of the Commonwealth.)
Our Constitution mentions not a word about life, liberty or happiness – you’re moving to a nation that values “peace, order, and good government.”
We love our country deeply and are proud of its many accomplishments, (insulin, Standard time, snowmobiles, etc.) but don’t go on about them all. If we see someone flaunting a maple leaf badge, they’re probably American, trying to pass.
Values: If a word begins with “co” – cooperation, community, collective, collaboration, commission, consensus, you’ll hear it a lot more now.
Not so much conflict, confrontation and bare-knuckled competitiveness.
We don’t pay tutors $250/hour to coach our kids to ace the SATs or ACTS to get into the best Canadian universities – most of which cost one-tenth of their American equivalent. Nor do we have ACTs or SATs or high school résumés to burnish.
Pink Shirt Day, this year held on Feb. 22, is a national movement begun in 2007 in a Halifax high school by two seniors showing solidarity with an incoming freshman, a campaign to end bullying. The Prime Minister, a former schoolteacher, wore one. That’s Canadian.
Helping others succeed is widely celebrated as a sign of strength, not foolish, naïve weakness.
And with only a handful of major cities to move to for well-paid work – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax – pissing someone off in the assumption you can move cross-country and start freshly anonymous is imprudent. With a small handful of top schools and long memories, discretion is prized and alliances run deep.
Healthcare: It’s not entirely free, but no Canadian lives with that most American of fears – medical bankruptcy. Once you’re a resident, you’ll get a provincial health care card and a number. Finding a family physician can be tougher than you like – some cities have more demand than supply.
Because of this, Canadians are generally more deferential to healthcare providers, and, for a variety of reasons, suing for malpractice is more costly and complicated.
If you need elective surgery, say for a new knee or hip or cataract surgery, you might wait weeks or months. But if your need is urgent (beyond the most remote regions), you’ll get excellent care immediately.
That’s about it: welcome to Canada!
Pop quiz! Define the following words or phrases:
Tuque, pemmican, Two Solitudes, pogey, shinny, Bunkie, Loyalist, backbencher, loonie, Hansard, les Quatorze, Inuk, Terry Fox, Roots, Giller Prize.
If the growing prospect of President Trump scares the shit out of you, Canada might be looking like a nice cozy bolthole right about now. But it’s not just a kinder, gentler U.S. with better hockey and beer.
Hey, it’s close, civilized, a quick flight from the Northeast. They speak English.
But it really is a foreign country.
A nation almost 100 years younger than the U.S., Confederation was in 1867, creating the first four provinces. For all its vaunted socially liberal policies, it’s also a country with its own history of submission and domination – French over English, the 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children forced for decades to attend brutal residential schools, the unresolved murders of 1,200 indigenous women, prompting the recent allocation of $100 million by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to investigate and address the issue.
While Canada recently welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, don’t be too quick to assume there’s an equal welcome for thousands of panicked Americans eager to flee a political scene they find abhorrent.
Read the Canadian government website for potential immigrants and you’ll find a list of exclusions, from health and financial problems to a DUI conviction. Yes, some of you will be able to obtain work visas, but many Canadian jobs pay less than you’re used to – and taxes are higher. You’ll also wait longer for access to some medical care.
Before assuming Canada is a default lifetsyle option, read its newspapers and listen to the CBC. Read our history and some of our authors, not just the ones you know, like Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro. Talk to people who live there. In other words, before you reassure yourself that if it comes to a Trump inauguration, you can pack your bags and head to Vancouver (maybe not Vancouver – CRAZY expensive to live there), you might want to take a minute to acquaint yourself with some specific attributes of that country to the north:
Culture: You probably know that Bieber and Drake are Canadian. Maybe Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Arcade Fire. Crossing the border can be disorienting since so much of the media Canadians consume is American. But, thanks to strong public policy and government incentives, some mandating the use of Canadian talent in the production of film, music and journalism, to name three, Canadian culture thrives despite the Niagara of incoming material from elsewhere.
Unlike the U.S., where the free market reigns unchallenged, Canadian authors get royalties from the use of their books by public libraries; with fine and performing artists, we can apply for decent grants from the Canada Council.
If someone says they’re earning a living as a creative, don’t assume it’s impossible; with mostly free healthcare, it’s less impossible than in the U.S.
Language: On parle deux langues officielles. If you seethe at the words “Oprima numero dos,” stay home. Canada has two official languages, French and English. You’ll see every product and government service offered in both and, for some jobs, bilingualism is essential.
Moving to Quebec? Brush up tout de suite if you want to fully comprehend your new life there. There’s even a language police to make sure you do and a régie to oversee almost every activity.
Winter: There’s a song about it: “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.” My country is not a country, it’s winter. They’re not kidding. Canadian winter redefines cold. In some places, wearing fur can save your life – like the Inuk whose snowmobile recently fell through the Arctic ice, and who built an igloo and slid into a fox he’d trapped to keep his legs warm. Cold that freezes your nostrils shut. Cold so fierce it hurts to breathe.
Regionalism: Technically, yes, we’re one nation. Newfoundlanders, who even have their own time zone and didn’t join Canada (see: Confederation) until 1949, hate CFAs (come from aways). Maritimers wonder why people in Toronto are such workaholic assholes. Some of Quebec always wants to separate. The once-booming oil patch – aka Alberta – is now deep in the hurt locker, having once sneered at Ottawa lawmakers: “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!” Everyone wants to live in Vancouver, but no one can actually afford to; a teardown just sold for $2.5 million, $80,000 over asking. And everyone beyond the GTA hates Toronto, no matter how many times it’s touted as one the best cities in the world.
Guns: Yes, we have them. But we don’t have, or want, open carry or ranting about the Second Amendment and why Canada really needs more guns.
There are good reasons for this.
One of the worst mass shootings in recent Canadian history, a sad decade before Columbine, occurred in a Montreal college classroom, on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine hunted down and killed 14 women there.
Nor do we fetishize guns as a metaphor for freedom, or fear the government bashing in our doors to reclaim them from us.
Government: Not generally considered a scourge to be pounded into submission at every opportunity, but a source of good things – like healthcare for everyone and tuition fees for the best colleges as low as $3,000 to $5,000 a year.
But you’ll see a new passivity as well. For Canadians shelling out so much in taxes, it’s often seen as “the government’s job” to take care of things in return.
Now that the ghost of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rapidly fading and wary optimism awaits Trudeau’s next steps, some Canadians are actually feeling good again about the federal officials representing them, with a Cabinet that includes people who understand their portfolios, like a physician, a scientist and a Sikh.
Self-regard: Don’t brag. Ever. About anything. To Canadians, boasting is like farting – when it happens, we’ll pretend politely we didn’t hear it and trust you tried not to. Canadians desperate for fame move to the U.S.
It’s considered tacky to tell everyone how awesome you are; with smaller, tighter social and professional networks, if you’re really that great, we’ve already heard about you.
Risk: The biggest difference you’ll find – other than people throwing themselves into Class IV rapids, portaging solo for miles and heli-skiing – is a possibly bewildering aversion to taking risks. It’s annoying as hell, and confusing to go-getting Americans, but networking phone calls can often go unreturned and emails ignored. Ghosting ‘r us. Wary of conflict, no one wants to actually say no, so they say nothing instead.
In a small country with fewer great jobs and sky-high costs of living in Toronto and Vancouver, few are eager to jeopardize their hard-won gains by taking a chance on you or your unproven ideas.
Decisions can move at glacial speed. Someone will be paid to create a Royal Commission and produce a white paper first.
Diversity: Canada is officially multicultural, with almost 21 percent of the population consisting of immigrants, compared to only 13 percent (2013 Census) in the U.S. There are longstanding issues regarding appalling treatment of First Nations peoples, but Canadians are generally unlikely to rant on endlessly about illegal immigrants or attack Muslims and Sikhs for daring to wear a turban or hijab.
Canada also just welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, some sponsored personally by Canadians, individually and in groups.
Work-life balance: Canadians value, and use, their vacation time – with holidays you’ve never heard of, like Queen Victoria’s birthday and Family Day. On November 11, everyone wears a poppy in their lapel for Veterans’ Day, a reference to the WWI poem written in 1915 by Canadian physician John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields.”
Reserve: Yes, we’re slower to warm up to new people. We won’t exhort you to “Have a nice day!” We’re not socialized to be “real friendly” and we tend to be both wary and skeptical, even disdainful, of those who try to sell, gladhand or backslap. No one’s likely to shoot us, or slash us on the subway, Manhattan-style, so we don’t feel compelled to preemptively placate everyone around us.
The metric system: That 100 km/hr sign? It’s 60 miles per hour. You’ll be buying Swiss cheese in grams and gas in liters. (Spelled, British-style, litres.)
Taxes: Canadians do pay higher taxes, which help to pay for everyone’s healthcare and affordable college tuitions – not decades of foreign wars.
Patriotism: We don’t have a “Canadian Dream.” There’s no “Canadian people.” If you choose to become a citizen, you’ll be pledging allegiance to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. (Canada is a member of the Commonwealth.)
Our Constitution mentions not a word about life, liberty or happiness – you’re moving to a nation that values “peace, order, and good government.”
We love our country deeply and are proud of its many accomplishments, (insulin, Standard time, snowmobiles, etc.) but don’t go on about them all. If we see someone flaunting a maple leaf badge, they’re probably American, trying to pass.
Values: If a word begins with “co” – cooperation, community, collective, collaboration, commission, consensus, you’ll hear it a lot more now.
Not so much conflict, confrontation and bare-knuckled competitiveness.
We don’t pay tutors $250/hour to coach our kids to ace the SATs or ACTS to get into the best Canadian universities – most of which cost one-tenth of their American equivalent. Nor do we have ACTs or SATs or high school résumés to burnish.
Pink Shirt Day, this year held on Feb. 22, is a national movement begun in 2007 in a Halifax high school by two seniors showing solidarity with an incoming freshman, a campaign to end bullying. The Prime Minister, a former schoolteacher, wore one. That’s Canadian.
Helping others succeed is widely celebrated as a sign of strength, not foolish, naïve weakness.
And with only a handful of major cities to move to for well-paid work – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax – pissing someone off in the assumption you can move cross-country and start freshly anonymous is imprudent. With a small handful of top schools and long memories, discretion is prized and alliances run deep.
Healthcare: It’s not entirely free, but no Canadian lives with that most American of fears – medical bankruptcy. Once you’re a resident, you’ll get a provincial health care card and a number. Finding a family physician can be tougher than you like – some cities have more demand than supply.
Because of this, Canadians are generally more deferential to healthcare providers, and, for a variety of reasons, suing for malpractice is more costly and complicated.
If you need elective surgery, say for a new knee or hip or cataract surgery, you might wait weeks or months. But if your need is urgent (beyond the most remote regions), you’ll get excellent care immediately.
That’s about it: welcome to Canada!
Pop quiz! Define the following words or phrases:
Tuque, pemmican, Two Solitudes, pogey, shinny, Bunkie, Loyalist, backbencher, loonie, Hansard, les Quatorze, Inuk, Terry Fox, Roots, Giller Prize.
If the growing prospect of President Trump scares the shit out of you, Canada might be looking like a nice cozy bolthole right about now. But it’s not just a kinder, gentler U.S. with better hockey and beer.
Hey, it’s close, civilized, a quick flight from the Northeast. They speak English.
But it really is a foreign country.
A nation almost 100 years younger than the U.S., Confederation was in 1867, creating the first four provinces. For all its vaunted socially liberal policies, it’s also a country with its own history of submission and domination – French over English, the 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children forced for decades to attend brutal residential schools, the unresolved murders of 1,200 indigenous women, prompting the recent allocation of $100 million by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to investigate and address the issue.
While Canada recently welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, don’t be too quick to assume there’s an equal welcome for thousands of panicked Americans eager to flee a political scene they find abhorrent.
Read the Canadian government website for potential immigrants and you’ll find a list of exclusions, from health and financial problems to a DUI conviction. Yes, some of you will be able to obtain work visas, but many Canadian jobs pay less than you’re used to – and taxes are higher. You’ll also wait longer for access to some medical care.
Before assuming Canada is a default lifetsyle option, read its newspapers and listen to the CBC. Read our history and some of our authors, not just the ones you know, like Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro. Talk to people who live there. In other words, before you reassure yourself that if it comes to a Trump inauguration, you can pack your bags and head to Vancouver (maybe not Vancouver – CRAZY expensive to live there), you might want to take a minute to acquaint yourself with some specific attributes of that country to the north:
Culture: You probably know that Bieber and Drake are Canadian. Maybe Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Arcade Fire. Crossing the border can be disorienting since so much of the media Canadians consume is American. But, thanks to strong public policy and government incentives, some mandating the use of Canadian talent in the production of film, music and journalism, to name three, Canadian culture thrives despite the Niagara of incoming material from elsewhere.
Unlike the U.S., where the free market reigns unchallenged, Canadian authors get royalties from the use of their books by public libraries; with fine and performing artists, we can apply for decent grants from the Canada Council.
If someone says they’re earning a living as a creative, don’t assume it’s impossible; with mostly free healthcare, it’s less impossible than in the U.S.
Language: On parle deux langues officielles. If you seethe at the words “Oprima numero dos,” stay home. Canada has two official languages, French and English. You’ll see every product and government service offered in both and, for some jobs, bilingualism is essential.
Moving to Quebec? Brush up tout de suite if you want to fully comprehend your new life there. There’s even a language police to make sure you do and a régie to oversee almost every activity.
Winter: There’s a song about it: “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.” My country is not a country, it’s winter. They’re not kidding. Canadian winter redefines cold. In some places, wearing fur can save your life – like the Inuk whose snowmobile recently fell through the Arctic ice, and who built an igloo and slid into a fox he’d trapped to keep his legs warm. Cold that freezes your nostrils shut. Cold so fierce it hurts to breathe.
Regionalism: Technically, yes, we’re one nation. Newfoundlanders, who even have their own time zone and didn’t join Canada (see: Confederation) until 1949, hate CFAs (come from aways). Maritimers wonder why people in Toronto are such workaholic assholes. Some of Quebec always wants to separate. The once-booming oil patch – aka Alberta – is now deep in the hurt locker, having once sneered at Ottawa lawmakers: “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark!” Everyone wants to live in Vancouver, but no one can actually afford to; a teardown just sold for $2.5 million, $80,000 over asking. And everyone beyond the GTA hates Toronto, no matter how many times it’s touted as one the best cities in the world.
Guns: Yes, we have them. But we don’t have, or want, open carry or ranting about the Second Amendment and why Canada really needs more guns.
There are good reasons for this.
One of the worst mass shootings in recent Canadian history, a sad decade before Columbine, occurred in a Montreal college classroom, on Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine hunted down and killed 14 women there.
Nor do we fetishize guns as a metaphor for freedom, or fear the government bashing in our doors to reclaim them from us.
Government: Not generally considered a scourge to be pounded into submission at every opportunity, but a source of good things – like healthcare for everyone and tuition fees for the best colleges as low as $3,000 to $5,000 a year.
But you’ll see a new passivity as well. For Canadians shelling out so much in taxes, it’s often seen as “the government’s job” to take care of things in return.
Now that the ghost of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rapidly fading and wary optimism awaits Trudeau’s next steps, some Canadians are actually feeling good again about the federal officials representing them, with a Cabinet that includes people who understand their portfolios, like a physician, a scientist and a Sikh.
Self-regard: Don’t brag. Ever. About anything. To Canadians, boasting is like farting – when it happens, we’ll pretend politely we didn’t hear it and trust you tried not to. Canadians desperate for fame move to the U.S.
It’s considered tacky to tell everyone how awesome you are; with smaller, tighter social and professional networks, if you’re really that great, we’ve already heard about you.
Risk: The biggest difference you’ll find – other than people throwing themselves into Class IV rapids, portaging solo for miles and heli-skiing – is a possibly bewildering aversion to taking risks. It’s annoying as hell, and confusing to go-getting Americans, but networking phone calls can often go unreturned and emails ignored. Ghosting ‘r us. Wary of conflict, no one wants to actually say no, so they say nothing instead.
In a small country with fewer great jobs and sky-high costs of living in Toronto and Vancouver, few are eager to jeopardize their hard-won gains by taking a chance on you or your unproven ideas.
Decisions can move at glacial speed. Someone will be paid to create a Royal Commission and produce a white paper first.
Diversity: Canada is officially multicultural, with almost 21 percent of the population consisting of immigrants, compared to only 13 percent (2013 Census) in the U.S. There are longstanding issues regarding appalling treatment of First Nations peoples, but Canadians are generally unlikely to rant on endlessly about illegal immigrants or attack Muslims and Sikhs for daring to wear a turban or hijab.
Canada also just welcomed 25,000 Syrian refugees, some sponsored personally by Canadians, individually and in groups.
Work-life balance: Canadians value, and use, their vacation time – with holidays you’ve never heard of, like Queen Victoria’s birthday and Family Day. On November 11, everyone wears a poppy in their lapel for Veterans’ Day, a reference to the WWI poem written in 1915 by Canadian physician John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields.”
Reserve: Yes, we’re slower to warm up to new people. We won’t exhort you to “Have a nice day!” We’re not socialized to be “real friendly” and we tend to be both wary and skeptical, even disdainful, of those who try to sell, gladhand or backslap. No one’s likely to shoot us, or slash us on the subway, Manhattan-style, so we don’t feel compelled to preemptively placate everyone around us.
The metric system: That 100 km/hr sign? It’s 60 miles per hour. You’ll be buying Swiss cheese in grams and gas in liters. (Spelled, British-style, litres.)
Taxes: Canadians do pay higher taxes, which help to pay for everyone’s healthcare and affordable college tuitions – not decades of foreign wars.
Patriotism: We don’t have a “Canadian Dream.” There’s no “Canadian people.” If you choose to become a citizen, you’ll be pledging allegiance to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. (Canada is a member of the Commonwealth.)
Our Constitution mentions not a word about life, liberty or happiness – you’re moving to a nation that values “peace, order, and good government.”
We love our country deeply and are proud of its many accomplishments, (insulin, Standard time, snowmobiles, etc.) but don’t go on about them all. If we see someone flaunting a maple leaf badge, they’re probably American, trying to pass.
Values: If a word begins with “co” – cooperation, community, collective, collaboration, commission, consensus, you’ll hear it a lot more now.
Not so much conflict, confrontation and bare-knuckled competitiveness.
We don’t pay tutors $250/hour to coach our kids to ace the SATs or ACTS to get into the best Canadian universities – most of which cost one-tenth of their American equivalent. Nor do we have ACTs or SATs or high school résumés to burnish.
Pink Shirt Day, this year held on Feb. 22, is a national movement begun in 2007 in a Halifax high school by two seniors showing solidarity with an incoming freshman, a campaign to end bullying. The Prime Minister, a former schoolteacher, wore one. That’s Canadian.
Helping others succeed is widely celebrated as a sign of strength, not foolish, naïve weakness.
And with only a handful of major cities to move to for well-paid work – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax – pissing someone off in the assumption you can move cross-country and start freshly anonymous is imprudent. With a small handful of top schools and long memories, discretion is prized and alliances run deep.
Healthcare: It’s not entirely free, but no Canadian lives with that most American of fears – medical bankruptcy. Once you’re a resident, you’ll get a provincial health care card and a number. Finding a family physician can be tougher than you like – some cities have more demand than supply.
Because of this, Canadians are generally more deferential to healthcare providers, and, for a variety of reasons, suing for malpractice is more costly and complicated.
If you need elective surgery, say for a new knee or hip or cataract surgery, you might wait weeks or months. But if your need is urgent (beyond the most remote regions), you’ll get excellent care immediately.
That’s about it: welcome to Canada!
Pop quiz! Define the following words or phrases:
Tuque, pemmican, Two Solitudes, pogey, shinny, Bunkie, Loyalist, backbencher, loonie, Hansard, les Quatorze, Inuk, Terry Fox, Roots, Giller Prize.
My 11th time kicking heroin: My frightening journey from honor student to homeless junkie to mother of three
Black tar heroin—a dark, sticky substance that’s dirtier than the white powder version—is well-known for destroying its host. There was no symbiotic relationship between it and me. My body was ravaged by the very substance that maintained my existence. By twenty-seven years old, I was far from the wide-eyed young woman who had stepped off the bus from Ohio. I was a hardened soul with years of jails, homelessness, and a few abusive relationships under my belt. The only thing I had to be proud of was that I was able to survive in a world that killed so many. I became the things that had once made me so afraid. I was unpredictable. I was occasionally violent. Most of all, I had a tenuous hold on sanity. I had spent time locked in a psychiatric facility for three days on an involuntary hold. I had to admit those were some of my best days in recent years—I was safe, well fed, and able to rest without fear of being assaulted. My life as an IV drug user had hit a low point. I had run out of veins, leaving me little choice but to stick syringes in the soles of my feet. When users run out of “surface” veins, there are a few alternatives. One is using the jugular vein, the one located in your neck. This can be very dangerous since it is located so close to your brain. I knew someone who died from a blood clot a few days after choosing this path. The second choice is using the femoral, or the vein in the groin. This one cannot be seen. There is also a high risk of breaking off the needle, as I had seen happen to my former lover. A third option is called “muscling,” or shooting the drugs directly into the muscle. This has caused many a soft tissue infection, also known as an abscess. The last and certainly least attractive choice was to quit using altogether. By this time, using felt like knitting needles were tearing away at my skin. I was barely able to walk a few yards at a time, yet I continued to trek up and down the city streets for a few hours a day to sell heroin to junkies like myself before coming home to my hotel in the Tenderloin district. The Hotel Kinney was known as a “trap house” because it was filled with junkies and small-time dealers, and people would get trapped there. Young women stepped off the Greyhound from the suburbs, as I did, and never left. I paid $35 a night to live with roaches, rodents, and a mix of immigrants who were trying to start a new life and junkies who stood a good chance of ending theirs in one of the empty rooms. But this particular night I wasn’t thinking about my neighbors as I dragged my tired ass up the stairs. I just needed to keep putting one swollen foot in front of the other. I had gone up almost a full flight of stairs when I heard the front door open behind me. Half turning, I saw two cops coming into my building. I knew they were looking for me before I even heard them say my name to the front desk clerk. One cop spied me on the stairs. “You there,” he called out. “Stop.” I froze, trying not to panic. Stay cool, for fuck’s sake, I told myself. I couldn’t make a run for it even if I wanted to. They asked me for directions to Tracey’s room. I told them I didn’t know who they were talking about. I later learned the police had only my name and a vague description of what I looked like from a confidential informant. I let them pass me before turning around and, trying not to appear too freaked, went back downstairs to a small pocket underneath the stairwell. I didn’t need much room. Starved by daily drug use, I was a walking skeleton. Underneath my three T-shirts you could see all my ribs. I pushed my body into the crawlspace. As I crouched in the enveloping dust, trying not to cough, a rat ran past me. Until then, I hadn’t realized that rats could run upstairs. I heard the scraping of its claws traversing the steps and was struck by the realization that this creature was free to roam while I was stuck in this hole. I was on a downward spiral. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a boyfriend. The latest one, despite being an addict himself, had found me to be too much work. He left me with a cocaine habit on top of my heroin one. I would get powder cocaine as a bonus from my dealer if I produced the correct amount of money for my packages of heroin. I had no one to blame but myself. I had refused rehab two years earlier despite the urgings of my parents. They had arranged for me to be transported from San Francisco to a center near my hometown. They became particularly concerned after I’d gone to the hospital to have a procedure to drain an abscess on my arm. This was in addition to infections I already had brewing on three other limbs. When I woke up from surgery in handcuffs, for a few seconds I considered going to rehab in Ohio. Yet despite all the evidence that it was time to stop, I was just not ready. I didn’t want to waste their money. This time, crouched under the stairs two years later, I finally felt it—it was time to stop. This time would be different. There were no more worthwhile highs, there was no more joy in drugs for me. I was not living anymore, just carving out a dull existence in my bruised flesh. I was done. I waited until the cops left—they never found my room. I paid by the night so I moved rooms every few days. I made up my mind as I untangled my body from the hiding place, brushing dust and bits of cobwebs from my hair. I’d evaded them this time, but whenever the police found me, I decided, I would go willingly and try to get clean. Many addicts find their way to recovery by accident. Mine was more of a planned surrender. When I got to my room, I packed a suitcase and put it in the closet, hoping I’d be able to take it with me when I was arrested. As soon as people saw you leave the hotel in handcuffs it was like an invitation to come into your space and steal your stuff. Every time I got arrested, I would come home to find nothing left. When I got out of jail this time, I didn’t want to start over with nothing. The police came to my door just after midnight a few days later. My best friend Mike was crashed out on my bed after we had been drinking some beers. Mike was the first person I had known who had been an addict and gotten clean. Unfortunately, he did not stay that way. We used to sit up sometimes on our sleeping bags in the cold alleys of San Francisco before the sun came up as we shed a few tears over the slow deterioration of our lives. Mike did not do heroin, but as an addict he understood me. He was always the first person to defend me. No matter what happened, it seemed as if Mike was there to help me pick up the shattered pieces. Once a man who had assaulted me walked into our den to score drugs. He didn’t realize he was walking into my space, my rules. Mike jumped from the couch. “Is this the guy?” he said. “Yes.” It was him. How could I miss the face? “Did you jack off on this girl?” Mike demanded. “I don’t know,” the man said. “How the fuck do you not know?” Mike said, then turning to me, he said, “Beat the shit out of him, Tracey.” I froze. I couldn’t do it. The man seemed so harmless and small without his knife, but I was still afraid of him. Just letting him go was not an option for Mike. It went against the law of the street. Mike beat him up for me. Mike and I would drink St. Ides, listen to Geto Boys, and talk about getting clean in between binges. He even helped me kick a few times. He would bring me water while I twitched and flopped on his couch for four days, only to see me go back again and again. As I would return to heroin over and over again, I saw his faith in me dwindle. Even among drug users, there is stigma attached to heroin use. An IV heroin user is the lowest of the low. Those who smoke or snort heroin have some superior standing, because it is believed among non-users and users alike that they are somehow not as addicted as those who inject. As a meth user, Mike was confused as to why I returned to something that caused me so much trouble, Stimulants create the illusion that there is no dependency. “I am just using this because I want to . . . I can quit when I want,” Mike told me. Apparently he “wanted” to use it all day every day for months at a time. Heroin was much less subtle. Every morning the call of the sickness would abuse me. Bitch, get up! it told me. There was no reprieve. I never had a pimp. I never needed one. Heroin was pimping me, getting me to do whatever was necessary to make money to feed my habit. This was something Mike could not understand. When he came over that night, I gave him a big hug. He had heard I was dealing now and wanted to see the damage. To celebrate, I plied him with weed and alcohol. I knew he would be too tired to leave. He didn’t realize I had already had a celebration of my own with crack on top of heroin on top of speed. I suspect he was used to it by now. He had become accustomed to my need to be high every second of every moment to make it through the day. I was so high that I accidentally opened the door to the police right away when I heard the knock. With one turn of the knob, I turned my future. As soon as I saw the police, I immediately put my hands up and said, “All the dope is mine,” so they would let Mike go. It only took a minute for them to find the heroin. I had picked up my normal package from my dealer, thirty balloons. I had injected three. The remainders were strewn on the bed. Normally I carried them around in a condom stuffed into my vagina. When I started using my body as a carrying case, all the romance of using was officially dead for me. I was fucked-up beyond reason on those three bags, but like the honor student I once was, I did some quick math. There was still a half ounce left. Shit. As I felt the tightness of the cold steel handcuffs, I started to ask the cops to get the suitcase out of the closet, but then I stopped myself. Did I really want to return to this? Fuck it. I decided to leave everything, walking out with only the pajamas and the pair of shoes I was wearing. I was unsure about the future, but I knew this: I did not want to come back to the room, the Tenderloin, or the life. I told myself this would be the last time I would take this walk of shame to the police car. I gave the Hotel Kinney one last glance through the haze of my sedation. Little did I know I would be back, living around the corner, six months later. Surprisingly, I would return clean. I did not know what awaited me in “recovery.” I had not known anyone who had gotten off drugs and stayed off. All I knew was that if I didn’t make the most of this opportunity, the next time I would get pulled out of this hotel, I would be on the way to the morgue. Like many addicts, I started my recovery in handcuffs. After a series of questions about my medical history, I was allowed to drag a mattress onto the cold floor of what is called the “kick tank.” The cell contained no bunks and was filled with addicts in various states of sickness curled up on the floor. I had been to jail many times, but I had never been deemed enough of a junkie to be sent here. I had heard stories over the years of people dying in here. I knew pain awaited me. My cold-turkey detox started twelve hours later, after the drugs started to leave my body, in a four-person cell. On the first day I was still feeling the effects of the drugs; they started to leave my body on the second day, along with what seemed like all my fluids. We were each given a plastic bag to hold our vomit. I had teary eyes, vomiting, and diarrhea all at the same time, while my legs twitched with involuntary muscle spasms, hence the term “kicking.” The jail provided some over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Doan’s Pills. We had to provide evidence we had puked to get a shot of Compazine, an anti-nausea drug normally given to schizophrenics. Only alcoholics got Librium to help control their fear and anxiety. The reality was everyone needed it. We were all going out of our minds. At the end of day two, I was shaking so hard and it was so noisy in the jail, I felt like I had boarded a rocket ship. Destination: Unknown. My body was detoxing from who knows how many substances. I was hallucinating so badly I started searching for syringes in my blanket because instinct told me drugs were the only thing that could keep me from dying. The day you stop using is the day your recovery starts. Recovery begins with the body and slowly works on the mind. The body shakes and shivers as layers of toxic substances are cleared away to make room for something new. It is as if you are shedding your skin. The body must be cleared of the very thing it desires. The body wants to pace, wants to run away. You feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest and then you realize you cannot get out of bed. By the third day my mind was clear enough to question everything. Recovery is both a noun and a verb. I did not know who I was any more than I knew what to do next. I got into a fight with another inmate, about something. She lunged at me, thinking she would take advantage of my vulnerable state. At that moment, I was in need of an outlet and she was it. As she jumped on top of me, I reached for her neck, pulling her off me with all my nervous energy. As I brought my other arm back to beat the hell out of her I had a moment of clarity. I am done fighting. I am not doing this anymore. When I get out of this motherfucking kick tank, I thought, I am asking to go to a program. Fuck this life. This was my eleventh time kicking heroin, and it would be my last. Adapted excerpt from "The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin" by Tracey Helton Mitchell. Available from Seal Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved. 
Black tar heroin—a dark, sticky substance that’s dirtier than the white powder version—is well-known for destroying its host. There was no symbiotic relationship between it and me. My body was ravaged by the very substance that maintained my existence. By twenty-seven years old, I was far from the wide-eyed young woman who had stepped off the bus from Ohio. I was a hardened soul with years of jails, homelessness, and a few abusive relationships under my belt. The only thing I had to be proud of was that I was able to survive in a world that killed so many. I became the things that had once made me so afraid. I was unpredictable. I was occasionally violent. Most of all, I had a tenuous hold on sanity. I had spent time locked in a psychiatric facility for three days on an involuntary hold. I had to admit those were some of my best days in recent years—I was safe, well fed, and able to rest without fear of being assaulted. My life as an IV drug user had hit a low point. I had run out of veins, leaving me little choice but to stick syringes in the soles of my feet. When users run out of “surface” veins, there are a few alternatives. One is using the jugular vein, the one located in your neck. This can be very dangerous since it is located so close to your brain. I knew someone who died from a blood clot a few days after choosing this path. The second choice is using the femoral, or the vein in the groin. This one cannot be seen. There is also a high risk of breaking off the needle, as I had seen happen to my former lover. A third option is called “muscling,” or shooting the drugs directly into the muscle. This has caused many a soft tissue infection, also known as an abscess. The last and certainly least attractive choice was to quit using altogether. By this time, using felt like knitting needles were tearing away at my skin. I was barely able to walk a few yards at a time, yet I continued to trek up and down the city streets for a few hours a day to sell heroin to junkies like myself before coming home to my hotel in the Tenderloin district. The Hotel Kinney was known as a “trap house” because it was filled with junkies and small-time dealers, and people would get trapped there. Young women stepped off the Greyhound from the suburbs, as I did, and never left. I paid $35 a night to live with roaches, rodents, and a mix of immigrants who were trying to start a new life and junkies who stood a good chance of ending theirs in one of the empty rooms. But this particular night I wasn’t thinking about my neighbors as I dragged my tired ass up the stairs. I just needed to keep putting one swollen foot in front of the other. I had gone up almost a full flight of stairs when I heard the front door open behind me. Half turning, I saw two cops coming into my building. I knew they were looking for me before I even heard them say my name to the front desk clerk. One cop spied me on the stairs. “You there,” he called out. “Stop.” I froze, trying not to panic. Stay cool, for fuck’s sake, I told myself. I couldn’t make a run for it even if I wanted to. They asked me for directions to Tracey’s room. I told them I didn’t know who they were talking about. I later learned the police had only my name and a vague description of what I looked like from a confidential informant. I let them pass me before turning around and, trying not to appear too freaked, went back downstairs to a small pocket underneath the stairwell. I didn’t need much room. Starved by daily drug use, I was a walking skeleton. Underneath my three T-shirts you could see all my ribs. I pushed my body into the crawlspace. As I crouched in the enveloping dust, trying not to cough, a rat ran past me. Until then, I hadn’t realized that rats could run upstairs. I heard the scraping of its claws traversing the steps and was struck by the realization that this creature was free to roam while I was stuck in this hole. I was on a downward spiral. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a boyfriend. The latest one, despite being an addict himself, had found me to be too much work. He left me with a cocaine habit on top of my heroin one. I would get powder cocaine as a bonus from my dealer if I produced the correct amount of money for my packages of heroin. I had no one to blame but myself. I had refused rehab two years earlier despite the urgings of my parents. They had arranged for me to be transported from San Francisco to a center near my hometown. They became particularly concerned after I’d gone to the hospital to have a procedure to drain an abscess on my arm. This was in addition to infections I already had brewing on three other limbs. When I woke up from surgery in handcuffs, for a few seconds I considered going to rehab in Ohio. Yet despite all the evidence that it was time to stop, I was just not ready. I didn’t want to waste their money. This time, crouched under the stairs two years later, I finally felt it—it was time to stop. This time would be different. There were no more worthwhile highs, there was no more joy in drugs for me. I was not living anymore, just carving out a dull existence in my bruised flesh. I was done. I waited until the cops left—they never found my room. I paid by the night so I moved rooms every few days. I made up my mind as I untangled my body from the hiding place, brushing dust and bits of cobwebs from my hair. I’d evaded them this time, but whenever the police found me, I decided, I would go willingly and try to get clean. Many addicts find their way to recovery by accident. Mine was more of a planned surrender. When I got to my room, I packed a suitcase and put it in the closet, hoping I’d be able to take it with me when I was arrested. As soon as people saw you leave the hotel in handcuffs it was like an invitation to come into your space and steal your stuff. Every time I got arrested, I would come home to find nothing left. When I got out of jail this time, I didn’t want to start over with nothing. The police came to my door just after midnight a few days later. My best friend Mike was crashed out on my bed after we had been drinking some beers. Mike was the first person I had known who had been an addict and gotten clean. Unfortunately, he did not stay that way. We used to sit up sometimes on our sleeping bags in the cold alleys of San Francisco before the sun came up as we shed a few tears over the slow deterioration of our lives. Mike did not do heroin, but as an addict he understood me. He was always the first person to defend me. No matter what happened, it seemed as if Mike was there to help me pick up the shattered pieces. Once a man who had assaulted me walked into our den to score drugs. He didn’t realize he was walking into my space, my rules. Mike jumped from the couch. “Is this the guy?” he said. “Yes.” It was him. How could I miss the face? “Did you jack off on this girl?” Mike demanded. “I don’t know,” the man said. “How the fuck do you not know?” Mike said, then turning to me, he said, “Beat the shit out of him, Tracey.” I froze. I couldn’t do it. The man seemed so harmless and small without his knife, but I was still afraid of him. Just letting him go was not an option for Mike. It went against the law of the street. Mike beat him up for me. Mike and I would drink St. Ides, listen to Geto Boys, and talk about getting clean in between binges. He even helped me kick a few times. He would bring me water while I twitched and flopped on his couch for four days, only to see me go back again and again. As I would return to heroin over and over again, I saw his faith in me dwindle. Even among drug users, there is stigma attached to heroin use. An IV heroin user is the lowest of the low. Those who smoke or snort heroin have some superior standing, because it is believed among non-users and users alike that they are somehow not as addicted as those who inject. As a meth user, Mike was confused as to why I returned to something that caused me so much trouble, Stimulants create the illusion that there is no dependency. “I am just using this because I want to . . . I can quit when I want,” Mike told me. Apparently he “wanted” to use it all day every day for months at a time. Heroin was much less subtle. Every morning the call of the sickness would abuse me. Bitch, get up! it told me. There was no reprieve. I never had a pimp. I never needed one. Heroin was pimping me, getting me to do whatever was necessary to make money to feed my habit. This was something Mike could not understand. When he came over that night, I gave him a big hug. He had heard I was dealing now and wanted to see the damage. To celebrate, I plied him with weed and alcohol. I knew he would be too tired to leave. He didn’t realize I had already had a celebration of my own with crack on top of heroin on top of speed. I suspect he was used to it by now. He had become accustomed to my need to be high every second of every moment to make it through the day. I was so high that I accidentally opened the door to the police right away when I heard the knock. With one turn of the knob, I turned my future. As soon as I saw the police, I immediately put my hands up and said, “All the dope is mine,” so they would let Mike go. It only took a minute for them to find the heroin. I had picked up my normal package from my dealer, thirty balloons. I had injected three. The remainders were strewn on the bed. Normally I carried them around in a condom stuffed into my vagina. When I started using my body as a carrying case, all the romance of using was officially dead for me. I was fucked-up beyond reason on those three bags, but like the honor student I once was, I did some quick math. There was still a half ounce left. Shit. As I felt the tightness of the cold steel handcuffs, I started to ask the cops to get the suitcase out of the closet, but then I stopped myself. Did I really want to return to this? Fuck it. I decided to leave everything, walking out with only the pajamas and the pair of shoes I was wearing. I was unsure about the future, but I knew this: I did not want to come back to the room, the Tenderloin, or the life. I told myself this would be the last time I would take this walk of shame to the police car. I gave the Hotel Kinney one last glance through the haze of my sedation. Little did I know I would be back, living around the corner, six months later. Surprisingly, I would return clean. I did not know what awaited me in “recovery.” I had not known anyone who had gotten off drugs and stayed off. All I knew was that if I didn’t make the most of this opportunity, the next time I would get pulled out of this hotel, I would be on the way to the morgue. Like many addicts, I started my recovery in handcuffs. After a series of questions about my medical history, I was allowed to drag a mattress onto the cold floor of what is called the “kick tank.” The cell contained no bunks and was filled with addicts in various states of sickness curled up on the floor. I had been to jail many times, but I had never been deemed enough of a junkie to be sent here. I had heard stories over the years of people dying in here. I knew pain awaited me. My cold-turkey detox started twelve hours later, after the drugs started to leave my body, in a four-person cell. On the first day I was still feeling the effects of the drugs; they started to leave my body on the second day, along with what seemed like all my fluids. We were each given a plastic bag to hold our vomit. I had teary eyes, vomiting, and diarrhea all at the same time, while my legs twitched with involuntary muscle spasms, hence the term “kicking.” The jail provided some over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Doan’s Pills. We had to provide evidence we had puked to get a shot of Compazine, an anti-nausea drug normally given to schizophrenics. Only alcoholics got Librium to help control their fear and anxiety. The reality was everyone needed it. We were all going out of our minds. At the end of day two, I was shaking so hard and it was so noisy in the jail, I felt like I had boarded a rocket ship. Destination: Unknown. My body was detoxing from who knows how many substances. I was hallucinating so badly I started searching for syringes in my blanket because instinct told me drugs were the only thing that could keep me from dying. The day you stop using is the day your recovery starts. Recovery begins with the body and slowly works on the mind. The body shakes and shivers as layers of toxic substances are cleared away to make room for something new. It is as if you are shedding your skin. The body must be cleared of the very thing it desires. The body wants to pace, wants to run away. You feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest and then you realize you cannot get out of bed. By the third day my mind was clear enough to question everything. Recovery is both a noun and a verb. I did not know who I was any more than I knew what to do next. I got into a fight with another inmate, about something. She lunged at me, thinking she would take advantage of my vulnerable state. At that moment, I was in need of an outlet and she was it. As she jumped on top of me, I reached for her neck, pulling her off me with all my nervous energy. As I brought my other arm back to beat the hell out of her I had a moment of clarity. I am done fighting. I am not doing this anymore. When I get out of this motherfucking kick tank, I thought, I am asking to go to a program. Fuck this life. This was my eleventh time kicking heroin, and it would be my last. Adapted excerpt from "The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin" by Tracey Helton Mitchell. Available from Seal Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.
Black tar heroin—a dark, sticky substance that’s dirtier than the white powder version—is well-known for destroying its host. There was no symbiotic relationship between it and me. My body was ravaged by the very substance that maintained my existence. By twenty-seven years old, I was far from the wide-eyed young woman who had stepped off the bus from Ohio. I was a hardened soul with years of jails, homelessness, and a few abusive relationships under my belt. The only thing I had to be proud of was that I was able to survive in a world that killed so many. I became the things that had once made me so afraid. I was unpredictable. I was occasionally violent. Most of all, I had a tenuous hold on sanity. I had spent time locked in a psychiatric facility for three days on an involuntary hold. I had to admit those were some of my best days in recent years—I was safe, well fed, and able to rest without fear of being assaulted. My life as an IV drug user had hit a low point. I had run out of veins, leaving me little choice but to stick syringes in the soles of my feet. When users run out of “surface” veins, there are a few alternatives. One is using the jugular vein, the one located in your neck. This can be very dangerous since it is located so close to your brain. I knew someone who died from a blood clot a few days after choosing this path. The second choice is using the femoral, or the vein in the groin. This one cannot be seen. There is also a high risk of breaking off the needle, as I had seen happen to my former lover. A third option is called “muscling,” or shooting the drugs directly into the muscle. This has caused many a soft tissue infection, also known as an abscess. The last and certainly least attractive choice was to quit using altogether. By this time, using felt like knitting needles were tearing away at my skin. I was barely able to walk a few yards at a time, yet I continued to trek up and down the city streets for a few hours a day to sell heroin to junkies like myself before coming home to my hotel in the Tenderloin district. The Hotel Kinney was known as a “trap house” because it was filled with junkies and small-time dealers, and people would get trapped there. Young women stepped off the Greyhound from the suburbs, as I did, and never left. I paid $35 a night to live with roaches, rodents, and a mix of immigrants who were trying to start a new life and junkies who stood a good chance of ending theirs in one of the empty rooms. But this particular night I wasn’t thinking about my neighbors as I dragged my tired ass up the stairs. I just needed to keep putting one swollen foot in front of the other. I had gone up almost a full flight of stairs when I heard the front door open behind me. Half turning, I saw two cops coming into my building. I knew they were looking for me before I even heard them say my name to the front desk clerk. One cop spied me on the stairs. “You there,” he called out. “Stop.” I froze, trying not to panic. Stay cool, for fuck’s sake, I told myself. I couldn’t make a run for it even if I wanted to. They asked me for directions to Tracey’s room. I told them I didn’t know who they were talking about. I later learned the police had only my name and a vague description of what I looked like from a confidential informant. I let them pass me before turning around and, trying not to appear too freaked, went back downstairs to a small pocket underneath the stairwell. I didn’t need much room. Starved by daily drug use, I was a walking skeleton. Underneath my three T-shirts you could see all my ribs. I pushed my body into the crawlspace. As I crouched in the enveloping dust, trying not to cough, a rat ran past me. Until then, I hadn’t realized that rats could run upstairs. I heard the scraping of its claws traversing the steps and was struck by the realization that this creature was free to roam while I was stuck in this hole. I was on a downward spiral. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a boyfriend. The latest one, despite being an addict himself, had found me to be too much work. He left me with a cocaine habit on top of my heroin one. I would get powder cocaine as a bonus from my dealer if I produced the correct amount of money for my packages of heroin. I had no one to blame but myself. I had refused rehab two years earlier despite the urgings of my parents. They had arranged for me to be transported from San Francisco to a center near my hometown. They became particularly concerned after I’d gone to the hospital to have a procedure to drain an abscess on my arm. This was in addition to infections I already had brewing on three other limbs. When I woke up from surgery in handcuffs, for a few seconds I considered going to rehab in Ohio. Yet despite all the evidence that it was time to stop, I was just not ready. I didn’t want to waste their money. This time, crouched under the stairs two years later, I finally felt it—it was time to stop. This time would be different. There were no more worthwhile highs, there was no more joy in drugs for me. I was not living anymore, just carving out a dull existence in my bruised flesh. I was done. I waited until the cops left—they never found my room. I paid by the night so I moved rooms every few days. I made up my mind as I untangled my body from the hiding place, brushing dust and bits of cobwebs from my hair. I’d evaded them this time, but whenever the police found me, I decided, I would go willingly and try to get clean. Many addicts find their way to recovery by accident. Mine was more of a planned surrender. When I got to my room, I packed a suitcase and put it in the closet, hoping I’d be able to take it with me when I was arrested. As soon as people saw you leave the hotel in handcuffs it was like an invitation to come into your space and steal your stuff. Every time I got arrested, I would come home to find nothing left. When I got out of jail this time, I didn’t want to start over with nothing. The police came to my door just after midnight a few days later. My best friend Mike was crashed out on my bed after we had been drinking some beers. Mike was the first person I had known who had been an addict and gotten clean. Unfortunately, he did not stay that way. We used to sit up sometimes on our sleeping bags in the cold alleys of San Francisco before the sun came up as we shed a few tears over the slow deterioration of our lives. Mike did not do heroin, but as an addict he understood me. He was always the first person to defend me. No matter what happened, it seemed as if Mike was there to help me pick up the shattered pieces. Once a man who had assaulted me walked into our den to score drugs. He didn’t realize he was walking into my space, my rules. Mike jumped from the couch. “Is this the guy?” he said. “Yes.” It was him. How could I miss the face? “Did you jack off on this girl?” Mike demanded. “I don’t know,” the man said. “How the fuck do you not know?” Mike said, then turning to me, he said, “Beat the shit out of him, Tracey.” I froze. I couldn’t do it. The man seemed so harmless and small without his knife, but I was still afraid of him. Just letting him go was not an option for Mike. It went against the law of the street. Mike beat him up for me. Mike and I would drink St. Ides, listen to Geto Boys, and talk about getting clean in between binges. He even helped me kick a few times. He would bring me water while I twitched and flopped on his couch for four days, only to see me go back again and again. As I would return to heroin over and over again, I saw his faith in me dwindle. Even among drug users, there is stigma attached to heroin use. An IV heroin user is the lowest of the low. Those who smoke or snort heroin have some superior standing, because it is believed among non-users and users alike that they are somehow not as addicted as those who inject. As a meth user, Mike was confused as to why I returned to something that caused me so much trouble, Stimulants create the illusion that there is no dependency. “I am just using this because I want to . . . I can quit when I want,” Mike told me. Apparently he “wanted” to use it all day every day for months at a time. Heroin was much less subtle. Every morning the call of the sickness would abuse me. Bitch, get up! it told me. There was no reprieve. I never had a pimp. I never needed one. Heroin was pimping me, getting me to do whatever was necessary to make money to feed my habit. This was something Mike could not understand. When he came over that night, I gave him a big hug. He had heard I was dealing now and wanted to see the damage. To celebrate, I plied him with weed and alcohol. I knew he would be too tired to leave. He didn’t realize I had already had a celebration of my own with crack on top of heroin on top of speed. I suspect he was used to it by now. He had become accustomed to my need to be high every second of every moment to make it through the day. I was so high that I accidentally opened the door to the police right away when I heard the knock. With one turn of the knob, I turned my future. As soon as I saw the police, I immediately put my hands up and said, “All the dope is mine,” so they would let Mike go. It only took a minute for them to find the heroin. I had picked up my normal package from my dealer, thirty balloons. I had injected three. The remainders were strewn on the bed. Normally I carried them around in a condom stuffed into my vagina. When I started using my body as a carrying case, all the romance of using was officially dead for me. I was fucked-up beyond reason on those three bags, but like the honor student I once was, I did some quick math. There was still a half ounce left. Shit. As I felt the tightness of the cold steel handcuffs, I started to ask the cops to get the suitcase out of the closet, but then I stopped myself. Did I really want to return to this? Fuck it. I decided to leave everything, walking out with only the pajamas and the pair of shoes I was wearing. I was unsure about the future, but I knew this: I did not want to come back to the room, the Tenderloin, or the life. I told myself this would be the last time I would take this walk of shame to the police car. I gave the Hotel Kinney one last glance through the haze of my sedation. Little did I know I would be back, living around the corner, six months later. Surprisingly, I would return clean. I did not know what awaited me in “recovery.” I had not known anyone who had gotten off drugs and stayed off. All I knew was that if I didn’t make the most of this opportunity, the next time I would get pulled out of this hotel, I would be on the way to the morgue. Like many addicts, I started my recovery in handcuffs. After a series of questions about my medical history, I was allowed to drag a mattress onto the cold floor of what is called the “kick tank.” The cell contained no bunks and was filled with addicts in various states of sickness curled up on the floor. I had been to jail many times, but I had never been deemed enough of a junkie to be sent here. I had heard stories over the years of people dying in here. I knew pain awaited me. My cold-turkey detox started twelve hours later, after the drugs started to leave my body, in a four-person cell. On the first day I was still feeling the effects of the drugs; they started to leave my body on the second day, along with what seemed like all my fluids. We were each given a plastic bag to hold our vomit. I had teary eyes, vomiting, and diarrhea all at the same time, while my legs twitched with involuntary muscle spasms, hence the term “kicking.” The jail provided some over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Doan’s Pills. We had to provide evidence we had puked to get a shot of Compazine, an anti-nausea drug normally given to schizophrenics. Only alcoholics got Librium to help control their fear and anxiety. The reality was everyone needed it. We were all going out of our minds. At the end of day two, I was shaking so hard and it was so noisy in the jail, I felt like I had boarded a rocket ship. Destination: Unknown. My body was detoxing from who knows how many substances. I was hallucinating so badly I started searching for syringes in my blanket because instinct told me drugs were the only thing that could keep me from dying. The day you stop using is the day your recovery starts. Recovery begins with the body and slowly works on the mind. The body shakes and shivers as layers of toxic substances are cleared away to make room for something new. It is as if you are shedding your skin. The body must be cleared of the very thing it desires. The body wants to pace, wants to run away. You feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest and then you realize you cannot get out of bed. By the third day my mind was clear enough to question everything. Recovery is both a noun and a verb. I did not know who I was any more than I knew what to do next. I got into a fight with another inmate, about something. She lunged at me, thinking she would take advantage of my vulnerable state. At that moment, I was in need of an outlet and she was it. As she jumped on top of me, I reached for her neck, pulling her off me with all my nervous energy. As I brought my other arm back to beat the hell out of her I had a moment of clarity. I am done fighting. I am not doing this anymore. When I get out of this motherfucking kick tank, I thought, I am asking to go to a program. Fuck this life. This was my eleventh time kicking heroin, and it would be my last. Adapted excerpt from "The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin" by Tracey Helton Mitchell. Available from Seal Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.
