Earlier today, an online friend asked me to lie to her and
tell her I thought we were all going to be okay. She’s an intelligent woman and
not someone I’d think of as a head-in-the-sand type, and I’m pretty sure she
knows I’m not going to lie. But, her comment made me think about what I’ve been
putting out into the world for the past couple of months. So, this post is part
balance, part mea culpa. None of it is a lie.
I do believe that we are at greater risk for both nuclear
engagement and terrorist attacks on American soil than at any point in history.
I also believe these potential conflicts, should they arise, will have a
devastating impact on the world as a whole. I can’t sugar coat that, and those
are risks I think most people aren’t taking seriously enough, so I tend to
reiterate them.
I can count on my thumbs the number of times in my adult
life that I’ve been able-bodied and clear-headed and entirely unable to think
of a productive step to take. That’s the position I’m in now, and it’s beyond
uncomfortable for me. It’s downright frightening.
In the wake of the election, I knew exactly what to do, from
working with the faithless elector movement to providing legal research to some
important (but ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to set things right. If our
current administration starts bar coding Muslims or making good on some of our
new President’s other insane promises, I know how to fight that.
I do not know of a single thing I, or you, can do to
minimize the chances that Donald Trump will provoke a war out of ego and inexperience,
nor that his anti-Muslim rhetoric will convince the Muslims of the world that
we are their enemy. I’m not a marcher. I need direct, productive action steps.
The uncharacteristic sense of helplessness I feel in not having an action step
regarding these all-important issues, I think, makes me sound more alarmist
than people are accustomed to.
That’s real.
But, it’s not the whole story.
I believe the vast majority of Republicans are not insane.
The current legislature will undoubtedly make many decisions we don’t agree
with and some, like the swift changes to health care legislation, will have a
significant impact on millions of people. But, we can fight bad law. It’s
happened before and it will happen again—at any point in time, our legislature
seems wrong-headed and destructive to some of us. The current state of the
legislature is, from my perspective, very bad news. But, it’s not cause for
panic. When people say “he has both houses of Congress,” I don’t think that’s
accurate. Paul Ryan and his ilk are not my kind of legislators, but they are
not Donald Trump.
I believe that people with more information and more power
than you or I are doing their jobs. That includes the U.S. intelligence
community. These are people who—again, political beliefs aside—have devoted
their lives to the security of the United States of America. They know more
about Trump’s ties to Russia, his history and his financial dealings than we
do, and if they conclude that he is under the influence of Putin, colluded with
Russia or is otherwise intentionally acting against the interests of the
country, I do not believe they will stand by and allow that to continue.
I am connected with a network of more than 120,000 attorneys
who are committed to fighting to keep this country what it was meant to be—and,
of course, there are many others who don’t happen to be part of this group.
Members of this group started the faithless elector research, provided research
assistance for the elector lawsuit in Colorado, uncovered the 50+ electors who
were not legally entitled to serve in that capacity and started the early
research on standing to file suit on the conflicts of interest issues. Others
are teaching workshops to allow attorneys in other fields to step in and defend
protesters, provide immigration assistance and fill other emerging needs.
Many of them, like me, are in a state of uncertainty. We’re
mourning, angry and frightened just like every thinking person in the world.
But, we don’t stay this way. Our nature
and our training is to analyze and act—and we’re just one group.
I am also very encouraged by the response from the rest of
the world. Although it makes me physically ill to see other countries
protesting the inauguration of the U.S. President in the same way they
protested apartheid and the Tienanmen Square massacre, I am heartened to see
that both citizens and governments around the world are prepared to act, and
that they seem to see clearly that it is an individual and not our system or
our people that pose a threat.
When tragedy and danger strike hand-in-hand, it’s
disorienting. But, the initial shock passes. History says we’re a resilient
people, and that once you get our collective attention, we can move mountains.
Meanwhile, our new President seems wholly preoccupied with
his inauguration numbers and convincing himself that we don’t really disdain
him as much as it appears. There’s a lot of criticism flying about that, but
I’m happy to see it. The longer he remains distracted, the more time he invests
in tweeting about his television show and persuading himself that a lot of
people came to his inauguration, the less damage he’s doing. And, while he’s
arranging for ringers to make it seem like what he says is well-received, intelligent,
competent people around the country are shaking off the shock and mobilizing.
