From now until at least the midterm elections in November, we’ll be featuring essays from powerful cultural voices alongside one simple thing, chosen by the author, that you can do to take action against the paralyzing apoplexy of the daily news. Maybe it’ll be an organization that deserves your donation; maybe it’ll be an issue that deserves greater awareness. Whatever it is, our aim is to remind you, and ourselves, of the big and small things we can do to work toward justice and change.
Travesty
by Jay Cantor
We need to take action because Donald Trump’s supposed nationalism is nothing but the usual vicious, insecure, and tawdry white racism, his own image writ large, as if we were a nation of such fragile egos that we could only sustain our pride, as he does his, by scapegoating the Mexican, the Muslim, the African-American. We need to take action because with a buffoon’s bluster, he has set about trying to destroy any who oppose his fickle, authoritarian will, spewing his slime on the courts, the few members of the legislative branch who have had the courage to criticize him, any in the press who hold him accountable, and the masses who demonstrate against him. We need to take action because though this flailing clown may easily be made to seem comical, a travestied version of fascism is still fascism.
Take action today:
Support the ACLU. And support the candidates you think will do the most to help stop Trump.
Jay Cantor is a novelist, essayist, and professor at Tufts University. His most recent book is Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka.