JANUARY 9, 2021 – As we Democrats and democrats view more images of Wednesday’s capitol rampage, we heighten our condemnation of Trumpublicans. They unleashed dark forces, then licensed the assault on democracy. But it’s important to consider what came first—chicken or egg; chicken-poop (Republicans in Congress) or the T. Rex (white supremacy/conspiracy theorists) egg?
The shenanigans in Charlottesville early in the Dark Era led me to a major reassessment of our country. Prior to that ruckus I’d viewed America idealistically as a nation defined not by ethnicity, place of origin, or religious belief but by a set of self-evident, universal principles that blossomed out of the Enlightenment and were chiseled onto the pedestal of Liberty—gift from the descendants of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Lafayette.
Silly me.
We’re in fact a gigantic sardine can made in the U.S.A., wrapped in fancy red, white, and blue paper festooned with stars and stripes. Under the wrap and stuck to the bottom of the can is a warning label: “Contents include foul fish.”
Long before The Apprentice was a (stupid) show, I’d heard first-hand accounts of charlatan Trump. Back in my day as an officer in the “bad loan” division of a large bank, I encountered my counterparts at other lending institutions, some of whom had dealt directly with Donald J. Trash. At the time, their accounts were unflattering of the man. In the context of his subsequent nomination for president, those first-hand stories were deeply disturbing.
But however deranged and deficient Trump was, after Charlottesville I realized he wasn’t the cause. He was the catalyst. Everything about him was “foul,” but his role was as the key lightly soldered to the bottom of the Ameri-can. Thanks not to genius but a lifetime of bullying, he knew how to insert himself into the metal tab of the peel-back cover of our country. By rolling himself up in the fool’s gold cover of a cheap tin can, he revealed an oily mass of “foul fish.” For us with civilized sensibilities, the stink is shocking—in wholesale conflict with the high-end paper-wrap bearing the label, Fabriqué en France.
This image can lead down one of two streams.
Rushing headlong down the first, we cram the crinkly paper wrap into a battered tacklebox marked, “History.” We toss the rotten sardines into the stormy, polluted waters and paddle our corroded can to mist-ladened shores. Whether we find cod, canned salmon or pickled herring . . . or barbed lures . . . depends on whether we land in a Canada, a Norway, a Sweden or a [Bad Place].
The alternative is to transfer sardines to a zip-lock bag, then rinse and salvage the can. Then, after tying flies and placing them in the recycled can, we head for the trout stream—and fresh fish. This isn’t a course for the weak-willed or faint-of-heart. It requires collective effort and lots of patience—only traces of which are American traits.
Which stream will we choose? In the days ahead, we’ll all be fishing for answers.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
