After hiding out and growing an epic beard, David Letterman has returned to entertainment with a new show on Netflix called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction”. The guest list is set to be filled with stars and activists like George Clooney, Malala Yousafzi, Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), Tina Fey, and the 44th President, himself, Barack Obama. The premiere episode featured number 44 having a casual conversation with Mr. Letterman that was set in front of a stage of a few thousand. The special was a little under an hour and a small grin was on my face the entire time. Watching him speak, I became nostalgic of what we, as a country, once had. I sincerely forgot that Donald Trump was, in reality, the current president.
In the spirit of Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father, I feel as though I’ve watched the dreams of my own father shatter before me in just two arduous years. There was a disheartening juxtaposition of the emotions he felt between two presidencies. For eight years, I watched how proud he was seeing an eloquent, caring, charismatic black man who was married to a black woman, with a black family be the face of America.
This was then followed by disdain at the mindset of a country that would allow a man with hate-speech and fear tactics to encourage a country to regress to a time where white men, and only white men, reigned supreme.
My father, a Caribbean immigrant, came here in the 1980s, a time in which opportunities for minorities and immigrants were abundant. Things were by no means perfect, but the “American dream” felt like a reality to most. My father worked late nights parking cars, delivering food on bikes, all while attempting to learn English and attending the City College of New York as an Engineering major. Today, my father is one of the brightest men I’ve met and a valuable asset to his job. He works for the government, doing the calculations that help ensure our American planes land safely. With scores of books in English and French, alike, he has a love of literature and math— both values that derived from his home country.
He’s Haitian.
Imagine knowing your country’s rich history and the influence it had globally. Imagine leaving your country to come to America. Imagine incorporating the values that your country gave you so that you could contribute positively to society for 40 years. Imagine your new President calls your country a sh*thole.
I fear for America.
Every day we become more and more polarized, and the thought of civil war in the near future becomes less and less ludicrous. As a progressive, I can admit that the words conservative, GOP, and Trump supporter evoke anger out of me. And I’m positive that they feel the same when they hear the words liberal, socialist, and progressive. What seemed like progress for so long, on the part of college-educated young liberals in metropolitan city centers, had actually been marginalizing a large sub-sect of America: the lower-middle class, those in rural areas, the less-educated. Barack Obama had campaigned on a platform of change, and for those of us who supported his mission, we overlooked the fact that, to many Americans, change is actually very scary.
The current state of American politics is the result of everyone:
Those who did not vote.
Those who did not vote because their preferred candidate did not make it to the final two.
Those who were ignorant of this outcome and the possibility that this could ever happen.
Those who let their emotions get the best of them.
Those who let themselves succumb to false facts and empty promises.
Those who put their individual needs over the greater good of the country.
However, we cannot look back and see our mistakes if our intention is not to reflect and move forward. So, where do we go from here?
As John F. Kennedy once said: “Ask what not your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The state of American politics is bleak, and inching closer and closer to that of an oligarchy. As it stands right now, wealthy, heterosexual, white men are in control, and they are not looking to relinquish that control easily to the lower and middle classes, LGBT+ people, non-whites, and women. As the “others,” and allies to the others, we must actively work to make this country truly great. We need to create our own businesses, our own technology and applications, our own media, climb up corporate ladders, infiltrate spheres of influence and more importantly, create our own. Already, I have watched my peers and fellow millennials shift our culture. For example, ThinkfulHQ, an application my friend told me about, is changing the way we are educated. The government may be pulling back federal support for education, but forward-thinkers found a way around it.
Living in this era is very “weird”. That’s not a very eloquent way to put it, but it’s how I truly feel. I simultaneously am constantly in awe of what we have accomplished with regards to innovation and am disgusted with how backward we are.
We have to also remind those who have praised Donald Trump for so long that the future he has for America is not for them.
Trump campaigns for the 1% and the incendiary nature of his xenophobic, homophobic, racist commentary is meant to deflect. He appeals to a certain demographic only in the social sense. He baits to certain values. However, economically, Trump supporters, too, will be at a loss if they continue to blindly follow this president.
If you refer to any history source you will discover that once upon a time, poor whites and minorities used to stand together. This was until the wealthy whites convinced the poor whites that their “whiteness” should take precedence over their financial well-being. Breaks were given to the poor whites and the minorities were left behind in this stratification process. We are the 99%, yet, somehow we are still struggling.
It is because we are divided: social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, geography, religion.
So, should we be hopeless?
I think not.
Remember, this is a country that put Barack Obama in office in the first place.
Let’s learn from our past and our predecessors because we’ll need all hands on deck.
That is, 99% of American hands on deck.