A House Divided

When I wrote about the election of the first woman president in the United States in my last post it was with more than hope, it was with conviction. There was a worm of a doubt buried deep in my gut that she might not win, but it was of the kind that makes us think about the sudden occurrence of a tsunami when we don’t even live near the ocean, or the thought of an endless darkness in death. It just couldn’t happen. Now, as in some Stanley Kubrick-like science fiction movie, we are faced with the reality that a considerable part of the America that voted wants to be the old, white, decaying man in the Kubrick movie, or are the apes screaming and scratching their heads at the monolith they’ve come upon, which is the present day America most of the rest of us inhabit.

It was with a lead-filled heart that I read about the 53% of white women that voted for a man who considers them no more than a hunk of meat and treats them worse than that. A woman abuser. A misogynist who even worded expressions of lust towards his own daughter. I guess, like the movies about women presidents (see post Down the Rabbit Hole…and Into the White House) women that voted for this man, in their subordinated mind, can also only conceive a woman as president of the United States as science fiction or comedy.

As the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir wrote so well: “When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior." To have voted for someone who sullies the very essence of who we are as women is to have internalized inferiority.

Could that also apply to the people who did not vote? Fewer than 26% of eligible American voters cast their vote. What a waste of such an important right and responsibility! And the majority of voters behind the man who won were white, dreaming of making America that place where racism allowed them to use their privilege as oppression; so not so great a time to go back to if you were a woman, disabled, gay, or belonged to a racial / ethnic minority. How hard it is for the privileged to give up the illusion of the righteousness of their privilege! How difficult to embrace difference and equality! I must admit that in a nation that holds up its modernity as a badge of honor I did not expect to see, in the 21^st century, a desire to take this country back to its darkest days of bigotry, inequality and hatred.  

I begin this post with two photographs, one from a movie released in 1915 and one released this year; both share a title: The Birth of a Nation. The first movie was originally titled The Clansman, like the book on which it was based, and was directed by Kentucky native D.W. Griffith. This movie is a glorification of the Klu Klux Klan. Enough said. One hundred years later, a black director, Nate Parker, has made a movie with the same title, but this time to honor the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1830. The movie made by Griffith was part of the hate-filled, bigoted campaign to maintain racist views and subjugation, a philosophy of hate that has been at the basis of the plight of people of color ever since, as is vividly depicted in another movie released this year, a documentary this time, brilliantly directed by Ava DuVernay:  “13^th”.  

 

"13th" Documentary by Director Ava DuVernay

Griffith’s movie helped support a philosophy of hate, and thankfully we’ve moved away from that as a society. The movies of the 21^st century have moved in the opposite direction, towards laying the ground for understanding, unity and progress. Many, like 12 Years a Slave, the new Birth of a Nation, Selma, Race, return to those dark times as a reminder of the horror of what it was. As we read about the endorsement of the KKK for the new president, and about white supremacists, nationalists and anti-immigrants being appointed to positions of power in the new administration, people who would divide this nation once again, we should turn to these movies and remember what it would be like to have another “Ku Klux influx” (borrowing a term from the amazing novel, The Sellout, by the first American author to win the Man Booker literary award this year).

It is certainly one of the greatest ironies of life that the KKK uses a Christian symbol when theirs is a philosophy of division and hate, the diametrical opposite of what Jesus Christ predicated: “Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.” (John, 4:8). It was also Christ that first spoke about the evils of a house divided (Mathew 12:25), which Abraham Lincoln, speaking against slavery, then took upon himself to remind the people of the United States about: “A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Moonlight, Directed by Barry Jenkins

Movies like Fruitvale Station, Straight out of Compton, or Moonlight, clearly one of the best movies of 2016, remind us of how far we still have to go to reach that point where our humanity, everyone’s humanity, is recognized, respected and allowed to thrive. We’ve been held back by bigotry, which now wants to raise its unbearable head once again.

But let’s never forget that the first woman to run for President of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, won the popular vote. She lost the Electoral College vote (the second time this happens in this century), but most of the Americans who voted, voted for her and for the future she stood for, one of progress and not regression. This is one house that can no longer be divided because many women, people of color, the LGBT community, people with a disability, and all those people of good will who want a better, more humane tomorrow for everyone, know that there is no going back.