What to Do When Your Country Turns Into a Dumpster Fire

By Michael Harriot, The Root

04 October 20

 

merica is America-ing again.

As a certain coronavirus-y occupant of the White House brazenly intensifies his all-out assault on the Constitution, media, truth, law, order, equality, democracy and everything this beloved country supposedly stands for, our fellow Americans find themselves in a state of confusion and outright despair after wrongly assuming a free supply of “liberty and justice for all” was included in their membership package.

For years, political scientists, historians and a well-regarded organization called “Every Black person who ever existed” have diagnosed America with a neurological condition colloquially known as “being fucked up.” If you, or someone you know, watched the presidential debate and now suffer from the condition experts have termed What Happened to the Illusion of Truth, Equality, National Exceptionalism and Superiority Syndrome (WHITENESS), have no fear, your friendly neighborhood negroes are here.

Luckily (for you, not for us. This shit kinda hurts), Black people have acquired a few useful survival skills born from 401 years of navigating chaos and disorder in a country that ignores our concerns; tramples on our rights and historically called for white supremacists to “stand by” whenever we asked the nation to stop being so damn racist. So, to address the concerns of those who are beginning to suspect that their country might be trash, The Root has created this handy-dandy, eight-step guide to help our Caucasian counterparts survive and—dare I say—thrive, under these adverse conditions.

You may feel overwhelmed by the rapidly spreading dumpster fire that you are currently inhaling but as someone whose been there, let me assure you:

You get used to it.

Step 1: Accept that your country might be trash.

I was Colin Kaepernick’s protest-years-old when I realized that some people actually believe that bullshit in the national anthem. Look, I imagine it feels good to romanticize the past but if you squint really hard at any history book during the twilight’s last gleaming, you might discover that Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1814, when America allowed still the state-sanctioned practice of enslaving Black people. 

The U.S. would continue to permit its citizens to purchase human beings for another half-century, long after Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands stopped that slavery bullshit. While racism exists in varying forms everywhere, those countries didn’t replicate the uniquely American versions of Jim Crow, color-based disenfranchisement and legalized second-class citizenship that still exist in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

To be fair, I was disappointed when I learned that Minnesota didn’t have berets made out of raspberries, crying doves or a single inch of purple precipitation.

Step 2: Realize you’re part of the problem.

Are you outraged that everyone is mute while the current administration tries to sabotage vote-by-mail efforts? Were you frazzled by a clarion call to MAGAmuffin poll watchers?

Well, you probably should’ve said something when Georgia’s Republicans purged 200,000 ballots in Georgia. I bet you cried when they tossed another 209,000 over registrations in Wisconsin. How about when they reduced early voting hours in Ohio? Did you say something about the “poll tax” on Florida felons? Did you share the study that shows Black people wait longer to vote? How did you react when all those Black votes vanished in Georgia?

I know, I know—those incidents of voter suppression didn’t affect you.

Those purges, poll taxes and disappearing votes mostly affected Black people, so you probably didn’t say anything. Perhaps that’s why the country wasn’t up in arms. That’s actually a good point.

But if you silently watched watching someone plan a robbery, you can’t cry when they take your shit.

There have been many corrupt, racist liars who tried to destroy America. There will always be corrupt, racist liars who will try to destroy America. But this country won’t be destroyed by corruption, racism, or lies. It will be because someone recognized the corruption, racism and lies and said:

“___________ .”

Step 3: Stop loving America so damn much.

You were rightfully appalled when Trump shouted out a violent white supremacist group in front of 70 million Americans. Aside from the fact that The Root has been reporting on the Proud Boys and similar groups for nearly four years, who even knew they existed?

Of course, those violent, right-wing extremists didn’t spontaneously manifest themselves into existence. They probably came from the right-wing militias who claim to want to “protect the Constitution.” Or maybe they came from the innocuous far-right groups whom the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have been warning us about for years. 

The nativist movement of the 1830s, the Ku Klux Klan, the nativist movement of the 1920s, the Nazi movement, segregation movement and the alt-right all evolved from supposedly “patriotic” groups who were intent on protecting American values and keeping “America First.”

But America isn’t lines on a map or words on a piece of parchment. America is just people. Whenever someone cloaks themselves in the false flag of “love for country” or refers to themself as a “patriot,” they are usually preparing to grab their tiki torches and long guns so they can ignite a dumpster fire and start killing people who don’t look like them.

Step 4: Don’t fan the flames.

Even if you don’t agree that Black lives matter; even if you don’t like seasoning, even if you refuse to accept the infinite amount of studies proving systemic racism exists in voting, policing, criminal justice, education and healthcare, why would you fight against addressing these problems?

Can we agree that police kill too many human beings? Why not just try to improve all schools? Shouldn’t everyone have better-paying jobs? Why would anyone want more people in jail or more people dying because they can’t afford healthcare? 

Why fight the good shit?

This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know why anyone would support a murderer, oppose an increase in the minimum wage or repeal a law that increased the number of insured Americans. There are also white people who can’t afford insurance. There are more poor and unemployed white people. You know cops shoot white people too, right? 

As the Trumpocalypse devours your beloved country, we will remember how you gathered around the fire and watched us burn. And when we begged you to help us extinguish the flames, you replied:

“Nah. I gotta roast these marshmallows.”

Step 5: Choose a side.

Perhaps this dumpster fire was ignited by people who only consider their needs instead of thinking about the greater good. Whether it’s a global pandemic, “economic anxiety” or the prospect of a post-election free-for-all, you’re going to have to pick a team to represent you in the Great American Shitshow.

The choice isn’t between Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, or even white vs. Black, Indigenous, People of Color Who Use The Correct Bathroom and Have Missionary Sex For Jesus. You have to make a choice between good and evil; right vs. wrong.

Here are your choices:

• People who believe Black lives matter or people who aren’t bothered by videos of Black people getting shot in the face.


• Lower taxes or poor people having access to well-funded schools, community resources, living wages, higher education and affordable healthcare.


• A global pandemic that disproportionately kills poor people or wearing a mask to Walmart.


• Guns vs. guns—but with some common sense rules.


• The right to vote or the right to vote if you have an ID, have never committed a crime, are employed by a company that will let you off work, live in a white neighborhood and don’t mind waiting in line.


• Lawry’s vs. a dash of salt.

Step 6. Do what Black people do. 

Now that your country is in flames, you’re gonna need someone to show you how to survive the fire. Although there are many people who have endured hardship and suffering, there is only one group of people whose record proves them worthy of your allegiance.

Team Black people.

This is not to say that white people aren’t survivors. They survived the bloodiest conflict in American history but they were fighting white people. They survived the Great Depression because the New Deal simply took the tax dollars paid by Black America and built the white middle class. They barely make it through the horrific tan suits; terrorist fist bumps and hidden birth certificates during the Obama presidency and all they had to show for it was free health care, a healthy economy, an international climate change agreement a nuclear-free Iran and five Rihanna albums.

Black people, on the other hand, survived slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, separate but equal, Red Summer, redlining, the civil rights movement, Nixon, the War on Drugs, Ronald Reagan, two Bushes and Donald Trump. And we did it with twice the unemployment, unequal schools lower pay, housing inequality, financial discrimination, racial terrorism and no health care.

And, just as she did during Trump’s reign of terror, Rihanna released very little music during Reconstruction.

See? We been doing this shit.

Step 7: Don’t just stand there! Do something!

We know you’re not an experienced firefighter but you can lend a hand by:

1. Voting for someone who’s not a white nationalist.


2. Saying something every time you spot a microscopic bit of injustice or inequality.


3. Not calling the police every time you feel uncomfortable or upset.


4. Fighting for what’s equality even if it costs you some privilege.


5. Not reflexively choosing to protect whiteness over righteousness.


6. Stop buying Katy Perry albums.


7. Listening to Black women.


8. Seriously, stop calling the cops all the goddamned time!
   


9. More seasoning.


10. Paying Black people the same thing you pay white people


11. Supporting diversity and inclusion by raising your hand and asking: “Why are there no Black people here?”


12. Remember that thing I said about calling the cops? Okay...Just checking.

8. Let it burn.

And finally, I know it feels terrible to watch something you love be destroyed by racism, apathy, hate and incompetence but you have to look at the bright side.

You’re gonna get a brand new country!

Sometimes, you can change a system by enacting fairer rules and injecting equity into the equation. But sometimes you have to raze everything to the ground and start all over. You can’t fix anything without dismantling the parts that are already broken.

This is just the breaking part. 

The Founding Fathers were essentially wig-wearing members of antifa. The federal government put down a white supremacist rebellion and we called it a “Civil War.” Examples of previous dumpster fires include the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party, the War Between the States and the white supremacists, the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the anti-war movement and every attempt at a reboot of the Fantastic Four. 

And if this makes you uncomfortable, there’s also an online version of this article that isn’t filled with as much sarcasm, profanity and “race-baiting,” which eloquently says:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

America has always been trash.

And sometimes, the things that should have been discarded are politely hauled away by people whom we have charged with that task. But there are times when those people don’t do their jobs and the racist, incompetent, corrupt debris starts to stink so bad that some of us can’t take it anymore.

And now, you are “some of us.”

Welcome to the fire.

A Taxonomy of Groping: The Below-the-Waist Edition

By E. Jean Carroll, The Atlantic

04 October 20

‘I Moved on Her Very Heavily’: Part 5

ust as there is an unofficial dress code for meeting the Queen of England, there is a style etiquette for meeting Donald J. Trump in a nightclub. So, from the onset, let me bring you news of our heroine’s wardrobe.

“Little Betsey Johnson miniskirt,” Kristin Anderson tells me.

“By ‘mini,’ Kristin,” I say, “do you mean halfway between your hip and your knee?”

“Oh! We’re nowhere near my knee!” Kristin replies. “We’re about an inch below my butt cheeks. And tight! Almost like I’m dipped in latex.”

What era are we talking about? Roughly, reader, the era between Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct giving the world a glimpse of what Gustave Courbet calls L’Origine du Monde and the opening night of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. The early 1990s, when tight dresses, short skirts, and spike-heeled puss-in-boots are worn by women in New York clubs, and 5-foot-9 Kristin Anderson is a born-again girl from Connecticut trying to make it as a dancer and model in the big city.

“What are you wearing underneath, Kristin?”

“A bodysuit. Low back, straps, and high cut on the hips because that’s the thing. I’d hike my bodysuit up on purpose to give a longer leg line. So I’m wearing a bodysuit, miniskirt, and heels.”

“Good.”

“And it’s not the snap-closure kind,” Kristin says. “It’s an actual bodysuit.” (Every woman knows Kristin is referring to that little bit of armor, two inches wide, between the leg holes.)

“And it’s 1992 or ’93?” I ask.

“Right in there.”

“And you remember it’s probably China Club?”

“Yup.”

One night when I myself am heading to China Grill, I end up by mistake at China Club. But as it is only 10:30 p.m., and too early for the screaming, dancing, diddling, drinking, and gunfighting, I miss seeing Elton, Stevie, Sting, Madonna, Prince, the other Stevie, Eric, Iggy, Rod, Cher, Bowie, Warhol, Bruce, and Mick.

“China Club is huge,” Kristin says. “It has a balcony, it has couches—it’s so fun. People-watching. The fashion show! There’s a line around the block to get in.”

Whenever I Zoom with Kristin, I get the urge to race through a sprinkler. She’s a woman who gives off a lot of sunshine.

“So you’re in your early 20s, and you’re sitting on one of the couches. Leather? Or suede?”

“Velvet, darling!”

“And you have no idea Trump is sitting next to you, because you’re turned toward your girlfriends, who are sitting on the other side of you?”

“We’re packed in like sardines,” Kristin says. “China Club doesn’t follow maximum-capacity guidelines.”

“You’re young and—” I am about to say “devastating.” But don’t take my word; here’s a photo of Kristin from the time we’re talking about.

“So I’m at the club. And I kind of think other people may see the short skirt and the happy, laughing girl and think, She’s game. I say that now,” says the raconteur of 50, a successful photographer who lives in Los Angeles, smiling back at her hot young self. “At the time, I was just out. I’m going dancing with my girls. I’m having a great time! I don’t see who is sitting next to me.”

Kristin’s dad is an engineer. He drives the Metro-North train on the New Haven–New York line. Her mom is an EMT volunteer and watches General Hospital religiously, and Kristin grows up in Clinton, Connecticut, hearing “Luke and Laura, forever” and giving tea parties for her stuffed animals. She begins ballet lessons at age 4. She wears princess costumes when she roller-skates to the Bee Gees under a disco ball in the basement.

“Playing any sports in school, Kristin?”

“I’m dancing, E. Jean. I’m not kicking any balls.” She is in the choir, the prayer group, the youth group, and is an acolyte at Holy Advent Episcopal Church; and, when these activities are not holy satisfying, Kristin asks her parents for permission and begins following the Pentecostal evangelist Grace ’N Vessels, who is “really, really dramatic—she’s got big flowers in her hair and long nails.” It is Kristin’s “first taste of a deeper spirituality,” and soon when she walks through the halls of Mercy High School, watch out. You don’t want to talk to old Kristin! Kristin will start praying over you about Jesus.

“Kids see me coming, and it’s like the parting of the Red Sea. ‘It’s Kristin! Everybody dodge her!’”

Reader, have you heard what Trump does to women? I mean what Trump does to women, really.

When people tell me they’re amazed that Trump is still president after so many women have accused him of groping, I reply: “That’s because nobody has told them what groping is.”

I mention this because we are at the point in Kristin’s story when Trump performs something the media call “reaching up her skirt.” Like “groping” and “grabbing” and “touching,” nobody knows what the heck Trump is actually doing, or to what part of the female body he is doing it. So the job of describing that falls to Kristin.

Don’t worry. Kristin can handle it. If you are squeamish, take heart. This is not live television. It is a brief exchange, and Kristin and I laugh most of the way through it. That is how painful it is.

“It’s gnarly,” Kristin says.

“Trump is sitting next to you,” I say. “You’re facing away from him, and he puts his hand on your leg? He reaches all the way up?”

Kristin makes a soft assenting noise.

“He feels your vulva?”

“He gets there.”

Silence. Kristin holds out her hand, turns it palm up, curves it slightly, and makes an upward motion with her fingers, as if patting the inside of a sandcastle.

“Does he pinch you?”

From pure tension, Kristin bursts into a peal of laughter.

“Yes! It’s like a squish.”  

“Like tongs?”    

“Like cupping,” Kristin says. “Like a squeeze.”

We laugh.

“What feels worse than that,” I say.

You know those lights you clamp on your computer to illuminate your face on Zoom? The blaze coming from Kristin’s eyes is enough to light the entire state of Connecticut as she says: “I don’t know why anyone would do that. I remember seeing the [Access Hollywood] video my friend sends to me. And she is like, ‘Kristin, did you see this? Isn’t this what Trump did to you?’ I am like, ‘Oh my God! That’s exactly what Trump did to me. And he just admitted it. That’s crazy.’”

From Mercy High School, Kristin moves on to the University of Connecticut. From UConn she booms down to New York City nearly every weekend, thanks to her free pass on Metro-North. Before her freshman year is up, she leaves school and moves in with her new boyfriend, a modeling agent, and from her agent’s place in New Haven, she moves to a West 83rd Street flat with her friend Rosa. And so when Trump feels her up on that red-velvet couch, her reaction is: “Just to move.”

“I turn toward him,” Kristin says. “And I remember seeing the hair and the eyebrows. Trump has those crazy eyebrows in the 1990s that are like”—she points her fingers out from her own eyebrows like bike spokes. “My girlfriends are ready to dance. We have been sitting long enough, and when I get grabbed by Trump, I stand, push against my friends, and we all kind of nudge our way through the crowd, and once we’re free, I look back, and my girlfriend says, ‘That’s Donald Trump!’ And I’m like, ‘He just stuck his hand up my skirt and grabbed me!’”

Twenty or so years after Kristin encounters President Fingers, a young woman who looks like Kristin’s sister—a slim, 5-foot-10 blond dancer with an ear-to-ear grin and a corn-silk complexion—is working as a hostess at a New York Fashion Week event held at Trump Tower. Though the young woman has mentioned it on Facebook, this will be the first time the world hears her story.

“It’s the Jenner girls’ first runway show together,” she tells me. “So the Kardashians are there. Ryan Lochte [the Olympic swimmer] is Trump’s guest, as are Miss USA and Miss Teen USA.”

The young woman, a knockout, is full of pep when we Zoom. She tells me about the black sheath she is wearing that night—“three-quarter-length sleeve, lace on top”—and shows me a picture. “I’m covered all the way up to here!”

“Very dowdy,” I say. “The skirt is only four inches above your knee.”

Her job is seating the VIPs.

“I see Trump walking straight at me from across the room,” she says. “He comes up, puts his arm around my waist as if he’s known me all along, and his hand immediately glides down to my butt. He squeezes it, and shakes it like it’s a hand. He jiggles it and then gives it a little tap. And he says, ‘I’d like to be seated now.’”

“So Trump’s hand is on your—”

“On my right butt cheek, to be specific.”

“Like he’s plucking a honeydew?”

“No, a full grab. He goes like this—” she spreads out her hand and turns it palm down like Tamika Catchings ready to dribble—“like somebody palms a basketball. You know, palms it, shakes it, and then gives it a little pat.”

“It’s the little pat!” I exclaim.

“I have never felt so dominated by a gesture,” the woman says. “I don’t know the right word for it. But I felt so small. And it wasn’t like ‘Oooh, I want to ravage you. Ooh, baby, baby.’ It was just he wanted to show that he could. And he did.”

           

People say Trump is prejudiced. He is not prejudiced in the least—he squeezes one tall white blond woman in the front and jiggles another tall white blond woman in the back. Both women come forward.

“A month before the 2016 election, I’m casually telling a co-worker about the time I met the Republican nominee for president,” says the hostess from the fashion event, who is now a Pilates instructor, “and my co-worker’s reaction is: ‘That’s assault!’ It’s the first time I realize anyone would care about the incident. So I write a Facebook post—four days before the Billy Bush [Access Hollywood] tape comes out. I honestly think it’s gonna be a few people from my high school seeing it, because the maximum number of Facebook ‘likes’ I get is 25. The first death threat comes from a friend of a friend. Really? You’re threatening the wrong person! Why are you threatening me? After about an hour, someone posts a picture of me in a bathing suit and says, ‘This is the whore that wrote that. Can you believe anything she says?’”

Because of these attacks on her private Facebook account, the young woman asks me not to name her in this article; the last thing she tells me breaks my heart. “As people start responding,” she says, “I have weird flashbacks. I relive the other not-so-fantastic things in my life—every dude who’s ever been a little shithead before.”

Coming forward drives the Pilates instructor to remember her past. Remembering her past drives Kristin to come forward.

“A man invites me out with him,” Kristin says. This is a year or so after China Club. “And I say, ‘Okay, sure!’” sounding like she’s not sure at all.

“He’s taking me to dinner. Of course, we stop off at his place first for a drink. This is common in New York. And he asks me: ‘Have you ever shotgunned a beer?’ I say, ‘No!’

“So he brings me a beer with a hole poked in the can, and I try it, but I spill it all over the place. We are out on his balcony. Up high. It’s on the Upper East Side. He’s like, ‘Try it again! Try it again!’ And then he hands me another beer, and I do like he tells me and put my mouth on the hole and tip my head back, and he pulls the tab, and I get the whole beer down. I’m like, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe I did it!’ And maybe like 10 minutes later, I start to feel dizzy, and my body stops working. I am unable to stand. And the next thing I know I am lying on his couch. I can see and hear, but I can’t move my body.”

“You were roofied!”

“Yes. And you know what? He opens the door and lets in four of his friends. They take turns. And then they dump me in a taxi, and I don’t remember how I get into my apartment. You know what else? I never speak of it. For years.

“So when the women begin accusing Trump, I feel that if I can’t say something about a pussy grab—so trivial in comparison to what has happened to me in my life—I may never open the can of rape worms in order to heal. I know, deep down, I have to do it. It is just very scary to open that can.”

On October 14, 2016, The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty breaks Kristin’s story. “Crazy Republicans” showing up at Kristin’s house wanting to slit her throat; people sending her crime-scene photos of the naked, bloody bodies of women—this is perhaps not what Kristin had in mind when she says she came forward to heal. But I think that in a small, weird way, the grisly reactions helped. I text her that notion.

“Hell no!” shouts Kristin, her radiance pouring through the phone as she curses at me. She is driving and leaving me a voice text. “It was scary!”

I am thrilled. I have never heard Kristin swear before.

“I don’t want to be chopped up into little bits! But on the flip side, my skin is now much, much thicker. So maybe in a roundabout, backhanded way, along with the work I did on myself, yes, it helped.”

Indeed, when her photography studio goes on hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic, Kristin spends her time enjoying the beach with her 9-year-old son and creating a seven-module course for sexual-assault victims called “True Course: Reclaim Yourself and Reignite Your Life,” which is available online. Kristin is so effervescent, in fact, so full of fresh courage and humor, I feel that it’s time for us to go back to China Club.

“Kristin!” I say. “Picture the scene. The music is pounding. Your girlfriends are there. The crowds. The velvet sofa. You are wearing your Betsey Johnson miniskirt. Trump is next to you. Can you see his eyebrows? Now Trump runs his hand up your leg. He’s a street dog after a bone. What do you do?”

She is quiet for a moment. Then she lays out the moves.

Kristin: I slap Trump across the face!

E. Jean: What else?

Kristin: I call out to my girlfriends, and they come running.

E. Jean: Good! Good!

Kristin: And they come with zip ties, and we zip-tie Trump’s hands together.

E. Jean: Very tightly?

Kristin: Very! And one of the girls hands me a judge’s robe, and I put it on. It is a very sexy judge’s robe, slit up to here.

E. Jean: And who pronounces the verdict?

Kristin: Me! I say, “Donald Trump, you are guilty of grabbing my pussy.”