Alpha

Some balm for the bomb

I have everything—and nothing—to say. No words came for the benumbed first few days post-election, until—slowly then suddenly—a tangle of thoughts and dreams that had me awake at 3 am. Like the motley contents of my comfort-fooded stomach, the stages of grief co-churn: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance (not that one yet, though we’re kind enough to concede). It’s been a very complicated, debilitating, distressing week for many, so forgive me if I need to press pause on Round 3 of the Ugly Pageant (myth edition) regularly scheduled to linger a bit on this unscripted Ugliness we face for however more years.

US Bomb, 1943

BOMB

Now that we’ve gone overnight from “weird” to “dictator-on-day-one” (his own words) and so many other semi-synonymous terms being bandied, I feel it’s helpful to review this new lexicon for the 47th President so we’ll know it when we see it. (And please this time, oh military generals and other adults in the room, should there be any, if you see something say something.) The terms, according to Merriam-Webster:

Dictator, tyrant, despot - a person who uses power or authority in a cruel, unjust, or harmful way

Totalitarian - controlling the people of a country in a very strict way with complete power that cannot be opposed

Monocrat, autocrat, ruler, monarch, sovereign, king/queen, potentate - one who rules over a people with a sole, supreme, and usually hereditary authority

Oligarch - a member or supporter of an oligarchy—government by the few; a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. [Since the 1990s this describes a few men amassing wealth and power after the collapse of the Soviet Union.]

Strongman - one who leads or controls by force of will and character or by military methods

Authoritarian - of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

Fascist - one practicing a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition. (The words fascism and fascist have long been associated with the Fascisti of Benito Mussolini and the fasces, the bundle of rods with an ax among them, which the Fascisti used as a symbol of the Italian people united and obedient to the single authority of the state.)

Nazi - a member of the German fascist party controlling Germany from 1933 to 1945 under Adolf Hitler, or one who espouses the beliefs and policies of the German Nazis.

All of those words and more might apply, or, you might just say, male.

Hold up: not just any man, you’re fine, just the toxic masculinity variety for which Trump is the poster GOAT in this article from The Conversation:

The term “toxic masculinity” [which has been around for a while but exploded in popular culture around 2015] points to a particular version of masculinity that is unhealthy for the men and boys who conform to it, and harmful for those around them.

The phrase emphasizes the worst aspects of stereotypically masculine attributes. Toxic masculinity is represented by qualities such as violence, dominance, emotional illiteracy, sexual entitlement, and hostility to femininity.

For anyone who has suffered the trauma of abuse from, say, a narcissist or a rapist, such an armed bros fest as this MAGA movement is intolerably triggering. Trump, however bumbling, plays the role of the quintessential alpha male from whose first four-year tour I have PTSD. Final definition for today, I promise:

Alpha male - dominant male; a strong and successful man who likes to be in charge of others

It’s a slippery slope from this often attractive Alpha to all-out Authoritarian, as Trump endlessly leans into the exaggerated mythology of maleness/misogyny the way Putin did once shirtless on horseback, or RFK, Jr. in his brainwormy show of displaying pushups. (Al Gore, on the other hand, reportedly according to his former consultant Naomi Wolf, was too tragically Beta). Not smarts or grace, but virility was the main measure when it came to the ol’ days of Trump debating a frail, confounded Biden.

What a very confusing time for men with so many mixed messages on how to be A Man in Contemporary Times and I can’t begin to pretend I have any wisdom on any of this, but I think these inflated alpha types, so full of empty bravado and patriarchal privilege, must feel very threatened and protective of their man caves (supersized to the Oval Office or the CEO suite), so the bigger their naughty bits or their weapons, their ego, or their trucks, the better. Even if they fumble trying to get into what turns out to be a garbage truck.

“Crazy” confidant Kamala comes kicking the doors in with her cool-casual Chucks and maybe, just maybe—did we dare hope—could whip up all that good mojo into a gentler, smiling (but powerful!) storm that crashes at last through that stupid roof of the crowded colosseums, but nope. Say what you will, so many autopsies opining on What the Dems Did Wrong, but the data—that sizable gender gap of many more men across ages and races voting for Trump vs. the fact that once we had an Obama—shows that perhaps the only thing she had to do differently was not be a woman. Better to put us back in our place. What place is that exactly?

Here in a time that is supposed to be circa 2024, Mexico has a climate scientist female president and I’m watching old episodes of The Crown pairing the Queen with Margaret Thatcher in daily teas throughout the entire 1980s. The rest of the world knows women make outstanding leaders, so why can’t we? We are our own worst enemy: my female coworker told me her main interest in Trump was that she didn’t like Kamala’s voice—so the patriarchy brainworm eats away at us women as well.

BALM

Since we’re going through the Alpha-bet, I will share now, in the anklenotes, that in October with the election as my deadline, I actually got a K for Kamala tattoo with all the grandest lucky charm ideals. Now it’s back to being just a K for me, my inK logo, and my K-named daughter.

Instead of crafting better futures for these dear distraught daughters—with education, medicine, and a functional earth—we get these false shows of strength verging on all-out absurdity. Trump fawning over Arnold Palmer’s penis size and performing fellatio on a microphone. This renegade Kennedy spawn—one wonders, What Would JFK Say?—with his awful litany of animal shenanigans, posing a dead baby bear/beheading whales, now tasked to protect us from fluoride. Pale Elon jumping on stage, in charge of all the money and the rockets.

Instead we get the news (I learned from Jimmy Kimmel, who himself movingly got teared up on stage on Wednesday night) that a band of 43 monkeys was on the run from the Alpha Genesis Laboratory in South Carolina, surely the first sign of the Alphapocalypse worthy of the The Wizard of the Oz.

Such is the stuff of nightmares. What woke me in the middle of the night the other night was a terrible confluence of timely if surreal tragedies. First, I was dreaming that my mom and I were bickering, and nearly coming to blows, over the lightning rod AOC (I defended of course, and she decried). Then there was a bus driving by, a clear glass bus my kids and I could see into clearly as we stood nearby. The driver had a big front window open, and the seats were full of passengers. Suddenly there was a large plastic Trump campaign sign flying up in front of the bus and making its way through the window to strike the driver on his neck. Oh no, we noted from the sidewalk, ouch, but it got way worse than that. The driver’s head had been severed and was hanging on by a thread. The passengers, mostly white seniors it seemed, were screaming, shocked, splattered in blood, as the nearly beheaded driver was still driving, somewhat, and they were surely all about to be in a bad accident.

Read into that as you will, but it certainly felt like it’s time to seek out some peace and perspective.

There’s been some poetry to soothe me, nature snippets helpfully shared from the Publisher of The Westchester Review for which I am digital editor.

And if a band of outlaw monkeys is anything but relaxing, she also sent some pigeons.

In this Beauty Pageant, flowers from my colleague showed up next at my office to cheer me up.

And, in my hummingbird mind, a new plan suddenly hatched this week. I’m determined to trade up on my Catskills rural outpost and get a larger chunk of mountain acreage to hide on…with a little sketchily constructed treehouse.

If I can manifest this, I can successfully distract myself for at least a few years with crippling manual labor projects in the woods again, and Not Have to Listen to His Voice. Rest, before the resistance.

What’s the definition of a real man to me now… Let’s present, for example, Robert Smith, frontman for The Cure, replete with midlife lipstick and eyeliner, as the sort of complicated, conscientious and creative man our culture currently requires. Deliberate and thoughtful, it took his band 16 years to come up with a new album just on time for the end-times. Songs of a Lost World is quite a bleak yet soaring soundtrack for this moment if you like to go dark and dwell there like I do, until you can catch your breath floating through the rousing instrumentals you might remember from your younger angsty coming-of-age days.

Some lyrics, from “Endsong”:

It’s all gone, it’s all gone
Nothing left of all I loved
It all feels wrong
It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone
No hopes, no dreams, no world
No, I, I don’t belong
No, I don’t belong here

And “Warsong”, with mention of that poison blood we’ve heard Trump (and Hitler!) talk about:

The shame, wounded pride, vengeful anger burning deep inside
Poison in our blood
And pain, broken dreams, mournful hopes
For all we might have been, all misunderstood

No way out of this
No way for us to find a way to peace
We never found before
However we regret
All we will ever know is bitter ends
For we were born to war
For we were born to war

One side talked hate, while we talked love. If we battle them, they are the ones with the guns. I’ve been hugging strangers this week and nodding to those with sympathetic eyes, because any others I can’t entertain right now. Unfriending abounds. Did he vote red? Did she? Whatever we assumed about people is no longer necessarily true. The immigrant tailor who was watching Trump talk on his Spanish language TV network when I walked by his shop—is he scared for the deportation round-up party, or is he a fanboy?

A black woman in the administration of the community health center that serves many lower income and minority folks in our region, came into my office to get tickets to distribute to those in need of a free Thanksgiving meal we’ll be serving soon. Despite how well-appointed she looked (unlike me practically in pajamas all week) I just took the leap to assume she too wasn’t celebrating. I asked her how she was doing and not in a small-talk way. Her eyes welled up, and said that she had never in her lifetime experienced discrimination on account of the color of her skin, but she experiences it all the time for her gender. And then we talked about how hard it is to have our daughters witness the unbelievable feat of the ugliest man imaginable (inside and out) being handed the most powerful position on the planet—instead of, again, the most articulate, inspiring, smart, and qualified woman. How do we rip the bandaid off their big dreams so soon when they are still just forming?

Alpha, my ass. Here’s to the all Al Gores and the truths inconvenient. As this wise man no listened to once said in his film of 2006:

Consider what happened during the crisis of global fascism. At first, even the truth about Hitler was inconvenient. Many in the west hoped the danger would simply go away.