In the middle of this
decade, I tutored fellow residents of Los Angeles who wanted help with their
English. Ivan, the son of Ecuadoran and Mexican parents had partied (that is,
drunk himself stupid) through high school, and, at 30, was scrubbing toilets at public playgrounds to
afford truck-driving lessons. Isaí had grown up in Oaxaca, the son of
an abusive religious fanatic, and was sending most of what he earned as a
busboy back to Mexico to pay for his younger sister’s education. Arouna, had attended
university in his native Burkina Faso, where students had to show up hours
before the beginning of the school day to secure a place to sit in their respective
classrooms. Hyuntak, almost 40, had a wife and two daughters, and worked as an
architect. Ivan had a pretty big chip on his shoulder — for which he blamed only himself, and quite vengefully, but all four of them were kind, generous, smart, and
hard-working. Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, isn’t fit to
shine the shoes of any of them.
I am the product of a
misogynistic, homophobic culture. There was a pitcher in my Little League named Steve Wyman. Before my team went
to bat against him, our coach — a World War II vet, a man’s man, a chainsmoker
who probably wound up dying a hero’s death of emphysema — snarled, “Steve
Woman! Don’t tell me you can’t kick this little faggot’s ass!” The culture writ
large!
To my infinite
discredit, I did pretty well (it seemed at the time) on the homophobia front, expressing my contempt
for “fags” with the frequency and ardor required of a “normal” American boy. I
fell pretty short on the misogyny front, though. I was terribly shy, and
terribly horny. Whereas a truly normal
boy would have stirred the two
together and wound up with hostility, I was only shy and horny, convinced that
no girl would ever like me. It wasn't their fault that I wasn’t cute and
athletic and self-confident and cool, but my own.
I have never liked
beer. I have never been interested in cars. I have never wanted to go out into
the wild and shoot something dead. I have never imagined that forcing myself on
a girl or woman would be anything other than awful. It would feel like
confirmation of the unattractiveness I’ve always felt. I’m not much of a
drinker.
My impression is that
someone like Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh’s bro and buddy, and I have nothing
whatever in common. My further impression is that tens of millions of MAGA
cap-wearing “Build the wall!”-bellowers and I have nothing in common, except
our nationality, which of course was an accident of birth. I feel infinitely more admiration for and kinship with Isaí,
Ivan, Hyuntak, and Arouna.
For which reason I
embrace President Trump’s rejection of globalism every bit as eagerly as
everything else for which he stands (though I of course recognise that the sole thing he stands for is his own glorification). Patriotism is
a ruse invented to get the non-rich and non-powerful to send their children to
dies in obscene wars to make the rich richer and the powerful more
powerful. I’ve no reason not to
believe that, given Google Translate and a comfortable place to sit down
together, I might bond more readily with a person roughly my own age from
Eritrea, Myanmar, or Peru than with a hunter or beer-guzzling former frat boy from Topeka
or Billings or, yes, Bethesda.
Globalism, sí . Patriotism, no!
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