Abnormalization

March 5, 2017

Back one-hundred-seventeen days ago, on election day, when America decided coal-mining jobs were more important than common decency, some of us vowed never to allow that which is Trump to become normal. No hard pull to the nut-job-right, no return to institutional racism, no locker-room talk; no, no, no – as if we had a choice.

Cause, here we are with a Nazi chief advisor to the president. Here we are, normally seating Breitbart News alongside legitimate news organizations in the White House press corps. Rick Perry in charge of our nuclear arsenal is now reasonable. Presidential tweeting idiotic indictments like an adolescent internet troll is common. Shit, the notion of a Russian-Republican alliance has morphed from unthinkable to familiar.

Normal describes the common, the everyday. Back in the early eighteen-hundreds, slavery was normal in Virginia. It was wrong, it was disgusting and we don’t like to acknowledge it – but, it was normal. Today, Nazis, Russians and sexual predators control the normal operation of our government – it’s wrong and disgusting and we still don’t like to acknowledge it – but, it’s normal. If we elect Nazi sympathetic, Russian collaborator perverts what else should we expect?

I’ve heard the first step in problem resolution is problem identification. So perhaps, first we need to recognize that we have already stepped through the looking glass.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

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Right now, the Donald is master – that’s all.

Changing normal requires changing masters, but that’s not all.

For a start, like Alice with the Red Queen, we need to shake the opposition party and the press. Shake them until they stop the word games; if they won’t stop, then break them – show them Obamacare’s not only thing that can repealed and replaced.

The republic, always ready for a new normal, looks forward to replacing “Lock her up!” with “Off with his head!”

In Peace and Justice,
osv