~a column by Colleen O’Brien
We can’t practice DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion) in our lives now.
The autocratic right wing of our politics (Republican) believes these three things (DEI) hurt white people.
To them, diversity, equality and inclusion mean we insist that brown people and black folks and women and poor people need diversity, equality and inclusion in their lives on a par with white men. The prospect of this actually happening frightens them to violence.
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We can’t be “woke.”
This is the sullen directive of right wingers who can’t figure out what it means. They prefer us to be unwoke, which is a deep aversion to learning new things, which is their kind of cool
–blind to cruelty if not thrilled by it;
–prejudiced against blacks, browns, women, the poor, all whose sexual orientation is something not just M or F;
–horrified by research into humans upgrading what we know about science; in words from the Oxford Dictionary — “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”
–weakened by compassion (it’s a sissy behavior; don’t indulge in it).
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We aren’t supposed to speak, write, whisper anything derogatory, satirical or amusing about the horrible leader and his horrible ideas, or about anyone who is his crony at the moment (changes by the day).
SO, what we have to do to counteract autocrats:
Make fun of the TACO.
Watch late-night comedians impart the latest news to us, the only way to get through an entire day’s worth of Trumpian idiocies without despair.
Find podcasts and alternative media in order to come across brilliant persons writing their dream on a social platform:
“Each day we pick a $B bro (billionaire), take all their financial assets, spread them evenly among everyone on the planet who is not a millionaire, billionaire, trillionaire, and then sacrifice the chosen $B bro to an ocean.”
I consider this a sound plan.
And, if we live in an autocracy, we must protest. This is a hard and fast rule of anti-autocrats the world over.
Consequently, last Saturday, I walked with my 32-year-old granddaughter and 8,000 other people, old, young, in-between, as well as folks in wheelchairs, using walkers and canes, pushing strollers along a street of the main campus of the University of Cincinnati singing and chanting about No Kings trying to lead our country.
Before starting, we listened to directives – no making fires or bashing cops or their cars, etcetera (this is not what anti-fascist protestors do but is what fascists do to anti-fascist marchers) – and when that was over and I knew the protest would take off at any second, I felt tears trickling down my cheeks and a deep welling up of patriotism in my chest. Looking around at what I was doing broke open a lump of hope so big I almost tripped over it; it rose up in me as I stood among those thousands in an unfamiliar place. I recognized a sudden acceptance of age and a brief longing for a younger me . . . followed by a chilling despair at what the whole point was about. . . . The need to save our country. And then I was swept up in the forward swing of things and a great, pleasant cacophony of chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”
