Today is the Monday following what I’ve read described as the largest protest in United States history, the women’s march on Washington. I vowed to attend the local march where I live and am feeling guilty that I didn’t make it. In penance, I’m going to make another donation to the ACLU.
The photographs of Saturday’s turnout around the world are heartening and even inspiring.
I’m worried that it is too late.
Wall street effectively smirked and said “Isn’t that cute” to the Occupy movement. I get the feeling those jockeying for position in the Trump administration (many of the same people, turns out) will treat Saturday’s demonstrations similarly.
Saturday was the school yard equivalent of a handful of scrawny 12 year olds yelling “stop picking on that kid” to a band of 16 year old bullies. They’re not scared of us. They’re scared of the teacher that might see what’s about to happen.
That’s why the incoming Trump administration is trying to flash bang the press while they replace as many compassionate actors in the bureaucracy that they can.
We need to treat what’s happening much the same way I approached the last fight I was in.
It was a pillow fight.
I was 20 years old and getting close to the end of my rotation in Germany for the Army. My company was staying in temporary barracks while our regular digs were being updated. The inside of the barracks was set up so that one set of bunk beds lay next to two accompanying standing double door wall lockers. The lockers were set up so that the next pair of bunk beds was against the back wall of the locker preceding it, forming rows.
The Army continually rotates new people in as those whose rotations are up leave. We had just moved into the temporary barracks where I had claimed the top bunk when a new soldier rotated in. He had the bottom bunk beneath me. I had a nice fluffy pillow for my bunk. He had a saltine cracker for a pillow.
One morning, I came back from brushing my teeth to find he had switched them. I asked him what the fuck was my pillow doing on his bunk and he replied with ‘it’s not your pillow anymore.’
At which point, I immediately grabbed him by the throat, shoved him into the wall locker behind him and then kneed him in the balls. As he was lying on the floor clutching himself, I pointedly switched the pillows back. I then told him if I caught him even looking at my stuff funny he’d be eating from a tube for the next few months. Sometimes prison rules apply in the Army.
While we were brushing our teeth on election night, Russia, evangelical Christian conservatives, neo nazi fucks, and the phantasmagorically stupid switched our pillows.
We need a pillow fight.
