Unlike many critics (and liberals), I've always felt that Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee's seminal film, isn't really all that it's made out to be. A musing on the ugly racial divides in outerborough New York, the film does accurately catch the tensions, misunderstandings and prejudices that made up urban life at the time. What I've always disagreed with, really is the title: no one in it is especially doing the "right thing." And without that, without some sense that there is a "right thing," Lee's film is a muddle - a film that never quite gets where it's meaning to go, no one to really feel good about, nothing in the situation that offers hope or possibility.
Still, watching last weekend's events in Charlottesville unfold, and watching Trump flail away in the days since, I come back to that notion of the "right thing" because Trump has been, at the very least, an object lesson in that in any bad situation, it's possible to make things worse. Do the right thing? Why not just do the wrong thing, and stand around, waiting for the applause.
The self-congratulatory, self righteous aspects of Trump - the boundless need for mass love, the urge he has to insist what he knows and has figured out is all there is to know - were, I always figured, the deal breakers for his run for high office. And, even with last year's outcome, it's possible to still feel right about this. Trump overcame his self made obstacles from a mix of people convincing themselves he couldn't possibly be as bad as all that, and another group hoping, more or less, that he was. That he was badass. That he was going to stick it to the people oh so deserving of having it stuck.
Those illusions are falling away - some times quickly (the "he can't be that bad" crowd has largely awoken to the fact that he is) and slowly (the growing unease beginning to show up in his friendly circles that He's Getting Distracted or Off Message... hint: he is the message). And with Charlottesville, Trump has more or less (mostly less) given away what he needs most: the good will of the doubtful. Now, at this point, he's not getting that back.
Charlottesville happened for a couple of reasons: a growing sense of confrontation and acknowledgement of the racial tensions, especially out of the traditional south, that drive the continued presence of Confederate symbols and the "Lost Cause" narrative of the Civil War. The other is the reawakening of the forces that ride that narrative to push their brand of racist hate: the Klan, other white supremacy groups, Neo-Nazis and on and on. "Standing Up For Our Rights" as the march was dubbed, was a construct of these racist groups, and from Friday night's procession of torch wavers to Saturday's messy confrontations, Charlottesville was driven by the hate of the racists.
There are these questions of "what does Trump know" or "what does he think" about the "Alt Right" (casual dress hatred for the young slacker) and the Klan/Neo Nazi world behind it... but this kind of misses the point. Trump doesn't have an ideology, a purpose, a philosophy to guide him. He has himself, and the prejudices and preconceived notions he came with, some he clearly got from his father (who seems to have had a more active, unpleasant notion of race relations in life and business), some he seems to have come up with on his own (his Central Park five antics, birtherism, etc). I don't know what he actually believes, I doubt he does, either. That, ultimately, is what makes him, and his actions, so sad and dangerous. He could know better... but why would he even try?
Trump's emphasis on opposition to violence, his revived use of Nixon era tropes about "law and order" and crime somehow rampant in the streets - a remnant, after all, of his New York youth - blurs, for him, the things that need to be addressed - out of Charlottesville, but more generally, around race in this country. He says the words about "condemning" Neo-Nazis and finding them "repugnant"... but it's a child's dutiful attempt to sound sincere.No one, it seems, can ask him the question he at least needs to think about for himself - not whether it's bad, but why. His answer seems to be "violence." For most of us, it would be, "the hateful racism."
As a nation, our use of language is sinking - and Trump is, in many ways, emblematic of that downturn as well. We use "racism" too often and too broadly to rope in a multitude of attitudes, actions and beliefs. This is racist. That's racist. He's racist. We need more words. I don't know if, Trump is racist, or how much. I suspect he's someone who carries a long list of prejudices and notions about race and groups that he's never particularly examined or thought deeply about their accuracy or usefulness. It's those preconceived notions he brings to this conversation - a painful, and probably necessary one - around race and how we treat one another, that lead him to choose to say and do the things that make this moment worse. And in that sense, Spike Lee was right - scratch the surface, and most people will show how they identify with their own tribe first. And not try very hard to understand the others. Do the right thing? We don't even know what that would be.
I think we do know some of the right things, and the wrong ones. In this new national conversation, perhaps the best approach is realizing that our President is not some all knowing, wise teacher - an approach of the last two Presidents, neither of whom quite deserved that spot, either - but someone who, like the rest of us, maybe needs to hear some things he hasn't heard before, consider the opinions of people who don't always agree with him, and think about changing his mind. For this conversation, discussion, dialogue to happen... that's a big part of what needs to happen (bless you Heather Heyer, and your amazing Mom). Just because Trump chooses, so actively and so throughly, to do the wrong things, doesn't mean we all have to go along. Indeed, saving ourselves - and any semblance of our decency - requires that we absolutely don't. And maybe that's a start on doing the right thing.
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