Now dying young

America lived fast and is now dying young

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary writes on trying to survive in the fire of Donald Trump's America

By Drew Magary

I wake up. It’s another day in Donald Trump’s America, but I try not to think about that. I try not to think about that name, given that I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet. It’s too early for America right now. I can deal with my country later, once I’m ready.

I get out of bed and take stock of my immediate surroundings. Sunlight is already poking through the curtains. My wife and dog are still asleep in the bed. One of our sons is already up and getting ready for school. The other one will stumble out of his room, bleary-eyed, in a few minutes. I go downstairs to hug the 16-year-old and then put on a pot of coffee. I wolf down a bowl of cereal and grab my phone. No one texted overnight. That’s good. That means no one has died.

I get breakfast ready for the dog and then sit in my chair with my coffee. I could check the news right now, but I’m not ready for the impact yet. Instead, I ease into my day gently, checking scores and playing a few dorky New York Times games. This is arguably the best part of my day, because it’s when I am most at peace. Eventually, that peace will be disturbed: by my younger son coming downstairs to prep for school, by the dog needing to go out for his morning piss and by America barging in with all of its America-ness.

I have to check the news now. I’m a journalist. It’s my job to stay informed. Besides, even if the news weren’t my job, the news would find me anyway. You can ignore the elephant in the room for only so long. S—t, that elephant all but owns the deed to your house now. So I have to keep tabs on the elephant, lest I end up under its foot. I live in the Washington, D.C., area, and all around me are dead public servants walking. Some of them are family. Some are friends. Some are neighbors. Most are strangers, but ones I’m grateful for. They’re all getting laid off, or are terrified they’ll be laid off at any second, because the people in charge of things have decided to rip the heart out of the government and replace it with a motherboard. Is that what the rest of my countrymen really want? Do they understand what’s going on right now? Do they even know what their government does?

I have no f—king idea. I try not to think about it.

That is, I try not to think about it all the time. I thought about it all the time back at the end of the 2010s, and it made me angry. Violently angry. That anger did me no good. It helped the bad guys more than it ever helped me, so this time around, I’m much more fastidious about my information load management. I focus on my salad. I don’t follow any political accounts on social media, and I’ve muted any friends of mine there who regularly air their political grievances. I want to stay informed, but on my terms.

Both of my sons are now off to school, and my wife has left for work, leaving just me and the dog. It’s as good a time as any to rip off the Band-Aid. I open the Washington Post’s front page on my phone. I know that this newspaper has been hopelessly compromised, but so have the rest of them. The majority of the news media is coalescing into a single propaganda arm now. But I know that, which means that I know how to maneuver around it. I can skim these front pages and articles for useful information while ignoring the dreck. I can also track down bits of good news and then bail on the article before the inevitable “but some are saying” follow-up. So I skim, I absorb, I close the tab, and then I think. Then I let the back of my consciousness process those thoughts while I try to go about my day as if it were any other.

I go to work in my office all morning. Then I break for lunch and a workout, and then I shower and then take a nap with the dog. It’s a good day in my world so far.

But America still manages to pierce my shield. The news comes in dribs and drabs, giving me more to process. They’re grabbing kids off the streets, redacting entire chapters of the nation’s history, firing all of the good scientists, and rifling through the passport database to hunt down those they consider to be foreigners. My wife is afraid to travel now because, despite being a U.S. citizen, she wasn’t born here. She isn’t sure they’ll let her back in here if she leaves. I also wasn’t born in the U.S., so maybe that means that I can’t go anywhere either. My wife has also heard a rumor going around that the goon squad’s next act will be sniffing around the passport database to find out which U.S. citizens have listed a new gender for themselves upon reissue or put an X in that space. What will they do to these people? Who’s next after that?

I don’t know, so I spend the afternoon banging out a post about the NFL. I don’t bother to write a post about greater America, because then I’d have to think about greater America, which would give me hives. Sometimes I open the release valve just so I have somewhere to put the aggravation, even if it doesn’t stay there. Most of the time though, I try to keep the valve shut. Perhaps you’ve tried to distract yourself in a similar fashion.

But distractions are only so effective against the gathering storm. I live in a country that lived fast and is now dying young. A strongman has taken things over and used the good will of both America’s citizenry and of its public officials to rob it blind. He can get away with it all too, because he already has, and because my fellow Americans hired him to do it again. And no one in power is fighting back because, in my lifetime, no one has ever wanted to lose Republican customers. Not even Democrats.

This is the end result, and it has a nasty logic to it. It only looks like Republicans don’t know why they’re dismantling useful, heretofore apolitical public services. But they know why. They know that this will make millions of people sick and kill millions more. They know this will make America both poorer and dumber. Those are the end goals here, because a destitute country is one that’s easier for them to rule. Ask Vladimir Putin. Ask Kim Jong Un. Ask Pol Pot. The more a dictator can expand the wealth gap inside the walls of their kingdom, the more comfortable they feel.

And comfort is the true dictator here. Like every other American, I have been trained to both expect and demand comfort at all times. Comfortable housing. Comfortable cars. Comfortable businesswear. If I’m ever uncomfortable, then something must be amiss. That’s an awfully spoiled way to live. From Bill Bryson:

“It really is extraordinary how long it took people to achieve even the most elemental levels of comfort. There was one good reason for it: life was tough. Throughout the Middle Ages, a good deal of every life was devoted simply to surviving.”

Americans need not worry about survival anymore, and so they occupy themselves with pettier matters, like a momentary lapse of comfort. To be uncomfortable feels wrong to the average American, and virtually all of our inner conflict stems from an endless disagreement over our respective sources of that discomfort. Some Americans find racism uncomfortable, as they should, while some Americans find confronting racism to be a personal affront. They’d rather not think about racism, so they don’t — or they simply pretend there is no racism at all. And if you ask them to think about racism, they swear vengeance. You are the woke, and you must pay. In a country where everyone abhors being inconvenienced, it was only a matter of time before the worst of us decided that our greatest inconvenience was one another.

I try not to let that thought overtake me, because the stress will kill me before the goon squad does.

Later, my daughter texts me from a protest on her college campus. I ask her to send me a photo so I can see her fighting for justice. She texts back, “I don’t wanna make anyone uncomfy. We’re all disguised and wearing masks and stuff, just in case.” I understand. I’m proud of her. I also hope that her masked face isn’t being scanned right now by a distant satellite and then logged into Trump’s janky-ass “Enemies” folder. I try not to think too hard about that last part, because I’d rather be proud than afraid. If I can’t be proud of my country, I can be proud of my family. That’s how I’ll survive this, I tell myself, however long it lasts.

What I try not to tell myself is that this could last for a long time. An excruciatingly long time. And what happens as more and more of American society falls apart? Will my family die if we don’t flee? When will we know it’s time to? When will we know if the water we’re in has started to boil? Will we still be in the pot? Will you?

I try not to dwell on it, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. More important, it makes me feel DUMB. I’d tell you I feel ashamed to be an American right now, but that turn of phrase has grown hackneyed. I just feel f—king stupid. Embarrassed. STAINED. Why do I live here? Do I REALLY owe this country anything? What if I defect to another country? Would I be a coward for that? Would it be worth the moral abdication? Is it a moral abdication at all? Everyone else who’s left America by choice doesn’t seem too pained by their decision. And I get it: Who would want to live in this spiritual vacuum of a place?

I try to think about why I AM still here. The answers come faster than you’d think. Everyone I love either lives in America or is American. All of them. I love these fine Americans to death and want to take care of them. I also love my house. I love my adopted home state of Maryland, which is one of the very few whose representatives actually seem to get it. I love my work-wife state of California, even if Gavin Newsom is a scumbag of the highest order. I love the food in America, I love the music, and I love the scenery. So it’s not just mere convenience keeping me an American, nor is it loyalty to the flag. It’s love, and all of the grief that love entails. I don’t know when America will be gone — it feels like awfully soon — but I try not to work myself up about that part of it. After all, just because this place can’t keep its s—t together doesn’t mean that I can’t.

The day is over, and everyone is home. I have done my processing and have earned the right to chill. I’ve got a gummy working its way through my system, a fresh near beer sitting on my armrest and my dog in my lap. Sometimes I think about keeping a happiness journal, where I could sit down at night and make a tally of everything that made me happy that day, large or small. I haven’t started it, though, because I already know what makes me happy, and I already know where to find it. It’s all here, right where my day started. Against all odds, that’s a comforting thought.

It’s also a fleeting one. I turn on some basketball, and every other ad is one for Trump. I try not to think about it.