fronting in the age of anger

The Oprah-for-Pres­i­dent, lib­er­al-celebri­ty-wor­ship is re­al­ly thought­less on so many lev­els, I can’t stand it. I saw the memes rolling in, and I want­ed to be blown away when I looked up the clip. But I could’ve pre­dict­ed that ster­il­ized, pub­li­cist-ap­proved, ba­sic PC canned shit in my sleep. And the nods of ap­proval and stand­ing ova­tions by a room full of lot­tery-win­ners – whose job is sup­posed to be per­ceiv­ing, dis­cern­ing, and re­lay­ing raw emo­tion – made the scene more sick­en­ing. I thought of many his­tor­i­cal­ly im­por­tant, gut-punch me­dia clips from oth­er eras of pub­lic fig­ures speak­ing out that stand out in my mind, and how Muham­mad Ali burp­ing into a mic would have been more mean­ing­ful than any one line out of Oprah’s speech. I was crav­ing dirt and got plas­tic. I didn’t hear any­thing ge­nius, in­sight­ful, or new, let alone pres­i­den­tial. The speech was a string of mean­ing­less plat­i­tudes “for lit­tle girls watch­ing” and lip ser­vice to big, ab­stract ideas with­out any im­pli­ca­tion for prac­ti­cal application. 

What the fuck is Oprah gonna do that any of you can’t? Why don’t, in­stead of hop­ing for a sav­ior, you name your­self pres­i­dent, think of your life as a mini-gov­ern­ment, name your ad­min­is­tra­tion, bud­get for the de­part­ments, and start or­ga­niz­ing your mon­ey into and out of the in­fra­struc­tures and sys­tems you wish to see dis­man­tled or sup­port­ed. None of those head-bob­bing, rich, lib­er­al stars want to risk any stand­ing, let alone change what they buy, what they wear, what they eat, what they dri­ve. They’d in­ject ra­dioac­tive horse piss into their faces to stay right where they are. And that’s why a lot of women didn’t speak up sooner. 

Everyone’s mad that 45 can’t be held ac­count­able for shit, and it’s com­ing out in Hol­ly­wood. A lot of men will pay, some de­serv­ing­ly, some too much, be­cause Trump can’t be touched. Someone’s got to start be­ing held ac­count­able for their abus­es of pow­er. What’s hap­pen­ing makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense to me, are lib­er­als point­ing a fin­ger at Trump as the bane of all Amer­i­can so­cial prob­lems, ig­nor­ing, in my opin­ion, that Trump is their fuck­ing fault – the fault of lib­er­als – for not be­ing con­sci­en­tious enough of cre­at­ing wide­spread change, for every­one, to be­gin with when we had more of a chance; for fail­ing to take the eco­nom­ic needs of work­ing class men, for ex­am­ple, se­ri­ous­ly; for writ­ing off every­one in the South as racist and stu­pid. How about this, Hol­ly­wood? Every­time y’all have ever writ­ten Dumb White Guy with a South­ern Ac­cent into one of your TV and film scripts, you ill-fat­ed­ly, naive­ly vot­ed 45 into place. 

Trump’s rise was sup­port­ed by a lot of work­ing class peo­ple who were tired of be­ing ig­nored and made fun of, and be­ing writ­ten off. He promised a gi­ant sect of peo­ple that he’d take them se­ri­ous­ly, drain the swamp on the tired oli­garchy that ne­glect­ed them, which Hillary rep­re­sent­ed. The rest of us knew he wasn’t who he promised, but that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He knew what hurt to speak to and what to rep­re­sent, in or­der to get elect­ed. Don’t think for a sec­ond that all his sup­port­ers were tiki-torch marchers. 

Obama’s time led to where we are now, too. Not fair­ly, be­cause Oba­ma is one hun­dred mil­lion times the hu­man be­ing Trump could ever be, but be­cause what we have now is a back­lash against what Oba­ma in­ci­den­tal­ly, un­fair­ly bore the brunt of rep­re­sent­ing – every­thing lib­er­al chic. Pro­gres­sive white peo­ple loved Obama’s reign, but it in­ci­den­tal­ly meant they didn’t have to know or care too much about gov­ern­ment ne­glect of work­ing class neigh­bor­hoods through­out mid­dle Amer­i­ca, or about black peo­ple get­ting shot by po­lice so much as they have since Trump has been in charge and there’s some­one to blame (I’ve worked in anti-racism orgs since I was a teenag­er and have nev­er, un­til late­ly, seen white peo­ple so up­set about things that have been hap­pen­ing con­sis­tent­ly to black peo­ple since Amer­i­can his­to­ry be­gan. NWA told every­one in 1988, you care now about the movie?). White, ed­u­cat­ed lib­er­als should’ve been giv­ing a shit this whole time about the needs of work­ing class peo­ple, white work­ing class peo­ple es­pe­cial­ly, be­cause when those peo­ple are for­sak­en, through­out his­to­ry, they (have been taught to) blame black and brown peo­ple. The racist march­es hap­pen­ing now days, as I see it, are lib­er­al fault. Trump just played on the left’s neg­li­gence and won. 

And where lib­er­als should know to wield our pow­er, the at­mos­phere put out is one of be­ing “of­fend­ed” – a state seem­ing­ly unique to lib­er­als, a mass that’s be­come so del­i­cate, mean­while wav­ing the flag of tol­er­ance but can’t tol­er­ate any­one ag­gres­sive, or mad, or “bad,” AKA dif­fer­ent. What’s a good test. Could you have some­one dif­fer­ent than you rag­ing in your face out of their own pain, and be able to main­tain pa­tience, love, an open heart, a will­ing­ness to ad­mit where you’ve been wrong, where you’ve been hurt­ful, where you’re hard, too? Be­cause some­times that’s the pain it takes to change old ways into new. Growth in any con­text – per­son­al, spir­i­tu­al, re­la­tion­al, in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal, is usu­al­ly a fuck­ing fight. 

Strange­ly, in the last cou­ple of years, what made me know my­self, my strength and my needs more than I ever have be­fore, is some­one very dif­fer­ent from me, ba­si­cal­ly yelling in my face that he doesn’t un­der­stand me. And out of some tremen­dous dri­ve to get to deep­er un­der­stand­ing, to try and un­der­stand an­oth­er person’s rage and hurt, too, with­out dis­con­nect­ing and shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger, I grew a heat, a nec­es­sary rage of my own, a clar­i­ty, and the con­fi­dence to fi­nal­ly gath­er the words and ex­plain my­self to him, very out loud, and say ex­act­ly who the fuck I am and what the fuck I need. With the ex­cep­tion of two very unique friends, my fam­i­ly and friends could not, for life of them, imag­ine that I would need that hard a chal­lenge in or­der to make me come out of my shell (“speak my truth” to bor­row an ab­stract Oprah-ism). Or that deal­ing with such a seem­ing­ly harsh sit­u­a­tion for an ex­tend­ed time pe­ri­od could pos­si­bly il­lic­it a pos­i­tive out­come for me. Some even la­beled it “abu­sive.” But I knew it wasn’t, and why I was in it. I liked it and I want­ed that kind of hard­knock love for a rea­son. I didn’t want to keep hold­ing things in, I don’t want to keep shut­ting down. I need­ed some­one – even if it seemed ugly – to make me re­al­ize where I was wrong, hard, not easy. Some­times keep­ing things in and man­ag­ing the in­ner life is right­eous. Oth­er times, it can come off as with­hold­ing, bor­der­line ly­ing, even. Growth is painful. It’s not al­ways a pret­ty pic­ture. Get­ting to peace can look like war, when in fact en­gag­ing in un­com­fort­able, diplo­mat­ic work is ac­tu­al­ly how wars are avoided. 

It doesn’t mean my per­son­al­i­ty changed, or that I need that boot­camp-style push for­ev­er, or that I no longer tend to be soft and shy over out­ward and con­fronta­tion­al. I just stepped up to tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for myself. 

Stop be­ing so fuck­ing del­i­cate if you want change. 

What looked like a ter­ri­bly harsh mas­culin­i­ty to some peo­ple is what I found strange­ly nur­tur­ing. And so I’m also dis­turbed at the threat­ened ex­tinc­tion of mas­cu­line men who do typ­i­cal­ly mas­cu­line things. Harsh is not al­ways bad. Ag­gres­sive is not al­ways dan­ger­ous. I looked at Oprah’s au­di­ence full of lib­er­al men lis­ten­ing to women stand up for them­selves, and they seem dumb­struck, not sure how to be. What to say. They look le­git scared to do or say the wrong thing. I’d love to hear one of them, from the in­dus­try, warn oth­er oth­er men, “If I see any of this abuse-of-pow­er shit on my set, I’ll beat your ass my moth­er­fuck­ing self.” In­stead, this at­mos­phere has men think­ing they have to be less mas­cu­line, when per­son­al­ly, I think the an­swer is that men need to stop be­ing afraid of their own mas­culin­i­ty (let alone fem­i­nin­i­ty). The most beau­ti­ful, heal­ing, MAS­CU­LINE thing men could do right now is pro­tect the sov­er­eign­ty of the di­vine fem­i­nine. But that would be called pa­tri­ar­chal, wouldn’t it? Think, though. Wouldn’t it have felt grat­i­fy­ing, even right­eous, if in­stead of gig­gling in that bus, Bil­ly Bush had put Trump up against the wall by his throat? 

Al­most 15 years ago, I sac­ri­ficed my reg­u­lar eat­ing habits for a plant-based diet, an anti-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, anti-chem­i­cal lifestyle – some­thing that ac­tu­al­ly cre­ates mas­sive, sys­temic change on a wide­spread, mass lev­el. (A few celebs have done it and cham­pi­oned the mo­tives. And then they use it as a me­dia op­por­tu­ni­ty when they change their minds. Go fuck your­selves.) I took my mon­ey and my body as a ves­sel out of a col­lu­sive net­work of cor­rupt, bro­ken, racist, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, preda­to­ry, de­struc­tive, un­just, ar­cha­ic sys­tems and it wasn’t be­cause I didn’t like chick­en or I be­cause I could nev­er kill an an­i­mal. And so I guess, un­less you’re will­ing to stop giv­ing your body and your mon­ey to bro­ken sys­tems, and rather be­come the change you want to see in the world, I don’t know what any­one thinks they’re stand­ing up to or what they have to com­plain about. 

While peo­ple are so des­per­ate for a sav­ior out­side them­selves that any celebri­ty with a canned pro­gres­sive speech might suf­fice, I’m look­ing for sole peo­ple to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves on such a deep lev­el that it would bomb the bro­ken sys­tems by de­fault. See where you’re part of all the prob­lems and fix it. What you avoid say­ing and do­ing and why? And by the way, what fac­to­ry do your shoes come from? Whose hands soak in chem­i­cals for you to car­ry a leather bag? Whose drugs are you on? How much land is sac­ri­ficed so you can eat meat? How of­ten do you change your wardrobe? What an­i­mal had to be preg­nant over and over and then thrown in the garbage so you can have but­ter in your Bul­let­proof cof­fee? Why we still con­sent­ing to a gov­ern­men­tal agri­cul­tur­al agency that had to pay black farm­ers mil­lions of dol­lars for decades of wrong­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion? Why do we al­low a food sys­tem that cre­ates dis­parate health di­vides along racial lines? How dare you point a fin­ger at Trump, YOU, who won’t change your ways? You’re the en­e­my of this nation.
 
 

—ruby roth

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2018 Ruby Roth.‬

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