I spent some time this week hunting around my house for a piece of black material to wear as an armband on Jan. 20, the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
I am wearing the black armband all day Saturday to signify the death of decency in the White House, the erosion of democracy in this country and the demise of truth due to this increasingly dangerous and chaotic administration.
I knew when Trump won enough votes in the Electoral College to be named our next president that he would prove to be a disaster in that position. Millions of us knew it, and said it, and took to the streets. However, Trump has been a far greater disaster than I (and many others) had predicted.
We knew Trump was ill-prepared for the presidency. We knew he had no experience in government and had suffered numerous bankruptcies. We knew he was a narcissist and needed constant reassurance and propping up. We knew his tweets were inappropriate and his behavior boorish. We knew he could not find major countries on a world map and would be embarrassing on the world stage. We knew these things and so much more.
But a quiet, never-expressed part of me thought: this man is from New York City, a wonderfully alive, diverse metropolis with extraordinary cultural and ethnic pluralism. Maybe there was a gay-affirming streak hidden in Trump somewhere. Maybe he was less racist than we thought. Maybe he was less appalling than we imagined. Maybe he would be awful as president but not totally, completely and relentlessly horrible. That was a fantasy, a private hope.
But Trump has proved, in his first year in office, to be a far more racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, transphobic, misogynistic, menacing bully and buffoon than I ever imagined. Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie have just published a book called “Let Trump Be Trump.” The problem with Trump’s presidency after one year in office is precisely that Trump has been Trump — uncensored, unnuanced, uncoached, unvarnished, unmuzzled, uninformed, undisciplined and unchecked. And the result is that we are all now more unsafe.
Some of Trump’s tweets can be dismissed as the early-morning rantings of an unstable, floundering, faltering mess of a man. But the sum total of his pronouncements to citizens of this country, world leaders, undocumented workers, people of color and the peoples of the world cannot be dismissed because he is endangering us, our children and our children’s children.
This man who is worried about the size of his nuclear button and who threatens to wipe out entire countries is a danger to everyone alive today. His decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and roll back decades of environmental protections so that “Big Oil” and “Big Coal” can reap more profits will bring us more severe hurricanes, more flooded coastlines and more devastating wildfires.
Trump is incapable of making even one decision based on facts, science, research, advice from experts, concern about children, feelings for refugees, compassion for poor people, the needs of women, the security of our nation or the fate of the planet.
On this one-year anniversary of the day Trump was inaugurated when so many Americans gasped, winced, hung their heads, said prayers, and laced up their boots to go march in protest, I think we should all wear black armbands to mark our grief and our ongoing resistance.
Saturday is a good day to march again, to take a knee, or raise a fist to symbolize our total noncomplicity with the direction Trump has taken this country. It is a good day to say again: A dangerous man lives in the White House — a man who makes decisions on impulse, clings to misinformation, lies about reality, mocks women, demeans entire nations and ethnic groups, and holds unbridled power.
It is a good day to mourn, organize, say prayers for sanity, ask the world community to forgive us, march and chant in the streets. Our resistance must continue.
The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian, of Northampton, is part of the ministerial team of the Alden Baptist Church in Springfield. She is the founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership, which offers free movement-building classes from Greenfield to Springfield. She writes a monthly column on the intersection of faith, culture, and politics, and can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.