Jonathan Light

Writer. Director. Producer.

Month: November 2016

Rough couple weeks

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I had a not-so-great time after the last two treatments (hence the lack of updates..) BUT I’m out of the hole, until next Thursday at least. Although chemo brain is definitely a thing…I just typed “whole” and almost didn’t notice. Proofread, people.

So for both of you refreshing this page for an update, one of you being my sister who I talk to every day anyway, I’m doing fine enough…only four more to go. Hopefully.

And not that you were wondering, but yes, the election definitely made it worse. Stress level is high, which just seems to enhance all the shit.

If you don’t feel like reading my take on it, then stop now…

I’m having trouble hearing everyone say “it will be OK, let’s just wait and see.” I’m trying my best to intellectually polish this turd, but the bottom line is this: Either he will do exactly what he’s been saying he will do, and hundreds-of-thousands-perhaps-millions of people will be “adversely affected” [translation: lives destroyed] by those policies, or he WON’T do what he says, and will instead follow along with the goals of the current Republican Congress, and perhaps slightly fewer people will be “adversely affected” [translation: lives destroyed] by those policies. 

We are way past this idea that politics is messy and this is just a normal rightward curve in a direction that will balance out to the mean. That was where we were with George W. Bush, who at least understood how a bill becomes a law, and wasn’t empowering truly evil people like Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions. I never doubted that the country could survive Bush as President.
This is different. There are no more checks, especially if he can pack the courts. Laws are only effective if people believe in them, and if there is enough of a balance of power to allow for bad laws to be challenged. I fear that he has enough support to make things that have been illegal until now, not – and vice versa.

Everything I believe in – clean air and drinking water, voting rights, protection of speech, justice for innocent people, a healthy and robust Fourth Estate, the idea that words matter… EVERYTHING is in peril with this guy. If those aren’t priorities for you, fine. That’s sad, but fine. But if you say they are, and you think that Trump will be OK, then I urge you to be concerned and vigilant. He has launched a soft coup without firing one shot, and has infused our system with the idea that profit and power matter above everything else. 

That is the real sadness here – instead of a government whose goal is to serve its people, to create a setting in which individuals can thrive and speak out and worship and feel free from want or fear, we will soon have a government whose goal is to enhance profit and protect the wealthy from losing anything, using tactics that delegitimize dissent and stifle empathic, altruistic thinking.  And due to a combination of cynicism, mistrust of “the media” and the lack of any kind of civics education in this country – supported by a healthy percentage of racism and bigotry – he’s rode in on a wave of support from people who think he’ll upend the system, turning everything back to being “great” – whatever that fuck that ever meant.
I just don’t think whatever semblance of a democracy we have left is equipped to handle such a soft, insidious threat – a threat that uses not a shred of nuanced thinking or rational analysis, but will require both to combat. The different realities that exist in this country are too bifurcated to actually do what needs to be done and rework our Constitution to reflect the modern era. This document was, after all, created by men for whom the Internet would seem like Darke Magic and  to whom “the Negro” only counted for three-fifths of themselves. Yes, that second one changed, technically…but has it really?

Sorry, that’s a whole other essay, I guess.

To conclude: No, I don’t know how to fight it, other than trying to pressure my representatives to do so on my behalf.  I don’t have the money or connections to run for office myself, and I’m skeptical that anything other than vicious legislative fights will do any good in the current atmosphere of misinformation and mistrust of real journalists. (Cynical, I know. Sorry.) The system is what the system is, and we can only hope that we’re able to stop them (not just him) from creating a situation in which we’re unable to vote them out of power.

But hopefully that will happen, and hopefully I’ll be cancer-free when it does.

How many stages until Acceptance?

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When I was diagnosed, I experienced all the stages of grief in a very short time. Within those first two weeks, I denied, got angry, bargained, slipped into depression…seemingly all at once.

Somehow, however, I quickly accepted it and implemented a plan of action. I started looking at cancer as a problem to overcome and began to explore the best options on the table to address it as nothing more or less than that: a problem to overcome.

Don’t get me wrong: anger, denial and depression still slide under the covers with me every now and then, but for the most part, I’ve been lucky enough to find acceptance and I’m following a plan of action.

I don’t mean to suggest that others should process and approach their own treatments the way I have, but this election has affected us all, and if, like me, you’re stunned into anger, denial and depression by Donald Trump’s election, then we need to move quickly to acceptance and focus on a plan of action.

In Which I Embark on an Extended Metaphor

Our country has been diagnosed – no, injected with cancer…an ideological cancer. Trump and the ideals he promoted to win this election, ideals which a clear fifty-percent of the country either implicitly or explicitly condone, are cancer cells that have metastasized. Hatred, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, gleeful ignorance – these are not abstract things. They are actual ideals that actual people have and defend. If we allow them to, these ideals will lead us down a dark hole of destruction and threaten our entire society.

But here is an important distinction, and it cannot be emphasized enough to those who just lost: Donald Trump’s supporters are not the cancer. Donald Trump’s ideals are the cancer. We need to remember that [most of] the people who voted for Donald Trump’s ideals are people, human beings with families and loves and fears…just like you or I. They do not see these ideals as bad or hurtful, they see them  as solutions to problems that are going unaddressed. That does not make them all irredeemable idiots. Misguided? Yes. In need of a civics education free from partisanship? Absolutely (and I would argue that’s our biggest problem.)  

So we can all agree, more or less, that we have problems in our society. But a free society has and always will have problems…the only question is which ideals we employ to solve them. Trump has sold his to half the country – but to paint as “stupid” every person who voted for him is just as dangerous as voting for Trump.

The faster we realize this, the faster we will be able to attack this cancer we all have. And yes, I say ALL – if we are to be one country, if we are to be part of a shared society and throw our lot in with each other, we have to accept the burden of our sickness together.

It is his ideals that are the sickness, his ideals that have taken hold of our society and infected our cells. It is these ideals that need to be addressed, challenged, attacked and beaten. We need chemo, immediately – and chemo is an absolute bitch. It’s hard, disruptive and ever-present. There will be days when you can’t inhale without dry-heaving, when your whole body aches, when simple acts require herculean efforts. Even on the days when you’re between treatments, it will be hanging five feet above your head, like your own personal guillotine that you know will drop in just a few more days. But that is what is called for now in our country. It won’t be easy to face the chemo we need, but face it we must.

And by that I mean, we need to get involved. We need to engage – not with those who agree with us, but with those who don’t. With love, empathy, patience and understanding – without yelling or demonizing, even when faced with it in return – we need to convince our fellow Americans that Donald Trump’s ideals are not good ideals. That they are not the ideals of a healthy nation. That they will lead to nothing but hurt and pain and destruction of all the things we hold dear as a society and as a Constitutional Republic.

And we need to do this not in the impersonal and shallow comments section, but with in-person, face-to-face discussions. Debates. Gatherings. Events that create real discourse among people and force everyone to take on everyone else’s concerns. I’m not talking about anything specific, and I don’t know what form these could take – but I do know that actual dialogue is necessary, and that it is still possible for everyone to meet somewhere in the middle if we just took the time to be a society again. Like chemotherapy, it is an uncomfortable, difficult path. But like chemotherapy, it’s our last, best hope to rid our body of this cancer.

I truly believe the ideals in our arsenal can win. Inclusiveness, generosity, empathy, society and love…these all stand in direct opposition to those other ideals espoused by Donald Trump, and they are the best bet for a healthy republic. But they will not win if the only way we’re promoting them is by sharing trite memes or re-tweeting clever one-liners for our own personal echo chamber. We need to engage with those in our society who think Donald Trump’s ideals are good, who think that the cancer doesn’t exist, and convince them to join us in the I.V. chair. It’s a difficult task, and there’s no guarantee of success, but if we want to fight for the ideals that would relegate Trump and his to the proverbial dustbin, we have to roll up our sleeves, take our anti-nausea meds, and shove that needle in as quickly as we can.

I’m grateful if you took the time to read this. Hopefully we can overcome this together.

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