Thoughts on a trip south via license plate bingo

Very recently, I realized just how much I needed some quiet time on my own, so I rented a tiny house near the Shenandoahs for three days-and-nights starting yesterday. After Wednesday’s insurrection (please watch this excellent video on it; I almost never watch MSNBC, but this is a must-see), leaving felt risky and untimely. I asked the boys if I should stay home. Jack said, “Mom, I’m not scared, I’m just pissed and disgusted. You deserve to go have some time for yourself. Have fun. I love you.” Ol said, “I’ve always wanted a tiny house. Can I come? No? Okay, well I’m fine, I just can’t believe people STORMED the Capitol with guns. They are awful.”

So, at a minimum, I have two extremely well-adjusted children. And, I am enormously proud of their righteous disgust and anger. I adore them.

When I was little, my sister and I had a variety of ways to amuse ourselves on long car trips to and from visiting family in Georgia. Perhaps what I most loved was license plate bingo. We had these thick cardboard pieces with a state in each bingo slot. As you saw that state’s license plate, you got to slide shut a transparent, red plastic door. Do y’all remember those? I swear this is what we had.

Screen Shot 2021-01-09 at 7.31.02 PM.png

Anyway, even though I have always suffered from horrendous motion sickness, I loved this game and still love the idea of it. Roadways fascinate me. They are a country’s vascular system, taking those in transit to all manner of place, an intricate web of vessels that intersect, splinter off of, run parallel to, and diverge. I loved when one car and ours would drive together for a while before that other chose to exit, carrying it away and toward something different than what lay in my future. Those brief intervals of overlap, of connection, they are meaningful in some weird way. Coincidental, fated, a thing in common before the break. Fleeting familiarity flanked by strangerness.

My favorite plates, for no reason beyond immediate aesthetic reaction, included Rhode Island’s simple gray wave, Vermont’s unapologetically spare green and white, South Carolina’s Palmetto and moon, and New Mexico’s turquoise and yellow with the central zia symbol. I still find them all pleasing, though my relationship with them has changed somewhat.

Things, for good and bad, so often become imbued with meaning: idolatrous, nostalgic, nationalistic (rather a twin to idolatry, I suppose), romantic…a simple figure can be appropriated in ways that leave some revering it with fervor while others, who previously loved said figure, suddenly shy away in discomfort or revulsion.

As I drove down to the Shenandoah Valley by myself, in a hybrid car studded with progressive cause bumper stickers, I found myself playing license plate bingo without enthusiasm. Yes, I had researched this area and this rental beforehand. I asked the owner to tell me more about Harrisonburg, in light of this week’s turmoil. She assured me that it was a very progressive town, albeit in a fairly conservative county, that I would be fine bringing my car, that you couldn’t see the parking space from the main road.

And she was right. Black Lives Matter, Biden, and Hate Has No Home Here signs abound. Masks are mandatory. Hand sanitizer is everywhere; in fact, it’s much more prevalent in commercial places here than back home. And true to its moniker, Harrisonburg is an exceptionally friendly place.

And yet.

I intentionally bypassed not a few places on my drive down in which I could have stopped for gas. You could not have paid me to pull off in a sea of mud-spattered pickups boasting the Don’t Tread On Me version of the Virginia license plate and Blue Lives Matter stickers on the cab’s rear window.

The Alabama-plated truck that came roaring up behind me? I pulled immediately into the next lane and did.not.look.left.

Pennsylvania and New York plates? Hard to tell. A little stressful. A Mainer this far south? Probably ok.

Any hybrid car regardless of plate? God, it’s nice to see you.

I hate this form of license plate bingo. I despise fear and otherness and assumption based on symbology. And yet, as the trump years have shown us, a red cap is not just a red cap. The American flag has several meanings, not least when its color scheme is changed to black, white, and blue, or the one flown is an older, much older, version.

Growing up in Louisiana, most every friend had a parent with a pickup truck, many with gun racks mounted in the rear window. My dad had an F-150 for decades, though never a gun rack. I was never scared. I didn’t like guns, and Dad was never a hunter, but the truck and the rack and the weaponry didn’t provoke fear.

Today, the black pickup with a loud engine and slightly darkened windows or a tell-tale sticker? I don’t love it. Huge eagle and American flag decals? Suspicious. Second Amendment, assault weapon, or pro-life stickers? I’m racing in the other direction. Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina plates? I wonder.

Let me repeat, I hate this. It is antithetical to every fiber of my being. My in-laws live in Virginia, for pete’s sakes. But in response to the militaristic actions of trumpers, pro-lifers, 2A’ers, nationalistic white supremacists, blue lives matter folks (who tend to be anti-black lives matter), and Fox News and OAN watchers? It sometimes feels smart to take the exit away.

This afternoon, I went to the Carrier Arboretum at JMU. It was a stunning day. Cold, brisk, blue, winter. I thrilled in the vestiges of fall foliage, in trees healthy and dead, in the ducks and geese that swam as if unperturbed by the frigid water, in the brave green of plants that have figured out how to thrive in tough times, in the various mosses that I just fancy beyond articulation. I had a perfect couple of hours, but as I approached the small parking lot, alone, no others around, I saw two big trucks pull up on either side of my car. There were other spots; they didn’t need those. And so I did another lap around the duck pond, another visit into a wooded area. One truck left, and the other backed into a different spot. Heart pounding, I headed for my car. My electronic key failed to let my trembling fingers pull the handle open. I was forced to put my bag on my car hood, dig for my keys, unlatch the physical key from the electronic fob, slide it into the lock, figure out which way opened it, and finally slip into the driver’s seat.

I’m not going to lie. In that moment, I was worried. It was like being a woman (like me) walking alone at night with her keys between her knuckles (like I have done many times), ears pricked (all the time), hurrying but not obviously hurrying. This really pisses me off. I have every right to put social justice stickers on my car and not worry I’m going to be harmed or targeted because of them, whether visible from the main road or not. I have every right to travel alone as a woman. I have every right to walk home late at night unmolested. I have every right to wander through an arboretum lazily, mooning over mosses and bird calls and root systems and green in winter.

Why do 45% approve?

Why do 45% approve?

As Republicans whine about healing and unity, let us understand that if someone perpetrates violence against another, healing does not mean pushing said violence under the rug and chanting kumbaya. Freedom of expression does not mean “I don’t like what you’re saying so I will now kill or threaten or harm you.” Violence and hate and related action are NOT protected by the Constitution, nor should they be. There must be consequences. (< Please watch the video accessible via that link.)

Let’s recognize who’s culpable in the why behind license plate bingo not being the same game it once was for me as a white person, and as it NEVER was for people of color. Let’s change things by demanding accountability, consequence, and justice, especially for white thugs and the man who encouraged their hatred and violence.

As an aside, here are some photos from today. Such beauty in this world.

Boy howdy, shit went down: domestic terrorists, and a Blue Georgia

Alrighty, y’all. very tired and upset and stressed on January 5, I melted down to you and felt so much better. As my friend Liz says, “writing is catharsis.” I do appreciate all who checked in on me. I love you! And then Wednesday came, lawd a mercy. I’m still wiping my brow.

I stayed up so late watching the Georgia returns before waking a few hours later and:

seeing confirmation that Reverend Warnock had ousted Barbie Loeffler;
starting to make enthusiastic calls to Georgia canvassers volunteering to cure ballots;
starting to feel real hope about Ossoff beating the jackass who pretended he couldn’t pronounce Kamala;
watching with disgust as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz sought to decertify Arizona’s votes;
seeing some news about a mob;
opening Twitter to find that insane domestic terrorists, aka MAGAs, were five miles from my house storming the Capitol with pitchforks, guns, flags, IEDs, war paint, and other paraphernalia of war;
becoming riveted to every news source and their video feeds;

Wait, hold up. WHAT? Yes. It was like watching a psychotic game of Olympic-level ping pong. And it was still just 1pm.

As you all know, trump’s people took his directive and planned an insurrection. They flew and drove here from all over the country. Hotels rented them rooms. It seems that some Capitol Police even opened perimeter gates* and actual Capitol building doors* for them, inviting them in to desecrate one of the symbols of America they -the police and the mob- purport to love. Footage shows rioters breaking windows and doors, sitting in Congressional chambers and office chairs, stealing podiums and who knows what else, all while screaming “This is OUR house!” I don’t know about y’all, but that is just not how I treat my home.

A woman wearing a trump flag was shot and later died. A video she shared a few days before this treasonous insurrection shows that she was really deep down the right wing cult wormhole. I haven’t been able to watch it in full because it is so insane and vitriolic and sincerely terrifying. She is now being heralded as a martyr for far right groups. Ivanka called these people “American patriots,” while Cheeto Satan said, “you’re very special. We love you.”

Prior to the arrival of various national guards and DC police, Capitol Police (not under DC jurisdiction) didn’t seem to do too much about the rampant mob whose behavior resulted in:

the American flag being replaced by a Trump flag;
a giant cross being erected outside which was, purportedly, to be burned;
a noose erected on the Capitol’s west side (apparently, these seditious thugs wanted to lynch Pence);
the DC mayor frantically issuing a city-wide curfew;
MD Rep Steny Hoyer frantically calling MD Gov Hogan to ask he deploy the state’s police and National Guard (which we now know Hogan tried to do but was delayed for some time before being granted permission to send);
Pence being hurried away to safety;
Congress being hurried away to a different, crowded place of safety in which some REFUSED to wear masks;
among other hideous actions.

IMG_0807.jpeg

All of this was and is domestic terrorism. And yet, later, after a measly 52 arrests (and that was SO much later; for comparison, more than 14,000 were arrested during protests against George Floyd’s murder), we saw footage of some of the insurrectionists back at their hotels, drinking and “celebrating” in lobby bars, sans masks, natch, flags and such resting on their chairs. Not arrested. If they were black, they would have been hours dead. White supremacy, anyone?

We also found that WHILE they were being safely guarded from the thugs they incited and encouraged, Hawley and Cruz, yes those two, sent fundraising emails to their supporter lists. Can you even fathom the depths of soullessness and cravenness that would enable a person to behave in such a way? In any of these ways?

I should fess up here and say that in my rage, I responded to Ivanka’s claim that these criminals were “American patriots” by tweeting, “You did this, you hideous whore.” On the same day that Twitter finally suspended Cheeto Satan, they also suspended me for hateful speech. Bless their hearts. To be welcomed back into the grand Twitterverse, I had to delete my tweet and “browse only” for 12 hours. Should we call people names? No. But I do find it a bit hysterical that a fairly factual, subjective tweet -mine- was met with the same punishment as the multi-year destructive, full-of-lies-and-hate, “Obama is a Kenyan muslim,” “Lock her up,” “the election was rigged” feed of spray tan mc ketchup face. Now I’m back, and trump has just been permanently banned. I guess there’s some justice after all.

I maintain that Ivanka is complicit in all of this. Of course she is. The whole family is. Just watch this recording of them watching, from a safe space, as the insurrection commenced -AFTER Evil Yam and his degenerate son WELCOMED and spoke to the thug mob- and played out. Kimberly is dancing. Jr looks wrecked and crazed as ever. Ivanka’s hair is coiffed. It’s The Hunger Games, a la Trumpian America and with less intelligence. A hat tip to Laura Branigan whose agents subsequently stated, very publicly, that she neither gave permission for or condoned, the hooligan family’s use of her song, Gloria.

After a five-hour delay, the Capitol was declared safe and Congress resumed what has previously, always been a perfunctory, symbolic tradition: the certification of the winning presidential candidate. Hawley and Cruz continued their shenanigans, but just before 4a on Thursday, Biden was officially declared the winner of the 2020 election. NO SHIT.

During said largely symbolic tradition, trump continued saying inflammatory things, refusing to acknowledge he’d lost. Matt Gaetz had the gall to say the mob was antifa in disguise (nope) and, get this, was applauded by fellow House republicans. And, Ossoff was declared the official winner in his race against Perdue. I have a lot of family in Georgia, and though it pains me deeply, most of them are ardent trump lovers. In part because of that and in part because of Georgia’s history of grotesquely racist behavior, it is a special thrill that the state not only voted for Biden but also that it replaced two white assholes with a Black man and a Jew. Thank you, Stacey Abrams and Latosha Brown and all others who made this happen by enfranchising (FFS, finally) black Georgians.

IMG_0791.jpeg

This has been an enormously unsettling time. I beg everyone to stop saying, “this isn’t who we are.” It IS who we are, almost half of us, and we MUST do and be better. The only response to trump, hawley, cruz, and the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol, are planning to do so again, and who support such behavior is to squash them completely, a la Germany post-WWII. There must be full consequence for the traitors; we must not give one inch. Not one.

While it’s good that since Wednesday many more have been arrested and/or fired from their jobs, not least because the idiots didn’t cover their faces and so have been readily identifiable, many are still out there, at least 6 were elected legislators, and, per NPR and other sources, intelligence suggests that more attacks are being planned for near-future dates. If you are thinking of coming to DC for the inauguration, I beg you to cancel those plans. Stay home. If you live in DC, stay in your home. I am not an alarmist. I have a fairly high risk tolerance. But this is all not remotely a joke. They wanted to LYNCH Mike Pence. Mike Pence!! Plus, more than 4,000 Americans died from Covid yesterday alone, so please, wear a mask, stay at home, be safe.

To be continued…

*There is video footage of both of these things happening. Many people are saying this was intentional assistance, suggesting Cap Police support for and enabling of easy access/infiltration; others are saying the Cap Police were just wholly overwhelmed by the size and anger of the mob and so couldn’t hold them back. I find this almost 100% improbably. I’ve protested MANY times at the Capitol and have even been directly pushed back by its police and threatened with arrest. They do not fuck around and they don’t get intimidated. They arrested an enormous chunk of a group I protested with one day (the day my friend K and I participated in the Remove Trump movement in the Cannon building; wearing shirts, each with a letter on it.)