Saturday before last, the 21st of January 2017 (I want to engrave the date in my mind) J and I joined an estimated 100,000 other people walking from Grosvenor Square to Trafalgar Square. It was damn cold, not the dry freezing cold of continental climates but the damp horrid cold that UK winter does so well and I had dressed badly thinking more of cycling there than the long, long wait standing still waiting for the huge crowd to move.\u00a0 But oh boy was it worth it!\u00a0 A huge turnout and though the reason for it is grim, there were smiles all round. I don’t think there was a moment in over four hours, across the thousands around us, in which I wasn’t seeing happiness and animation pretty much everywhere I looked.\u00a0 Of course there was anger too: we were all there because we’re angry; we’re angry that Trump represents a new resurgence of misogyny and of gender hatred in blatant and nasty form.\u00a0 We’re angry that so many Americans (a minority but the minority that carried the day) voted for him.\u00a0 However, as many posters and banners said, this was about a belief that affection, love, humour and joining up with people across differences will win over anger, hatred, fear and contempt.<\/p>\n
I’m sure everyone there shared that anger and I felt waves of it as I have from the minute Trump stood for the Republican nomination and started to reveal this side of him.\u00a0\u00a0 As the march went on I felt that and waves of disgust, and deep waves of fear washing through me, swashing back and forward against the sheer joy and hope at being there.\u00a0 This felt to be about turning my anger and disgust, and my contempt even, the emotion of mine that I fear most, to fuel; putting it to constructive, creative use not letting it moulder away in me and poison my presence for others.<\/p>\n
This event was driven by anger about anger.\u00a0 My anger toward Trump is about two things he has brought together with devastating effect.\u00a0 Most obviously, and the primary driver for the march that day is his understanding of the tragic appeal to humans of confident hatred — the terrifying ease with which we align behind a dictator or a dictatorial system.\u00a0 He is of course a democratically elected leader, but so was Hitler, such is one of the many problems of democracy though it’s probably still better than the alternatives.\u00a0 With the right presentation, the right massaging, the right rhythm and ritual we will vote for people who hate, who tell us it’s alright to hate, tell us that it’s OK to have contempt for others.\u00a0 This is a a position he fills with consumate, disgusting, brilliance.\u00a0 The other thing I hate is his indifference about facts, truth, his contempt for careful exploration of complex challenges, and his wish to stifle those trying to find sufficiently truthful, grounded, knowledge about our world and the parlous state we humans put it and ourselves in.\u00a0 This is a vital complement that any dictator, any would be demagogue needs, this is a crucial part of what I call the massaging of the message, it enables the ritualisation of the speeches so they contain very little of any real substance at all, so they preempt all thinking, all exploring, all testing.\u00a0 Suddenly Brecht’s “Resistible rise of Arturo Ui” seems less a burlesque, more a simple warning to us all.<\/p>\n
We have to, yes please we<\/strong> <\/em>have to, oppose both aspects of Trump’s rise to such power, as Brecht knew so well and personally, these things are resistible.\u00a0 I know my part in that starts with protesting against these things, knowing that I am angry, I am full of disgust and contempt.\u00a0 I know I have to both hold these passions, but also that I must challenge them, use them carefully as fuel to strengthen me to stand with others.\u00a0 Held in that way then they are necessary emotions and the testing, trying to find facts and truths and share them, is the vital containment vessel that makes these feelings safe and vital<\/p>\n More on this to come I hope.\u00a0 No photos, I know we were all there to make a public statement but that felt like turning it into political tourism, a spectator sport (that’s me: hooray for anyone who felt differently and is circulating their ‘photos of the smiles, the brilliant jokes on posters and so, so much that was good).\u00a0 However, I do think Lily Allen’s video celebration of the event really captures it well:<\/p>\n