Not One Iota

Since the inauguration of the current President of the United States, I have heard people express their concern about how embarrassing the current officeholder is, or they wonder if others share their shame over his actions and behavior. Even some foreign nationals assume citizens of the US to be embarrassed by what the world is witnessing. More on this later.

Last month, he took center stage to address the global leaders who comprise the General Assembly of the United Nations. Created as a global intergovernmental agency 70 years ago, the 51 founding countries wanted to collectively address human rights and peace. Today, the United Nations is comprised of 193 countries who have signed the Charter. While the ideals and hopes of the agency are lofty when compared to the challenges of national priorities, the United Nations is a source of hope in an often complicated and messy world. It is expected that invited speakers model at least a modicum of decency, dignity and respect for the organization and those present, even when addressing contentious matters. President Trump chose to fall far beneath any such expectation. To compare his behavior to that of a bull in a china shop is off kilter because the bull is a wild animal with no capacity to honor procedures. Trump seems to enjoy running roughshod over decorum.

After this past weekend’s No Kings protests of him and his administration became the largest in our history with seven million participants, he responded with an AI video of him as a king piloting a bomber plane. As he guided the plane over protesters, he dropped excrement on them. Whether he approved the release of this video or not is irrelevant. He has created such a toxic environment that his sycophants know what resonates with him and how low he is willing to go to retaliate against those he identifies as enemies. Desiring to prove themselves indispensable they are eager to satiate his appetite for cruelty with no regard for the Constitution, the Office of the President, or we, the people. Their memories are short until they involuntarily join the ranks of Jeff Sessions and Mike Pence.

We are in a tragic and unfortunate moment, but it is neither the first nor the last time. Whenever we as a nation appear to expand our understanding of human dignity and human rights, there is a rebellion to maintain the status quo. Our history includes many cruel people and their sycophants. How else do we remember the genocide of the people of the First Nations, the kidnapping and enslavement of my African ancestors, the internment of those of Japanese ancestry, the systemic sins of colonization, and Jim Crow? Sadly, our history includes many other atrocities based on the dehumanization of people considered unworthy. The autocratic rebellion orchestrated by Trump, Project 2025 and others reveals the worst of who we are as a nation.

After promoting our nation as a beacon for democracy, justice, liberty and opportunity, we are revealing to the world and ourselves that our work is not done. Some are learning for the first time how important it is for each of us to be engaged in the civic process. It is a lifelong response that must be taken up by each generation. If we want to live in a just and democratic society with liberty and opportunity, we need to expand our thinking from the individual to the collective. Myopic vision limits and harms all of us by making us mere pawns in someone else’s game.

Upon arriving to this land, my ancestors recognized and experienced a massive shift. They struggled to hold onto their God-given dignity in inhumane circumstances that I cannot fathom. Yet, in spite of their embodied trauma and struggle, their existence gave birth to my parents. They are the ones who insured my knowing the truth of myself in a society that lied about it. From them I learned the parts of our national history often neglected, and my responsibility to exercise the rights of citizenship for which many struggled and died.

This is how I come to the table. Shame has been used to humiliate women in Black bodies for far too long. With the awareness I possess, I do not have one iota of embarrassment or shame over the actions or behavior of Donald John. I recognized the con as I watched him descend the escalator in 2015. A convicted felon, he embodies the corrupt greed that dehumanized others to build the wealth of this nation. It continues to thrive today. No, the embarrassment is not mine. The shame is not mine.