IT SEEMED FITTING that the yellow hair with the tiny hands capable of annihilating the whole world would surface in the depths of winter darkness. January and February for me, as for many millions, equal darkness. Physical and spiritual. And where I live on the 48th parallel in France (about the same latitude as Duluth), thick river valley clouds turn the days still shorter and darker. What could be more appropriate than that with the scrawl of a photo-op pen these presidential hands would soon after make it legal for certified madmen to purchase military weapons to eliminate all of us whose skin and sex and regard they don’t like. These hands who trained at the feet of the closet-case gangster attorney Roy Cohn have converted Murder Inc. into a drive-by franchise.
My qualifications for falling into their sites might seem to come from my generally celebratory books and reporting on homo sex life. For the moment this commander in chief has not issued such a direct order—daughter Ivanka apparently has too many homo pals in the fashion sector—but when he is shown the impeachment door, his rabid evangelical successor seems almost sure to sharpen the testicular knives. These are moderate concerns of the dreams that visit me at 3AM.
Greater anxieties, however, bordering on the terrain of trauma, circle and hover around roots: the roots I share with Hillbilly Elegy author J. D. Vance.
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Tikkun 2017 Volume 32, Number 3:13