Thanks for sending along your recent thoughtful blog about your personal travel ban to the US. I always appreciate your views and insights, and feel a need to comment. Please excuse my just getting back to you now, but I assure you I have been thinking a lot about what you wrote, and I understand your concerns completely. I really would have to say that based on some of the things that have been said by our new President, and what is portrayed in the media, if I didn’t already live here in the USA, I might not want to come here either. You, among the friends I have been fortunate to make outside of America, have a special knowledge and experience about this country that even many of my American friends, who have never been to places in the middle of the country, do not have. So I do know and respect the experience from which you speak. I’m sure that you will make many new friends and exciting discoveries in other places you will visit, which is exactly the reason we visit other places. I am especially interested in your proposed travels to the Baltic nations, since my father’s family originally came from Lithuania. My real last name is actually Augustitus, not Rodgers, and I probably have more cousins around Vilnius, where the family is from, than I will ever get to meet. Please let me know if you get anywhere around that area, and if you meet anyone with that name, please get some contact info. I might be related to them!
But back to the issue and dilemma of the current American government. I have a couple of responses to the disturbing questions that you have raised, because believe me, you are not alone in your concerns. Among my liberal-thinking New York (a different country than Middle-America?) friends, we are asking ourselves, “What should we DO about this? Is there some useful action we can take to counter the tide of antagonism and stupidity that now flows out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?” My answer to this is that there are many levels of action that can be taken, and everyone will have to decide individually how much extra time they have to devote to some kind of protest. But everyone who disagrees should do SOMETHING to indicate that they are not part of some coalition of agreement with our new government’s policies, just because a certain individual has been elected President. We have always had these rights, and they have always been exercised with regularity by groups and individuals who are not happy about something that has taken place. This is part of the fundamental constitutional make-up of this country, and is not likely to go away upon the ‘Executive Order’ of an egotistical (or even megalomaniacal) President. I would like to mention two important reasons for this. First, (as I’m sure you know), that the government here is made up of not just the Executive branch (the President), but also the Congressional and the Judicial. And although the President can have some influence over the Judicial branch, via his nominees to the Supreme Court, he has less over the upper and lower houses of Congress, which in some capacity, represent the people. This is where the ‘checks and balances’ lie, and where the preventions of despotism are centered. A nutcase president cannot simply do what he likes. He will be challenged by opponents in his own government. The second reason is less official and more populist, but still readily apparent. Among the American flaws that you mention in your blog, (which I fairly well agree with), you did not include the touch of schizophrenia that is also part of the American makeup. The inner conflict between ‘rebellious freedom’ and ‘puritanical conformity’ is always around and not hard to discern. The American character is consistent only in it’s inconsistency. Just look at the election results since the 1980’s and you will think you are viewing the actions of a giant pendulum. First, Bush Senior, then back the other way to Clinton, then back again to Bush Dubya, and then to Obama, and now, to D.T… Kinda crazy? A bit. No doubt that many individuals who voted for Trump also voted for Obama or Clinton. But Presidents are in office two terms at most, and I cannot imagine at the moment that D.T. will even get that far. One can only hope. The words of our first and greatest Republican president echo: “…You can’t fool ALL the people ALL the time.” Thank you, Mr. Lincoln (if indeed you really said this..)….
Which leads me to the last point I would like to mention here, one concerning information and perceptions, which to my mind is one of the fundamental sources of the problems you mention, (and also, perhaps, your reactions to them). People nowadays get so much information and opinion so quickly and easily, that it becomes a huge job to sort out what is being said and by whom, a critical job which may not be done. Is one news report more of an ‘opinion’ than actual reportage? Is a particular information source set on promoting a specific political agenda? Is another news source mostly set on being ‘seen’ and paid attention to and quoted? The news business is first a BUSINESS that makes money through selling advertising, and more visibility means more revenue, plain and simple. Mr. Trump was, for them, the perfect candidate and the perfect subject. Visible! Outrageous! Combative! Attention-seeking! The media kept him right where he wanted to be: on the front page (or the internet equivalent), and gave him everything he wanted and more. His presidency was created by his visibility. And he sold lots of advertising for the media. Mrs. Clinton’s boring ‘administrative diligence,’ ‘concern for the good of all’ and lack of ‘flash’ was utterly useless for raising advertising-rates. Trump was a master campaigner, but at some point, he will actually have to govern. Problems in this area are already becoming apparent. I suspect that the media will kick Trump when he’s down just as readily as they glorified Trump’s outrageousness when he was on his way up.
Which leads me to ask you to please don’t forget that the currrent American government’s policies are not necessarily what the people want and believe, but also, that the things you read or hear on a TV or computer screen may not be what you would be hearing from someone on a streetcorner in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I, in my travels (and I’m sure you in yours), have discovered that governmental ‘policy’ does not always equate with what individuals believe and communicate. Sometimes you hear quite the opposite from those who the government supposedly ‘represents’…. I would like to speculate that a good deal of the dismay that many people are feeling about our ‘government’ may, in fact, be traced to the personality and opinions of the President himself. If you were to look at ‘approval polls’ (if you choose to believe them) at the moment, you would see that Mr. Trump’s ratings are at incredibly low levels. He does NOT have universal sanction, and he does NOT represent what all of the people of this country believe. He also, I may add, did NOT win the popular vote total, either.
So, may I dare suggest to you, Dennis, that instead of instituting your own personal travel ban on coming to the US, that this might actually be the BEST time to come over. You might be surprised not only to find that many people here doing creative stuff, like making music, are like-minded and open to sharing their opinions about the whole situation with you, but also, you might even infuence a few opinions yourself, by being an intelligent foreigner who does in fact care about what he sees and hears, and like Stefan said in his comment on your blog, that your concern comes out of affection for what you have seen and learned in your time here in the US. If only there could be more of this among many of the people who actually live here, then we might not even have this issue in front of us.
But, my friend, if and when you carry on with your travels to other places, and if I myself begin to feel burdened by a President I don’t agree with, and decide to take a travel break, perhaps we can meet in a pub somewhere in Vilnius and down a couple of pints of the delicious local brew with one of my newly discovered third or fourth cousins, while learning how to say “Schoen Abend, Alles Gut!” in Lithuanian. That would be just fine.
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David Rodgers is a perfomance artist based in New York City, momentarily residing in California. This reply refers to the article “My own little travel ban: USA – No More” by Dennis Schütze published on this blog on March 22nd 2017.