By Robert Pembroke
Audre Lorde, who died in 1992, was poor, black, a lesbian, author of The Lord of the Flies and “has posthumously become the ultimate insider on American campuses,” according to a Wall Street Journal article by Jillian Kay Melchior. There is an Audre Lorde lounge on the campus of the University of Utah and she conceived the phrase “Your silence will not protect you.”
Lorde described America as a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. She has become “one of my sheroes,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, at a 2017 commencement address at Oberlin College. A whole bunch of college kids agree with Walker and have taken to the streets.
Many of my good friends are unhappy with Donald Trump and I do not blame them one bit. Trump has the knack of rubbing people the wrong way and this is causing me a lot of stress and anxiety. My good friends and family members are constantly haranguing me about the shortfalls of Trump and somehow I need to calm them down.
It is way too early to tell whether Trump will go down in history as either a good president or a bad president. Right now, our country is in pretty good shape. The economy is booming, unemployment is down and long-promised tax reform is in place. In the past 12 years, the share of the world’s citizens who live in free countries has risen and world poverty is diminishing. But times could change and, as history has taught us, if we wait long enough, all sorts of bad things will happen.
The war on Trump is never going to go away and, yes, Trump is guilty of something, but so is everyone else. Did Trump conspire with Putin to rig the election? Is Trump mentally ill? Did Trump obstruct justice? At this point in time, none of us know definitively whether or not any of the above are true.
Not only are people deceiving us, we are deceiving ourselves. “If a particular perception of an event somehow appears to have become the social norm, people seeking to build or protect their reputations will begin endorsing it through their words and deeds, regardless of their actual thoughts,” said Holman W. Jenkins Jr. in his article “The Long War on Donald Trump” in The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 8.
Doug Jones beat Roy Moore by a little more than 1 percent of the total votes in Alabama to win a seat in the United States Senate. Jones ran a better campaign than his opponent by getting thousands of people out on the street, talking up his positions. Moore, according to NPR radio, took Steve Bannon’s advice and put very few boots on the ground and proceeded to lose the election. It looks like both candidates were unable to change people’s minds and only boots on the ground decided the winner.
During the past six months, while writing this column, I have learned an important lesson: You cannot change people’s minds once they have reached maturity. So, if you were a “Never Trumper” in 2015, you are a “Never Trumper” today.
Here is a possible answer to my dilemma of stress and anxiety: Somehow, I have got to get my “Never Trump” friends and family members to pick up a sign and march around downtown Salt Lake City. I will figure out a sign and have it printed and present it to my some of my friends and family members as a gift. I will need eight signs.
I think that Lorde was a very wise and prudent person. She relied on thoughts to encourage people to be free. While some will question her rigidity in focusing on racism, sexism and homophobia, her concept of being motivated and empowered from within is a real winner.
So, I encourage all you to pick a sign and spend a couple of days walking around downtown Salt Lake City. Our founding fathers did this and created a nation that is still leading the cause of freedom 241 years later.
Robert Pembroke is the former chairman of Pembroke’s Inc. He can be reached at pembroke894@gmail.com.