Just watched a fisherman catch a catfish here in Baltimore waters. After removing the hook from the fish’s mouth, he threw it back into the water. He looked up and smiled at me watching him. I kept looking in the water for the fish, wondering how it would repair the trauma caused by the violent hook, being removed from water, being handled by a pair of human hands, having the hook wrenched out its mouth by a pair of plyers, and tossed back in the water. Did he enjoy being played with?
It feels the same with Trump’s comment about letting Russia and Ukraine “fight for a while”. Even though as the President of the United States, he has the power to intervene to bring an end to the war sooner than later, he is enjoying watching this war continue: he’s playing with people’s lives. This came to mind as I watched the fisherman let the fish thrash around on his line, then on the pier, and then in his hands before having the hook removed from his mouth and being tossed back into his home, the Chesapeake Bay. Trump compared the two warring countries to children fighting before you pull them apart.This authoritarian-type role that Trump has assumed, the all-powerful able to sit back and determine the faith of other human beings, is akin to a fisherman and his powerful fishing line and bait: a sport.
Trump’s decision to call in the military for protests occuring in Los Angeles and beyond is another example of playing with people. This authority to “play” with people’s lives, their welfare, and their future is the theme of this President of the United States of America. His apparent enjoyment in this role is similar to the apparent enjoyment fisher-people have in catching fish and throwing them back in the water. How do you find joy in torture? Or perhaps it’s a subversive control that brings the joy.
What can we do, as responsible residents of the United States of America, to stop a president from “playing’ with the lives of human beings? We can recognize that our lives are also on the fishing line, because we are no different from the protestors in LA or the immigrants in Baltimore afraid to come out their homes or the citizens of Ukraine and Russia and Gaza and the Westbank. What is different however, at least in this moment, is that we still have the ability to pull out the hook while our siblings in these spaces of violence – in Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, Israel, Sudan, Haiti, Los Angeles, Baltimore- do not. We get to decide if we want to be played with as voting and non-voting citizens of the United States and beyond. What will you do to remove the hook and stop the violence that the President of the United States calls “play”’? There is nothing enjoyable or fun about having a hook stuck in your mouth. Pull out the hook people! War, violence, oppression, is not a spectator sport.
