Aftermath: Surviving As A Nation After Donald J. Trump

By Max S. Gordon

Look down, look down that lonesome road,
Before you travel on.

–That Lonesome Road, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–1973)

This is America.
— Childish Gambino

1

I suppose it was inevitable that one day it would come to this, that racism would meet itself traveling down that lonesome road.

Witnessing it has been both ugly and delicious, new — yet hauntingly familiar. Lindsey Graham gets off a plane and walks through an airport in Virginia after recently acknowledging on the Senate floor that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States. He is greeted by a mob of enraged Trump supporters who yell “traitor” and record him on their cell phones while he is escorted through the crowd by a detail of police. A woman screams above the others, “You know [the election] was rigged, you garbage human being. Piece of shit. It’s going to be like this, wherever you go for the rest of your life.” A man beside her shouts, “Welcome to the new America, Lindsey.”

I watch him move through the crowd and recall the iconic image of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford as she desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the…