In Trump World, Where Palestinians Call Home Is Just an Abstract Chunk of Real Estate

I need some help here. The Trump presidency and the “America only” future he’s hawking to the public like the world’s most arrogant snake-oil salesman feels beyond my ability to address right now, even though I consider doing so my life’s work.

But sometimes the news of the day simply feels too absurd, too strange, to seriously address, like President Donald Trump’s comment the other day as he sat next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House: “You know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate.”

Dividing the world into abstract chunks of real estate! This is lethal blather, without which war would be too complex to wage. First you have to sell the concept to the public, then do whatever is necessary—murder-wise—to claim the real estate itself

What does it mean that we live in a world that includes both generosity and greed, both love and genocide? Knowing this, how do we proceed?

Meanwhile, life goes on in minuscule bits for the average person, who is unaffected by (but perhaps in favor of) this war or that war or that war. The minutiae of life—my life, your life—goes on. Sometimes I take it upon myself to notice it. Or even learn from it—dig for the soul and spirit of the universe within it. To that end I welcome “The Cardinal,” a poem I wrote several years ago, in honor of everything that doesn’t matter.

I thank you god
if that’s your name
for the beauty and the trash,
the spill, the vomit, the love and
exhaust smoke of
this new most
amazing day.
Outside my window
a cardinal shocking
as a nosebleed
pecks the raw winter
ground beneath its feet.
I thank you for its
food and mine,
for my coffee and for these
words, these malleable
playthings of awareness,
which still birth
all I think and know.
Let them stroke
the trembling potential
of what I see and what’s
to come.
The cardinal lifts.
I salute it with
my cup
and swallow.

In honor of the cardinal, let me ask: What if he “mattered”—to organized human consciousness, to the global power structure that purports to control the future? What if we valued minutiae—that is to say, basic existence, the actual world we live in—in a way that transcended our valuing of power, dominance, ownership, and control? What if humanity, Planet Earth’s organizers in chief, could push their own evolution beyond exploitation of the planet to... God knows what?

What if those with power actually valued those without power, which includes Planet Earth itself?

Sorry, but here’s more President Trump, continuing to muse about Palestine:

Having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing, because right now all it is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems.

If you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries—and you have plenty of countries that will do that... you call it the Freedom Zone, a free zone, where people aren’t going to be killed every day. That’s a hell of a place.

Yeah, an “incredible piece of important real estate” shouldn’t have genocide going on. But the cause of the genocide is the victims themselves, apparently, so we just have to move them to wherever. Maybe they’re physically, historically and spiritually connected to that land, which they call “home,” but in Trump World this is real estate—so, sorry, genocide victims, you’ll have to move. The issue here is money.

Pssst... don’t tell anyone, but this is the god we worship, fervently and thoughtlessly.

All of which leaves me feeling as lost as I did when I started this column. As I try to honor the minutiae of real life, I realize that also includes Donald Trump and all world leaders, or at least their flawed humanity, as well as earthworms and cardinals, sunlight, sky, rain and snow and everything else I can see beyond my kitchen window. What does it mean that we live in a world that includes both generosity and greed, both love and genocide? Knowing this, how do we proceed?

Slowly, I’d say, and with minimal certainty; the paradox is within all of us. The best we can do is keep our eyes and hearts wide open.