Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Resistance
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read. Written in 2020 after the Trump coup attempt failed.
When I need to get away from my life, Amsterdam in the winter is where I go. I cloak myself in a city wearing ash grey. In the quiet canals of Amsterdam, an unperson can see their reflection.
The hammering imperative to be alone this Christmas began with my letter to the editor about the impeachment of President Trump. My letter argued that a poisonous president should not be impeached in the waning days of his presidency. I wrote that the body politic should devote itself to progressive policies rather than a failed coup. Better to win the future than punish the past, I opined.
At the time I didn’t know that a letter could be a weapon for committing social suicide. The day after publication, showing up at my high school, walking into the faculty lounge, I faced a room of perfunctory greetings and frozen faces, the scorn of unwelcoming silence.
Juried an apostate, I was ostracized, shunned, canceled. After four years of pent-up political rage enflamed by the treasonous Trump coup attempt, among my colleagues revenge felt more relevant than reform. My letter was cataclysmically out of step. I was accused of betraying my own values, abandoning my outspoken opposition to Trumpism. Branded a hypocrite.
To break my emotional freefall, at the first chance, I ran away--seeking asylum or purgatory, or both. Amsterdam, as it turns out, is making me feel worse.
Strolling through the Tropen Museum, artifacts from the Dutch East India Company’s occupation, subjugation and exploitation of other civilizations confront me. Nowhere in the exhibition is there a letter of dissent about the world’s first plundering megacorporation.
The Dutch Resistance Museum eulogizes the defiance of everyday citizens under Nazi occupation. I’m no freedom fighter, just a letter writer fleeing from public opinion. My shoulders sag into a protective shell, permanently.
People shuffle through the Anne Frank House in silence or with muted sobs. In the faces of the ‘huddled masses’ hated by Trump’s neo-Nazi followers, Anne Frank is remembered. In my guidebook, I read that Hitler’s first failed coup attempt occurred ten years before his Nazis took power at the ballot box, lawfully.
Uncertainty crawls through me. Maybe a Nuremburg Trial—a public spanking—is needed to stop the next sleazy president, another conniving traitor, a Hitler-in-the-making. Maybe my exile is a lesson.
Social banishment is a life sentence. Rejection without redress. There is no forum for publishing a retraction, explaining a change of heart. The court of public opinion has no judges, no courthouse, no bailiff, no procedure for filing a petition of redemption.
Scorned and hated for my ideas is scorned and hated for who I am. In the eyes of my peer community, I’m a war-time collaborator. An unperson.
Under leafless trees etched against a colorless sky, I walk alone with my thoughts empty and hollowed-out. My body, as if diseased and dying, does not warm itself. In the dark, still canal waters, a flotilla of flotsam floats—a tennis ball, a Styrofoam cup, a cracked wood chair, a Heineken beer bottle, a smear of motorboat oil.
