Last night I watched the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris from the green couch where my kids used to build pillow forts. Today, September 11th, Facebook shows very few comments about the Twin Towers and instead it’s filled with posts of cats and dogs allegedly seasoned with parsley. Where do we put our attention these days?

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My school had an asphalt playground. I remember it because when I fell, my knees were covered with wounds filled with black grit, which didn’t come out until the scab fell off. «Come over here and let’s put some Mercurochrome on that» Mother Ayesa used to say (that’s how we referred to the nun in charge of First Grade) before she approached the first aid kit attached to the wall, opened the little metal door, and grabbed a dropper as red as the feathers of the cardinal that appeared on my book Nature and Color. The drops slid down the skin, mixed with the embedded grit, and the bruise turned purple. But it did not burn. Once Mother Ayesa was done painting me like Orzowei she would recite (as if watching children fall at recess was as regular as the daily bread): “So, Gema, do you want a band-aid?”

There were the kids who wanted band-aids, and there were the kids who did not. The concept of “two sides” didn’t exist in our minds per se, but we all knew since kindergarten who were the ones who wanted band-aids, who were the ones who wanted Mercurochrome, and why.

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“Good Night for Harris” concludes the New York Times, sharing a graph indicating national sentiment following the debate: Harris 49% and Trump 47%. The race has already begun; as of September 6th, barely five days ago, it is possible to vote by mail. Yet voters feel a little dizzy.

It all started two months ago, in the fallout of the debate between Trump and Biden, when the New York Times shared the statistics: 43% for Biden and 49% for Trump. The Democrats came off poorly because, after that verbal exchange, 74% of voters saw Biden, at 81 years old, too old to be president. NBC News reported: «Polls drop 1 or 2 points for Biden due to his difficulties in the debate.»

On July 13th, to the amusement of television viewers and the Republicans who were present at a rally in Pennsylvania, a bullet grazed Trump’s right ear. It was a failed assassination attempt. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the twenty-year-old shooter with no criminal record who shot from a rooftop, was immediately located, and killed instantly. National media was filled with images of Trump shouting: «Fight!» with a bloodied face and a raised fist. Facebook was swarmed with photomontages of the Republican leader stopping projectiles with his hand like Neo in Matrix, black leather trench coat included. And Trump kept scoring points in the polls.

«He is protected by God,” many Republicans said, and as a result, men and women covered their ears with cloths and napkins at rallies. They did it out of solidarity, said the supporters, and thus Trump’s advantage increased. «Ears with Bandages Become a Fashion Statement at the Republican National Convention,» CNN reported on July 18th.

But on July 21st, Biden withdrew from the election, and Kamala Harris took over. “It is in the best interest of the party,” Biden wrote in a letter published by the New York Times. And the statistics began to change. Harris, at 59, was the first female candidate for president of the United States. And so, with great curiosity, Americans watched the second debate between Democrats and Republicans on September 10th. Me, from my green couch.

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«Your knee looks like hell,» my mother would tell me when I got home, and I would stare at the mix of drops of water with blood on the skin, because the nuns had said that such a mixture was like the Eucharist. But when I fell on a weekend, my mother would say that the wound needed air, and I would squat and blow on the wound. Days later I would run my fingertips over the scab, which looked like a turtle shell, and I would lift a corner of that brown layer in order to see how my body regenerated. When I was five, I imagined that God was in charge of making scabs, that’s how extraordinary they seemed to me.

When Mother Ayesa asked me at recess if I wanted a band-aid, sometimes I nodded, because they were cream-colored and the bruise became almost invisible. Then I would forget for a while that I had fallen, and I ran even faster. The wound was like a secret that gave me energy. «I’m so strong. I just fell down and got up as if nothing happened,» I used to think, and I repeated the Spanish song to myself: «to the shoe hidden behind my back, stay-back, you don’t see it now and you won’t see it again, oh-eh!». I remember it as if it were yesterday.

But other times I didn’t want to wear a band-aid, because that way I could show my war wound and tell my friends everything when they asked. In other words, when I was in need of a little attention, instead of a band-aid I wanted Mercurochrome. I never realized that Mother Ayesa gave us the option to choose, nor did I realize that the personal choice was made after an analysis of what was best for me on the day I had fallen. It is precisely those free choices of our childhood where our true essence is found or discovered. We children thought for ourselves in kindergarten without having more social pressure than Marco’s cartoons.

In 1977, when I was three years old, the Japanese series Marco was released. It was about an Italian boy who, at eleven years old and as the song says: «gets up very early to help his good mother.» But his mother leaves him dying of grief and embarks on the «Michelangelo» from the Apennines to the Andes. As a good emigrant, she must work and earn money. But that was not the saddest part of the first chapter. The horror vacui moment was because of a lie, when Marco realized that his whole family had lied to him because the truth was too difficult to be told. A truth that was repeated in the chorus of the song every single Sunday: «mom has to leave to another country across the sea.»

From that chapter on, Spanish children learned about the pain and sacrifices of emigrants and learned that the inner fire that motivates you to do crazy things does not come from hell but from discovering lies. That seemed to be an even more supernatural power than that of the scabs, because Marco ends up going alone to Argentina with a monkey on his shoulder.

The first lie

There is no doubt that the June presidential debate between Trump and Biden had been a disaster for the Democrats. Biden moved slowly and had a tough time enunciating sentences. When you saw him on television, you wished there was an usher nearby. Trump implied that his opponent was a battered, old, canned snack. Many of us felt sorry for Biden that day.

When it became evident that the polls would reflect the catastrophic performance of the Democratic leader, his party did not hesitate to seek solutions to the problem. And so it happened. Biden did not resist much such pressure much, and Kamala Harris took the lead in the next electoral debate, ready to be president.

In the debate on September 10th between Trump and Harris, it was embarrassing to listen to Trump. When he became nervous, he repeated the refrain that he had prepared to face Biden, to the point that his opponent said on live television: «remember that you are debating against me, not against Biden.» The next morning, Richard A. Friedman published in The Atlantic «Trump’s repetitive speech is a bad sign» and added the subtitle: «If the debate was a cognitive test, the ex-president has failed it.»

The battered, old and canned snack had been Trump that night at 78 years old. There was no doubt that this time the disastrous performance was for the Republicans, but Trump did not seem to be looking for solutions to the problem but to repeat: «This has been the best debate of my life.»

Hannah Arrendt had come to mind when I heard that, especially since at the end of the debate with Harris, Trump had made a surprise approach to the media from the back of the stage to talk about «the best debate of his life.»

In the recording, journalists are heard apologizing for not having good sound and showing images with a handheld camera «because of the unforeseen event.» In the video, Trump is seen stopping in front of an ABC News sign and explaining: «The Democrats have ruined our country. The Democrats have destroyed our country. The moderators have been unfair, but it was to be expected because everyone knows that…» and here Trump turned and pointed his finger at the ABC News sign before saying: «this is the worst news network in the world.»

Seasoned dogs and cats or the empire of lies

«Lying constantly is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes in anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and falsehood cannot distinguish between good and evil. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing it or wanting it, completely subjected to the empire of lies. With people like that, you can do whatever you want.»

This was written by the German historian and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who developed the concept of «the banality of evil» after being a correspondent for The New Yorker magazine and covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem for his participation in the genocide against the Jewish people during World War II. It was a trial involving many controversies, and Arendt observed that Eichmann had carried out orders without reflecting on their consequences, because the concepts of «good» or «evil» had been replaced in the mind of the accused by the concept of «efficiency.»

How is it possible that both electoral parties have the judgment to recognize when Biden screws up, but the majority of the Republican Party is unable to recognize when Trump is wrong? When Biden does not measure up, his people look for solutions to the problem. But when Trump opens Pandora’s box, there seems to be no problem. Can that which the eyes see and the nose smells be denied indefinitely, and in a reasonable way?

One of Trump’s nonsensical comments in the debate against Harris was to assure that, in Springfield, Ohio, immigrants were eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats. That phrase was denied by the city’s mayor’s office, which contacted the news network to confirm that residents’ pets were safe and there was not a single complaint about immigrants or animals.

On Tuesday, September 10th, CNN published that Trump was «defensive, out of control and made wild and uncertain comments.» Jokes about dogs and cats flooded social media, and it all would have been a mere anecdote if Springfield residents didn’t have to rush off work on Friday of that same week to pick up their children, who were being evacuated from school because of several bomb warnings. The bombs were aimed at immigrants who, according to Trump, ate pets.

Judith Hernández de León, of Mexican nationality (she works as an executive coach for women in Guadalajara, located in the Mexican state of Jalisco) comments on the idea of Trump being elected again as president: «He will probably return to the fray with his idea of the wall. It is sad that there are not more candidates. My relatives in the United States have struggled with their documentation to legalize their residency. With Trump, an elitist and racist wave can be felt. Mexico is important to the United States, but Trump doesn’t value it.»

Biden said of the attack on the Springfield immigrants: «This is wrong. It has to stop. There is no place for violence in this country.» But almost simultaneously, Trump explained to a reporter in California: «As soon as I’m president we’re going to kick these people out. We’re going to do the largest deportation in U.S. history and we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora [in Colorado].»

The grass is blue

The first time I became aware of the existence of sides was when I discovered that there were children who did not hesitate between “yes to band-aids” or “no to band-aids.” Those who said «no» were the ones who threw the ball the hardest, jumped higher and ran pushing others, if necessary, without fear of tripping. The ones who said «yes» were the ones who cheered you up with kind and tender sentences when you fell. But in the end, we did not care about anything other than taking advantage of every minute of recess, whether it was playing hide and seek or marbles.

My memories from when I was three and four years old are many. I remember that I did not like taking naps with my head resting on the table. And I also remember how important it was to run in a circle hand in hand, the faster the better.

Everything was because of Ring Around the Rosie. The more girls we were, the more we pushed ourselves. And when it seemed that you were going to crash onto the ground, you would rise, because the mixture of centrifugal force with laughter kept us in balance as in the painting of «The Dance» by Matisse. Sometimes we dragged our feet to the floor and, when we played in the park near home, full of sand, my grandmother would say: «you are making a powder keg!» (My grandmother’s sayings referred often to the Spanish Civil War because it was too close to her.) But neither in the park nor at recess did we make distinctions about who could play and who could not. The important thing was the group, because without a group there was no circle. And the circle was the center of our lives because the grown-ups did not get there. Then, back in the classroom, we became more or less smart girls.

When I saw Donald Trump on the TV screen after the first failed assassination attempt (because there was a second failed attempt on Sunday, September 14th, while he was playing golf at his private resort in Florida), he was speaking to the masses from the podium with a bandage on his ear. But it wasn’t stuck together like a band-aid, because it protruded like a mini pillow as white as a detergent ad, visible from a mile away. I thought then of Trump as a child at recess. Would he want to show his war wounds from far away? Or was he one of those who sang in unison? How and when do we forget to play hand in hand and focus instead on the differences?

The second time I became aware of the existence of “sides” was when I read the fable of the donkey that says to the tiger: «The grass is blue!» And the tiger replies: «The grass is green!» until the argument escalates and they go to see the lion king:

«Your Highness, is it true that the grass is blue?» said the donkey.

«True, the grass is blue,» the lion replied placidly.

«Well, the tiger contradicts me and fights with me: punish him,» said the donkey.

«The tiger will be punished with five years of silence,» said the lion.

After the sentence, the donkey left happily and the tiger accepted his punishment, but first he asked the lion:

«Your Majesty, why did you punish me if the grass is green?»

«The grass is green. The punishment is because a feline, as intelligent as you, is wasting time arguing with a donkey, and on top of that, he comes to annoy me with the question.”

There will be many who take the story personally without noticing the real danger hidden in the fable: if the animal kingdom is populated by thousands of donkeys who claim to see blue pastures, and dozens of tigers who remain silent, what happens if –after the elections in the animal kingdom– the law stipulates by absolute majority that the grass is blue? Will they have to paint the fields with a broad brush like Alice in Wonderland? Let us remember what Lewis Caroll wrote about what the Queen of Hearts screamed if they were not well painted. There are no band-aids in the world to cover such a wound.

It’s good to have an opinion

A four-hour drive northwest of New York City are the deep and narrow Finger Lakes, which stretch from the Canadian border like an imaginary hand. In order to breathe some fresh air, on Sunday, September 15th, I went upstate to see mountains. I stopped near one of the small towns in the area called Erin, in between hills full of streams, fruit trees, and esplanades filled with flowers, such as the one in the Little House of the Prairie. A group of Irish immigrants settled here in 1822 and, since the romantic poets of the nineteenth century called Ireland: «Erin», they chose that name to feel closer to their motherland. Millions of years ago, the slopes of this area were sculpted by glaciers. In this idyllic landscape, with all that melted snow under our feet, I had a coffee.

Sip after sip, it was impossible not to hear the conversation of some adults in their sixties at the nearby table. They seemed to be part of a group that was trekking in the area, and talked laughingly about marriages, tendons and knees. They were three women and a husband. When I finished my coffee, I approached them:

«Hello, good afternoon. I’m writing an article about the U.S. elections for a Spanish magazine. Could I ask you a few questions? You don’t need to give me your names if you don’t want to. It’s just to get an idea of what the voters have in mind.”

The conversation went on like this:

«I can’t give an opinion. I don’t want to talk,» said the woman sitting to the left of the table.

«Well, I do want to talk,» said the woman sitting on the right. «I wish there was a strong third party, or more strong parties instead of two.”

I listened nodding my head. Then the third woman said:

“Well, I’m very happy with the two options we have… very happy. Because it is very clear what we need in this country.”

«And what does the country need?» I asked with interest and an accent from Madrid.

“Well, we need a strong economy because it has been destroyed. We are a nation in decline. America needs to be strong again, because it has been ruined and we know exactly what needs to be done to make America great again.”

«Will you vote for Kamala or Trump?» I asked.

«Trump, of course,” she replied.

«Thank you for sharing your thoughts,» I said without further alteration in my voice, and added: «What is your opinion in relation to the trial that Trump has pending and the possibility that he might go to prison?» I added in the same tone. But at that moment the husband got up from his chair and said:

«Stop! I know what you are doing!”

«What am I doing?» I said respectfully. «Many people in Europe ask themselves just that, don’t you?»

Then the wife answered us both:

«That’s all a lie. None of that has happened.” And she took a deep breath. “Biden and Kamala have lied to get Trump to go to trial. The judges also lie. Everyone cheats on him.”

«I understand. It’s Fake News,» I nodded without moving a muscle in my face.

“Exactly. All that is fake news,» the wife concluded.

«Ok. Before I go, I want to make sure I’ve got it right: Trump’s sentences and the judges’ findings have been rigged, they’re not true, and Trump has not committed any crimes. Is this what you mean?”

«Yes, that’s right. Everything bad they say about Trump is a lie,” she confirmed.

I thanked the four of them for their time and said goodbye. Then the husband asked in a defiant tone:

«It’s good that we can have an opinion, don’t you think?»

«Of course. And look, you have just given me a gem of a phrase for my article: ‘It’s good that we can have an opinion’ because that’s exactly what democracy is all about.”

He sat again in the chair and remained thoughtful.

I wrote down the dialogue immediately inside the car. Among the notes I had was the article by Kara Scannell, Jeremy Herb and Lauren del Valle for CNN, dated September 6th, which explained that former President Donald Trump would not be sentenced in his New York criminal case until after the 2024 elections. (Trump was convicted back in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying records, but the sentence has been on hold for months as Trump’s lawyers pressed to overturn the conviction because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.)

University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Richard L. Hasen says there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents a convicted criminal from running for the nation’s highest office because the Constitution contains only limited requirements to run for office: be at least 35 years old, be a natural citizen, and have been residing in the United States for 14 years.

«Trump is now a convicted felon. Can he still run for president?» wrote Zachary B. Wolf for CNN on May 30th. The same news network confirmed that as Trump left the courthouse – after the verdict of the New York jury that found him guilty – Donald Trump had said: «It has been a rigged trial, I am innocent.»

Trump is in the unique position of being the first former U.S. president convicted of felonies, with the possibility of a prison sentence. But if a majority is convinced that everything that does not come out of his mouth is Fake News: the grass is blue.

Camouflage

I don’t know why my mother left me to eat lunch at school that day. I reached out to take my anorak and get in the bus line to Barrio de Santa María, but Mother Ayesa told me: «You are not going home to eat today. Here’s the voucher. Get in this line.» And there I went to the dining room with green tables, with the nun who pinched your nose until you couldn’t breathe anymore and, when you opened your mouth to take a breath of air, she put a spoon full of pudding with cinnamon all the way back to the tonsils.

After the pudding we had to go to the upper floor and pray the rosary, but I would get sleepy. To keep from falling asleep, I used to look out the window at all the other girls who had already returned from their homes and were playing tag on the asphalt. It wasn’t cold that day and I had been placed near the door. With my blue checkered smock and my six years of age, I placed my hand on the knob in between an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and went down to run with the rest of my classmates before the afternoon classes began.

When the bell rang I went up to my classroom happy and sweaty. Mother Ayesa was waiting for me. When she saw me she said with an enigmatic expression on her face: «Hi Gema, did you escape from praying the rosary?» I didn’t answer because I was scared. She continued, «Do you think I haven’t seen you?»

I remembered that Mother Ayesa was looking at the floor when I opened the door. It was impossible for her to have seen me. Maybe she was a magician. But, this time with a bitter tone, Mother Ayesa sentenced: «Please put on your smock straight up! How do you think my face turned out when, as we were about to begin the litanies, I look out the window and see you running like Superman, with the smock as a cape and your fists in the air?»

It took me a few decades to understand Mother Ayesa’s frustration. That day I had exchanged the rosary for flying to other worlds, but she could not fly just by turning her habit upside down, no matter how many buttons she unbuttoned. That scene stuck with me. That moment of camouflaged liberation between girls my age, with identical smocks, had not gone unnoticed. Jesus walked on water but did not fly, I thought with my innocent mind while the nun scolded me. But she didn’t punish me. Perhaps Mother Ayesa was nostalgic and remembered the last time she had expressed her longing to open a door and go for a walk. Or maybe it wasn’t her intention to take away the children’s desire to fly.

At the end of the debate between Trump and Harris, I would have liked to fill my lungs with the same air of freedom that I breathed that day when I turned around the smock, convinced that I was invincible between the four fences of recess.

Until the next time we meet

It was thanks to the scabs that I had faith in self-regeneration or finding the solution to a problem if I paid attention to patterns that didn’t work. For example, I believed in the regeneration of a failed exam if I dedicated a few more hours to study; or in the regeneration of a volleyball team if I had a good breakfast. Now, as an adult, I believe in the regeneration of entire societies if individuals think for themselves, are culturally educated and don’t allow themselves to be manipulated by what the neighbor says.

I was sharing these thoughts to an agent of the United States Secret Service on September 22nd, right after one of my tours in a museum for a Prime Minister (from a country I can’t name). The agent had told me: «What you were saying to the group was very interesting,» and handed me an embroidered patch of the American flag.

Before starting my tour, the agent had informed me about routine questions and the safety distance, because the museum was open to the public, but during the tour I had not noticed his presence. When he gave me the patch I smiled and told him that the last secret service agent had not given me a patch but a card with his name on it. And that I had found it hilarious because as a child I never imagined that secret agents carried cards in their pockets, much less with silver stars.

«Now they are made of gold,» he corrected me.

«Have you heard everything I said?» I asked him.

«Yes, most of it,» he answered.

We both admitted that we felt a little weird when after having interesting conversations with even more interesting people, it was part of our respective jobs to not say a peep. I mentioned to him that I had to finish this article, and that I was worried about the level of security we would need in the United States if news of failed assassination attempts became routine; and that, after the elections, what were we going to do with the frustration of so many, especially if the frustration came from the side that covered their ears with pads.

He smiled and told me that yes, it might be a good idea to have more staff. And since we had both finished our workday, we ended up having a coffee. The conversation extended over the following hour and a half.

He told me that in his work he mostly listened and spoke little, not like my job where I could elaborate.

«I don’t know if my conversations are too colloquial sometimes, but they laugh,” I said.

«I think you did very well. Depending on the personality of the individual, so goes the tone of the conversation.” And he explained what I had already seen on TV: “The Obamas are very down to earth and people around them feel relaxed. Kamala is more serious, and people usually speak to her formally.”

I didn’t ask him direct questions since I imagined that he was having a coffee with me because he knew that I wasn’t going to inquire about details. Each of us on a stool, in a café on Madison Street, watched men in black suits with sunglasses come and go. My colleague would check them from top to bottom, like an eagle that had located a hare from above, and then would look back at his cappuccino.

«Deep down, you and I have jobs that try to keep us calm and safe,» I said. “Believe me, as an artist I try to do everything I can to do my bit. Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should focus our attention on those moments of our childhood, when there was no fear and we did not think of ‘sides’ but on running faster. Wouldn’t we be better off that way?”

I remembered Matisse’s The Dance from 1909, where five cream-painted women with black hair appear on a earthy floor with a blue horizon, joined hand in hand in a circle that turns to the right. Two of the figures’ fingers don’t touch, but it is almost unnoticeable because that space is filled with a cream-colored leg placed in the back. This way, Matisse leaves the circle open for us to integrate if we want. The painting is an ode to life, to the freedom of innocence, to the primal need of human beings’ desire for connection.

I looked at the golden badge on my colleague’s lapel and, for a moment, I didn’t understand why instead of protecting others (or ourselves) from the dark side of the world – whether it was an Inca Pachacuti, a Mayan Xibalba, a Greek Hades, or a Darth Vader from Star Wars – we didn’t invest in building circles, for it is more economical and intelligent to practice courage where there is no room for complaints or negative thoughts.

Constant complaining and criticism do not allow us to see our own failures and defects because they block the ability to analyze. They are so devastating that they end up draining emotional strength. The peak of criticism is disappointment, which manifests itself in apathy, estrangement, and the presumption that «the other» no longer gives us what we need. In other words, “the other” is no longer good for us. And then we give ourselves permission to make the other trip; and that is pure disconnection.

“I’m going to title my article: U.S. Elections and Ring Around the Potato. What do you think?” I said after a few seconds of silence.

«I like it.» In english it is called Ring Around the Rosie,» he answered. And we began to remember how we ran like crazy during recess in our schools.

This is the week of the General Assembly at the United Nations and secret agents are on the loose in New York City. There is little time left until November 5th, election day, and until then anything can happen.

«Until next time we meet,» he said outside the café.

«If after the elections this gets ugly, I know who to call,» I joked.

«Of course,» he said seriously.

And we left, walking fast, each one of us in opposite directions on the sidewalk.

New York, September 2024

English version edited by Alexander Gallagher

Texto en español