In the Summer of 2016, I saw that the Indigo Girls had a concert in Washington DC in the Spring of 2017. When Trump was elected, I realized that I needed to be ready for what was to come. Instead of the concert, I went to the B-Sides conference in Rochester, New York. It would be one of several changes of plans I would make to reflect a long struggle ahead. A character from a Facebook game was transformed into a hacker, I got involved with Democratic Socialists of America and an attempt to organize a local of the Industrial Workers of The World.
I had been using an app called Duolingo to learn Spanish already, and saw that as useful. Being able to speak Spanish would help me communicate with Trump's main "outgroup". I'd like to think I'm decent at it. My Spanish goes well beyond "Donde esta el bano" and "Mas cerveza por favor", but is nowhere to the point that I can converse with a native speaker. I could probably get around Madrid, Barcelona, San Juan, etc.
Somehow the idea of trying to learn Arabic crossed my mind. Muslims are another one of Trump's favorite groups to throw to the rural reactionaries that make up so much of his base. but how to learn it. Duolingo gave me hope when they revealed that an Arabic for English speakers was in the works.
It looked like the course was in development limbo. That ended today with a tweet that the Arabic course was available!
So I have a new challenge, to work through the course. I may also see if there's a MeetUp for Arabic, but would wait until I have some basics down. The way I see it, being able to speak correct English, and knowing Spanish and Arabic would be three more languages than a lot of Trump's supporters know!