written to a prompt yesterday
Get it out, the theory has long been. Get it out and you’ll feel better. Rage, sorrow, bitter resentment, or whatever other emotion burbles just below the surface — as if to articulate say, fiery anger, was to put it to rest. But that’s not how it works, is it? At least not every time. Sometimes to spell it out and spell it out out loud lends clarity (think: Audre Lorde saying that ‘anger is loaded with information’). But along with clarity might come a bend in the amplitude, one that offends family, neighbors (if it’s summer and the windows gape open) and sends the dog slinking away to a remote part of the house. How is that helping anyone, including the one with bulging eyes and spittle on her chin?
Some tyranny tiptoes in and robs you of breath just by being silent and unbudgeable. That’s what I married into. I try to think of it as a style, to lesson its defeating force. In the face of such brutal passivity, it’s tempting to view the expulsion of rage as somehow virtuous. But it’s not. Or it’s not necessarily.
Today anticipating more big wind, more torrential rain (one might say the weather is offering its own testimony of outrage), I prepare for fury. Have I ever done this before? Maybe. Maybe the summer the black-robed liars overturned Roe v. Wade and because of a leak, we knew it was coming. (Actually, we knew it was coming listening to feckless Susan Collins’ assessment of Kavanaugh, but skip that lest it sound like bragging, even though every sane consumer of the news knew it was coming).
Let me get right to the point. Why don’t the powers that be care about my outrage? Is it just that our side owns fewer guns?
I prepare a bed to kick and jump on when the Supreme Court of the United States hands down an opinion not worth the paper it’s written on — an expected ruling that, no, Colorado does not have the right to exclude an insurrectionist from the ballot. It’ll be some bullshit about the 14th Amendment, Section 3 not being self-executing or the president not being an “officer.” Or maybe they’ll straight up dish out policy and opine about the importance of uniformity, stability, or whatever, instead of doing their goddamned job which I don’t need to remind you is to interpret and UPHOLD the Constitution.
In not doing their job, the SCOTUS will be signaling that the rage of one set of people, all on the right, matters more than the sanity of the rest of us. The “pitchfork exemption” as Timothy Snyder calls it. To rule in fear of violence means violence wins. Talk about tyranny! No tiptoeing here.
What if I start breathing fire? Climb up a water tower and let loose? Or maybe travel to Maine where some extremist is buying up land and settling in for some siege or other. Who do you think you are?
Meanwhile Justices: Don’t you dare think that ruling there is no absolute presidential immunity (an absurd and ridiculous argument) will get you off the hook on reading the Fourteenth Amendment as it was intended and as it is plainly written.
Originalists and texturalists, my ass!
The rain is expected to fall hard and in volume. The last big wind took out the Internet for three days, offering a revealing lesson about routine and connectivity that might be worth looking at but I’m not willing to do so at the moment.
What is here today, on the page, out the window? Always a worthy question and sometimes all the remedy strong emotion requires. I’ll be hungry later. There will be dog hair to swipe off the floor with the side of my hand, cooked farro to add to soup and reheat. Bath bombs arrived and that means I’ll enjoy a fragrant bath, one with orange-tinted water.
Fury on hold, for now.
Dee.
i read these opinion piece NYT worthy words here and what i FEEL from them is
some kind of relief. Our arena is different, but our Intensity, the same…yours, mine. Yours rage on hold, mine, i don’t even know what to call it…am 78 years
old and never before feeling what i am feeling entering this 2024…. maybe some kind of Horrible Disbelief that we have come to this….BY CHOICE
Often ….i am momentarily physically sickened by Trump and his
minions……o…..enough grace, ……., so just to say. Thank You. I am so
glad i know you
Love
We are sickened because they are sickening. The fact that we don’t even need to read between the lines anymore — trump’s assertions so brazenly authoritarian — really makes you wonder. Is this reaping the harvest of poor education? Or are we scraping out the barrel of residual attachments to slavery or at least, its shadow? Thanks for reading along. As Joyce Vance says at the end of every newsletter, “We’re in this together.”
It’s no wonder to me that I write characters who will behead, gut, and incinerate evil-doers with glee.
It must be cathartic.
Thank you .. I always appreciate how you are able to put words to my feelings. Outraged .. yes a perfect word describing feelings so mixed and messed up in my head and heart that I’m kept up nights trying to make sense of it all. I want desperately that it has to end .. that it will end but I’m not so sure anymore.
Enjoy that warm bath …
I’m often up nights too
thanks for this post Dee, you manage to put into words how I feel when I let myself think about politics/political reality in both our countries (and the rest of the world for that matter)…..I somehow manage to ignore it most of the time, mainly because I feel there is so little I can do to change the situation without self-destructing. I say to self I want to enjoy my time here on earth and when I go for my early morning walk with Snoopy it feels possible to do just that. I’ve been and still am involved in several local issues and that’s enough to drain my energy to such low levels, I now try not to get immersed too deeply…..probably not the bravest choice but it keeps me afloat. We all have to find ways to be able to cope!
A scented bath sounds wonderful;-)
Maybe following the news doesn’t make me brave? Maybe it’s in fact a function of fear. It definitely helps to connect in all kinds of ways to the likeminded and to commit to small acts in support of re-electing Biden.
we have fewer guns and less money … who cares what we think?
The shamelessness and cowardice of their disregard keeps reaching new heights. The fact that Thomas won’t refuse from the trump cases, for example. With all that we know about Ginni? My god.