Don’t tell me to shine brighter, fight harder, to organize, to protest, to call out ugly, illegal maneuvers, and dirtified truth.
At least not today.
Dirtified? As you can see, today my thoughts vaporize into a dirtified atmosphere, an atmosphere unnaturally overheated for November, an atmosphere gone rank with defeat.
If John Lewis could get up and fight… Yes, yes — I will look to him and to Susan B and Navalny and Douglass and Fanny Lou Hammer, but not today.
November 6, yesterday, reminded me not so much of Hillary‘s defeat in 2016 as it did of that infamous day in 2001, 9/11. A beautiful blue sky. Warm air. Delicate breeze. Children squealing and playing across the fence. They have no idea, I thought on 9/11. They have no idea, I thought yesterday. The wreckage to come, both immediate and obvious and gradual and insidious, as yet beyond their ken.
I have so many questions, so shut up with your no guardrails talk and by the way, did your third bestseller about Trump make you enough money to feel OK about the damage your withholding, in part, wrought?
We know about the absence of guardrails. We know. This time he has gargoyles and vampires – Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller – and jumping dipshit apartheid enthusiasts (yes, more than one) and the cadres of pod bros, who are shamefully crowing today: #YourBodyMyChoice.
So many times in 72 hours, I’ve heard someone utter a variation of a death wish. Why won’t someone just take him out? Why can’t he just drop dead?
But we are so far down the road of Trumpism that merely eliminating his greasy shit-stained face will not do the trick anymore.
Shit-stained is not a metaphor. His face is literally the color of sewage.
What I wonder is will good-hearted, right-minded lawyers, like the ones who showed up at airports all over the country after the Muslim ban, armed only with their laptops and allegiance to the Constitution, show up again? Will it matter?
How much do bulletproof vests cost anyway?
Sometimes I think the average white person will have to be made to understand on a visceral level what it means to be Black in this country before we can heal.
Which might mean that white terror spiking for a few years constitutes a silver lining.
Then again the suffering associated with barreling our way to fascism may serve no purpose at all.
We don’t have to worry about another coup or endure months of listening to that mendacious talk about election fraud. THAT’s a silver lining, though not a particularly attractive one. At the very least it’s proof positive that it was never even for a second about election rigging.
Is Boston gonna be safer than LA? Or New York? Are those even questions I should utter out loud? And if I tell you we are retired and on Medicare and reliant on stock income to live and that I’m worried about the stock market — what of my priorities then?
It does gall me to no end that this man’s special brand of toxic influence will continue to poison my twilight years. What about RVs and beaches along the Portugal coast? What about hiking with a new hip and the joys of trading cloth? Or even, what about having the presence of mind to throw myself headlong into climate activism?
I hate him with a passion I hadn’t known I possessed is a thing you hear a lot. Otherwise well-regulated folks say this, a little astonished at what the hideous fraud inspires.
Is there a way to brace for day one? The day he’s promised will be bloody — a little bloody, maybe a lot bloody — the day he’s asserted he’ll be a dictator, pardon all the insurrectionists (probably giving them jobs in his administration). It’s also the day he’s promised to begin the massive deportations that were the centerpiece of his campaign.
People VOTED FOR THIS.
Newsflash: his followers do not yet know that they will be paying the tariffs. They do not yet know that the tariffs will cost many of them their jobs. The tariffs will not be funding childcare or making housing more affordable or lowering the cost of goddamn eggs.
In her concession speech, she talked with grace and poise and beauty about how in the darkest night we can see the stars. I got her drift but all I could think about is what an incredible president she would have made. The grief in that.
And stars? I couldn’t even see the comet from where I live. Didn’t catch the seemingly ubiquitous northern lights. But I can put my head down and read, I suppose. Especially if I give up watching the news even a little.
I ask by text if my sons are OK. Mango Mussolini might be shitting on my twilight, but he’s poisoning their middays. My heart breaks for them. The tears on all those young faces listening to Harris, standing in front of Frederick Douglass Hall, listening to her admonitions about not giving up, about continuing the fight. And then my own tears.
The boys want to know if I’m OK. They’ll be fine, they say. They’ll be OK, they say. But mom, are you OK? Maybe they know me better than I think. The younger one advises that I unhook from social media.
Yeah, but nah.
Hunker down means something different when you’re a homeowner than when you’re not. Hunker down means one thing in an affluent, white suburb and maybe means nothing at all in a mixed urban landscape. Hunker where somebody might ask and, with what resources?
How quaint it feels now to recall taking the mic at a Newton City Council meeting — this must have been 2017 — imploring them to send a petition to Congress asking them to explore possible bases for impeachment. Tentative, respectful. But oh no, we were told, it’s just not done.
But it had been done before. I found the reference and cited it (although it hadn’t been about impeachment but about trade embargoes). I quoted someone about a nation being brought to its knees or something. I wish I could remember. Did I mention twilight?
The young one texted he might be sundowning, but you’re not, I guess suggesting I have a mind to protect.
Hunker down. Divorce this or that. Recharge. Fight anew. It will become clear I suppose, as we begin to wade through the splintered wreckage of our republic how and in what manner to fight. But for now, I merely grieve, which, in this Irish-American soul means tending to a slow-burning fury with grievance and lawyerly arguments of harm.
How did I manage to go this long without saying it? Well here it is: Fuck!
Title of this post courtesy of Eileen from writing workshop this morning.
FURIOUS GRIEF is where I am. Every reference you made sits in me. Just this morning saying to a friend that this hits harder than 9/11 did. Had a dentist appointment today. When the hygienist asked me how I was doing today, all chipper and cheery, I burst into tears. “not good”. She didn’t know what to do. Neither do I.
Tears help.
I told myself, early this morning, as the snow fell, that I was ok, steady and ready, but as the snow fell and over 51,000 were without power due to this fierce snow storm in New Mexico, (we were ok, did not lose power, at least of the electric kind.) Power of the soul, of the active citizen, well that is another story for I am not fine. I am not over my anger, my total disbelief and possibly my despair. Me ego won’t let me admit to despair but it lurks …
I told myself to unplug, delve into one of my soothing, cozy, Maeve Binchy Irish reads but I simply can’t. I am tethered to whatever I can find to help explain Nov. 5th: This article in today’s The Guardian by Rebecca Solnit, I present to all of you for it so wraps around me in the real of what has occurred: Here is a tidbit: Solnit speaks of trump and his circle:
“They appear to be deeply damaged people and they have come to damage everything else, including the climate; human rights, especially women’s rights, trans rights and immigrants’ rights; and the US economy. The rest of us and the rest of the world will be the cleanup crew because men like this never clean up after themselves.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga
Thanks for the link Marti. I hope you don’t lose power. But I hear about the internal loss of power. Rebecca Solnit is so clear eyed. I look forward to her latest comments. Thanks again.
My thoughts and feelings you have so eloquently given words to…
I really believe that the US will break apart at some point. Maybe we older people won’t be here to see it but I really believe that. If only all the blue states were in one place. We could build a wall and elect our own president. Hell the Germans did it. I don’t know what we do now. Keep making art I guess.
It is hard to see how we go forward.
It has stopped me in my tracks. I’m sick at this turn of events. I really thought she would win.
I’m furious, more than just at Trump, but at our fellow Americans. The morons, garbage, despicables that elected him.
There is no escaping it but I have to take a breather. To recover from this blow I’m forcing a reset. Yoga and mindlessness has never been my thing. I have trouble quieting the mind but this time I have too. Self-care, self-preservation, sanity. Still the nausea remains.
I’m focusing in on simple shapes in art while formulating curses in my mind. Maybe foolish, but when our hands are tied (as they are at the moment) even heathens turn to their core belief systems.
I think how Covid-19 slowed him down last time. What’s needed is a disaster, in his own house this time, to take him down. All things are possible. Why not that?
So I’m getting out the amulets and salts. Calling upon Mother Earth and the spirits to rise up against the maga. I suppose it’s wishful thinking but wishes are all we have at the moment.
Thank You for writing this. Cathartic to read words from others that are about some of my own thoughts…scattered thoughts of despair or I would be writing more myself.
Well done. I wish I could have expressed similarly my horror, and my fear of what’s to come.
I opened up Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th century … which I confess I have not (yet) read … and found
#18 Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
#19 Be a patriot
#20 Be as courageous as you can
and #10 Believe in truth
Thanks Liza. I bought that treasure of a book last time trump was elected.
Yes. Tim Snyder.
I can’t sleep. I can’t stay awake.
The best thing I’m hearing is that the tech-bros are basically on a path to failure, maybe for the first time in their tiny abhorrent little lives. But, meanwhile, if we wait for that… we’ll be “obeying in advance”. And who will be there to hold who accountable?
I’m looking for survival stories to read… hoping for Rebecca Solnit to write something, somewhere, on the current state of the broken union, soon. Or, has she already? I can easily reread Orwell’s Roses. I would tend to my garden but this drought is so deep I’m afraid to move the leaves and touch the dirt. Sew? Knit? I am working through art projects which helps a bit, but connecting with other like minded humans is most helpful to me right now. Thanks!
oops – I forgot to say, Dee! How tremendously helpful it is to read your take on all this.
“My take” is an exercise in hovering up stuff from other places for the most part. 😊
Many many millions of us voted against him and we are all still here.
I am similarly torn about wanting to watch Trump fail in epic manner so that his dumb followers maybe finally understand that they voted against their own interests too? That’s already happening to some degree.
Follow this account on threads if you dont already.
https://www.threads.net/@adriennemareebrown/post/DCIc9epvJ-p?xmt=AQGz2KGKo_e_DSkElLOVvrhTZAAu8Hl5pAg8tId847hpRg
And please, please, do not minimize the role that writing and making art will have both in terms of resistance and survival.
In today’s The Guardian, this from Rebecca Solnit:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/09/authoritarians-like-trump-love-fear-defeatism-surrender-do-not-give-them-what-they-want
oh boy! THANK YOU!!
Deb Lacativa posted a horrible TikTok about Colonial Williamsburg on her Facebook page … how they are “obeying in advance” by deleting a webpage about the sources of the Revolutionary War … it brought back all my worst memories of sitting in a managers meeting in the 1990s listening to the president of CW talking about how we were a destination not an educational institution (which I realize now was that our visitors perceived us that way … but really, I believe he perceived us that way, too) … I quit within 3 months, taking a significant pay cut to become a school librarian instead
Absolutely disgusting example of obeying in advance. Oh god.
In my comment of a few days ago, I had posted a link to words written by Rebecca Solnit. The day after the election, Robert Reich had a long email and at the end of it, he had a different article from Rebecca Solnit titled, “How To Find Hope, Even Now.” I simply was not ready to read her words. Today I am looking for some sort of balance so I went back to read her words. Can’t send a link because her article was imbedded into Reich’s commentary but I do want to quote a few paragraphs. The last words of her article deeply moved me so with a little more time, maybe…
“The Wobblies used to say don’t mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don’t have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning. You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset and check your equipment for going onward. A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.
People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry. There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it’s sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.’
“There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good.” Important point. Also the one about how taking care of others is an important part of taking care of ourselves.