"They have put a face on their own lawlessness."
A place to start when feeling stuck, unable to move, or not knowing how to possibly do anything that is impactful.
What a time to be alive, am I right? There is no easy way to navigate being an American or a person of the world at the moment. I’ve been having a hard time not getting overwhelmed and becoming paralyzed.
There is so much joy inside my sweet, privileged home. Let me stay there, in my cozy bubble. There is so much devastation outside in the world, right in my community. Let me take action, be on the right side of history. Both feel confusing and dangerous.
wrote last week:I don’t mean to be alarmist, but the alarm is ringing. When an email goes out to your partner’s workplace about very explicit precautions to take as a journalist when leaving and re-entering the country — particularly as someone who’s been critical of the administration — the alarm is ringing. When a citizen of the United States is sent to an ICE detention center, the alarm is ringing. When the president shrugs off the demand of the Supreme Court to return a man who was unlawfully deported to a death prison in El Salvador, the alarm is ringing. When the Health and Human Services secretary claims that autistic people will never pay taxes, hold a job, go on a date, or write a poem — the alarm is ringing. When the administration is strong-arming private institutions into adhering to their ideology around freedom of speech and trans rights — the alarm is fucking ringing.
So what are we doing to protect ourselves, the people we love, and the people in our communities — people we may or may not know, but whose lives and livelihoods matter?
I actually do not have an answer to that question.
A recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show gives context and understanding to our Current Times™ from a legal and political perspective.
I would not call this a hope-filled episode, but what it did provide for me was knowledge and education. And when I feel stuck, unable to move, or don’t know how to possibly do anything that is impactful, learning becomes a place for me to start.
It’s heavy on the legal language and SAT words but I did get a better grasp of what in the living hell is happening at this moment. Which strangely gave me some calm? IDK.
And just to normalize the realness and not tell you what to do, it took me three days to listen to just this one episode.
I still feel unsure about what to do next, yet the illumination of the darkness in some way brought about acceptance (without minimization), which perhaps provides momentum for doing the next right thing.
Catch up on my other thoughts about being medicore, boobs, mothering, the internet, and finding meaning in it all. <3