The people who can do the work to resist need to know they’re not alone.
You don’t have to do anything, and maybe you can’t. But things have changed. The United States — the entire world — is so different now than it was the day before the election that in the event there are history books as we understand them in the future this begins an entirely new chapter. And it’s a very bad one.
On the one hand, yes, you have your life to live. The life you HAVE to live. The only one you have. Your children, your family, your job, your mortgage or rent, your sanity, you have to attend to all of them. Almost no one can commit their lives, full-time, to saving us all. From the very beginning of time humans have lived full lives simply trying to survive, loving a precious one and then a precious few close to them, fighting demons — outside and in — and then dying. These are noble and even sacred lives. Your life is noble and sacred. It’s a luxury to have the time, emotional energy, and impulse to lift your head even momentarily above the avalanche of things that is your ordinary day and survey the world and our present, very dire, circumstance.
On the other hand, If you do, you’ll see that the worst people in our own nation, who would be among the worst people in history if circumstances allowed, are now in control. You’re being ruled now, not governed. These are the same people who, in different times, would build concentration camps and hang former slaves and their children and grandchildren.
They may still do it. The Rules you may not have known that used to exist no longer exist. The same United States Supreme Court that sent Dred Scott back to his “master” in 1857 serves as a corrupt enforcer for President-elect Trump today. He is immune from prosecution or limit. As a result, so are his enablers and collaborators. The Free Press is no longer Free: It’s a hedge-fund or billionaire-controlled newsletter for the national or your own local Chamber of Commerce. This generation’s Fascists and Oligarchs won, and are in charge. Any suggestion to the contrary is a lie or a fantasy. The assumption by you that this is just a new and acceptable normal is exactly how the Fascists, Oligarchs, and worse, win.
Every reach across the aisle. Every network interview with these criminals. Every vote for one of their kind or one of their proposals, accepts and normalizes that which should not be accepted or normalized.
The Democratic Party won’t save you. We’re here in part because they’ve defined themselves by (a) not defining themselves and (b) when forced to, staking out positions laughably and unconvincingly just inches to the “left” of a Republican Party that has consistently moved the norm “right” so far it’s made Reagan look like Bernie Sanders. They’re losing losers who have finally lost the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court and responded to the election by arguing they lost because they weren’t conservative enough. They’re a small icy wooden door floating on the frozen waters of the North Atlantic and they’re not making room for you.
You may not be able to do much about this. Maybe no one can, at least not now or for a while. But one thing everyone can do is to stop pretending that this was just another election, and that this is just the inevitable result of a polarized electorate and we simply need to “come together”. We’re polarized because one side is utterly, galactically, and historically wrong and the other is merely ineffective, but not evil. One side plans to inflict cruelty upon the weak and defenseless and the other does not. That’s not polarization. That’s righteous opposition to an enemy.
The one thing you can do, no matter how busy you are, is to recognize this. That, even as you tend to your family, your work, the whole of the rest of your life, you realize and — whenever it does come up — act, even in small ways, upon the understanding that this is not normal, and that you are not going to pretend that it is. Others will take up the hard work of fixing this, but they need to know that they aren’t alone.
This article appears in Nov 20 – Dec 3, 2024.
