we interrupt this program to bring you
this is not a drill.
I have to be honest: my heart is heavy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly capable of pretending that everything is fine, of living day by day, concerning myself with only the corporeal, the immediate, the facts and fictions of my individual reality. But I’m hurting. And I’m sure that everyone else must be hurting too or I’m bewildered that no one else seems to be hurting or I’m wondering why we don’t pronounce our hurt, louder, from the mountain’s edge (spare me your Instagram stories and re-posts though).
How do we go on? How are we going on? Are the gods so apathetic to humanity? Are humans so apathetic to humanity?
It’s not one thing or another, it’s the aggregate of all the things that make it apparent that we’re marching toward self-destruction.
History will show that they were playing the long game; that the game is rigged; that playing by the rules proved to be ineffective and foolish, time and time again. As this year, as these coming years, solidify and crystallize, the arc of the Republican or conservative or right-wing strategy will become as legible as black text on white textbook page. The right-wing agenda is overt: to keep the oppressed oppressed and the historically powerful in positions of privilege.
Every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasures that have been denied the many.
They’re scared of the rise of people like you and me—people who’ve made their own way, who do not rest on the laurels of their forefathers, who have no laurels to rest on because our forefathers came from developing countries as refugees or prisoners or slaves and were reduced to “non-threatening” (“feminine”) enterprises like laundromats and restaurants and mocked and marginalized and massacred and lynched, no matter how small they made themselves.
The Obama presidency gave us a false sense of security. The visibility of that victory lulled us into believing not only in change but that we were already changing, that the plot of progress was unfurling, high-speed rail hurling into the dawn—that change was inevitable. All the while, what has materially changed in this country? Every baby step toward improving access to health care, the justice system, working conditions, affordable housing, protecting the environment or basic rights is met with everything from stalemate to all-out, no-holds-barred manipulation, to preserve the archaic status quo. Our votes come up against gerrymandering, our donations come up against unscrupulous lobbyists, corporations, and billionaires with resources beyond our imagination.
It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship; all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones-so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears…It changes neighbors into consumers-so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our generosity but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking-so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product-a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car-or kill generations for control of products-oil, drugs, fruit, gold.
real
When I was in college, I saved an Iris Murdoch quote that went something like “Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” I didn’t fully understand it then, and I wasn’t sure if I agreed with it, but I liked it and it’s always stuck with me (another one I felt this with is Christopher McCandless’s “Happiness is only real when shared.”). But I think I finally understand it—albeit impressionistically.
We each live in our own realities, narrated by our internal dialogue, echoing off the walls of our self-constructed inner worlds—realities that preclude the realness of others. We spend our time and expend our energy ensuring our survival and worrying about our legacy, making homes and families and art that provide feeble reassurance that our life, our singular existence, will be close to meaningful, or at least, more than fleeting. Throughout it all, no one else is truly real to us—beyond those we personally love—and we’re not truly real to anyone else either.
The reach of our love is sharply delineated, stubbornly limited to faces that are familiar. Attention, empathy, action are confined to our individual nuclear lives. Deaths from COVID or school parade shootings or hate crimes feel impersonal—and increasingly so as the body count rises. As technology exposes us to more stories and more people than ever before, othering and dehumanization is a reasonable, but self-defeating response. We think that it’s always someone else that pays the price—until it’s not.
Somebody once told me that I can minimize my personal suffering by minimizing the distance my empathy travels. In other words, if you care about fewer people, you’ll feel less pain; there is too much suffering in the world outside of your own to be able to shoulder all of it. I think that would be beneficial to my mental health. I also think that’s how we got into the mess we’re in now. Aren’t we citizens of the same world? The earth is an ecosystem, and so is civilization on earth. It is blissful and ignorant to believe that you can remain insulated in your own world in a globalized world. No man can be an island.
Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe if, instead of tribalism, we let our empathy diffuse beyond our immediate friends and family, we wouldn’t have to worry about doomsday bunkers and emergency evacuations.
hope
And yet, in the same breath of despair, we have to hope.
Once upon a time, I derided ostensible signaling like pussy hats and black squares of deference. But it all matters, doesn’t it? Every piece of it, every word of protest, every dollar donated, every choice we make. Protest Dobbs and the overturning of Roe v. Wade; name the injustices of Justices; set up a recurring donation to the Yellowhammer Fund; vote consistently; pay attention. The actions we have at our disposal might feel paltry; our impact might be no match for the Supreme Court’s daily life-changing, earth-shaking transgressions—but in aggregate, it matters.
They want us to feel scared and powerless and hopeless. But we can intertwine our arms and daisy-chain our bodies and there will be enough of us or we’ll go down together, one whole they tried to break apart. We can be steadfast, we can say enough is enough, we can stand up, we can hold each other up. And we can keep doing it, again and again, create a system of support, a schedule of shifts, take turns when one of us is worn out. We have to. What other choice do we have? The rest of us are depending on you.
While it’s not apparent exactly what this newsletter is for (“what are humans for?”), it isn’t meant to be political—but not being political is a privilege that I’ve indulged too often, at too (in)convenient of times.
I have to believe that most people can be good, that most people have it in their hearts to care, to fight, for what is right. And I know that most of these people—the people in my life, at least—have the privilege of turning the other cheek, of retreating into the safety of their small lives. But can’t you see that “what we fight with is so small, when we win, it makes us small”? “What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things.” Fight the great fight.
Look at the long history of humanity. “The past is prologue!” Look how far we’ve come. We are the dreams-come-true of our ancestors. We are what our forefathers—hands chained, backs lashed—fought for. Look how much farther the horizon goes. There are possibilities and there are futures that let the light in. Keep your eyes on them, your gaze steady. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
— Kurt Vonngut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Happy Fourth of July, to all those who celebrate. May you and yours never be shot at.
Thanks, generous, brave and welcoming
Liz