- Losing My Perspicacity
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- Losing My Perspicacity January 20, 2023
Welp, it’s finally here. The day we’ve been dreading since November 5th.
Relatively speaking, we’re in a pretty miserable stretch of America: The Country right now. Los Angeles, the land that has, for a century, represented unbridled possibility in America (or at least the possibility of becoming wildly rich and famous), has been devasted by wildfires. A large swath of the country is either in a polar vortex, in the path of a blizzard, or both. We’re embroiled in constant arguments with people we love because one half of America operates on a different set of facts than the other half. One of the few outlets Americans have to connect and find joy is a political football for an authoritarian regime. Rumors of mass deportations are rife. And the Kansas City Chiefs just keep winning.
It feels bleak.
I’ll be honest: I barely have it in me today to write this newsletter. I’d rather curl up with a good book that will take me far, far away from our current reality (which reminds me, it’s a great time to start reading either Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series or Sarah J. Mass’ Throne of Glass series). Given how I feel at the moment, surviving four years of a nervous stomach and the rage-induced migraines that come from seeing the right disregard yet another foundational tenet of our democracy seems impossible. And the exhaustion from being angry — my God, the exhaustion.
And yet, I wasn’t going to let this day pass without reminding you that we are all in this together. You don’t have to fight this fight alone. There are millions of people in this place with you, millions of people who understand precisely how you feel. In an election where 155 million Americans voted, Trump won by a measly 1.5 percent. While the Democrats in Congress (with the exception of AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Jamie Raskin, Hank Thompson, Tammy Duckworth, and Elizabeth Warren) may not be as … robust in their opposition as we would like, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are angry and are willing to fight. That’s not nothing, and we’re a lot farther along in organizing against Trump than we were on January 20, 2017.
We are not powerless. Here are some things we can all do in the next few weeks (and four years) to defy, disrupt, and disobey.
Take a deep breath. Relax your jaw and shoulders. Drink plenty of water. Get plenty of sleep. Move your body. Step away from the doomscrolling and the news each day. Be thoughtful about what you let into your psyche. We need you to be rested, healthy, and strong.
Put the emails and phone numbers of your congressional reps in your Contacts. Get used to emailing or calling them when you feel strongly about something. It might feel insignificant, but it’s not, even if your reps are right-wing trolls. They’re all afraid of an opposition because they’re all afraid of losing their seats.
Divest from media outlets that have bent the knee to Trump and invest in those that are still practicing responsible journalism. I recommend news sites like ProPublica, Mother Jones, The 19th, and Dame Magazine.
Call out misinformation when you see it, either by reporting the content to the platform and/or by posting a link to the correct information from as neutral an outlet as possible. Too many Americans get news from bad actors on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Do your best to shop small and local, even if it’s less convenient. I know Amazon is a monster that has worked its way into every facet of our lives, but every little bit helps. I’ve started ordering directly from merchandisers rather than relying on Amazon to get everything to me in 24 hours. Buy your books from Bookshop — they help keep independent bookstores alive. Or better yet, get your books and ebooks from your local library by downloading the Libby and Hoopla apps. I’ve been reading library ebooks on my Kindle lately, and StoryGraph is an excellent alternative to GoodReads (which Amazon owns). If you want to get away from Amazon entirely, here’s a site that can help.
Vote with your wallet and shop your values. Maybe this means avoiding places that have trashed their DEI initiatives, like Walmart and Ford, or that engage in union-busting, like Starbucks and Amazon, or who have donated to those who supported the insurrection on January 6. Find out which companies you want to support (for me, Costco, Patagonia, Arizona Iced Tea, and Penzey’s Spices) and do so loudly and proudly.
Follow content creators who can put the current times in context for you. Yes, everything feels awful, but things have certainly been worse (imagine being a Black person living in the Jim Crow South or a poor child during the Industrial Revolution). People with far less power than most of us have fought back, and that means we can fight back, too. I like Kevin Kruse, Robert Reich, Sherilynn Ifill, and Dalia Lithwick, to name a few good follows.
Know your rights. The Constitution does not give the government rights. It limits what the government can do to each of us. It’s that way for a reason. Make sure state and local law enforcement respect the inherent rights all people have.
Research and know who you’re voting for in your local elections. At the end of the day, what happens locally affects our lives far more than national and international politics do. You can shore up protection for your own community by knowing when your local elections take place and what the candidates stand for. In this age of book banning and attacks on LGBTQ+ kids, progressive local officials are more important than ever.
I know that all seems like a lot, but we don’t have to do everything, and we don’t have to do anything right away. Some of those things are easy to incorporate into your day (like drinking more water!), some take more time, and thoughtful planning. The most important thing is that we do what we’re able, when we can. When in doubt, ask what John Lewis would want you to do.
Don’t forget MLK Day
While many of us will be focused on not watching the inauguration today (can you think of anything that would make Trump as angry as getting terrible ratings?), let’s take a moment to remember that it’s also MLK Day.
My friend Jonathan Eig wrote a highly acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., and I wanted to share some of what he wrote in his op-ed for WaPo (ugh). I gave up my WaPo subscription last Spring, but I got my hands on the text of the essay (you probably can, too, by using a burner email to get access).
At the time of the first celebration in 1986, M. Carl Holman, president of the National Urban Coalition, expressed concern that politicians might use the holiday to disguise their opposition to King’s objectives, paying homage to the civil rights leader to provide cover for policies and beliefs they knew King would abhor. “Frankly,” Holman said, “it’s easier for a lot of people to honor Martin when he’s safely dead and deal with him as if he were just a visionary, and not a practical and very pragmatic protester against the status quo.”
It took less than a week for Holman’s prediction to come true, as President Ronald Reagan delivered a radio address denying allegations that his administration sought to do away with affirmative action and weaken civil rights enforcement. “We want a color-blind society,” Reagan said. “A society, that in the words of King, judges people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
That “content of their character” quote — taken from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech — has proved to be one of the most dangerous weapons in the effort to airbrush his legacy. It is used widely to suggest that King wished for a color-blind society — that he would have opposed affirmative action, for example — and that all he ever stood for was peace, harmony and coalition-building.
This reminds me of when I would speak of MLK as a child, prompting some of the more ancient members of my family to chime in that he was a “troublemaker.” We all need to access our “troublemaker” side.
King never wanted White Americans to get comfortable with discrimination. He never remotely suggested that his dream of a society free of racial discrimination should make us blind to the persistence of racism and inequality.
In an essay published after his assassination, King criticized White America for its “ingrained and tenacious racism.” Even in his “Dream” speech, before he mentioned “content of their character,” he talked about racial segregation, the lasting social and economic impact of slavery, and the Black victims of police brutality. To come away from that speech thinking King called for a color-blind society requires willful distortion, which is exactly what we have seen.
Today, let’s remember how radical MLK was (especially for the time), and let’s all vow to be a little more radical in honor of his memory.
The danger of executive orders
Reminder: Presidents can not overturn congressional legislation via executive order. Executive orders have the force of law, but can only be used in areas reserved for the Executive Branch. Trump can not, for example, issue an executive order overturning the Affordable Health Care Act.
I mention this for absolutely no reason.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump plans to sign more than 50 executive orders Monday — and possibly more than 100 — on the first day of his second presidency, according to a person in his transition operation.
Trump, who is scheduled to take the oath of office inside the Capitol at noon, intends to sign several of the orders in front of a crowd at an event in Capital One Arena in Washington later in the afternoon. The inauguration-related events were moved to indoor locales because of inclement weather in the nation's capital.
Get those emails to your congressional reps ready. I often bang out a couple of emails to my Senators about Trump’s cabinet nominees via voice-to-text while I’m running errands. Easy, fun, and an excellent outlet for my rage.
The High Note
Each day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, or the determination to fight on.
This is what I’ve been hanging onto lately. We don’t get to pick at what time in history we live, all we can do is decide how we will live and what we stand for.
There are other forces at work in this world besides evil… and that is a comforting thought.
Be strong today.
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