It’s getting hard to concentrate.
I adjure myself: “Calm down. Focus. Stick to your lane. Your role, Carll, is to sing in the chorus – one voice amidst a throng. The chorus needs all its voices. Share your feelings about the emotional trials and moral quandaries of this horrific hour – that is your beat. Stay in line – and in tune. Forward, march.”
I applaud my prudent counsel. Right thinking, right? I open my laptop to type. But first, a glimpse at the headlines – and yikes, a trap door opens beneath me and I’m flailing in air.
These words (quoted by decamped Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin) unsettle:
Democracy doesn’t get saved one post at a time. Authoritarians are delighted when their opponents only channel their anger into typed outrage that generates dopamine through clicks from like-minded partisans. Elon Musk will be constrained far more by Tesla boycotts and the prospect of plummeting sales figures than by mean memes. Donald Trump hates bad optics—and mass protests are terrible optics for a wannabe despot who (falsely) claims a “landslide” popular mandate.
I didn’t know their author, Brian Klass, now I do – oh no, not another anguished voice I should be following! My inbox wails these days like a wilderness of coyotes – Paul Krugman, Heather Cox Richardson, Josh Marshall, Timothy Snyder, and on, and on – I agree with them all! – applaud them all – share their dread – but collectively they corrode the calm I need to compose. What use one more howl? But no, that’s bad thinking. Apprehension isn’t real unless shared. Together we must bellow, panic, act.
Meaning what?
It’s time to take to the streets. Not just the dependable few, who can be counted on to protest injustice, but all of us who refuse to abandon democracy without a fight. I’ll continue to roar and explore – that is my work – but I cannot let spouting, which I enjoy, excuse me from protesting, which I don’t. It is too easy to congratulate myself on “doing my bit”, when what we all must be doing is all we can.
The Democrats’ elected leaders have been wary and timid in their response to the Nameless One’s predations. We the people, by massing, must put starch in their spines. The stock market crashing is a good thing – let it crash farther – alerting even the stupidest to the perils they face. Let disease ravage innocents and decimate flocks because of ignorant health policies. Let our tyrants cozy with Putin and offend our friends. Let the price of everything ratchet to the skies. Disaffect the military from their Commander-in-Chief so none dares attack their fellow citizens.
Polling points to the unpopularity of all that this Administration is attempting to achieve. Who likes being ripped off by the rich? Who wants their pensions pinched, healthcare denied, or universities gored? Yes, we’ve been fools to have let this happen – but that was yesterday. Let’s repair tomorrow.
I’m exhorting myself. So far my horror has been notional. Our cozy lives continue as before. Others are hurting – losing jobs, freedoms, protections – but not we – yet. We must place our bodies, not just our minds, on a war footing. We must train ourselves to hate hard – and risk our safety – to save our state.
War is evil. But not to wage war in defense of the right is worse.
The Nameless One has done us a favor with the shamelessness of his predation, each outrage more outrageous. No both-sides-ism permitted here. Either you believe in human freedom, justice, generosity, truth, or you don’t. Time to enlist, like it or not.