This post is too long to appear in full in your inbox. I don’t know where it will cut off in the email version, but it will be available online. See you there!!!
I’m writing this part of today’s piece as Donald Trump is being sworn in as the 47th President. I had written an extensive introduction on a notepad that I accidentally left at my office which is inexplicably locked for the first time since I started working there. But hey—what would today be without hiccups and suffering?
It should come as a shock to absolutely no one reading this that I have many thoughts on today and whatever is doomed to happen next. I wonder if we’re going too dark, if the American system will prevail and we all worried so much for nothing. I also can’t stop thinking about the possibility that we’ve underestimated how dangerous the next few years will actually get.
More than anything, though, I’m really fucking annoyed. I have spent the last ten years—and essentially my entire college degree—orbiting this man who I literally can’t stand. Oh, stop watching the news. Oh, just ignore it all. And then what? Trump doesn’t just disappear when we close our eyes. He’s not the ghost of our object permeance’s imagination. I’m annoyed that he has seeped into every facet of American life and I’m annoyed that 77 million people are, at the least engaged level, fine with it.
I can’t stand feeling helpless—as far as feelings go, it’s among my least favorites next to pitied and gassy. But I know how easy of a trap it is to fall into when you think about the bigness of what has happened and what is to come. How can one person make such a difference, we ask while one person continues to fuck everything up. How can one person solve all the problems one person has created?
In short: you can’t. No one can handle, mitigate, or fight back against all this alone. It takes community and compassion and education and a will to fight back. Our government will not save us, our elected officials will not save us, and corporations will absolutely not save us—but we can find ways to protect each other against the worst of what could come. That is why this week, I asked several guests past and future to speak on different modes of resistance. It’s not a finite guide, but it’s a way to start thinking about how we can make it through together.
I asked everyone who participated in today’s piece to answer the question, What is something that currently gives you hope? I had written my own response to the question that was, at turns, angry and dreamy and hopeful…all on the notepad.
I think, perhaps, I wasn’t meant to publish that response just yet but instead share a quote from Cecile Richards, a lifelong reproductive rights activist and the former president of Planned Parenthood:
“It’s not hard to imagine future generations one day asking: ‘When there was so much at stake for our country, what did you do?’ The only acceptable answer is: ‘Everything we could.’”
Richards died earlier this morning, which feels a bit like an omen—of what, I’m not yet sure. But her legacy and this quote, combined with the thoughtfulness and empathy radiating out of every single response below, are the things that are currently giving me hope. It’s not going to be pretty and it’s not going to be easy but we have to do everything we can to survive the next four years, if for no other reason than to piss off Trump and his sycophants.
Helplessness may be one of my least favorite emotions, but pettiness is easily in my Top 5.
If you or anyone you know is at risk of being deported, make sure you know your rights and protections which are afforded to you by the Constitution regardless of your immigration status. Also, remember that certain areas around the country (such as Chicago Public Schools) are sanctuary sites that will not cooperate with ICE unless they have a criminal warrant.
As I’ve been thinking about ways to protect myself in the coming years, I instinctively always tack on “and others” after “myself.” How will I protect myself and others? If it’s not clear from any piece I’ve ever published here, community is key to every facet of my life. This is not solely because I’m an Extrovert (with a capital E for Emphasis), but because I’m constantly reaping the benefits of being surrounded by good people—do you think this newsletter would have gone anywhere if it only ever featured me?
We all bring different strengths and experiences to the table, and when we find ways to come together and stand in solidarity with one another, people like Trump get scared—they always have. It’s the Avengers theory, right? We are incredibly powerful together which is why certain people want to keep us pitted against each other.1
With that, I wanted to start this piece by talking with someone who builds a new community whenever he enters a room. You cannot spend four years siloed off from the rest of the world, nor can you spend all of your time online, isolated in a different way.
I asked everyone’s favorite club kid Brady Goodman-Williams about the importance of building and fortifying your community over the coming years.
Brady Goodman-Williams basically goes to concerts for a living. As the editorial lead for DoLA.com, he shows and tells LA what to “do” every night. When he’s not being a 365 party girl, he’s probably laughing over something dumb with the nearest gays, or posting about it on Instagram.
Emily: How important is community to you, and how do you think it will help us in the coming years?
Brady: It’s funny—as I reflect on this now, I believe community might be the most important value I hold today (or it’s at least in the top three). Creating community has stayed a consistent theme throughout my life. As my therapist reminds me, growing up the only child of divorced parents wasn’t easy, so I found a profound sense of belonging from classmates in school (and I’ll admit I was a total teacher’s pet, too).
I’ve been a social butterfly for as long as I can remember and possibly peaked in high school as Student Body President. I found fantastic friends in college and felt no fear in finding new ones overseas during a gap year in Australia—until Covid. I spent 6 months in Melbourne’s strict lockdowns cut off almost entirely from my community support system back in the States. No joke: that period of isolation changed me forever. (We’ve already discussed this in a previous E4P, I believe.)
As a human being, we need to belong somewhere. We are social creatures by nature. It’s literally the third level from the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. Being in a different timezone and thousands of miles away from my close circle of family and friends during a global pandemic felt like losing my right hand. My mental health was so bad that I couldn’t function at all.
I made it my mission to move back to LA and regrow my community as fast as possible. I was the ultimate social butterfly slash friendship whore (and my friends remind me of it often), but being that butterfly literally saved my life. Four years later, I’m now surrounded by a chosen family of queer friends who rebuilt me when I was most broken. They’ve helped me rediscover myself and reinvent myself. I’m lucky to have found my “tribe” of weirdos.
Community can’t be an afterthought. We live in one of the most isolating eras since the Dark Ages. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that our society has become increasingly more prone to loneliness. We’d rather text than yap. We rely on social media and dating apps for connection instead of common spaces like coffee shops, bars, or parks. We stay home more often in the name of “self-care,” inadvertently making it harder to be taken care of by others.
So in the challenging years ahead, we all must commit to the collective community around us: our neighborhood, institutions, friends, families, and most importantly our planet. It’s the only cure I’ve found for doom-scrolling. Particularly for the girls, gays, and theys, the people and places that make us feel like we belong must be protected at all costs, unless we want to end up in a Black Mirror episode.
Emily: As a community organizer, what are some of your tips for people to get involved in their areas or connect with others to build and fortify relationships?
Brady: No disrespect to my guy Maslow, but personally I’d put community building lower down on the pyramid with food, water, and shelter. The way I see it: if we don’t have community, we have nothing to live for. What they don’t teach you though is that building community takes a lot of work.
No one warns you that the older you get, the more you have to really go out of your way to meet new people. So what’s a guy to do? In cities like LA where I live, you have to go out. All. The. Time. (Okay, I’m exaggerating. But not really.) Despite what my Instagram feed suggests, “going out” doesn’t just mean partying--unless you want it to.
Going out can mean whatever you want it to mean. Maybe that’s going to church, synagogue, temple, etc. Or maybe it’s an anime convention, a book club, or joining a kickball league. The point is you need to be meeting as many new people as you can in an environment where you can authentically be yourself and have fun. This is especially true when you move to a new city, and it takes some trial and error! But finding your “tribe” is worth the risks, perceived or real, of rejection, social anxiety, awkwardness, conflict, and more introvert-inspired phobias.
Some practical tips?
Think of something you give a shit about, then find other people who also give a shit about the same thing. Bonding over common interests is the umami of community building.
When you connect with someone, always get their contact info, even if it feels forward. Reach out. Follow up.
If you want to meet new people, don’t bring a +1.
Remember that adult relationships are not the same as childhood friendships. People are busy. Lower your expectations, and show them the same grace when they fall short that you’d show yourself.
Show up when it counts, even when it’s hard or inconvenient. Volunteer. Protest often. Read the news. Inform others and have difficult conversations.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Brady: Last week, LA experienced its largest wildfire in history. It was heart-wrenching and deeply traumatizing to see displaced people and animals lose their whole world in the flames as the sky was enveloped in a plume of smoke and ash for days—our air quality was apocalyptic. I packed my “go bag” but thankfully didn’t need to evacuate, although many of my friends did.
Currently, I’m the Content Manager for DoLA.com, which covers all of the concerts, comedy shows, sports, and other things to “do” in Los Angeles. I oversee our entire editorial strategy, our daily newsletter which reaches 150k+ subscribers, and all of our social channels.
For the last week and a half, my work has been laser-focused on wildfire coverage. Each day I scoured Google and Instagram to pull together community-centric editorials including a comprehensive wildfire resource guide for evacuation information, animal shelters, and donation links, plus roundups of in-person volunteer opportunities, donation drop-off points, wildfire benefit concerts, and local mutual aid resources.
I’m proud to report that this city came together in a way that made me genuinely hopeful for the future. And it wasn’t just nonprofits! I received countless press releases about restaurants offering free meals to first responders and evacuees, and other local businesses collecting hygiene kits, clothing, and nonperishable foods. Entire stadiums were turned into donation distribution centers, and they were overflowing with donations, which isn’t a bad problem to have!
I saw a Tweet that said, “Despite what our institutions may suggest, Americans genuinely do want to help one another.” The only way we’re going to overcome the problems of our generation is if we look out for each other at the local level.
The start of 2025 has been so violent, but after seeing what I’ve seen in Los Angeles, I’m feeling more optimistic than ever about the future of our communities, even when our government and the structures of capitalism may fall short.
Reading Is a Form of Resistance
As we’ve been talking about the TikTok ban—or lack thereof—and the rise of masc4masc Meta, the conversation has floated around information suppression. While the real-time disintegration of trust in our social media apps (where, for better or worse, many people receive their news) feels incredibly dystopian, I would be remiss not to point out that information suppression is the world’s second-oldest profession.
Between 2023 and 2024, there were 10,000 instances of book bans across the country which is up tremendously from the 2,532 instances between 2021-22 and the 3,362 instances between 2022-23.
Book bans, while alarming on their own, are also a bellwether for rising educational censorship that has plagued not only K-12 public schools since 2021, but a range of institutions, including public libraries, colleges and universities. Across these institutions, we have seen a range of policy changes and new state laws, designed to suppress education about certain viewpoints, identities, and histories; namely, concerning people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and sex. This broad campaign uses falsehoods, fear, and hatred to dehumanize, dismiss, and diminish important voices in the public sphere — and these efforts are reshaping American public education (X).
While the concept of information suppression on the apps we use to communicate with one another in the world feels like an immediate affront, the war being waged against the information shared in books is a longer fight that we should not take our eyes off of. No one can take information away from you once you learn it which is very well the reason why so many people want to ban so many books.
But enough of me being doom and gloom—this piece is meant to give our hope a fighting chance. With that, I talked with Sophie Guimaraes who is one of the most thoughtful (and bookish!) people I know about reading books in these trying times.
Sophie Guimaraes is a book editor with a critical eye and a heart of gold. She is passionate about the girl group TWICE and sharing stories with the world, in that order. Most importantly, she has impeccable taste in books which is key because she shares a few picks with us below.
Emily: In your opinion, how is or can reading be a form of resistance?
Sophie: Banned books might be the first thing that comes to mind, but I actually think the answer is much simpler than that. Reading, period, is a form of resistance.
Not to get all woo-woo on you, but the people responsible for upholding systems of power would love it if we never empathized with others’ lived experiences, never took the time to ingest and digest a bulk of information, and never thought critically. Stories reflect the nuances and intricacies of the human experience. You carry them with you and they inform everything you encounter thereafter.
If I told you, “Systems of power operate the same wherever you go,” you’d be like, okay, sure, prove it to me, and I could give a couple of sound bites and you might go, “That’s not relevant to me,” or “Okay but what about x y z.” But if I handed you a copy of, say, Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART, you’d be like, Oh. Oh my god. I get it. Stories transcend the sound bite.
Emily: What are some books you would recommend as we head into this next administration?
Sophie: Claudia Rankine’s CITIZEN changed me forever. So did Adania Shibli’s MINOR DETAIL and Arundhati Roy’s THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS. Books by and about people who experience life differently from you are generally a good place to start.
Read books in translation. Read books from small presses. Read ACOTAR—hey, it got people reading again, I’ll never knock it—and then go read something else. Gateway drug that shit.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Sophie: Much easier these days to answer, “What isn’t giving you hope,” isn’t it? History tends to repeat in a pretty depressing way, and you have to wonder if anyone ever learns. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and it’s paved with bad ones, and I can’t figure out which gets me down more.
I guess three things make me feel hopeful:
The Internet. Obviously, there’s misinformation, and there are the evil algorithms, but it’s easier than ever to engage with some really smart takes (e.g., the olfactory ethics chick from Twitter), see other people’s everyday lives (e.g, Xiaohongshu), and realize that we’re all more alike than we’re told we are.
Art. Generally, my mentals are pretty fucked, and I find myself asking if anyone else finds being alive this excruciating. Yep! And more! Engaging with any kind of art reminds me that, to varying degrees, and in many different ways, we’re all going through it.
And my loved ones, who reflect my ideal world and remind me that goodness does indeed exist on this earth. It’s all about love, man.
Women = Hope
There has been so much talk—from myself as well as countless others—about how significantly state and local governments impact our daily lives and how that is only going to become more true in the coming years. And we know now that Trump’s strategy for avoiding passing any federal legislation that might make him unpopular with the cool kids (read: access to abortion and reproductive rights) is to hot potato it to state legislatures to decide amongst themselves.
I wanted to talk to someone who works for one such governing body to get the inside scoop on what is actually needed of us moving forward.
I reached out to Melanie Migliore who once submitted my all-time favorite panel response (I’m not linking it so thank you in advance for driving up my views while you hunt for it), but who is also making state bureaucracy fetch.
Melanie Migliore has worked for the New York State executive chamber since December 2018, starting her career under former Governor Andrew Cuomo. She began her career on the citizen’s assistance phone line and worked her way into becoming a legal services coordinator! She currently works with the FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) attorneys to get public records collected and sent out to whoever requests them (government transparency is so hot!!).
Emily: How can we all get involved with or support our state and local governments?
It’s so important to maintain a level of cognizance of what is actually happening on a local level because what directly impacts us more than what’s happening in our literal backyards? Become familiar with the legislation that is in front of our community leaders. Once you have background knowledge on issues that you feel passionate about, use your voice to amplify! Call your local leaders and tell them how they can do better to serve the people of our communities.
I began my career in state politics by being on the citizen's assistance phone line which was extremely eye-opening. Constituents call in from every corner of the state to not only get assistance from the governor's office but also have the opportunity to log their opinions on issues that really matter to them.
Your opinions are logged and they’re presented to senior officials in the administration because they must keep a finger on the pulse of what their constituents have to say. Speaking up gets bills signed (or vetoed!) that will help your community.
Resources:
The NYC Legistar database to look up local legislation & the meeting minutes/agendas from local council meetings: Legistar.council.nyc.gov
The New York State legislative database to look up statewide legislation including info on who voted yes/no, and where it is in the process of reaching the governor's desk: Public.leginfo.state.ny.us
The citizen's assistance phone line is 518-474-8390 to share your opinion with a representative
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Melanie: Wildly loaded question there girly pop!
Despite Hope being my middle name, it’s kind of hard to muster it up these days. With the upcoming inauguration and sense of impending oligarchical doom for the next four years, finding pockets of hope is really a challenge for me.
I gotta tell you, though…nothing has given me more hope than seeing women in office. Although the election didn’t turn out how I wanted it to, watching VP Kamala Harris's campaign not only instilled an incredible sense of hope but lit an absolute fire in me.
I’ve had the privilege to work with and under a handful of the literal baddest bitches in this state. Leaders in reproductive rights, leaders in male-dominated fields like NYC sanitation and transportation—women that I’ve worked with going on to become CEOs and big law partners. (You too, Miss Emily, keeping us informed and giggly—your work is very important!!!!)
The list goes on and on. Really seeing and hearing women in these positions of power has only made me more proud of who I am and what I can be. The pinkprint has been laid out for us to uphold and it has given me hope in our generation of young women. Women = hope.
The Youth Will Save Us All or Die Trying
I have a very complicated personal relationship with social media activism, one I’ve documented fairly extensively in this very newsletter. Yet, I know there’s value in sharing information and resources on these apps for two reasons: the first is that people keep doing it. As we’ve covered here today and previously on E4P, 32% of 18-29-year-olds who responded to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey claimed they regularly get news from TikTok. Social media activism, when done right, helps get critical information to individuals by meeting them where they already are.
This brings me to the second reason why I know it’s important: people are trying so hard to control it. Even though Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram will now rely on community notes like “X” does—ostensibly making it appear like they are taking a laissez-faire approach to controlling the dissemination of information on their apps—never forget that Instagram implemented a political content limit back in March 2024 that users had to opt out of rather than in to. These apps and their founders have a vested interest in what you are consuming and from which sources, now more so than ever.
For this reason and countless others (namely that I just love getting to yap with her), I wanted to talk to someone well-versed in both social media and social media activism. While Beca Kindling creates social content professionally, she also uses her personal Instagram to provide information on and advocate for the advancement of progressive causes such as the ceasefire which went into effect yesterday. I wanted to know her thoughts on what activism could look like for her under the Trump Administration.
Beca Kindling is a social media content specialist by title but I like to think of her as a great connector by nature. Although she may see herself as a pessimist, she is a light in the lives of those around her, and her well of empathy for other humans is a bright spot in what can often be a demoralizing media landscape.
Emily: Why is it still important to advocate for progressive causes even when you know those currently in office are not just opposed but actively hostile toward them?
Beca: I always say this: the reason we have so many issues in this world is because no one has any empathy. No one cares about anyone but themselves. From anti-colonization to healthcare and reproductive rights, universal early childhood education to the climate crisis (the list goes on and on and on), I really just want to convey that we, as a collective, should care about all of it.
It’s so valuable to be one of many to stand up and make your voice heard, especially when a hostile administration is in power. I may be scared but I will not be silenced. Find your communities, small but mighty, mutual aid, continue the conversation, and try not to give up hope.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Beca: My first thought: I am a pessimist lol.
My honest answer: the youth will save us all or die trying. We don’t give enough credit to the people *ahem my age-ish* who have the power to change the world for the better. Get rid of all those paid-off politicians and put people into office who had to do active shooter drills in school, who went to college and left with $200k debt, who realized that buying a house is nearly impossible, and who experienced pivotal moments through a Zoom screen.
I’m tired of this, grandpa! It’s past time for change.
If you want to get involved in progressive politics at any level (especially the local level), consider checking out Run For Something. And before anyone—yourself included—has the chance to tell you otherwise: you’re not too young and you don’t need a political background to make a huge difference in your community.
Marginalized Communities Will Always Have Each Other to Lean On
Someone asked me last night why this conversation matters so much to me because it doesn’t impact me. But doesn’t it? Isn’t there that whole poem about how not standing up for the most marginalized members of society comes back to literally kill you? Was there another message we were supposed to take away from that?
Yes, I have trans and non-binary friends I love and want to protect. Yes, I love drag and support all queens—even the one who read me for filth because I wore overalls to brunch one morning when I was hungover. But this all, to me, is so much more than my personal relationships with drag and gender and transness: what this all comes down to is caring about other people.
I do not want to waste my life harming other people. I do not want to spend my days consumed with thinking up ways to ruin people’s lives…Last year, Roe was overturned. This year, over 300 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have already been proposed. Whether we like it or not, we are once again living in that poem and I, for one, would rather go down with my waist snatched and face beat to the gods than sit idly by.
While it’s no secret that this incoming administration hates women (argue with the wall, Karen!), my other identities insulate me from the worst it has promised to do: I’m white, I’m an American-born citizen, I’m cisgender, and, according to multiple sources, I actively exude straight energy in a way I’m choosing to see as Sabrina Carpenter-coded.
But my life would not be my life without my friends and loved ones. Just as my vote was not solely for me, neither is my fight for a better future. I am not a subtle person and neither is Donald Trump—real recognizes real, bitch. He is physically incapable of moving in silence so we know who and what he intends to attack and largely in the order he plans to do so.
If we combine all of the things we’ve talked about up to this point today, a call to action becomes clear: stand with the most marginalized members of your community and stay informed about which attacks are coming next.
With that in mind, I reached out to an Anonymous guest who manages to see the best in people and art to talk about their thoughts as someone whose identities place them in Trump’s line of fire, and how they convey their experiences to others who may not know how to listen.
This Anonymous guest always has their finger on the pulse of pop culture and is an undeniably skilled communicator. While it’s their identity that made me want to interview them today, it’s their never-ending empathy—their constant desire to hear or watch one more story get told—that makes their answers resonate.
Emily: As someone who sits at the intersection of a number of identities and communities Trump, his cabinet, and Republicans in Congress have targeted, what are your thoughts heading into the next four years?
Anon: The first thing I remember feeling about his re-election is fear, and I’m sure many of us kind of felt a similar sense of general dread. It’s kind of got no place to live though, because it’s almost like we have no idea what it is exactly what we’re afraid of. But after the past few weeks it’s becoming apparent that we were right to be scared.
Trump is already targeting an array of marginalized communities including trans people which was to be expected, but what was most shocking was the speed at which he’s already getting these things done without even having entered the White House for the second time.
It’s bleak and it’s deeply upsetting, but if there’s anything we know about queer people is that out of nothing we rise with a fighting resilience that is unique to who we are.
Emily: In your experience, is there any effective way to communicate with those who hold bigoted and discriminatory views in an attempt to show them where they may be misguided?
Anon: I think time arguing is time wasted. A conversation everyone learns from is where the magic happens. I believe those are the conversations that are the most worth having.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Anon: What currently gives me hope is that queer people and other marginalized communities will always have each other to lean on, to mobilize and to enact change.
I don’t think every act over the next four years needs to be brave. I think, to parrot something Gill Clowes said last week, some of our actions and beliefs can be in service of ourselves and still be against this administration. As she explained it,
I want to continue to be vocal about my beliefs, and my sense of right and wrong. I want to keep my sense of individualism (X).
It’s as simple as that sometimes. We can save ourselves by being ourselves.
To be fair, Gill has been making me laugh throughout our entire friendship but she has done so frequently over the past two weeks. I wanted to bring her back on for two final questions to hopefully make at least one person reading this laugh, too.
Emily: How are you trying to maintain a positive outlook on the future when a lot of the news lately has felt, at best, hard to hear, and at worst, demoralizing?
Gill: I’ve truly been in denial. Nooooo TikTok’s not getting banned (now true), and nooooo Trump’s not taking office (what’s the T-minus on that?). I kept thinking this day was not coming.
I am trying to maintain a positive outlook by remembering term limits exist! I’m also really enjoying collecting data for inevitable failures. What promises weren’t measured up? I kind of want to be a bit of a historian here.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Gill: Sometimes a common enemy is the key to unity. Maybe we can use this time to band together and work together to get rid of him or something. Maybe it’s the delusion and denial or the amount of hopecore I consumed before TikTok shut down. Maybe this can be an opportunity for us to put our foot down on some billionaires.
“Are you willing to fight for that person who you don't even know as much as you're willing to fight for yourself?”
I’m turning 27 in less than a month which, astrologically speaking, means that I am closing out the first phase of my life. I know I’m young and (Oprah-willing) I have a lot of life left to live but, if you can’t tell, I’m cursed to spend my life always thinking about everyone else. And, at this moment, I can’t stop thinking now about those future generations Cecile Richards was talking about.
While I’m determined to live my life as a childless cat lady (pity and spite, baby), others have to wrestle with what raising a child might look like during the next four years. There is a different set of worries and fears and hopes that come with that, so I wanted to talk with someone who now has to grapple with all of them.
Joe won’t tell you this but in addition to having an 11-month-old son, he also has a “Nevertheless, She Persisted” tramp stamp. One of those two things is a lie, of course…his son is only 10 months old. In any case, I wanted to talk to Joe about how he foresees his politics influencing his role as a father and the world he wants to build for his son.
Joe is a non-corporate American working in corporate America. He will eventually be the person single-handedly keeping Elon Musk employed with the way he uses “X”, and will manage to find the last open Starbucks during the apocalypse for one more Venti cup of tea.
Emily: What are some of your thoughts as a new parent raising a child under a Trump 2.0 Administration?
Joe: At 5:22 am the morning after election day, I was alone in a hotel room in Atlanta on a work trip. I had stayed up convincing myself that there was something in the outstanding vote that would change the trajectory. I sat up in bed and texted my wife in disbelief over how wrong I could’ve been about how the race would turn out and how depressing of a reveal of our nation’s character this was. At best, we lost because of a prevailing apathy, but at worst, there is a lack of morality, and many people that I know and love are simply not good humans.
I texted my wife: “I'm just glad little man can't understand.”
My son had just turned eight months old on Election Day, so while every day he is trying to figure out the world around him, he is a ways away from being able to grapple with right and wrong. His sense of injustice is getting annoyed when we take a tube of diaper cream out of his hands or keep him from playing with wires by the TV.
So in that regard, I feel lucky. He can enjoy a blissful innocence. The rest of us who are the blue dot in a conservative family? We need to try to come to terms with the incongruity of seeing those close to us whose actions would indicate they are good people show that they must not give a shit about anyone else based on what they voted for.
It’s not like I can keep my son away from his grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins, right? Should their apparent worldview disqualify them from being able to enjoy familial rites together? They look at my son with such love and awe. Are these really the same people that mainline Fox News and in some instances harbor a complete disrespect for others based on what they look like or where they come from?
How can you possibly reconcile this moral dissonance?
I acknowledge that based on where I live, my gender, sexual identity, job, savings, etc, I can navigate these next four years raising a child with a certain privilege that millions can’t. Ultimately the best my wife and I can do at this stage is to make him feel loved and teach him to love and respect others. If he feels supported and safe and cared for, then maybe he’ll grow to want to help those who aren’t.
There’s such a long road ahead of us with his social and emotional development, but I just need to make sure he’s raised in an environment where he won’t eventually feel an emptiness that can only be satiated by toxicity.
Emily: What is something that currently gives you hope?
Joe: Knowing that we’re not alone. That all of us that are feeling beaten right now are going to be there to pick each other up and fight through these next four years. It feels different than Resistance 1.0—there won’t be any “Mueller Time” memes. There’s a seriousness that I think we recognize.
I wasn’t a Bernie Bro (Liz Warren Hive, rise up), but this quote from a Bernie speech in Queens during his 2020 campaign has stuck with me since: “Are you willing to fight for that person who you don't even know as much as you're willing to fight for yourself?”
That doesn’t mean we all need to be out in the streets protesting and wearing pussy hats every time the Supreme Court hands down a decision, but there are millions of people who will need help and support, and there are tens of millions of good people out there that will reject all of the bullshit that comes up during this next administration.
The only way out is through, and we’ll do it together.
There is not really anything I can say that adequately expresses my gratitude for everyone who participated in today’s piece. The spooky scaries haven’t left since last week but this helped in ways I’m not quite sure I can convey outside of my head.
This is all stupid and hard but it does bring me some modicum of comfort that at least in my corner of the world, all of you are here because all of you care. I’m grateful for you, too, and to have a space for conversations like this.
Take care of yourselves this week. I love you!!
Not to be totally desperate, but I’ve made it as easy as possible for you to subscribe so you kind of don’t have an excuse now.
By the way: this source is a high school publication and I not only thought it was brilliant, but it speaks so clearly to a later argument that the youth of this country will save us.
Tiktok failed to load.
