Story Eleven

That time I looked for liberty.

What follows is a selection from my journals. I tend to think around the same thoughts for years before I publish them, because I want to be very sure that I know what I mean to say before I speak, but I think the repetition is telling. Most of the entries are from 2018, although I think the Philadelphia entry was from 2020.

I have long talked about societal and political breakdown. I spent most of 2015 and 2016 talking about nascent fascism and nationalism and violent white supremacy, but by 2018 I had mostly given it up as a bad job because the people who understood why I was worried were themselves concerned, and everyone else was either avoiding the topic or openly dismissing it as a bit hysterical.

One year and change from the insurrection, on the heels of the first indictments for sedition since the first World Trade Center bombings back in the mid-90s, it feels less hyperbolic.

I think these things are still timely; we live in a time where time moves both glacially and also all at once. The norms are shattering but the system, while fragile, is holding enough that there’s still something to fight for. Still, we are right back where we were, in a country where most people read the news of riots and protests and political violence and terrorism and shake their heads and say it’s a shame things are falling apart.

It might be worth thinking about what we could be doing not just to stop the damage, but to repair some of it.

***

There has always been a group of people who are entirely ignorant. It’s not a question of knowledge, exactly, it’s more a question of information. That is to say, it’s hard to know something that you haven’t had an opportunity to learn. There are places on could live where one simply does not hear what’s happening in the world in real time. I have long advocated for a broader understanding of that fact, but solipsism is a hell of a drug and in any case it’s not longer a timely understanding in the United States. We’re past that now, siloed into our own recursive news cycles. Now we are choosing sides and there is no more time for grace.

We know that the default setting for most people in the US will be to do nothing. We can’t count on anyone who has not actively declared themselves by now to show up; any political organizer can tell you about flake rates. Even the people who volunteer can’t be relied upon to do the work, that’s why you overbook any shift knocking doors or making calls. Nobody wants to point this out because it’s considered somehow traitorous to acknowledge when the people you hate most are right, but everyone from the three percenters to your most mainstream Kerry staffer knows about flake rates, and that further you don’t need most people to show up. You just need more people than the other guys have.

You go to war with the army you have, said Donald Rumsfeld, and it’s true. In this case, it’s a war of opinion rather than arms, although there’s an arguable case that we’ve come up into the time where we should treasure being able to say that. There is already a death toll, and it will rise. There’s not time to ward this pending outcome off; the time for that was years ago or maybe yesterday. Now it’s time to fight, knowing both that we wish we could avoid violence and also that enough people glory in it that it will happen. We are up against people who think nothing of death and care nothing for suffering. They mock parents grieving their children and abuse the children in their own care in the name of saving children who never existed.

We have spent the last months discomfited, careful in our speech. What do we do if they keep on this path? Do we stand by and watch the nation hollow itself out further? We have already destroyed ourselves but hope means looking at how to salvage what’s still sacred.

***

I shouldn’t know what an MRAP is, I tell the Marine. And it’s true, I shouldn’t, as a 36-year-old civilian mom, know the tactical difference between CS and CN gas is. I definitely shouldn’t have preferences about which chemical weapons I prefer the government to use on civilian populations.

This is fucking pastoral, I tell the women basking in the spring sun while their sons play in the yard below.

The juxtaposition is what kills you. Civilians aren’t supposed to have to live like this.

It’s the nationalism that’s triggering, says the Marine, and yes, exactly that. That’s precisely the thing.

***

Why is there a drum cadence for a flag presentation at my kindergartener’s Halloween assembly? It’s martial in uncomfortable ways. IDK why a roomful of grown adults is popping up like it’s fucking Mass but I suppose it’s because one must train the children.

***

The world is as wild as it’s been since Trump took power. People are just beginning to see it, but it’s too late now. We’re already stripping people of their citizenship, and it’s hard to imagine reversing course from here. Trump is on Twitter today saying that trade wars are good, actually, which seems to me like it’s probably not true. The markets are plunging and the fiscal right is losing its shit. Bill Kristol might have a stroke. No way anyone in the international economy wants to deal with us now, we’ve gone erratic. It’s surreal to be having conversations about using our place as a safehouse for refugees, but then again it’s batshit the anyone is seeking fucking sanctuary in a New Jersey church like it’s the hunchback of Notre Dame.

***

The more I read, the more convinced I am that there’s nothing to be done about it. Malheur is going to happen again but this time it won’t be a sideshow. The previously unthinkable has become practically mundane. Instead of doing anything about it, we focus on the margins and call that enough. This week it’s guns, last month it was stocks, before that sexual harassment. All fine and worthy things to think about to be sure, but none well-suited to answer this protofascism. Helpful in keeping the window in place, I suppose, but not precisely opposition. People keep thinking this is going to look like something that came before, keep waiting for a putsch in a beer hall specifically; the putsch at a wine bar doesn’t count because everyone knows that violent authoritarians prefer beer. There’s no hyperinflation so it can’t be compared directly to Weimar no matter what the historians say. Everyone is on a tree hunt in the forest with no luck.

Nobody designed this, it’s happened upon us in a million tiny ways. It’s unintentional. Truth is merely collateral damage of the rise of the ideology. But without truth we can’t win. Mobius victory.

***

It is July 4th and I am looking for liberty in Philadelphia. It’s weird to see children waving flags with innocent giddy glare, waiting for the candy that inevitably comes with parades, the day after we found out the camps are worse than we thought. Or maybe we found that out two days ago, it’s hard to remember what day news happened when it keeps happening faster and faster. (Still, spare a thought for the poor PFC in full dress uniform in this heat. None of this is his fault.)

A man in a suit eats ice cream while a woman in a sheath dress drapes her Hermes scarf artistically around her shoulders. A man ambles past them wearing a t-shirt that features a graphic of a rocket pop with the slogan “tastes like freedom” which seems slightly obscene, but then again this whole thing seems a bit obscene on this day. The notion of freedom seems furtive and degrading, how dare anyone celebrate this on this day? Have we no shame?

The parade begins with a color guard, and people wait respectfully for the flag to pass before they impede the parade in protest of the literal fucking camps on the southern border. The Philadelphia Police And Fire Pipes And Drums march past the Jewish History Museum inexplicably playing the Marine Corps Hymn, and police who are neither playing pipes nor drums arrest a rabbi to clear the road so that the parade can continue.