This intro might seem whiny; it's not meant to be in all sincerity, but it's realistic. I have low engagement with this thing, and I've had difficulty writing consistently. Living here with a full-time job, five dogs, and an almost 91-year-old slipping into delirium is challenging. I spend my free time watching hockey because hockey is hypnotic. Writing is supposed to be cathartic, but watching the "boob tube" is more manageable after a full day, if I'm being honest. I've also been challenged with a nearly crippling depression due to a severe vitamin D deficiency (it was part of the reason I had surgery last fall), so that exasperates all of this and stops my consistent writing for a while. However, vitamin supplements are taking that edge off, so now Washington depresses me, not my biology. Nonetheless, even if people want to follow a blog and engage with mine specifically, it must be frustrating with how spotty it is. So, I'm retiring like Jaromir Jagr (without the mad talent) yet again. I hope I have put out some fun, thought-provoking material in my tenure. I thought about keeping it up for just me, but that's called journaling, so that's likely what I will do, only in all these empty notebooks I've collected over the years.
However, why not go out with a bang and tell you how I feel as a 64-year-old woman on the cusp of retirement during the reign of "King Trump."
And that is scared shitless on every possible level.
I am haunted by election day. I doubt I'll forget it until I'm dithering to the point where I barely remember my name. There was just something "off" about the day. It was unseasonably warm, for one thing. So much so that I was in shorts when my husband came home to relieve me. I headed off with Carly for a walk. One thing about it I recall was that it was still, even though it was pretty late in the afternoon, so generally we walk to the sound of buses bringing screaming kids home and people coming home from work, plus birds, deer, and other walkers. Instead, it was like I was playing out a scene in The Walking Dead, or COVID, The Movie. Almost like the world was holding its breath. I was distracted, worried about the election, and not paying attention to my feet. Which why should I, since I walk the same route almost daily. Not far from here, as I turned onto a side street, my left foot hit a divot in the road, and my shoe stuck in it as I tried to step forward. My ankle twisted, but the divot held me tight, and I went down to the ground, dropping Carly's leash and slamming my right knee and both hands on the pavement. I remember sitting there for a second, a bit shocked. Carly, for her part, just stood there, gently nudging my face, waiting to see what I'd do. I wasn't sure myself for a minute or two. My knee was bleeding, my ankle was saying unkind things, and I was sort of stunned. I knew in that moment Kamala Harris would lose, even if I wouldn't admit it to myself fully. The whole thing just smacked too much of foreshadowing.
That feeling of being a little battered and bloodied, numb with shock and disbelief, has never really left since that day. I put it aside during the holidays, very intent on ensuring the grands had a good one. But once inauguration day came, that wasn't an option anymore. It's been like a daily smack onto the gravel-filled pavement for all of us - even the MAGA crowd, although some (too many) don't realize it yet. I simply cannot quite wrap my head around where we find ourselves.
At this point, some of you are seriously eye-rolling, if you're still reading at all, thinking I'm being overly dramatic. Or disrespectfully wrong. I assure you, and you can remember in years to come, that I said it, I am not. This is the most dangerous time our very flawed country has ever seen.
There was a heated debate on Threads a few weeks back prompted by a comment that someone made likening this time to Germany in 1933. Of course, many agreed, but others poo-pooed it as hyperbole. It's true, people sling the word "Nazi" around way too freely. I've been called a Nazi many times over four decades of property management. It was always offensive to me, but I remember my business partner telling me to get over it, people just use it as a casual insult and don't mean anything by it. I never thought being compared to a movement that was responsible for 50 million deaths was just a casual insult, but I get the point. The word has become almost trite. But I considered the arguments for and against that day, and here's what I believe:
This is not Nazi Germany in 1933. This is 2025, MAGA and Project 2025, and it's far worse in many respects and far more perplexing to understand how and why we arrived here.
Many of you know this, but it bears repeating; I studied Nazi Germany and the Holocaust extensively growing up. I learned what the circumstances were in Germany post-WWI as the Depression set in and set the stage for Hitler and his cronies to come into power. I won't excuse it, but there was a reason the average German was overly susceptible to a dogma that we can look at now and see clearly was mad and wildly racist. The oldest tale in the history of mankind is that when times are challenging, people look for scapegoats, a place to lay the blame. And times were exceptionally difficult for the Germans after the war.
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Money was so worthless, people used it for heat |
That's a big one. People use religion to justify their support of the alt-right. I didn't pay much attention in Sunday school, but the lessons I did learn do not align with what is happening today. I was taught that Jesus told people not to cast stones, that he fed the multitudes, and he cast out the money lenders. Yet, people in His name are tightening the noose on so many of us that they consider "other." It's very un-Christ-like.
Many of you voted for Trump for economic reasons and aren't entirely what I think of as "MAGA." But I have to ask you: how's that going? How does renaming the Gulf of Mexico bring down the cost of groceries? The things he promised were a ruse. He wanted your vote, and now that he got it, you are nothing to him. He cares for all of you about as much as he cares for me, and trust me, he does not care for me because I disagree with him. I didn't wish him ill; I simply disagreed with him. That is enough. If I were to ever rise to his attention, he would downright hate me. Do you want a man who holds you in contempt governing over you?
Where today does resemble 1933 is the gradual build-up to the big bang. You look the other way at the human rights abuses as people are taken off for deportation because you tell yourself they are "illegal" and costing us jobs and committing crimes. And maybe you are not worried about what happened in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy visited because Ukraine is far away and "not our problem." I am sure Germans told themselves similar stories leading up to Kristallnacht and continued to say them when troops rolled into Poland. But that's the thing. Our version of Kristallnacht will come if this is left unchecked. When you become immune to abuse, it becomes too easy to abuse. Remember that the Holocaust started gradually, with the Nazi party wanting to deport the Jewish population. Then, when that didn't work, they herded them into camps, and then...you know the rest. The classic slippery slope. If you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.
MAGA is the party of anti. Anti-trans, anti-women, anti-anyone who doesn't look and talk like them. As all of us who fall into that bucket become increasingly marginalized, violence will inevitably break out. We are not a society that was raised to respect authority. As a matter of fact, we have always been taught that peaceful protest is our right. The right, ironically, is clamping down on that. I fear it is only a matter of time before the consternation many expresses in town halls and peaceful protests turn violent. Our own citizens warring with one another. I hear audio of people begging their representatives and the desperation in their voices. If left ignored, what choice will they have?
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Fasanenstrasse Synagogue in Berlin, November 10, 1938 |
And that's the most frightening thing of all. We have the lessons of history to guide us. How did we get here? How did we ignore what history so clearly has shown us?
My husband told me my name would go on a list if I wrote these things. Before he said it, I realized that that was likely true, except that, as I mentioned, no one reads this much anyway. Think of that. I am resigned to the fact that I am putting a bullseye on my back in a country that has always held the First Amendment as sacrosanct. That should give you pause. I'm not espousing violence or any alt-left philosophy; I am merely saying it will happen unless we regain our senses as a country. If that makes me an enemy of the state in your opinion, I cannot help you. You are, quite frankly, on the wrong side of liberty and democracy. You should be able to say your beliefs, but it works both ways. That is the only way this experiment called Democracy works.
We have created this evil by allowing an unhinged individual to sit in the highest office in the land, clearly manipulated by other forces but not at all beholden to "We, The People." If you think that's wrong, you are mistaken. This will become clear as the term wears on. Now, we can only try to hold him in check in what ways we can: protesting, calling his henchman to account, voting. Above all, voting. Don't give in to hate. I mean this for either side because I feel it, too. I watched a group of what I called "bozos" in MAGA hats sitting behind the USA bench during the Four Nations championship game and found myself genuinely hating them, having never met them. They were bringing politics into my refuge, and I would have slapped them all had I been there in person. To have felt that horrible, poisonous, passionate hatred of these total strangers was unnerving, and I realized this is where we're at now. Us and them. But that solves nothing. We have to come through this as a country or risk losing everything as we tear one another apart.
But anyway, back to the story of me sitting in the middle of the road on election day. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to decide: do I get up and limp home or take my walk? I looked at Carly's expectant face: she loves walkies more than anything. I stood up and tested the ankle to see if it would take my weight. It did, although it didn't like it, so I decided to walk on, and we did: blood trailing down my leg the whole way - I have a scar still - but we did the entire loop. That smacks of foreshadowing, too. It's what it will be like when MAGA's time is done, and it will be someday. We're going to be bloodied and bruised, hurt and stunned, but we will need to pick ourselves up and carry on. I wish I could tell you we'd never fallen in the first place; for the sake of my grandchildren, I wish it more than anything, but we're past that. We're ass down on the pavement. Might as well make some good trouble while we're down here.