One thing I’ve tried to get better at this past year: figuring out how to better acknowledge the labor that goes into work that I enjoy, that I find myself looking forward to, and that challenges me.
"Put differently: white people who have faced little adversity in their lives are beginning to grapple with what it means to suffer without cause, for reasons utterly outside of your control, in a way that feels abjectly unfair, with little or no recourse."
This connects to something I've often thought about the "I'm done with covid" substack bros, and even more generally among people I know: There's a certain class of privileged white man who just could not handle things including but not limited to having to take on the amount of childcare their wives had always taken for granted. But more broadly, for whom it felt like a massive violation of their very selves to undergo any discomfort for other people because it had never been asked of them, and they felt like their discomfort was an absolutely valid driver of public policy, no matter what the current covid numbers looked like. Not to say I didn't see privileged white women taking that view, but the numbers were extremely skewed. I kept coming back to something I read about a couple going through infertility, where the woman took absolutely for granted that she would have to go through all kinds of uncomfortable, invasive procedures, and then her husband had a little fit when he had to have blood drawn for some tests. Or pregnancy, a case where women routinely go through long stretches of physical discomfort and having their lives seriously constrained. Or even just the basic socialization to suck it up for the good of your family. I just see all these white men vibrating with outrage at having encountered something that didn't care about their feelings.
But the point in this piece about election night 2016 definitely also hit home. My feelings were more of deep, deep dread than shock, but I really wanted to push them down and just ... not think about it any more than I had to, not let myself go into a pit of despair. And my husband was fully in the pit of despair, and one thing I had to remember was that it was hitting him differently as a brown person than me as a white person, even though in every other way our levels of privilege are similar or slightly tilted toward him.
Regarding election night 2016, I remember my (white) husband being shocked and angry that the country would do this, but I (a white woman) wasn't shocked. I know the country hates anyone who isn't a cishet white man, but this was the first time I think he saw it. When I had my tubes removed instead of just reupping my IUD in 2019, he couldn't understand why I was convinced the government would try to interfere in my personal decisions, and then last year came and I was not very graceful in my I TOLD YOU SO rants. I may be in a blue state but I don't know if I'll always be here.
I had a salpingectomy, which removed my tubes and decreases your ovarian cancer risk-- I had it Friday morning and was at work on Tuesday. And yes, more risky than a vasectomy or an IUD, but it was something I had complete control over and I don't regret the choice. I mentally would not have survived another pregnancy, they trigger a catastrophic depressive episode in me.
Living in a very red state, I have given up. I just want to move somewhere else, not a perfect place but one where I do not feel so despised. Substantial change seems impossible here. It’s too rural, voting R is deeply engrained in identity and pride and religion, abortion is murder, guns are everywhere, college is for job training, business is worshipped, the rich are economic engines, poor people need to start trying, the vulnerable need to buck up, science is not to be trusted, children are damaged by childcare, and the far right is making huge gains, bankrolled and supported from outside the state. After 38 years I’m just worn out.
For the past 16+ years, I've lived in a red town in a very blue state, sandwiched between other towns that are mainly blue. I feel everything you're saying. I've been reluctant to stand up and speak out, because my children pay the price in the schools and in sports. In certain pockets of the community, I, Jewish and a Democrat, am clearly despised. It eats away at my soul, and I find myself acting small to make life easier for my children.
Simplified, it is that a mother always provides the best care for her children before they go to school. If a mother is working, then the children are not receiving that care. If the mother must work, family care is always preferred to daycare. Of course, this point of view was idealized in the post-war era as GIs returned to their homes and women were forced from their wartime employment either because their was no longer need for their jobs at all or because it was felt that men should return to jobs that had been filled by women. In my state, this view is also held by some churches/clergy/religions who believe that a woman's place is in the home and the man's place is to provide. Many families need both incomes (and family or friend or sibling care because childcare is too expensive) so it becomes the privileged or those that have extended able available family that can make it work. The unprivileged may be told that they need to rethink their priorities, make and keep to a budget, move closer to their families, or be more faithful (prosperity gospel). I know these attitudes and beliefs can seem unfathomable and retrograde to those who don't live in an area where they are readily observable or even exist. I know there is excellent, passable, sometimes inconsistent, and even abusive daycare. But these general attitudes, IMHO, are just evidence of a patriarchal society or subgroup that is trying to make women submissive (there are only two genders, male and female, as determined by external genitalia, and anything but heteronormative behavior is deviant and should be punished, either by God or man).
"how much of this feeling has to do with the fact that white, straight people with American passports are now feeling the same sort of societal precarity that has long been the norm for people without those privileges" THAT PART. ALL OF IT.
You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral when Hugh Grant turns his alarm off and goes back to sleep, just to have ten alarms start ringing and his friend shaking him to wake him up? That's where most white middle class Americans are. We can't unhear the alarm or go back to sleep, none of what is happening in the world or our country will allow that. So now we have to go to the church, confront the person we don't really want to marry, and tell the truth and get punched in the face.
I don't know how hopeful I am about this post-pandemmy "reconstruction" phase, hope is that thing with feathers as Emily DIckinson tells us, and as we emerge there is some complete bullshit happening from those who want to tear it all down and remake it in their own image (because the Christian agenda is really about white men, not God). But I believe in the resilience and durability of the American Experiment. Dreaming is for sleep and now we are awake. It's a cold morning to awaken into, but facing the consequences is a good place to start.
Because of my particular education and profession, I have long been aware of the deep ramifications of the climate crisis. But at the same time as I am working in my small ways to address it, I have to not think about it too hard because then I can't function. I can't think about how the Alaska I grew up in is already gone, or the futility of trying to chip away at renewable energy and resilient ecosystem projects when things are hurtling in the wrong direction. And that's just climate. If I take everything else in along with my own personal griefs and clinical depression, I literally will be unable to get up out of the fetal position on the floor. It's hard to know what to do, other than my job. I helped people get vaccinated, I donate to charities, but there's so little a person can do. I think the pandemic taught me for the first time in my life to live in the now and not overthink the future or past because it's just too hard to think about either.
I work in health policy so it's not as intense as climate change but it's still just a bunch of tragedies all the time that I really cannot feel anymore. It just feels absurd. We beg legislators for change from under the couch and it's so easy for them to say no and so easy for me to say oh well I tried. And now someone can't have insulin. I don't know what else to do except keep doing my job as well as I can like you said. When I try to explain the level of suffering I sound hysterical and fail - and I'm in a "blue" state and I know things are even worse elsewhere. So instead I'm just checked all the way out.
Oh I get that. I work with chronically mentally ill folks in a blue state. We literally had a conversation yesterday about “what on earth is it like in other states??”
I hear you about the climate. And also what else can we do? So I will go out to support hunger strikers against a dirty peaker plant this weekend and send money to try to protect the Amazon. I like to imagine that if nothing else I am making the day of a fossil fuel executive just a little harder.
This piece is almost painful to read with how much every line hits home, and to see all these anxieties collected one after another. I can't decide if it's comforting exactly to know, from a historical view, that so few of the things we are dealing with now are truly unprecedented. But something about studying history and drawing those parallels and seeing that we did eventually come out in an even slightly better place can be comforting. And progress has always been so back and forth. Sometimes I think it's maybe not the best thing that many white millennials like me grew up with this illusion of stability because we were not at all prepared for the idea that we'd have to fight, not just to further progress, but to preserve what we have. I hope that younger generations, for all they have to deal with, will at least grow up with an understanding that vigilance, staying informed, and remaining politically active are essential. Because even though sometimes it feels like the world will just cease to exist, it won't. I try to remember that people have lived through horrible things that they probably felt were unprecedented and would never improve, and yet they still found ways to thrive and move forward.
I also think part of the reason we're seeing this reactionary legislation that feels so new is because, for a long time, white patriarchal society tended to reinforce itself, and now that so many people are not living that way, the only way they can see to hold onto the old order is through legal enforcement. I don't know if that's comforting, but the bell can't be unrung. Once people know the freedoms they deserve, they won't let you take them away again without a fight.
This newsletter feels like a gift from above today. I’ve been having a meltdown—or maybe a depressive episode?—about this very thing for weeks now. As someone who has post-vaccine Long COVID, the idea of unending crisis is just…so burdensome. I’m not sure I am hopeful about the potential for progress out of this difficult period, but it would be beyond nice if it happened.
I’ll add this to the conversation about whiteness and crisis. I’m Mexican American and married to a cishet white man. After Trump was elected, he—with all good intentions—tried to convince me that things wouldn’t be “that bad.” That prompted a few weeks of difficult discussions about privilege and precarity. He ended up going to therapy to unpack this (and other things!) for himself. But it was a wake up call for both of us around how different our lived experiences are. I’ve lived in a state of distrust and fear for most of my adult life…which is something he’s been excepted from.
But the pandemic has leveled that—he’s suddenly feeling the ennui and just…FEAR that has come with it. I think it’s been even more destabilizing for him because, as AHP points out, he’s never had to live a destabilized existence.
"If you live in a state where this agenda is unrolling, you know." Yup. Thank you, as always, for somehow taking many of my muddy private thoughts and articulating them.
I was reading back over that description, and it's kind of like one of those cartoons of THE FUTURE LIBERALS WANT and people are like yes, it's true, we would LOVE a future populated with tons of drag queen storytimes! This is the inverse, and it's not hyperbole, and I sometimes think people who haven't spent time in these states or watching what's happening at the state and local level don't know just how possible it actually is.
One thing I hesitate to say, but I think needs to be considered, is that the worst future is actually becoming slightly more certain by liberal/progressive-minded people leaving more conservative states/cities. There is every justification for this shift, especially for people who are at risk from the whole spectrum of legislation. But because the structure of the U.S. legislative system (2 senators for each state no matter what the population) isn't going to change anytime soon (no mechanism for that, even if there were political will), political sifting/sorting actually makes conservative states more powerful because it's easier for further-right people to take control at all levels of elected office. And eventually even the most progressive bastions will be subject to far-right policies and ideologies. (Also, Christian Nationalism scares the bejeezus out of me.)
Yes, this, and it’s not just that those of us in red states need more progressive people to help. I want folks in blue states to understand it’s also a rural/urban divide. I live in Tennessee where the cities are fairly progressive, but the state government is still controlled by the backwards politicians from the rural parts of the state, and there are so many rural parts to this state. Nashville has been overrun by new folks, so the legislature took its reliably blue congressional district and sliced it up, giving a share of it to all the surrounding red districts, and suddenly we’re looking at being down to one democratic congressman from two, despite the influx of new residents. But I don’t know what else I personally can do. I call, I wrote letters, I protest, I donate, I vote. No one who is in power listens and nothing changes.
The rural/urban thing is so real. Even where I live in northwest Montana, the neighboring larger city is more conservative than my town, but the surrounding rural communities across the valley are far, far more conservative. The whole state went further and deeper right in the last election than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
Yet when you look at actual voting numbers, our “red” states aren’t as imbalanced as they’re presented in media. There was that great graphic after the last national election that showed how most “red” states fall around 60-40 splits, and also eye-openers like there were more Biden voters in Texas than in New York, for example: https://xkcd.com/2399/
I personally think major media does a lot of damage by simplifying these realities as “red states” and “blue states.”
I'm from Georgia and totally agree. Even in deep red rural Georgia, there are Democrats. And it's counterproductive to write off segments of our population. The nation was shocked that we sent two Democrats to the Senate last year, but on the ground in Atlanta, I felt the momentum that got us there.
You've also reminded me of something else that doesn't get talked about often enough: If all the progressive-minded people with means (money, mobile job, whatever) move out of a state or county or region, what happens to all the vulnerable people who can't afford to leave, or are committed to their home, or have other reasons to stay? That's something I think about a lot.
This post is just bullseye after bullseye...and damn, how I wish you were wrong. I am so tired, and afraid for our country, afraid for the more vulnerable becoming most vulnerable. I'm also glad you included Jamelle Bouie; I read a lot of his stuff, and I think he's really on to something re this moment & its parallel to the time of post-Reconstruction. Do we have the collective energy left in us to make now and the coming days a better version of ourselves as a nation? God, I hope so.
I started writing a book in 2017 that was thinking about American problems, but built around studies of the political economy of everyday life -- about how people in African countries live with precariousness, that they have lives infused with well being and meaning even as precariousness is an ongoing part of their existence -- and I wanted to talk about how most privileged Americans (especially white Americans) can pile on blankets of comfort to hide from the fact that we, too, are living in precarious times. And then, well, I mean, shit's always happening, as you say, but then more of it happened in ways that were unavoidable (the book was ostensibly about food and cooking and food shopping) and I watched all the ways that people who thought they were insulated suddenly hit some walls where they were not (like getting whatever food you want whenever you want it or not having to pay the real price for it because cheap food cheap labor). So I have not written the book, which is fine, but I think about this every day. Today I was sitting in this unstable place with my grad students, between wanting them to see how freaking privileged they are and how they need to just do the damn work and follow professional courtesy (tell me the paper will be late) versus a deep sympathy for the world they have to navigate. And I am wondering what resources do I, an extraordinarily privileged person who's also subjected to this current world, need in order to keep making an environment that nurtures their skills ---- and I can't formulate even what to ask for, but I ate a lot of pie at the end of the day.
YES. Thank you for articulating so much that is banging against the walls of my head and heart. I have been trying to reach back for resources from people who lived through these times of relentlessness in earlier eras and learn from people around me now whose understanding of survival & hope is so much more robust than my straight-white-lady one is. The resources are there, I'm just not great at finding & relying on them.
I imagine my grandmother, pregnant with my aunt, my mom toddling around, my grandfather kind of an ass, poor, and her beloved brother killed on D-Day. My grandmother had a lot of flaws but I loved her and I try to channel her strength.
This post and the comments alone would be worth my subscription. Just what I needed to hear on a day when my morning began with my sharing, with my small group of thinking partners that meets by Zoom every other Wednesday at 7 am, a very ambitious new personal commitment to a project intended to inspire massive structural change. Mahalo nui loa.
I’m so, so tired as well. Amazing articulation of everything I’ve been feeling. It’s been particularly difficult knowing how to “lean in” and help usefully without burning myself out.
<cw death>
Early in the pandemic I was part of a hackathon aimed at doing whatever we could to end the pandemic quickly. We won. I ran headlong into the fire. It quickly turned into another full time job that had me connecting with epidemiologists and looking at field updates from ERs across the country to be on the edge of what we were learning about the virus. It will probably not surprise you that I quickly became depressed. Reading detailed reports of infection and death is overwhelming. Very soon after I detached from the project only to get swept up in BLM and the election and insurrection.
This year I read a great thread, hopefully I can find it, offering advice to those in privileged positions, particularly tech, can help with social work (such as pandemics, climate change, racial equity, etc) which said essentially: don’t. Unless you’re willing to spend 5-10 years in a career change to learn the context, any solution you offer as an outsider will not work and will divert attention and funding away from efforts that would work, if only they were funded. If you can fund something, do that instead.
So I struggle with: I don’t want to do nothing, but I also don’t want to make things worse. I don’t believe in the American dream anymore, and more and more we’re considering moving out of the country. — What did it look like say 10 years before Rome fell? Etc
What if you spread the word among tech people? That would help us!
Tech people tend to think everything has a quick technological fix (see: hackathons), whereas, as you correctly point out, what is needed is funding existing efforts.
Some tech even makes problems worse, like AI (when needlessly used, which is often), bitcoin, and NFTs, to only name those, which consume a staggering amount of energy. They even have their own chapter in the IPCC report on climate change.
Tech people only seem to listen to other tech people, so tech people are needed to stop other tech people from destroying everything.
Absolutely amazing. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, YES! Let us know if you get feedback from our black and brown friends with more specific things we can do. And how the F! are they making it??!! If I'm wanting to give up on us? And I know there are still good people, I KNOW. But if it's not enough? Was it ever enough or are we white people just soft and of course life will plow through this? We are soft (so soft, so so soft) but can we grow enough to push through this to something better? I hope so. But I'm not placing bets in our favor.
As is so often the case, your timing is perfect in capturing our moments. Moments after moments after moments. Last night we were watching a documentary about the International space station. There was so much International cooperation and so many beautiful shots of that little blue marble with that very thin skin of atmosphere. And toward the end I started sobbing because that kind of cooperation can take us so far if we reach together in the same direction and yet we can't get our act together to save our own species. And on top of that the Russians in the documentary, which was an older one, are from the country that has violently invaded their neighbor and removed themselves from the International community in so many ways, and that kind of story may never be told again. One little film and it just brought so much to the surface. I work to improve active transportation in my day job and I can think every day that I am doing my part to try to fight climate change and at the same time I don't dare look directly at how much there is to do because then I just won't get out of bed. And that's coming from a place of privilege so how much worse is it for people who've never had the comfort that I'm now losing? How is it we don't all start and end every day just screaming in the streets?
I found that it helps to choose a specific area of activism and focus on it. I for one have chosen biodiversity and animal welfare. Other people will choose other issues, like you do with active transportation. Hang in there! We're in this together.
"Put differently: white people who have faced little adversity in their lives are beginning to grapple with what it means to suffer without cause, for reasons utterly outside of your control, in a way that feels abjectly unfair, with little or no recourse."
This connects to something I've often thought about the "I'm done with covid" substack bros, and even more generally among people I know: There's a certain class of privileged white man who just could not handle things including but not limited to having to take on the amount of childcare their wives had always taken for granted. But more broadly, for whom it felt like a massive violation of their very selves to undergo any discomfort for other people because it had never been asked of them, and they felt like their discomfort was an absolutely valid driver of public policy, no matter what the current covid numbers looked like. Not to say I didn't see privileged white women taking that view, but the numbers were extremely skewed. I kept coming back to something I read about a couple going through infertility, where the woman took absolutely for granted that she would have to go through all kinds of uncomfortable, invasive procedures, and then her husband had a little fit when he had to have blood drawn for some tests. Or pregnancy, a case where women routinely go through long stretches of physical discomfort and having their lives seriously constrained. Or even just the basic socialization to suck it up for the good of your family. I just see all these white men vibrating with outrage at having encountered something that didn't care about their feelings.
But the point in this piece about election night 2016 definitely also hit home. My feelings were more of deep, deep dread than shock, but I really wanted to push them down and just ... not think about it any more than I had to, not let myself go into a pit of despair. And my husband was fully in the pit of despair, and one thing I had to remember was that it was hitting him differently as a brown person than me as a white person, even though in every other way our levels of privilege are similar or slightly tilted toward him.
Regarding election night 2016, I remember my (white) husband being shocked and angry that the country would do this, but I (a white woman) wasn't shocked. I know the country hates anyone who isn't a cishet white man, but this was the first time I think he saw it. When I had my tubes removed instead of just reupping my IUD in 2019, he couldn't understand why I was convinced the government would try to interfere in my personal decisions, and then last year came and I was not very graceful in my I TOLD YOU SO rants. I may be in a blue state but I don't know if I'll always be here.
Jessica yes! Do I put my last IUD in at age 40 and trust, which is like the logical thing to do, or have a tubal ligation with all the risks?
I had a salpingectomy, which removed my tubes and decreases your ovarian cancer risk-- I had it Friday morning and was at work on Tuesday. And yes, more risky than a vasectomy or an IUD, but it was something I had complete control over and I don't regret the choice. I mentally would not have survived another pregnancy, they trigger a catastrophic depressive episode in me.
Sorry if this reply shows up twice. I think my last disappeared. But I totally hear you. My postpartum anxiety verged on almost psychosis.
I mean, I’m know it’s not SO risky. But comparatively more so.
Living in a very red state, I have given up. I just want to move somewhere else, not a perfect place but one where I do not feel so despised. Substantial change seems impossible here. It’s too rural, voting R is deeply engrained in identity and pride and religion, abortion is murder, guns are everywhere, college is for job training, business is worshipped, the rich are economic engines, poor people need to start trying, the vulnerable need to buck up, science is not to be trusted, children are damaged by childcare, and the far right is making huge gains, bankrolled and supported from outside the state. After 38 years I’m just worn out.
For the past 16+ years, I've lived in a red town in a very blue state, sandwiched between other towns that are mainly blue. I feel everything you're saying. I've been reluctant to stand up and speak out, because my children pay the price in the schools and in sports. In certain pockets of the community, I, Jewish and a Democrat, am clearly despised. It eats away at my soul, and I find myself acting small to make life easier for my children.
That sounds so disheartening. I’m curious what “children are damaged by childcare” means.
Simplified, it is that a mother always provides the best care for her children before they go to school. If a mother is working, then the children are not receiving that care. If the mother must work, family care is always preferred to daycare. Of course, this point of view was idealized in the post-war era as GIs returned to their homes and women were forced from their wartime employment either because their was no longer need for their jobs at all or because it was felt that men should return to jobs that had been filled by women. In my state, this view is also held by some churches/clergy/religions who believe that a woman's place is in the home and the man's place is to provide. Many families need both incomes (and family or friend or sibling care because childcare is too expensive) so it becomes the privileged or those that have extended able available family that can make it work. The unprivileged may be told that they need to rethink their priorities, make and keep to a budget, move closer to their families, or be more faithful (prosperity gospel). I know these attitudes and beliefs can seem unfathomable and retrograde to those who don't live in an area where they are readily observable or even exist. I know there is excellent, passable, sometimes inconsistent, and even abusive daycare. But these general attitudes, IMHO, are just evidence of a patriarchal society or subgroup that is trying to make women submissive (there are only two genders, male and female, as determined by external genitalia, and anything but heteronormative behavior is deviant and should be punished, either by God or man).
"how much of this feeling has to do with the fact that white, straight people with American passports are now feeling the same sort of societal precarity that has long been the norm for people without those privileges" THAT PART. ALL OF IT.
You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral when Hugh Grant turns his alarm off and goes back to sleep, just to have ten alarms start ringing and his friend shaking him to wake him up? That's where most white middle class Americans are. We can't unhear the alarm or go back to sleep, none of what is happening in the world or our country will allow that. So now we have to go to the church, confront the person we don't really want to marry, and tell the truth and get punched in the face.
I don't know how hopeful I am about this post-pandemmy "reconstruction" phase, hope is that thing with feathers as Emily DIckinson tells us, and as we emerge there is some complete bullshit happening from those who want to tear it all down and remake it in their own image (because the Christian agenda is really about white men, not God). But I believe in the resilience and durability of the American Experiment. Dreaming is for sleep and now we are awake. It's a cold morning to awaken into, but facing the consequences is a good place to start.
Because of my particular education and profession, I have long been aware of the deep ramifications of the climate crisis. But at the same time as I am working in my small ways to address it, I have to not think about it too hard because then I can't function. I can't think about how the Alaska I grew up in is already gone, or the futility of trying to chip away at renewable energy and resilient ecosystem projects when things are hurtling in the wrong direction. And that's just climate. If I take everything else in along with my own personal griefs and clinical depression, I literally will be unable to get up out of the fetal position on the floor. It's hard to know what to do, other than my job. I helped people get vaccinated, I donate to charities, but there's so little a person can do. I think the pandemic taught me for the first time in my life to live in the now and not overthink the future or past because it's just too hard to think about either.
I work in health policy so it's not as intense as climate change but it's still just a bunch of tragedies all the time that I really cannot feel anymore. It just feels absurd. We beg legislators for change from under the couch and it's so easy for them to say no and so easy for me to say oh well I tried. And now someone can't have insulin. I don't know what else to do except keep doing my job as well as I can like you said. When I try to explain the level of suffering I sound hysterical and fail - and I'm in a "blue" state and I know things are even worse elsewhere. So instead I'm just checked all the way out.
Oh I get that. I work with chronically mentally ill folks in a blue state. We literally had a conversation yesterday about “what on earth is it like in other states??”
I hear you about the climate. And also what else can we do? So I will go out to support hunger strikers against a dirty peaker plant this weekend and send money to try to protect the Amazon. I like to imagine that if nothing else I am making the day of a fossil fuel executive just a little harder.
This piece is almost painful to read with how much every line hits home, and to see all these anxieties collected one after another. I can't decide if it's comforting exactly to know, from a historical view, that so few of the things we are dealing with now are truly unprecedented. But something about studying history and drawing those parallels and seeing that we did eventually come out in an even slightly better place can be comforting. And progress has always been so back and forth. Sometimes I think it's maybe not the best thing that many white millennials like me grew up with this illusion of stability because we were not at all prepared for the idea that we'd have to fight, not just to further progress, but to preserve what we have. I hope that younger generations, for all they have to deal with, will at least grow up with an understanding that vigilance, staying informed, and remaining politically active are essential. Because even though sometimes it feels like the world will just cease to exist, it won't. I try to remember that people have lived through horrible things that they probably felt were unprecedented and would never improve, and yet they still found ways to thrive and move forward.
I also think part of the reason we're seeing this reactionary legislation that feels so new is because, for a long time, white patriarchal society tended to reinforce itself, and now that so many people are not living that way, the only way they can see to hold onto the old order is through legal enforcement. I don't know if that's comforting, but the bell can't be unrung. Once people know the freedoms they deserve, they won't let you take them away again without a fight.
Gretchen, thank you for staying all of this so eloquently.
This newsletter feels like a gift from above today. I’ve been having a meltdown—or maybe a depressive episode?—about this very thing for weeks now. As someone who has post-vaccine Long COVID, the idea of unending crisis is just…so burdensome. I’m not sure I am hopeful about the potential for progress out of this difficult period, but it would be beyond nice if it happened.
I’ll add this to the conversation about whiteness and crisis. I’m Mexican American and married to a cishet white man. After Trump was elected, he—with all good intentions—tried to convince me that things wouldn’t be “that bad.” That prompted a few weeks of difficult discussions about privilege and precarity. He ended up going to therapy to unpack this (and other things!) for himself. But it was a wake up call for both of us around how different our lived experiences are. I’ve lived in a state of distrust and fear for most of my adult life…which is something he’s been excepted from.
But the pandemic has leveled that—he’s suddenly feeling the ennui and just…FEAR that has come with it. I think it’s been even more destabilizing for him because, as AHP points out, he’s never had to live a destabilized existence.
"If you live in a state where this agenda is unrolling, you know." Yup. Thank you, as always, for somehow taking many of my muddy private thoughts and articulating them.
I was reading back over that description, and it's kind of like one of those cartoons of THE FUTURE LIBERALS WANT and people are like yes, it's true, we would LOVE a future populated with tons of drag queen storytimes! This is the inverse, and it's not hyperbole, and I sometimes think people who haven't spent time in these states or watching what's happening at the state and local level don't know just how possible it actually is.
One thing I hesitate to say, but I think needs to be considered, is that the worst future is actually becoming slightly more certain by liberal/progressive-minded people leaving more conservative states/cities. There is every justification for this shift, especially for people who are at risk from the whole spectrum of legislation. But because the structure of the U.S. legislative system (2 senators for each state no matter what the population) isn't going to change anytime soon (no mechanism for that, even if there were political will), political sifting/sorting actually makes conservative states more powerful because it's easier for further-right people to take control at all levels of elected office. And eventually even the most progressive bastions will be subject to far-right policies and ideologies. (Also, Christian Nationalism scares the bejeezus out of me.)
Yes, this, and it’s not just that those of us in red states need more progressive people to help. I want folks in blue states to understand it’s also a rural/urban divide. I live in Tennessee where the cities are fairly progressive, but the state government is still controlled by the backwards politicians from the rural parts of the state, and there are so many rural parts to this state. Nashville has been overrun by new folks, so the legislature took its reliably blue congressional district and sliced it up, giving a share of it to all the surrounding red districts, and suddenly we’re looking at being down to one democratic congressman from two, despite the influx of new residents. But I don’t know what else I personally can do. I call, I wrote letters, I protest, I donate, I vote. No one who is in power listens and nothing changes.
The rural/urban thing is so real. Even where I live in northwest Montana, the neighboring larger city is more conservative than my town, but the surrounding rural communities across the valley are far, far more conservative. The whole state went further and deeper right in the last election than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
Yet when you look at actual voting numbers, our “red” states aren’t as imbalanced as they’re presented in media. There was that great graphic after the last national election that showed how most “red” states fall around 60-40 splits, and also eye-openers like there were more Biden voters in Texas than in New York, for example: https://xkcd.com/2399/
I personally think major media does a lot of damage by simplifying these realities as “red states” and “blue states.”
I'm from Georgia and totally agree. Even in deep red rural Georgia, there are Democrats. And it's counterproductive to write off segments of our population. The nation was shocked that we sent two Democrats to the Senate last year, but on the ground in Atlanta, I felt the momentum that got us there.
You've also reminded me of something else that doesn't get talked about often enough: If all the progressive-minded people with means (money, mobile job, whatever) move out of a state or county or region, what happens to all the vulnerable people who can't afford to leave, or are committed to their home, or have other reasons to stay? That's something I think about a lot.
I live in Lexington, Kentucky, and I really feel this.
Same, other Lexington Al[l]ison. Same.
I wouldn't normally point out typos, but can you please fix Trayvon Martin's name?
Thank you so much — corrected.
This post is just bullseye after bullseye...and damn, how I wish you were wrong. I am so tired, and afraid for our country, afraid for the more vulnerable becoming most vulnerable. I'm also glad you included Jamelle Bouie; I read a lot of his stuff, and I think he's really on to something re this moment & its parallel to the time of post-Reconstruction. Do we have the collective energy left in us to make now and the coming days a better version of ourselves as a nation? God, I hope so.
hi anne!!
exactly what has been swirling in my head lately.
one copyedit: “of giant steps back it comes to women’s bodily autonomy.”
…and, i weep, those giant steps are painful. thank you for your honest honest writing. always inspiring.
love from new zealand
amanda
Hello, Amanda. Thanks for posting here. Big love from Kentucky (where I am acquainted with your friend SuperKate).
I started writing a book in 2017 that was thinking about American problems, but built around studies of the political economy of everyday life -- about how people in African countries live with precariousness, that they have lives infused with well being and meaning even as precariousness is an ongoing part of their existence -- and I wanted to talk about how most privileged Americans (especially white Americans) can pile on blankets of comfort to hide from the fact that we, too, are living in precarious times. And then, well, I mean, shit's always happening, as you say, but then more of it happened in ways that were unavoidable (the book was ostensibly about food and cooking and food shopping) and I watched all the ways that people who thought they were insulated suddenly hit some walls where they were not (like getting whatever food you want whenever you want it or not having to pay the real price for it because cheap food cheap labor). So I have not written the book, which is fine, but I think about this every day. Today I was sitting in this unstable place with my grad students, between wanting them to see how freaking privileged they are and how they need to just do the damn work and follow professional courtesy (tell me the paper will be late) versus a deep sympathy for the world they have to navigate. And I am wondering what resources do I, an extraordinarily privileged person who's also subjected to this current world, need in order to keep making an environment that nurtures their skills ---- and I can't formulate even what to ask for, but I ate a lot of pie at the end of the day.
YES. Thank you for articulating so much that is banging against the walls of my head and heart. I have been trying to reach back for resources from people who lived through these times of relentlessness in earlier eras and learn from people around me now whose understanding of survival & hope is so much more robust than my straight-white-lady one is. The resources are there, I'm just not great at finding & relying on them.
I imagine my grandmother, pregnant with my aunt, my mom toddling around, my grandfather kind of an ass, poor, and her beloved brother killed on D-Day. My grandmother had a lot of flaws but I loved her and I try to channel her strength.
This post and the comments alone would be worth my subscription. Just what I needed to hear on a day when my morning began with my sharing, with my small group of thinking partners that meets by Zoom every other Wednesday at 7 am, a very ambitious new personal commitment to a project intended to inspire massive structural change. Mahalo nui loa.
I’m so, so tired as well. Amazing articulation of everything I’ve been feeling. It’s been particularly difficult knowing how to “lean in” and help usefully without burning myself out.
<cw death>
Early in the pandemic I was part of a hackathon aimed at doing whatever we could to end the pandemic quickly. We won. I ran headlong into the fire. It quickly turned into another full time job that had me connecting with epidemiologists and looking at field updates from ERs across the country to be on the edge of what we were learning about the virus. It will probably not surprise you that I quickly became depressed. Reading detailed reports of infection and death is overwhelming. Very soon after I detached from the project only to get swept up in BLM and the election and insurrection.
This year I read a great thread, hopefully I can find it, offering advice to those in privileged positions, particularly tech, can help with social work (such as pandemics, climate change, racial equity, etc) which said essentially: don’t. Unless you’re willing to spend 5-10 years in a career change to learn the context, any solution you offer as an outsider will not work and will divert attention and funding away from efforts that would work, if only they were funded. If you can fund something, do that instead.
So I struggle with: I don’t want to do nothing, but I also don’t want to make things worse. I don’t believe in the American dream anymore, and more and more we’re considering moving out of the country. — What did it look like say 10 years before Rome fell? Etc
Feeling stuck. You know?
What if you spread the word among tech people? That would help us!
Tech people tend to think everything has a quick technological fix (see: hackathons), whereas, as you correctly point out, what is needed is funding existing efforts.
Some tech even makes problems worse, like AI (when needlessly used, which is often), bitcoin, and NFTs, to only name those, which consume a staggering amount of energy. They even have their own chapter in the IPCC report on climate change.
Tech people only seem to listen to other tech people, so tech people are needed to stop other tech people from destroying everything.
Godspeed!
Absolutely amazing. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, YES! Let us know if you get feedback from our black and brown friends with more specific things we can do. And how the F! are they making it??!! If I'm wanting to give up on us? And I know there are still good people, I KNOW. But if it's not enough? Was it ever enough or are we white people just soft and of course life will plow through this? We are soft (so soft, so so soft) but can we grow enough to push through this to something better? I hope so. But I'm not placing bets in our favor.
All of this. ^
As is so often the case, your timing is perfect in capturing our moments. Moments after moments after moments. Last night we were watching a documentary about the International space station. There was so much International cooperation and so many beautiful shots of that little blue marble with that very thin skin of atmosphere. And toward the end I started sobbing because that kind of cooperation can take us so far if we reach together in the same direction and yet we can't get our act together to save our own species. And on top of that the Russians in the documentary, which was an older one, are from the country that has violently invaded their neighbor and removed themselves from the International community in so many ways, and that kind of story may never be told again. One little film and it just brought so much to the surface. I work to improve active transportation in my day job and I can think every day that I am doing my part to try to fight climate change and at the same time I don't dare look directly at how much there is to do because then I just won't get out of bed. And that's coming from a place of privilege so how much worse is it for people who've never had the comfort that I'm now losing? How is it we don't all start and end every day just screaming in the streets?
I found that it helps to choose a specific area of activism and focus on it. I for one have chosen biodiversity and animal welfare. Other people will choose other issues, like you do with active transportation. Hang in there! We're in this together.