I wrote about the state of things.
Everything is really, really bad right now. Everything. It’s overwhelmingly bad and it’s getting worse at an alarming rate. I’ve been trying to write about it for a few weeks now, and every time I tried it was just tirades of doom and horror and darkness. But that’s really not what I wanted to say. I wanted to give myself a pep talk, because I simply cannot spend the next few weeks/months/years drowning in despair. Writing helps me process, and if nothing else I wanted to try to write myself into a better mood about this. So. I took a minute, and I thought about it, and this is where I landed. I feel a little bit (a LITTLE bit) better now. Maybe it will do the same for you.
I have always really cared about politics. I was in 8th grade during the 2008 election and I was so excited about Barack Obama. I talked about him all the time and all my classmates truly could not have cared less (in their defense, we were 12). I was just as loud in 2012. In 2016, I felt profoundly invested in the possibility of electing a woman to be President. And then the days after she lost were full of actual, legitimate grief. And in the years since, I have felt more and more disillusioned by federal politics and more and more scared about the trajectory of our country. I begrudgingly voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and I have spent the last four years at a baseline of annoyed and a peak of actually angry at him and his administration. The Supreme Court has fundamentally reshaped the way our government functions and stripped me of the right to control my own body, and he has done basically nothing about that. He will not even say the word abortion unless forced. He has refused to condemn and continued to fund a genocide. Congress continues to operate at a near standstill, as it has for the entirety of my adult life. Not only do I not like Joe Biden’s politics, but I have also watched in growing horror as he has abdicated what I think was maybe his administration’s (and the entire Democratic party’s) most important duty: to select and support a successor who could beat Donald Trump in a general election. Now, this 81 year old man who is clearly experiencing a not insignificant amount of cognitive decline is refusing to step aside at a moment where it feels like our country is on the brink of something we will never come back from. To state the obvious: I don’t feel good about any of this.
It’s hard to overstate the level to which I feel abandoned by the political party I have looked up to for as long as I have been capable of having opinions about politics. My personal politics have changed, yes, but I also think the party has failed to do their job at the most basic level. The octogenarians in charge have sat passively and watched the Republican party build and execute a plan to gain power and make it impossible to take back. Even now, in a moment where we are on the brink of a full on democratic collapse, they cannot put their egos aside to make good choices. Asleep at the wheel for decades, doing less than the bare minimum and then getting mad at us when we tell them we’re upset about it. It’s embarrassing to a degree that is hard to grasp. I will never trust them again. Do I think they are better than the other option? Of course. But that’s like saying getting a cavity filled is better than getting a root canal. Both SUCK. I used to think that the Democratic party would make things better if we just put enough of them in charge. I really thought that. I don’t anymore. They’ve done nothing to show me that would be the case. Better than the worse case scenario is not good enough for me.
As I have watched the slow and steady degradation of our institutions over the past few years, I have also gotten a master’s degree and a job at a public defender’s office. Doing this work has radicalized me to an extent I am sure most of my friends and family find alarming, at a rate that I myself can recognize is astonishing. It has changed my world view in almost every way, in a very short amount of time.
A lot of the time when I tell people what I do for work, that I work with people who have been charged with crimes, they ask me how I can defend “those people” or “guilty people” or if it’s scary to interact with our clients or spend time at the jail. The truth is that my job has had the exact opposite effect on my perceptions of people. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve have in the past two years have been with people in jail cells. “Those people” are just regular people who have ended up in bad situations, sometimes because they made bad choices and sometimes because our society is horrifically unfair. I used to be a really judgmental person, and I thought anyone who made choices that were different from mine was just pretty stupid. Now, my first reaction is to meet people where they are and try to see things from their point of view. People who have done bad things can also do good ones. I have seen people work really hard to better themselves.
I have also seen the criminal legal system do horrific things on a daily basis. There is violence happening in your local courthouse every day. Policing and incarcerating people is not an effective way to solve our societal ills. You cannot punish people into changing their behavior, and even if you could, it would be an extremely cruel approach. In theory, the purpose of the system is to serve justice, but in practice it’s not doing anything even remotely close to that. The criminal legal system is built to exert it’s power over people who are less privileged. Occasionally it may help someone, but that is certainly not its main function. Extrapolate this same principle to the federal government as a whole, and that’s where I think we are.
I don’t believe in these systems of power anymore, but I do believe in the rest of us. Joe Biden is not going to save us. The man can barely string a sentence together. The rest of the Democrats aren’t either. We need to look to each other. Look to those around you for help and support. Be generous and kind to people you encounter, assume positive intent from people you don’t know. Do what you can to help under resourced communities. Get to know people who are different from you. We should be focused on building community with the people around us instead of looking to the government to solve our problems. This all sounds like some meaningless bullshit on a motivational poster, but I’m being serious. I just have to believe that most people are inherently good, because the alternative is too depressing. The problem is the people who seek power are less likely to lead with that side of themselves. They are not doing enough to make things better for us. We have to do it ourselves.
I am not saying that you should check out. The opposite actually. You still need to vote in every election, federal and local. But also, I think you should turn off cable news, pick an issue you care about, and find out how you can contribute to making that issue better in your own community. Maybe its abortion. Maybe its something related to the criminal legal system. Maybe its homelessness, maybe its substance abuse or mental illness, or environmental issues. I don’t care. Just pick one and get to work. Invest in the community where you live, work to make it better for everyone in it. Doing these things in my life has made me feel infinitely better than yelling about politics ever did.
Obviously this all comes from a place of privilege. To chose what about and when and how to be engaged is a privilege. I want to make it clear that I know that.
I’m not saying I feel good about the state of things now. I really, really do not. I feel scared and I feel profoundly angry and I feel tired. But the thing that keeps me from an unending desire to fling myself off a cliff and/or bury my head in the sand is the fact that I found something that I care about and I am doing work every day that helps move the needle in some small way. Look for that in your life. It has helped me immensely.
I also find it extremely helpful to read and listen to people who are smarter than me. I have made a real effort to expand and diversify my media diet. I stopped consuming rage bait and I stopped obsessing over the 24 hour news cycle. I do not look at polls. I listen to Up First from NPR every morning. I used to listen to The Daily but I found it too centrist and annoying more often than not, so I stopped. I get my abortion news from Abortion, Every Day by Jessica Valenti. I get criminal justice news from The Appeal or The Marshall Project or Bolts. I love that the Vibe Check podcast discusses news AND pop culture in a way that is smart but also accessible. I read Rebecca Traister, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, and a bunch of other women, and hardly any men. I also turn my brain off and watch trash tv and read romance novels. I can’t be serious all the time.
I often cannot find the right words. I’m just out here trying my best. But I know we have to keep going, because the stakes are too high to do anything else.
Toni Morrison said, “the function of freedom is to free someone else.”
Mariame Kaba says, “hope is a discipline.”
And who the fuck am I to disagree with them?
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