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What do we have that they should want? We have a wall to work upon
For the first day of summer proper, I had lobster and ice cream. I mended two out of my three pairs of jeans. I baked a lemon cake for the chorus potluck tomorrow. I bought a tank top on sale. I passed out on a couch for an hour in the evening because I had slept maybe two hours the previous night.
I do not know what to do about the planned mass roundup of immigrant families, obscenely described by ICE as a "family op." [ETA: As of this evening, the roundup has been delayed. May it stay so and may there be no advantage to the White House from the threat of it.] I do not know what to do about children tortured, American concentration camps. I already have a senator whom I call to express support of her unwavering opposition to these monstrous policies (which makes a nice change from my governor whom I call to yell at about everything) and I donate when I can to RAICES and I am feeling trapped by the limitations on my finances and my physical capacities which make it difficult enough already to keep myself alive, but what is the use of being alive if I can do nothing for anyone else? It feels like being cornered into complicity, as if I should be expected to raise my hands and say not I didn't know but so what could I have done? I want to know what to do from where I am, which feels terribly far from any levers of power. Fretting is just thoughts and prayers, secular edition.
I do not know what to do about the planned mass roundup of immigrant families, obscenely described by ICE as a "family op." [ETA: As of this evening, the roundup has been delayed. May it stay so and may there be no advantage to the White House from the threat of it.] I do not know what to do about children tortured, American concentration camps. I already have a senator whom I call to express support of her unwavering opposition to these monstrous policies (which makes a nice change from my governor whom I call to yell at about everything) and I donate when I can to RAICES and I am feeling trapped by the limitations on my finances and my physical capacities which make it difficult enough already to keep myself alive, but what is the use of being alive if I can do nothing for anyone else? It feels like being cornered into complicity, as if I should be expected to raise my hands and say not I didn't know but so what could I have done? I want to know what to do from where I am, which feels terribly far from any levers of power. Fretting is just thoughts and prayers, secular edition.
no subject
*nods* I know precisely what you mean. In Oregon, we have a governor, two senators, and my local House rep who are all awesome in their dedication to opposing this vileness. I write or call to congratulate them periodically, and I do
Postcards To Voters for out of state activity, but it feels like so little. I remain both sad and horrified that what are becoming death camps (via neglect and deprivation) are not inspiring continuous news broadcasts and the occasional riot. Instead, we get arguments over terminology and apathy.
no subject
I am glad to hear that. I don't know so much about states I don't live in.
Instead, we get arguments over terminology and apathy.
I'm not seeing apathy in the circles I run in, which again I know are self-selecting; I just want to know there are enough of us to change things.
no subject
Like Washington state, Oregon went deep blue relatively fast. 15 years ago it was a pale blue state with a split state legislature and one Senator from each party, but we've had a Democratic supermajority in the legislature for a while. I don't see this changing until the GOP does.
I'm not seeing apathy in the circles I run in
Neither am I, but when I look outside of my friends and chosen family, I see it, and it makes me very sad. Admittedly, distinguishing apathy from fatalism is difficult with people I know only peripherally or only encounter on the fringes of my social media, but it seems to be one or the other.
no subject
I know that apathy exists. I know that enthusiasm for genocide exists. I just feel in some ways as though the fatalism is being reinforced even more than the apathy and that's what I'm trying to avoid being swamped by. I ran into a macro the other night with a quotation attributed to Werner Herzog: "Dear America, you are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of your people would kill another third while the other third watches." And I had a knee-jerkingly negative reaction to it because (a) some of us have always been aware that it can happen here (b) where does that leave the people who are neither the victims nor the perpetrators and enablers of mass murder? It's a formulation that leaves no room for resistance, except perhaps by the unsuccessful dead. I don't find that useful at all. I understand people have been suffering sea-shocks in their image of America ever since the election of Trump, but at some point you have to stop being stunned and start grappling with the world as it is and shouldn't be. That doesn't mean deciding it's all just fine. (I really appreciated Gessen's article: "Anything that happens here and now is normalized, not solely through the moral failure of contemporaries but simply by virtue of actually existing . . . It is the choice between thinking that whatever is happening in reality is, by definition, acceptable, and thinking that some actual events in our current reality are fundamentally incompatible with our concept of ourselves—not just as Americans but as human beings—and therefore unimaginable.") But I think it also means not overshooting and deciding it's all too awful to do anything about. I know that people are terrible about states of uncertainty, but I don't see any other way to survive.