There is the question of what each of us can do to resist. You resist by raising the alarm. We all have to figure out where our agency lies. We do have local votes to cast. If we can afford it we have money to give to political causes that will be resistant. What else? Perhaps in a future post, you can point the way. Your words fall on my ears and shift my attention.
David, you're right. We each have to determine where our agency lies. For me, always, it begins as a writer. Like others, I can do more, but it needs significantly to be conceived and organized by people whose experience and expertise is in political mobilization. I've offered my hand in that direction a couple of times in my life, most recently in New York, in opposing the antisemitism rife within the CUNY faculty union. One lesson has always been the same -- how challenging it is to wrangle, unite, and when necessary, sideline opposing factions that might be disruptive to your aims. Political contestation is not easy work. I see already, in grassroots organizing against Trump, that groups with marginal and extreme commitments will stain what needs to be (to offer my cliche for the day) a big tent. That history on the left in the U.S. goes back to the 20s and 30s at least and carries all the way through. That will be ammunition for the oligarchs and autocrats.
If well-known political leaders in the U.S. are not already conceiving and planning to mobilize a national opposition for democracy outside the channels of government, they will be letting us down far worse than they already have.
This is a child’s view. The big bad wolf version of history. As if anyone sentient hasn’t seen the lies and corruption of the current regime. It’s just laughable.
I stand corrected, "Grape Soda" -- you are reading me, with your belief that Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are "stoked" by the Los Angeles fires and that Mike Pence is a "Judas." But you're a little too carbonated for my taste.
The alarms to which David R. refers have been going off for more than two centuries, since before this country's founding. I don't have to repeat the horrors we Americans have wrought; Jay already has. And they not are simply a "big bad wolf version" of our history, as "Grape Soda" writes. The wolf in the children's story got what he deserved in the end, and the moral of the fable is clear. Fiction only rarely follows the path of reality.
"Fiction only rarely follows the path of reality." It works both ways, doesn't it, Maureen? The happy endings of fiction? I wonder what kind of novels Jane Austen would write today.
Hi Jay,
There is the question of what each of us can do to resist. You resist by raising the alarm. We all have to figure out where our agency lies. We do have local votes to cast. If we can afford it we have money to give to political causes that will be resistant. What else? Perhaps in a future post, you can point the way. Your words fall on my ears and shift my attention.
David, you're right. We each have to determine where our agency lies. For me, always, it begins as a writer. Like others, I can do more, but it needs significantly to be conceived and organized by people whose experience and expertise is in political mobilization. I've offered my hand in that direction a couple of times in my life, most recently in New York, in opposing the antisemitism rife within the CUNY faculty union. One lesson has always been the same -- how challenging it is to wrangle, unite, and when necessary, sideline opposing factions that might be disruptive to your aims. Political contestation is not easy work. I see already, in grassroots organizing against Trump, that groups with marginal and extreme commitments will stain what needs to be (to offer my cliche for the day) a big tent. That history on the left in the U.S. goes back to the 20s and 30s at least and carries all the way through. That will be ammunition for the oligarchs and autocrats.
If well-known political leaders in the U.S. are not already conceiving and planning to mobilize a national opposition for democracy outside the channels of government, they will be letting us down far worse than they already have.
This is a child’s view. The big bad wolf version of history. As if anyone sentient hasn’t seen the lies and corruption of the current regime. It’s just laughable.
I stand corrected, "Grape Soda" -- you are reading me, with your belief that Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are "stoked" by the Los Angeles fires and that Mike Pence is a "Judas." But you're a little too carbonated for my taste.
https://open.substack.com/pub/america/p/what-will-you-miss-about-the-last?r=5okqj&utm_medium=ios
EVERYTHING!
Yep. A real, fallible but good human being. The sadness that so many people can no longer recognize decency and don't care about it anymore.
Yes to what you write
Right on, friend.
The alarms to which David R. refers have been going off for more than two centuries, since before this country's founding. I don't have to repeat the horrors we Americans have wrought; Jay already has. And they not are simply a "big bad wolf version" of our history, as "Grape Soda" writes. The wolf in the children's story got what he deserved in the end, and the moral of the fable is clear. Fiction only rarely follows the path of reality.
"Fiction only rarely follows the path of reality." It works both ways, doesn't it, Maureen? The happy endings of fiction? I wonder what kind of novels Jane Austen would write today.
Yes! To your No!
The lobster in the pot analogy seems particularly ... prescient.
Thank you for your clarity.
Thanks for your supportive comment, Holly. It props me up, as does your writing. Reasons to go on.
♥️