I started to write this nearly a week ago.
Another mostly “normie” week for me. The big house project, and the start of gardening season.
10 days or so ago I put up the post titled No Data, No Source, Just Vibes, saying that it sure felt like something was shifting. At that point the orange monster had already lost the election in Canada and had not yet lost the election in Australia.
A week ago – last Monday, I believe – Joyce Vance wrote her The Week Ahead newsletter, and she seemed to agree with me. As a country we saved ourselves before, more than once, and she seems to think we can do it again. She even manages to extend a bit of grace for it taking some time for us to pull ourselves up after the shock.
At dinner this weekend, a friend told me that one of the most encouraging conversations she’d had recently involved a look at how other countries that have been through a democratic backsliding process, like Hungary and Poland, did. It turns out that the temporary paralysis that came with the first 100 days of this administration is fairly normal for countries in this position, especially for the opposition. Then, everyone gathers themselves together and moves forward.
The timing of our conversation was perfect, because as I’ve been doing a lot of research about how other countries have worked through attempts by would-be dictators to take over, as I continue to work on my book. I had reached the same conclusion—that giving ourselves a little grace for the shock of dealing with a president who wants to dismantle democracy is appropriate. But it’s also important to remind ourselves that just like Americans saved the country during the Civil War, during the Civil Rights era, during Watergate, we can do it again.
The moment calls for courage, and if elected officials, regardless of party, can’t muster it, then they need to step out of the way (and we don’t need to reelect them). It’s a failure of imagination to think government has to be the enemy. That it has to be stagnant, cowardly, and mired in gridlock. But at a bare minimum, our elected officials should be capable of defending the Constitution. Why else do they take an oath to uphold it? Trump offers only the politics of grift and revenge, and that is not democracy.
This is where we are as we start the week ahead. It’s time to move forward. Our progress may feel slow. It may not always be linear. But we are beginning, and right now, it feels important to be here and to keep going.
For the final piece of the trifecta, Trump lost the election for Pope, as well, on May 8. (How can that be just 4 days ago????)
We have a million miles to go, but it feels like the tide is turning.
It sure feels to me like it’s time for us to ramp things up.
We certainly live in interesting times.
