Hey, Adam

Hey, Adam.

Hey, Adam, right back at ya. I mean, at me.

So, how are you feeling? It’s been a trying emotional weekend, but now that you’ve had a few days to decompress, where are you at?

I’m still in a pretty shit mood, to be honest. It feels quite hopeless.

Yeah, I’m with you. Fuck this.

No, but seriously, FUCK THIS.

I know. That’s what I said. Fuck this. I literally cried yesterday.

I’m angry. I’m fucking ANGRY.

Yeah, me too, me too.

Seriously, I’m ANGRY. ALL CAPS ANGRY.

We’re all angry, I’m just also so exhausted of anger, so hopeless about it.

We should kill them.

Who? Who should we kill?

The Supreme Court? All Republicans? All Christians? Just spitballing here.

Hey — you can’t say that. Seriously. That’s not cool. We’re not murderers. We’re not “like them.” We’re not hateful, violent, lawbreaking. We’re not the ones rioting at the Capitol, and that matters. There’s moral high ground here. Besides, you can’t just threaten people’s lives like that. They’ll throw you in jail.

You know what? I don’t care. How long have we been making compromises for their feelings? After 2016 we were all “Let’s try to figure out why these people feel this way.” Michael Moore wanted to talk to them. Sarah Silverman wanted to talk to them. To these fucking deplorables. Why can’t we just declare a fucking Civil War and be done with it? I hate them with a tremendous, burning passion that cannot be overstated.

Okay, well, for one, you’d lose a Civil War. You don’t have enough of the military or the police or the people hoarding hundreds of weapons on your side. We would straight-up lose. So, purely tactically speaking, it’s a terrible idea. Also, what the fuck is wrong with you? How do you think you’re the goodguy spouting all this violence?

Look, I know you’re right, rationally. But I feel so fucking impotent. What are we going to do? A bunch of liberals who can afford to take time off work are going to apply for a permit and peacefully march in a liberal city? We’re going to go vote for some right-wing pro-corporation criminally-incompetent asshole like Joe Biden? We’re going to pretend that voting is the solution in these gerrymandered nightmare states? People are going to die THIS YEAR because of this decision. What is all of that going to do to stop it?

And so you think that committing random acts of senseless violence somehow would help?

No, I don’t rationally think that. But I’m angry, and I want to take it out on someone.

Is it safe to assume that you’ve been going on the internet and cursing out strangers?

Well, yes. I have. It’s a bit of a relief valve, if anything. I feel like moments like this — and like Jan. 6th — give us free reign to curse out Republicans. To refuse to take them seriously as part of polite society. I feel like we seriously need to start refusing people medical care if they are still voting Republican. Shun them, exclude them, let them die, die, die, die, die, die. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m so angry! It’s so unpleasant!!!

It doesn’t sound to me like this is cathartic or helpful at all for you. You’re just getting yourself enraged, and not at the people who matter. And you’re playing right into their hands. Remember how they reacted to being called “Deplorables”? Let’s not make that mistake again. It just drives them away.

It is such a pipe dream that it matters what we say. Do you really think they’re open to listening to us? Do you really think that it matters what we say? They have their own completely coherent and closed-off mediasphere. They will hear what they want to hear. Why are we liberals always blaming ourselves for this? Did the Jews go around 1930s Germany saying, “Damn, we shouldn’t have been so mean-spirited about the Nazis, we totally get where they’re coming from and how ignored they feel.” Fuck no!!! We ignore them BECAUSE THEY DESERVE TO BE IGNORED.

I can’t with you, not right now. This is not healthy. You are making me sick to my stomach with all of this hateful talk. What is it with this “us vs. them” mentality? Isn’t that exactly what “they” say? Isn’t this the mentality we’re trying to stop? The only people who will hear your hateful words are either those who already agree with you, and who thus don’t deserve to be subjected to your barrage of hatred, or those who might disagree with you, and will just laugh and enjoy drinking your “liberal tears.” YOU ARE NOT HELPING.

Look, I know, I know you’re right, but I’m angry, and I don’t think it’s fair that I should have to contain my anger. Why do Republicans deserve to be treated with even the smallest modicum of respect? Haven’t they basically forsaken the right to be part of any civilized society when they pursue such uncivil means?

No one forsakes that right. That’s what “we,” if there is a “we,” believe. And we will not solve this problem through more hatred and division. We have to somehow build a bridge, or all is lost. Your son dying in a hopeless civil war is not better than your daughter dying in a botched back-alley abortion.

So then what? What can we actually do to help?

Well, in the short term, we can support initiatives to get healthcare information and access to women who need it, whether that’s through mail-order pills, mobile on-the-border units, full legal and financial protections in all of the states where human rights still exist, and so on. In the long term, what we need is a better, more secure, more affluent society. A generation that grows up with better workers’ rights, smaller healthcare costs, more affordable housing and education, and a more stable society will most likely be a less reactionary generation. All of the progressive initiatives in our minds, if we stick to them, will eventually solve this. If we devolve into chaos, it will only get worse.

That’s very well-reasoned, but it still leaves me feeling seething and hopeless. For people our age, we saw just how meaningless “hope and change” can be. We saw an educated, calm, well-meaning Black American win the Presidency, against all odds. And it did not matter at all. It was like it never happened. It’s hard to imagine that “voting” will produce a better outcome than Obama. So it’s hard to believe in voting. And look — rhetoric aside, setting a few fires in Minneapolis really did help make things better for police prosecutions around the country. I seriously think we need to start setting things on fire for this.

No. We’re not going to set anything on fire. We are going to campaign for human rights while maintaining our composure. The ends never justify the means.

But how can you sit calmly and idly by while this happens?

I hate to say this, but, the cold reality is that not as many people are as affected by this as you think. In Missouri, for example, last week there was ONE operating abortion clinic in the state. Today there are zero. In most of the places where abortion will now be illegal, it has been effectively illegal for a generation already. You live in a Blue State. You are going to be okay, and your family is going to be okay. I accept that I am unable to save the lives of women who are oppressed in Saudi Arabia, of Uyghurs who are oppressed in China, of Ukranians who are being bombed. I can petition to make it better but it’s too far from me, geographically and culturally, to directly affect. I don’t believe that violence solves these problems; I don’t believe that sending the American Military into Afghanistan, or Syria, or Texas actually makes anything better in the long term. So on some level, we’re going to have to accept that we can’t help everyone, and that life is going to seriously suck for people in a lot of America, until we can all make the world better together.

This feels like you’re saying, “Hey, it’s not me it’s happening to, so it’s not my problem.”

I’m not saying that. We have to take what steps we can, but we also have to remain as calm as we can, and be reasonable and rational and nonviolent.

What’s that quote? “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”?

Yes, I know the quote, attributed (probably falsely) to Edmund Burke. I hear you. I’m not saying “do nothing,” but I am saying drawing a line. I am saying that there is a right and wrong way to go about things. We are supposed to be the side that believes in the Constitution, that believes in rights, that believes in society. We have to hold on to that. We have to make change through legal and moral means.

And the Niemoeller poem? “First they came for the…”? What about that? You do realize that it can get worse, don’t you? They can find ways to outlaw abortion in all states. To outlaw homosexuality, to outlaw birth control. Clarence Thomas has openly written now that this is his goal. To literally turn us into a theocratic dictatorship with forced heterosexual birth and no recourse for anyone. While you’re playing nice, they are actually planning this. They’re not even pretending anymore; this is all completely out in the open, and it’s happening, right before our eyes.

Of course I know the poem, but it doesn’t change what I’m saying. Your way cannot work.

You are fucking obsessed with the “Constitution.” News flash: It was written by rich white men, whose closest political party now would be the moronic “Libertarians,” and most of whom were literally raping their slaves. They wanted a world where no government (Congress or Parliament) had the ability to tax them or to stop them from raping their slaves. It is an 18th Century document. What other country in the world is still following an 18th Century document? Almost every nation in the world is following a Constitution that was written after WWII. Fuck the Constitution and fuck America. I’m not actually interested in preserving a single piece of that document. Tear it up and start over.

Jesus, we’re back to this again? This impotent outrage? I get it. I get that you enjoy getting a rise out of me, and out of conservatives. We’re all competing to see who can say the most outrageously anti-American thing and get away with it. But that’s childish, and again, it’s NOT HELPING. You can’t —

You’re not helping either! What you have outlined is NOT GOING TO HELP. Tell me something that will help, other than shouting obscenities on the internet, and I promise I’ll stop. Tell me something that will help!

… I can’t. Other than what I said above, I can’t actually think of a way to help. I stand by the statement that unless we can reach a point of mutual understanding and even love with our fellow countrymen, we can’t solve this problem. We can’t solve it through hate or violence. But I admit that I have no idea how to break through the walls of ignorance and identity, buffeted by a closed-off mediasphere and buttressed by constant instability, economic hardship, legitimate fears and illegitimate fearmongering by those just seeking to make a profit off of conservative vitriol. I do not know how to reach them. I only know that we have to try.

I really thought, up until the end there, you were going to agree with my plan to just start burning shit down.

Lol.. no. No, I’m never going to agree with that.

Even if it’s literally Hitler? You won’t literally burn Hitler down?

I don’t think it would have helped, honestly. I think the rage and dissatisfaction inside Weimar Germany, and the powerful ethnic tensions boiling in Europe for centuries, and the total psychic and economic meltdown of the late 20s, made Nazism inevitable. As many have pointed out, the Nazis only did within Europe what the Europeans had been doing globally for centuries. It was not an aberration. If you killed Hitler, it would have been someone else. Never forget that the Poles and Hungarians and French and Romanians were more than happy to help the Nazis kill off their Jewish populations; the Holocaust was coming, and I think that if you started random violence in Germany in the 1930s it could have arguably been worse — or at best, just delayed some. I genuinely believe that escalating violence can only lead to horrific ends. But also, seriously, it’s terrible argumentation to keep bringing up Nazis.

Even when the other side is literally Nazis?

Lol. Oh, Adam … yes. Even then.

I did get to put a lot of my hate into writing, though, here. That was something, at least? Maybe a little catharsis, if people read it and admit that part of them shares the same childish, murderous anger?

Maybe. If anything I’m glad to see some self-reflection on your part. But you’re calm now? You’re good? You’re ready to move on and keep fighting the decent fight?

I … I am, I’m calm, but, I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do that will actually matter, that will actually help. I still don’t know if what matters is saving women today, or trying to build for a better future, or trying to salvage what we have left of America, even if that’s foolhardy.

Can’t it be all three?

Well, maybe. But not really. What you said comparing Afghanistan to Texas was smart. We can’t really defeat either Taliban with force. Change has to come from within those societies. We can help, we can inspire, but we can’t force the Texas Taliban to give in anymore than we could force the Afghan Taliban. So I think we have to decide what the priorities are. Is it civil disobedience to make national political change? Is it agitation inside Red States to help turn them Blue? Is it flouting the laws as much as possible because it saves the lives of women now? Or is it trying to build for a post-America world, setting up state compacts in New England and on the West Coast to prepare for the eventual dissolution of the nation, and offering asylum to anyone coming here from Gilead? Because I feel like it’s folly to try to do all of those at once. I feel like we’re either giving up on America, or fighting to keep it from getting worse, or fighting like hell to put it back the way it was as soon as possible. And I really feel like we need clarity, as a community, about which one we’re doing.

I hear you, but … we are not a community, or at least, not a singular one. “We” are a hundred-million people of a great diversity of background, opinion, and status. Some of us will agitate for change; some of us will forge a centrist path towards reconciliation; some of us will act legally, some extralegally, and still more of us will prepare for the nightmarish dissolution that you seem to be hoping for. “We” can do all of these things, but we’re always going to disavow violence, insurrection, and general nastiness.

Even me? I have to disavow that stuff to?

Yes, Adam, you do. I’m not saying to roll over and take it. I hear your complaints in those quotes you referenced earlier. We’re not going to do “nothing.” We’re going to do many, many somethings.

Okay. I hear you. Just promise me this: Don’t let your life go “back to normal.” You don’t have to take your angst out on every passing Republican, but remember today’s feeling, even when the pain has faded a little over the next few weeks. Remember that you have to constantly be pushing for positive change, that if you really believe we can “win them over” you have to actually be engaging with them as often as possible, and just … don’t let your anger subside. It is a valid feeling, and we’re still in the middle of this very, very scary fall.

I will try. And I know that, if I slip up and become complacent, you’ll be here to scream in my ear about it.

Great. Sounds like a plan. So, we’re good?

Yes, we’re good. So the Yankees are on this afternoon, want to watch?

Sure, who are they playing?

The Houston Astros.

You mean a team from TEXAS? THAT FUCKING NAZI STATE? HOW COME WE LET THOSE COCKSUCKERS INTO NEW YORK CITY? FUCK TEXAS AND EVERYONE WHO LIVES THERE! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Sigh…