I started writing this yesterday. It spilled into today.
It’s a rambling mess and, for that, I apologize. My high school English teacher used to chide me for writing like I spoke. Blame it on English being my second language, OK?
So I’m sitting here, processing everything, the day after the Day.
I did not have a good night’s rest.
My mind couldn’t let me rest because it couldn’t believe it was happening again.
It was. It did.
So now I’m sitting here, tired, sad and angry and unsure of what comes next.
So forgive me if this feels off-kilter. I promise to go back and make it make sense before I hit post (NOTE: I didn’t.)
Sooo….we’re back to doing the fascism thing?
I know it won’t be called that. It’ll have some new branding. With bells and whistles and fireworks to make it All-American. But it will be the same thing eating out the heart of much of Europe right now: a fear of the foreign other and a lust for a strong leader to make it all go away. That has one name and it starts with f. And that’s not Frank.
In 2 years’ time, we celebrate our 250th birthday. And guess who’s bringing the birthday cake?!
(I threw up in my mouth).
All that said, and bouncing between anger, despair, pessimism and defeatism, I started thinking about what I should do, what I could do.
This isn’t a list of things to do. It’s a list of ideas. Do what you can with it if any of it resonates. Leave the rest behind.
FIRST: FOCUS ON MYSELF
I think if there is one lesson that came out of the Election, it’s that too many Americans vote thinking only of themselves. Who cares about the rights of their friends, family or neighbors if my pocketbook is out an extra $100?! I know my vote my make the life of marginalized communities hellish, but screw them. I wanna feel good! It’s OK to not care about anyone else but me! Me! ME!
So follow that lesson. Be about me.
Let’s start with the easy stuff: time to curtail social media.
It’s already too many as is. So time to get off a few of them. The easy one is the dead whale site, whose bloated carcass has become the new 4chan.
Download the data and deactivate. Let friends whom you want to keep in touch know as to where they can find you. If they’re friends, they will find you. If not, they were not friends. They were acquaintances.
Speaking of “Friends”, feel free to unfriend, unfollow, block, mute, dismiss.
Someone who thinks your humanity matters less than their wallet is not your friend.
Someone who thinks the little abuela who has made tamales for the neighborhood for 30 years needs to be deported is not your friend.
Someone who sees people of different skin tones or who love differently or present and identify differently and sees them as lesser – and let’s be clear, that is what they have shown – is not your friend.
A friend supports you. A friend encourages you. A friend fights for you. A friend protects you.
You know the old joke of “a real friend is the one that helps you hide the body at 1 AM”? Well, now you know who’d be the people you’d call and would report you instead.
Those are not friends.
So don’t feel any loss in cutting them out of your life. They’ll whine and bitch and moan but they won’t admit to doing anything wrong to you.
Next big thing: finance
The natural inclination will be to spend. To use shopping therapy to soothe the soul.
Look, buy the pretty thing if it makes you happy. But don’t buy 20 of them. The time has come to get serious about money.
If the plans spoken of and written about the next administration are correct, we will be in a recession sometime in 2025. You cannot take the wrecking ball to the global economy they plan on swinging and not have it impact us peons in the worst way. From mass deportations to the raising of costs that will follow imposing so many tariffs to the breaking up of so much of the social safety net, things are going to get ugly.
And when the economy gets ugly, people lose jobs. People’s costs of living go up. People struggle.
Remember how the anti-immigration laws that Florida and Georgia passed a few years back resulted in workers fleeing those states to the point that farmers lost thousands in dead crops that went unpicked? Or the footage of half-finished homes in various states of construction as sites went quiet with no one to work them? That it got so bad that their state representatives – the very people who made and passed those laws – were on the news begging migrants to come back because the laws were not about them?
Multiply that effect now that it’s nationwide. What’s that going to do to the cost of things? And that’s just one policy. Add the cost of supplies, of materials, of foodstuffs going up due to his dumbass tariffs and that $100 extra in 2024 is gonna be $200 next year!
So, much like Joseph in Pharaoh’s court, it’s time to start putting stuff away for the bad day ahead. Eat out less. Take a look at your subscription services and begin eliminating what you do not use. SiriusXM costs a lot a month. So does the Washington Post and the New York Times. Do you really need Disney+ and Netflix and Amazon Prime? Does anyone really need Amazon Prime?
It’s time to look at your budget, at what you are spending things on, at what you are supporting with your money and consider if it is worth it. Is the expenditure worth it. Is the support you’re giving this corporation worth it? Is that going to help you right now or in the future?
If it isn’t, time to cut it. You’re going to need that $12.99 a month a lot more than they are in the coming months and years.
Finally: Health
This one is tough because so much of health depends on nutrition (impacted by cost of things), mental health (impacted by…ALL of this!) and your location (do you live next to some chemical plant? Are there parks near you for you to walk?). But here’s the thing: they are going to try to repeal the ACA again. And this time there aren’t the likes of John McCain to torpedo them. We will get the “concepts of a plan” instead.
That means pre-existing conditions come back to being denying factors for health coverage.
That means young people now lose coverage for not being able to be on their parents’ insurance.
That means expect massive cuts to Medicaid benefits and services.
So as someone who exists with a number of health conditions, I know I’m going to have to work to get better at self-care. The costs of everything will go up and insurance companies will feel no fear in dumping me or people with my conditions over the side. That means eating healthier, that means losing weight, that means stockpiling medications and working to ensure that I can resolve health issues on my own or with limited need for resources.
Healthcare is gonna cost a lot more and medical systems employ bill collectors that make the Mob look nice by comparison.
SECOND: FOCUS ON MY COMMUNITY
If step one is focusing on me, then the next step is to focus on my family, my tribe and my community. Again, so many outside of my bubble showed themselves uninterested in their concerns or needs. So, cool. But I do care for the people I love and I promise to myself to be there for them in the ways they need.
If that means donations, donate. If that means transportation, transport.
That may mean trying to support local businesses more – akin to the efforts we did during the pandemic. That may mean joining mutual aid organizations or community groups that help in times of crisis. Cause let’s be fair, I live in the Gulf South. There is literally a hurricane hundreds of miles south of me that looked at one point to be coming this way.
How are we going to deal with next year’s hurricane season without a NOAA or a NHC? Thoughts and prayers and hopes the European model is still available to us? Sit around and wait for insurance companies who are literally fleeing the region to come in and give us a tenth of what a roof is worth?
There is no cavalry coming. There is only us caring about us. Holding us up. Protecting us. Helping us forward.
Time to lean into that.
It also means protecting those populations more at-risk. The ones that he and his minions have stated they hate and despise. The “other” that is at fault for their lives being so shitty and pathetic.
They need people to be in their corner. To speak for them. To shield them.
I don’t know what I can do, but whatever that is, I will. (Starting by not enunciating who they are. Think of it like hearing or seeing something creepy in the Appalachian woods: No, you did not see or hear a thing.)
No one is coming to save us. We must save one another.
THIRD AND LAST: BE DYLAN THOMAS!
The hardest part of the last day or so was feeling and living with that sense of despair. That pit in your stomach feeling that things are going to get uglier and darker and meaner. That it may take years for us to purge this out.
I compared it yesterday to feeling like one of the Hebrews listening to Moses as he told everyone that they had been condemned by God to wander the desert until everyone one of them that rejected the promise of the land of milk and honey was dead. Like, it was right there! We almost made it!
Well, now we haven’t. And we won’t be for a while. And that while might be my lifetime. And it might be your lifetime. And it might be the majority of the lifetime of kids like the ones I help or my friends’ kids.
But here’s the thing: that fight that needs to be fought for the country we want to live in is a good one. It’s a righteous one. It’s a just one.
Living in a place where people are judged for their character and not for their gender or their skin color or their sexual identity or their personal identity or where they come from or what they sound like or what disabilities they have had to contend is worth fighting for.
Living in a place where people can live free from fear; live free from hate; live free from racism, classism, colorism and misogyny is worth fighting for.
Living in a place where hopes and dreams for better days is not held back by some billionaire’s need to be the center of the world is worth fighting for.
So let’s all promise to not give into the despair of yesterday. Let’s promise to rage against the dying of the light.
This is our world too. This is our country too. And we have as much a place here as those who think that we do not.
It’s the day after the day after the Day. Their Day was yesterday. Ours is tomorrow.
Forgive my rambling. It had to go somewhere.