What Am I Supposed to Do With All This Anger?
I wasn’t planning to write about the election. When Trump won in 2016, I was working at Gothamist and wrote a blog about hope and resilience that’s cringe-y to read now. Enough #takes are out there that you don’t really need mine this time. Initially, this was going to be a fun blog about The Queen’s Gambit, a very good show you should watch. But this is my newsletter, and I’ve had some thoughts rumbling around my head, so I’ll do what I want. Skip to the links if you’re already bored, or just click away and turn on The Queen’s Gambit.
Unless you were smart enough to self-freeze in carbonite, you know the news. After a one-thousand year election, Joe Biden is the president-elect, which means that in 69 days (nice), the Trump presidency will be over (nicer). Probably. Trump has been openly trying to steal the election, and the GOP is going along with it. This is either because they think they can (unlikely), or because they want to placate Trump (probably), or because they want to placate his base, whose support they’ll need in the upcoming Georgia runoffs (likely), or because they want to continue to erode public confidence in democracy and use that to their advantage to stay in power (definitely). While this is happening, the Democrats are in-fighting over the phrase “defund the police.”
Meanwhile, new daily COVID cases are in the six figures, and hospitalizations are at a record high. Winter is coming, and so, one can assume, are more cases, more deaths and more lockdowns. We are still waiting for another stimulus bill, for federal and local guidance, for something. The people in charge don’t care enough to make time for us.
In that aforementioned cringe-y 2016 blog, I wrote about being angry about Trump’s win.
“I am not surprised at last night’s results, but I am angry. I am so angry,” I wrote. “I do not know what to do with this anger.” I suggested, to myself and to my readers, that the answer was getting involved—protesting, donating to nonprofits that protect marginalized groups, not moving to Canada. I did all those things, and nothing really changed.
It’s been four years, and I’m still fucking angry. Everyone has failed us. They are continuing to fail us. 230,000-plus Americans are dead of a virus we had the power to mitigate, but we didn’t try. My generation is still drowning in debt. The U.S.’s immigration policies have gone from very bad to sadistic. Our federal courts are stacked with conservative judges. Facebook and other tech platforms have helped proliferate fake news stories and conspiracy theories about Soros-funded pedophilia rings. Police are gunning down Black men and women in their cars, in their beds, and in front of their mothers. After a record-breaking hurricane season and several months of watching California burn down, it’s 70 degrees and humid in New York City in November and we just pulled out of the Paris Accord.
I am so relieved we are (I HOPE) spared four to 75 more years of Trump’s presidency, but we are not out of the woods. The virus still has months to spread unhindered. The president is throwing a hissy fit and his party is using it to their advantage. The people who spew this shit won’t do anything to help anyone, even though they take our money. I have no faith that my own political party will stop squabbling and hedging and making nice with big money and start getting behind the platform proposals that could pull us out of this mess.
I know I got angry too late. I’m angry at myself for that. I don’t even think I have a right to be angry. I lost some things in the last few years, but in retrospect, I didn’t lose much. Still, every day, I am so fucking furious that my eyesight is starting to blur. I don’t know what to do. Tweet? Donate? Blog? March? Door-knock? Text-bank? Break shit? Join DSA? Write elaborate fan fiction about feeding Mitch McConnell through a wood chipper?
I don’t know. You’re not supposed to pose a question in a headline unless you’re planning to answer it in the piece, but this time I don’t have the answer.
Catching up on the news
The big news is the election. The second big news is Trump trying to steal the election. The third big news is that BuzzFeed made a vibrator. Here’s some more news:
Britney Spears lost her bid to remove her father from the conservatorship of her estate, which is as infuriating as it is unsurprising.
Ron Weasley had a baby.
I do not want to live in a world where Karl Rove is a voice of reason.
Toobin’s out.
Starting to think maybe the White House should stop throwing parties.
This, uh, seems quite bad!
Here are some good blogs and features I am reading
“The Coup Is a Crisis Even If It Doesn’t Work” — Discourse Blog
“REGIME CHANGE” — Gizmodo
“How Trump Sold Failure to 70 Million People” — The Atlantic
“Prospect Park Is the (Only) Place to Be” — The Cut
“Living Through History Fucking Sucks” — Jezebel
“Alex Trebek Was a Part of Our Lives” — Defector
And one I wrote!
“What to Do If You See a Ghost” — Lifehacker
And now for some good tweets (rare!!!!)
And more importantly, here are some tweets about Gritty, noted revolutionary and my personal hero:
See you next week, when I will actually write about The Queen’s Gambit.