I'm struggling

Who's With Me?

I am struggling. This is difficult for me to admit, because I am not someone who admits such things. My mom once told me that when I was a little kid, I would go out to the driveway and cry behind the car, so no one could see me. I have Irish and Acadian peasant blood, and this means I have not twice, but six or seven times the resolve to appear as though I am always in control.

Since November 8, 2016, we have been on a journey to a much less perfect union, and since January 20, 2025 the pace has become frenetic. One month in, there is a full-blown coup underway, metastasizing like a cancer that we likely won’t be able to cure.

It started with the unconditional pardons of traitors, many of them violent, who, at the direction of the sitting president (HeWho), sought to stop the certification of a free and fair election. Five law enforcement officers died in the aftermath of this event. From there, the HeWho unleashed Elon Musk, who in addition to being a very dangerous immigrant (even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again), is an unappointed, unelected, ax-grinding, radical, enigmatic ball of hate and weird machismo on our government. He’s been ruining lives by employing a bulldozer rather than a scalpel to the federal workforce, after which he boasts about it on not-Twitter like the cruel beast that he is. The Muskaterrors, his merry band of teenage hackers, have also infiltrated all manner of sensitive databases, reportedly downloading the most intimate of information about American citizens to private servers. (But her emails!)

I wonder what they want with that information. JK! I know what they want. Elon told me!

As many have said, if you are looking to do an audit, you bring accountants, not hackers. It will save you money on energy drinks, at the very least.

In the past few years since Monday, utterly unqualified men with ideologies that run from dangerous to kooky to vengeful have been confirmed to run Health and Human Services and the FBI, AND we, the United States of America, have become the bad guys, turning our back on European allies to cuddle with a murderous dictator who has dangled some gold in front of the deranged, declining despot who sits in the office where the leaders of the free world have historically sat. Watching the two of them is not unlike watching two people in an abusive relationship, with the insecure HeWho trying to impress the criminal mastermind. (By the way, I’m thinking He Who is jealous of Zelenskyy, a brave patriot and respected former television star who has much higher popularity ratings than he has and looks good in a quarter zip. Can you imagine the crap HeWho would being spewing if the courageous and dashing Navalny still walked the earth? Lucky for HeWho, he was imprisoned and murdered.) HeWho has proposed what amounts to a hostile corporate takeover of a sovereign nation.

It is a perfect illustration of the dangers of the governed conflating the role of business with the role of government. Autocracy, Inc., which Anne Applebaum describes as an international cabal of authoritarian leaders has arrived, taken root, and is thriving. It’s a global criminal enterprise.

Republicans who have (rightfully) said damning, nasty things about Putin in the past, are now softening their stance. I guess it makes sense that as they grow more comfortable with an American tyrant, it’s not such a stretch to snuggle up to a Russian one.

Oh, and a few hours ago, the regime ended temporary protections for Haitians who came here fleeing their beleaguered country for humanitarian reasons. This one strikes at the very heart of my Massachusetts, home to the second-largest population of Haitian people in the United States. They are my friends and neighbors, who came here for our help, and have given so much in return. The cruelty is the point.

So now my question is this: Is this it?

TBH, I’m thinking it might be, but are we going to settle in without a fight? I’d really rather not.

I wrote a widely-circulated essay two weeks ago BEGGING elected officials to institute a daily public briefing, In thinking about this in the two weeks since I posted it (and one week since I wrote an actual script), I have to say, I DON’T FUCKING UNDERSTAND what’s so difficult about it. As I said before, we KNOW no one has the answers. We’re probably even willing to accept that no one (except maybe attorneys general) have a plan.

What we’re not willing to accept is no fight, no leadership, no direct communication. People are confused. People are suffering. People are going to die. Many of us want to stop this. But that won’t happen with a bunch of disorganized efforts.

In that same essay, I mentioned Professor Tim Snyder’s writings about the use of a Shadow Cabinet. (He is now calling it a “People’s Cabinet.”) It’s a brilliant idea used in several governments that have more than a two-party system (HELLO?). I’ve seen the idea dismissed as being too complicated, to which I say GTFOOH. You know what’s complicated right now? Getting out of bed in the morning. That’s complicated.

In an interview with Anand Giridharadas on Wednesday, Senator Chris Murphy, who has for the most part been a strong anti-coup voice, spoke about the Shadow Cabinet idea in a way that highlights THE WHOLE GODDAMN PROBLEM WITH THE DEMOCRATS. He said,

“That just sounds like something else for people to compete over. If you were to create a shadow cabinet and you had to pick Democrats to be in each one of those positions, you'd have to come up with a process and there'd be campaigns and backroom efforts to try to be the Shadow Secretary of Defense. It would be a lot of wasted energy and I'm not sure, ultimately, it would result in the best people being in those positions. I mean, what's happening now is a little meritocratic. The folks who have more amplified voices are the folks who are just more plugged in with the actual emotional zeitgeist of the country.”

OMFG.

What I hear is that we don’t have unified messaging from the Democrats acting as an Opposition party, because they can’t put their fucking egos aside for the good of the country. They can’t stop jockeying for their moment in front of the mic, pushing their colleagues out of the way. In this way, they are no different than the Republicans, who clearly believe that their next election is more important than democracy.

I read on the internet that most of them have a rusty birdcage where their hearts are supposed to be.

Members of Congress splash around in this toxic miasma as they become less and less relevant every day, HeWho just ignores them, and does whatever he wants. Do they think this will get better if they retake the House in 2026? (Will there be elections in 2026?) Do they think he and his people are going to show up for the hearings they’ll call for? LOL. Whose courts are going to enforce their orders? Whose military is going to defend our laws? Both of those institutions are kompromised with a capital K.

It’s becoming clear to me that the Democrats will never be an Opposition party, but I am hoping that some Democrats will help build an Opposition party.

I have been intentional about being out and talking to people, and it is clear to me that a lot of good people have checked out, eschewing the media onslaught. I understand this impulse, but I find it distressing.

Yesterday morning, I went to the landing pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and was completely blown away by the gravity of the headlines.

If you are one of the people who is living under a self-imposed media blackout, I am begging you to get back in the know, and further begging you to make mainstream legacy print media outlets part of the diet. I KNOW they are problematic. I know they were complicit in getting us here. I know they’re still not calling it a coup. I know that paywalls keep good reporting from people who are starving for good reporting. I know who owns them. I know that billionaires do not operate in our best interest. But I also know that while alternative media and public intellectuals with Substacks are awesome, they do not have the potential reach of the legacy media, which must be preserved. Pigpen Bannon said the media, not the Democrats, are the opposition. That should be enough to send everyone running to renew their subscriptions.

During the COVID emergency, many media outlets dropped their paywalls on pandemic-related news. Wouldn’t it be great if they dropped their paywalls on coup reporting? During the coup emergency? Let’s ask them. There are many people – normal people just trying to get through their days – who think people like me are overreacting. It’s not their fault. They just don’t know. They just don’t see it. They won’t, unless we explain it to them, calmly, but with urgency. They need to hear from trusted sources. They need to hear stories about real people, canceled cancer trials, broken families, veterans unable to access benefits. Find some stories, confirm them, and share them. There are thousands out there.

I am struggling, but there are a few things I will keep at right now. I am sharing them in case they are helpful to you as well.

- I am not going to stop calling for a daily public briefing, though I fear I’ll still be doing it when I’ve finally gone to retire at the home where they keep the old ladies who yelled and screamed for a daily public briefing.

- I am going to continue to check in on my friends to see how they’re enjoying the coup. I am going to invite them over and we’ll dream up projects, stock food pantries, and put on shows. I’ll text the ones who don’t live nearby. I did this during COVID – even texting people I haven’t been in touch with in years. I will keep doing it. We need each other. I certainly need them.

- I am going to show up at town halls and community events and make new friends.

- I am going to continue to be informed, and figure out what I can do to defend the institutions that are under attack.

- I am going to be kind to everyone. There are many forms of resistance, and kindness is one of them.

-I am going to talk to everyone I can talk to, listening and looking for openings to explain how what’s happening might affect them. I am going to try to do this without sounding like a lunatic or a know-it-all. (This will be a challenge.) I will correct people who refer to red states as Dumbfuckistan or similar. This is BAD information and should be corrected at every opportunity.

- I am going to stay hydrated, and I am going to try to do things I enjoy, like reading and movies and concerts. I saw Jack White on Tuesday night, and it was a cathartic balm (is that a thing or did I just invent it?) I didn’t know I needed. Especially this.

Jack gets it.

I wish I could tell you that it will be alright, but I just don’t know that. If you’re looking for me, you might check in the driveway behind the car.

Thanks for reading.

Joyce