Dear readers I must apologize. I have no witticisms or insightful movie references or rallying words or anything to offer in the wake of our national tragedy this morning...
America was a grand experiment and 240 years is a good run for anything I suppose. But I really wanted it to outlive me. I wanted it to be a beacon of hope like the Statue of Liberty rather than a place that rewarded xenophobia, misogyny, and racism and those who would seek to shut down the freedom of the press and, well, facts and compassion in general.
And soon there won't even be healthcare for anyone who needs anti-depression medication! (Which will likely be all of us soon including those racists and misogynists who voted in the orange one, or those who don't feel racist or misogynist but who condone those things and therefore are them with their vote, and those who shamefully didn't vote, and those who tossed their votes away or those who planned to volunteer and didn't (raises hand), those who didn't donate, those who didn't explain their fears to conservative friends, or those who didn't A-Z...
But that urge to cast blame doesn't get us far
I recently saw a movie called The Bad Batch by Ana Lily Armipour and I did not like it at all. Despite the director's visual gifts it was so relentlessly ugly in its worldview. I sat there shaking my head about its thematic arc, which seemed to suggest, even romanticize, the idea that humanity's most primal urge was for self-destruction. It had a lot of uncomfortable similarities to Mad Max: Fury Road except that its own missing-limbed Furiosa wasn't driven and heroic. But in the long mostly sleepless night that just passed it flashed in my movie-addled brain and perhaps its nihilism is prescient.
I don't want to feel this hopeless but if grief has taught me anything in my life -- and that's arguable though I have an uncomfortable amount of hours spent with it-- it's that you have to feel whatever you feel whenever it wants to be felt.
And then you have to soldier on. Because the other option is just more of the nihilism and self-destruction and loss of hope that can cause plenty of its own grief. And why add to it? This morning I read an essay called "Whe Who Choose to Stay and Fight" by Sara Benincasa that I highly recommend. It helps in the tiniest of ways and so we seek out all of those little helpers until we can stack them up like a ladder and escape the dark depths of depression.
A little later this morning there's an incongruously joyful episode of our "Judy by the Numbers" series but we'll let it publish as scheduled. Perhaps it'll be one of those little helpers to someone. Hug your loved ones irl or virtually today -- especially if they belong to any minority group or fall on the lower end of the economic scale because anyone who fits either description will be attacked the most by the oncoming all GOP rule of the USA -- and find at least one thing to feel hopeful about today, however small it is. Do that again tomorrow. Stack them up and climb until you can see some light.