One of the (many) reasons I never pursued anything that required me to write for pay is when I’ve got something going on, I can’t write about anything but that thing. The words will only flow or come together if I’m writing about whatever that thing is. It’s a specific form of writer’s block: I can compose something wonderful or at least halfway decent at the drop of a hat, so long as it’s about the thing. Tonight I cannot write about the amazing pot roast my husband made, or his new and equally delicious forays into baking. I cannot write about the stroll around the orchards I managed to crawl off the couch to accomplish today, rucking between hail storms with good horses, my good dog and my beautiful son.

This week’s thing is the same as last week’s thing, only much, much worse: The “move fast and break a system that took hundreds of painstaking years to build” oligarch takeover of our Federal government. The flooding the zone with so much bullshit is overwhelming, “traditional” media is…snoozing? Absolutely not fulfilling their Constitutional enumerated right and duty at all. If you need details, check out the below:

• This article by Donna Ladd;
• Any of the daily “Letters from an American” by Heather Cox Richardson;
• “The Logic of Destruction” Substack by Timothy Snyder;
• Follow Alt National Park Service anywhere;
• “The End of North America” by Paul Krugman
• This piece about the Tik Tok Ban

It’s utterly disheartening to know the cruelty and confusion is the point for so many. The thing I keep going back to is these are not “unprecedented” times. This current takeover and questionably legitimate administration has happened before, and was foreseeable. We, as Americans, have been through much darker times, darker even than anyone in my entire family tree had to go through, even my mother, who was an out and loud and proud dyke in the 90s. In Arizona. The cruelty, displacement, and dehumanization was the norm for hundreds of years, ask any Indigenous person, any Black or Brown person, any woman at any time, the West Virginian coal miners, the Chinese railway builders, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory workers, the gays at Stonewall, Matthew Sheppard, the Tuskegee Airmen, the list just keeps going.

The whole damn point to our Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, our Constitution was, and is, as MLK Jr. reminded us, to ensure that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It’s been a bloody dark march of time to 2025, with so many left behind, so many names forgotten, to get from all white men signing those original documents to now, when I can hold a credit card in my name, cut my hair as I wish, and ride good horses with my son in the sunshine. Last year on November 6th was not a perfectly realized version of America by any means; younger folks (and plenty of midlife and older folks) can’t find jobs that allow them to thrive, one bad accident or medical scare can cripple an entire family, the system to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free” is a fucking joke, a whole chunk of LA just completely burned to the ground, so many folks in North Carolina are still sleeping in tents because their homes are in the ocean, and child labor is totally coming back as all the rage among a certain set of bottom feeding cretins. Newsflash asshole: We’re supposed to leave the world a better one for our kids, not drag our “shining city on the hill” kicking and screaming back to when rickets was a hell of a problem.

I know I’m complicit in this whole mess in so many ways. As we learned from the Good Place, it’s hellaciously hard to be a good human, to put only good out into the world, to exist in a way that harms none. I’m a middle class, middle aged, comfortably married white lady in one of the safest towns in Oregon, fully employed with benefits and family and a community to fall back on. I recognized the echo chamber I was in around voting time (though, thanks to TikTok, it wasn’t as isolating or complete as it could have been). I’m still so fucking mind boggled by one lady who I know from endurance who, and I quote her from several months ago, viewed The Massive Orange Hemorrhoid as “a hopeful figure”. One of my husband’s favorite YouTubers, who flew his own helicopter to deliver supplies and evacuate folks in North Carolina, was hopeful the Massive Orange Hemorrhoid would be good for his business. I sincerely hope they regret their choices, and realize what’s happening to the Federal government is as un-American as could be.

And yet. And yet I did enjoy that pot roast and bread. I did kiss my mares sweet soft nose, shared music with my son, grabbed a mocha at a locally owned bakery. We helped a friend with a healing broken arm (by taking her fun gelding on a grazing walk, so helpful there!) We reached out to other beloved friends going through rocky times. We watched a funny movie about weddings and talked to our son about things he’ll need to know to be a good human when he’s on his own. I managed to get laundry clean (if not put away). We live to fight and dig in and support folks who need it another day.