This post will be a bit of a conglomeration of background thoughts, things I ruminate over as I climb the hill to put Tarma back in her summer pasture, as I’m playing a random game on my phone as Tom drives us home from work, and when I’m trying not to think about all the stuff I should be doing around the house (what can I say, I’m a fully feral horse wife every summer).

Things are getting trickier out there by the day, ya’ll. News outlets left and right are folding to the Goon in Chief’s threats and demands, our Orange Barnacle in office is sundowning on live TV and literally rolling out the red carpet for the actual Boogieman and everyone just says that’s not really noteworthy, a black elected Representative is being kidnapped and threatened by goons in Texas, kids drown in a totally predictable but worse than usual flood and the main response to that is not to provide prenatal care to unwed pregnant women in Tennessee. Do the unmasked, are they actual Government Goons or just Proud Boys given free rein to snatch folks off the street, ya’ll on the absolute wrong side of every history trying to terrorize DC even warrant a mention?

We are entering another period our immediate ancestors would be well familiar with, where what is the status quo, or what is legal, is not right and right must be fought for. Among my doom scrolling the other day (sometimes it’s not doom, I do manage my feeds to be full of horses and birds and trails as much as possible but alas, the Algorithm is bigger than me) I saw a throwaway comment on a news article by a Facebook friend (not to be confused with actual friend). She’s still a big supporter (somehow) of the Orange Hemorrhoid, but also apparently of all the decisions being handed down by our Supreme as in Taco Bell Court. I don’t recall which decision the news article was discussing, but little that has been handed down by this current set of Justices as in Justice for me, not for you has been particularly palatable. But this FF basically commented something like “At least now the Justices are following the law in their decisions, not emotions or politics.”

I’ve sat with my response to this for weeks. It just didn’t sit right with me, not because I knew it was coming from a staunch Orange Vomit bullshit guzzler, but because of the underlaying sentiment. If it’s law, that’s right and correct and what we should follow. But that has rarely been been true…and it’s heading towards even less true in a hurry. America is many things, but correct in all things we’ve never been. Our founding ideals are solid and a good start but were flawed from the outset, and unequal, not for everybody. Every single change of law, whether it be expanding who can vote, what you can do with your property (and who and what is defined as property), what you can (and can’t) subject your employees to, who gets to build and hold and inherit wealth, has been written in blood and battle and wretched tales of folks for whom the changes came too late to serve.

What is law is not always right. What is law is not always fairly applied. I’ve been struggling, as so many others have, with the feeling that what does being a good and honest and capable person even matter right now? I’m proud of the reputation I’ve built in the communities I’m a part of, as an employee, as a family member (mostly), as a friend, as an equestrian, as a dog owner, as a writer. I’ve broken generations of trauma, in the never ending course of building a solid life, growing internally every day, confronting the demons of my demographics little by little (far too slowly, of course, but I try not to impinge on spaces where my current ignorance is harmful). But what does all this careful, thoughtful, honest work matter when the leaders of our country are the meanest, dumbest, most vile and self serving options we could have put there? What does building community matter when our so lawful and high and mighty laws are being inflicted against the most vulnerable humans, our carefully built institutions are being sledgehammered, our economy ripped to shreds, every single tattered safety net stomped into the mud, unreachable? What is the point of being caring and keeping an open mind when the cruelty is the point for so many?

And yet…we persist. These times, Frodo, call for us to be better than our leaders, flawed and awful and wretched as they are. They call for us to protect all of those the current Badministration is targeting, with our courage, our support in whatever way they need, our privilege used to drive down the street following ICE with a bullhorn, TikTok news that pokes holes at all the cruelty, to correct random relatives when they say “If they just came here legally”, to attend the local school board meetings and speak out against book bans (unless it’s the Bible getting banned, lets get that creepy text right outta public schools). To keep writing, to keep forming the next generation to be better and braver and kinder, to keep enjoying our little corners, to just survive another damn day and keep our heads above rising waters is also so necessary.

I was holding tight to the understanding that it has been worse, though I’m coming to understand that saying so is more akin to giving up than I’d like. Yet it remains true. We are tearing ourselves apart, targeting the most vulnerable people, undoing decades worth of environmental and cultural work, almost giving up on the very notion of the Shining City upon the hill….but times have been worse, and folks have survived and fought and strived and changed things during worse times. How can we do any less, with all the privileges and knowledge we have?