This Year’s Lists, Partial
(A Trip Inside My Mind)
Utterances:
NO
Fuck
What the fuck
Fears I Thought I’d Never Have and Do Have:
Nuclear War
Mass Arrests and Concentration Camps
Being Unable to Get Trump Out of Office
Vladimir Taking Over the Office
Everything Bad You Can Imagine to Women, People of Color, LGBTQ, and Jews
Those in Power Simply Taking Everyone’s Money
This Internal Conversation:
How much I hate all the Goons and how much I don’t want to hate anyone. How these people deserve my hatred, but you maybe can’t prevail for justice if hatred fuels you (how I metabolized MLK).
Vocabulary:
Emoluments
Oligarchy
Kleptocracy
Kakistocracy
Buffoon
Conspiracy
Collusion
Moron
This Internal Conversation:
How can people who are lifelong R’s in power just let this administration hijack their party, their power, and make a mockery of democracy — do they not realize they could end up in the concentration camps with us resisters simply because of personal conflicts with this wannabe dictator, who could maybe perhaps become a real dictator and also start a nuclear war?
Stuff that Happened:
Threatened major corporations (remember Nordstrom and Ivanka’s clothing?)
Threatened the NFL
Threatened news organizations
Threatened judges
Threatened sitting representatives
Yes, our so-called president threatened all these people and entities
Utterances:
Fuck
Fuck
OMFG
Russian Hacking (short version):
Day Two (post-election): “I think it’s the Russians.” So many people save for the hardcore HRC supporters: “No. Don’t become a conspiracy theorist because your candidate lost.”
January: “I think it’s the Russians.”
Bernie People: “This isn’t about conspiracies; it’s about how she wasn’t a good candidate and now we have this.”
See also, Tillerson. Sessions. Both had Russian ties or at least meetings. See also, Flynn.
February: “I think it’s the Russians.” See by then, Yates, Flynn.
March: “I think it’s the Russians.” See by then, Comey. DJT’s loyalty pressure becomes more blatant.
April: “I think it’s the Russians.” See, Pence’s lies.
Note: Every time I think this, which can be daily or more, my blood boils and also, the more credible this becomes (see, news stories about hacking, top ranking people confirming the story, the press conference in March in which TASS took the photos and US journalists were left out of the room, and on and on and on) the more afraid I become that in fact, we’ve lost our Democracy, capital D to Russian interference and by having this administration/congress we won’t get ourselves organized back into a fair election scenario — see, the fake voting commission that is somehow supposed to prove he really won — and then we are screwed again in 2018, 2020, 2024…
May: “I think it’s the Russians.” See, Manafort.
June: “I think it’s the Russians.”
July: “I think it’s the Russians.” See Don Jr. and the emails that signaled clearly how he met with Russians for dirt on HRC I mean adoption. Adoption, that’s right. Oh, it wasn’t about adoption after all.
August: “I think it’s the Russians.”
September: “I think it’s the Russians.” Maybe Facebook didn’t tell the whole truth about the ad buys. See also, Trump Russia tower and just how long he wanted to have one and how it was dangled as possibility.
October: “I think it’s the Russians.” Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Google all placed Russian ads. See also, Jared and Ivanka’s many private emails that were used for WH business “accidentally.”
October 7th: Anniversary of the day the White House (under 44) released news that Russians were interfering in our elections, present tense and the story immediately got buried under hurricane, grab by the pussy, and Podesta Wikileak (Russians) but somehow the Russians’ part continued not to rise up to the surface as the story and we know about what Comey did later in October that further buried the Russians’ influence by bringing and then taking away too late any email issues from HRC.
Fuck
Fuck
HRC:
Three. Million. Votes.
I was so ready. She was so ready.
Misogyny.
Misogyny.
Ageism.
Grudges.
Misogyny.
Name me someone with a long, distinguished career in public service (politics side) without having raised too much corporate money.
Most qualified candidate ever.
Lovely laugh.
Sincere.
Smart as all hell.
Wonky.
Those grandchildren.
First gentleman.
Misogyny.
Fuck
This internal conversation:
How unsafe we feel if we are vulnerable in any way to have a bully — greedy, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, denier of everything — with the bully pulpit even if he cannot speak even one truly coherent sentence.
Grift:
The greediest family ever
Tom Price
Steve Mnuchin
Mike Flynn
Paul Manafort
Scott Pruitt
Rex
Fandango Man
Kellyanne (I’ll do a commercial for Ivanka’s line)
Ann Coulter (predates administration, obviously)
Zinke
This internal conversation:
Maybe we are left with only one thing to do consistently and that is to be kind. It seems heartbreakingly tiny and irrelevant to the planet and all the abuses, but does it boil down to our ability to greet one another with scowl or smile? Some days, this is on a repeat loop. It makes me feel a tiny bit hopeful and terribly desperate at the very same time. I look at my sweet town and wonder whether we can just duck and cover. And then I remember that Richard Spencer lives in a smaller town some would call idyllic and I know kindness is essential and yet kindness alone falls terribly short. There isn’t enough kindness in the world right now to counter the ugliness if it were tit for tat.
So many people have sacrificed already for what’s just
Don’t get me started on the missing of Barack and Michelle and Joe and Jill
Gratitude:
My dear husband
My kids
My family
A kid selling pumpkins at our farmers’ market
My daughter is sad Hillary isn’t president and then imagines how great it would be to grow up and become the first girl president
My friends in solidarity
My friends who tune things out when they can’t take one bit more but are grateful for those who stay in
The sky’s unwillingness to stop being glorious
Flowers, especially in the spring
Music
Dark chocolate
Comedians
Exercise
Therapists
Making applesauce
Health
Instructions:
Resist
Persist
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember
Call your reps
Watch what they do not what they say
Feelings:
RAGEY. Yes, all caps.
Sad.
Scared.
Terrified.
Desolate.
Anxious.
Distracted.
Worried.
Angry.
Sleep deprived.
Upset.
Knotted.
Despairing.
Afraid.
Hopeful.
Determined.
RAGEY. Yes, all caps.
Fuck
Fuck
Some People I’m on a First Name Basis With Now At Least in My Mind:
Hillary (obviously)
Adam (Schiff)
Barbara (Lee)
Kamala (Harris)
Liz (Warren)
Elijah (Cummings)
Rachel (Maddow)
Norm (Eisen)
Walter (Shaub)
Amy (Siskind)
Jim (Himes)
Josh (Silver)
Joy (Reid)
Larry (Tribe)
Mazie (Hirono)
Eric (Swalwell)
Chris (Murphy)
Ted (Lieu)
Al (Gore)
Auntie Maxine
Carmen (Yulin Cruz)
Sarah in the House Oversight Committee Office
All the Friends in the Resistance I’ve made in the last year plus even before we knew we were Resisting or Persisting
This Internal Conversation:
How can someone like John McCain or Steve Scalise experience such intense and immense human frailty and still vote against others in their shoes? How? How?
What the actual fuck
Question:
How does Elaine Chao manage to keep such a low profile?
Movies That Made Me Sob:
Hidden Figures
Battle of the Sexes
Experience:
I can ask myself impossible-to-answer questions about where the humanity went from so many who were elected to serve us and come up blank — and yet ask it again. I’m in a broken groove. I cannot get over these hypocrisies. I want to take so many people’s health insurance away, I really do. Clearly, if you’re willing to take someone else’s away — or hand people guns to shoot them, too, with or without health insurance to cover you during cancer or post-gunshot — you should fork yours over. Reminder to self: in some of the repeal/replace plans Congress KEPT ITS HEALTHCARE INTACT (I hear that in my head in ALL CAPS).
Related Experience:
I keep recognizing the number of times someone I love has needed health care and gotten it. The number of times what’s being said — or not said — is so damaging to people, and how those words can hang over us. Those words and silences wound us all. There’s a tension; do we have to turn away from being hurt — sticks and stones — and continue onward? Or should we confront horrible words and deeds and alarming lack of compassion?
People I’m on a First Name Basis With Now At Least in My Mind And Don’t Want to Be:
Hey Jared
Ivanka
Rex
Kellyanne
Melania
Orange Goon
Devin
Mitch
Who I’d Love to Have a Candid Conversation With:
Chris Steele
Bob Mueller
Preet Bharara
Sally Yates
Katy Tur
Barbara McQuade
Maggie Haberman
Jim Comey
Things I Loved More Than I Realized and I Did Realize I Loved Them:
Democracy
The White House as People’s House
Voting (one person/one vote/civic duty/no Russians/paper ballots, baby)
Belief in Democracy
The Arc of Justice
This Internal Conversation:
How can no one care about democracy enough to save it? This question is for Republicans. It is not rhetorical.
Fuckers
Fucking fuckers
Russia (when I was 23):
Cold War fears
Stereotypes that seeped into us and became prejudice
How incredible it was — then the Soviet Union — to see the streets looked like streets, and there was (not always so much) regular food in stores, like bread and vegetables and meat
Tbilisi’s gorgeous views and colors
Museums
Gold on buildings
Silence in the elevators because someone was listening in
Being followed
Being scared
Realizing how much I took for granted not being scared of my own beliefs (other things, yes)
White nights
Loving the people we met and feeling so awed by their bravery
This Internal Conversation:
Why get hooked on distracting Twitter wars, paper towel tosses and beautiful chocolate cake? Stay focused, always, on the issues. Why can’t the issues be of more import? In this reality television as government it seems as if the paper towels and name-calling actually matter. Flummoxed.
Things:
Walls
Bans
Solidarity
Sit Ins
Hands held
Relief supplies
Barriers evoked
Golf cart rentals
Visitor logs ignored
Every agreement and pact rescinded
File Under HONESTLY:
Devin Nunes?
Silencing Liz Warren?
Rough up suspects?
Pointing out the guy with the “football?”
Campaign funds for legal fees?
Coal, climate denial, Federal Parks taken away, pipelines to be built
I could go on and on and on and on and one
Hope:
Courts
People
Pink Pussy Hats
The flaming tweets in response
Bob Mueller
NFL players’ knees
Giant Inflatable Chickens
New and Old Friends Doing the Work
