None Of This Is Okay

None of this is nor­mal. None of this is okay.

It’s not okay for American cit­i­zens to be dis­ap­peared and sent to an over­seas Gulag.

It’s not okay to make it hard­er for thou­sands of women to vote (via the SAVE Act).

It’s not okay for an unelect­ed bil­lion­aire to act in an elect­ed capac­i­ty with­out a con­gres­sion­al hearing.

It’s not okay to remove free speech from the White House press conferences.

It’s not okay that I paid more in fed­er­al income tax­es than Tesla last year.

It’s not okay for Trump to strip fed­er­al employ­ees of their union bar­gain­ing rights.

It’s not okay to force the NIH to cut fund­ing to projects that include the word diver­si­ty.

It’s not okay to dis­man­tle cru­cial cli­mate poli­cies to ben­e­fit fos­sil fuels.

It’s not okay that DOGE and Starlink gave Russia 10GB worth of sen­si­tive data.

It’s not okay to have a gov­ern­ment fund­ed web­site to report teach­ers who cel­e­brate inclu­siv­i­ty in their classrooms.

It’s not okay for our pres­i­dent to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignore the checks and bal­ances inher­ent in our gov­ern­ment hierarchy.

It’s not okay to dis­man­tle the Department of Education. Or the National Park Service.

It’s not okay that chil­dren are dying from a pre­ventable diease like measles.

It’s not okay to text sen­si­tive war plans to jour­nal­ists in Signal.

It’s not okay to remove books about the Holocaust from the US Naval Academy’s Library (while keep­ing Mein Kampf).

It’s not okay to par­don the ter­ror­ists (sor­ry, patri­ots) who were involved in January 6 (even though some of those defen­dants had pri­or con­vic­tions and/or pend­ing charges for crimes includ­ing rape, sex­u­al abuse of a minor, domes­tic vio­lence, manslaugh­ter, child pornog­ra­phy, and drug trafficking.)

This is not nor­mal. This is not okay. This is Fascism. We are not crazy. We were not being dra­mat­ic in 2016. Our feel­ings of rage, over­load, and hope­less­ness are valid. In fact, these feel­ings were always a very inten­tion­al part of the plan. If we are too over­whelmed by nev­er-ceas­ing hor­rors, we can­not take effec­tive action. I myself am too enraged and exhaust­ed to have any­thing pos­i­tive to offer right now. So I’m sit­ting with it. Taking lots of deep breaths. Looking up from my bad news device.

Check back next week for some ideas to direct these feel­ings into effec­tive action.