Prepping for the Next Four Years

A few weeks before the elec­tion, I start­ed to man­ic clean my home. As in, bought a steam mop clean. Organized every clos­et and cab­i­net clean. Climbed a lad­der and wiped down the ceil­ing fan blades clean. 

As far as the elec­tion, I was feel­ing naive­ly hope­ful for human­i­ty, but my ani­mal body would nev­er for­get the hor­rif­ic sur­prise of 2016, so I thought I was pre­pared for what­ev­er would hap­pen. I thought the clean­ing was just my nor­mal win­ter­ing pat­tern, shoring up prover­bial nuts for the long, dark winter.

The old­er I get, the more win­ter­ing becomes a sea­son in its own right. And menopause win­ter­ing is some­thing alto­geth­er new. I delet­ed Facebook. I sleep nine or ten hours a night, eat enough soup, pota­toes, and bread to eas­i­ly dou­ble my dai­ly caloric input com­pared to sum­mer. Unless you’re in my inner cir­cle, texts and emails have gone large­ly ignored. Any time not work­ing is spent couch rot­ting, read­ing thrillers, or bing­ing Hulu. 

But this year it feels less like I am win­ter­ing and more like I am prep­ping for … some­thing. Something bad. It feels a lit­tle like Y2K, when every­one hoard­ed water and bat­ter­ies for the inevitable fall of technology. 

I think I have been prep­ping for the next four years. Prepping for the dis­man­tling of our gov­ern­ment and our social safe­ty nets. Prepping for a world where incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion rule the day, where prof­it mat­ters more than peo­ple, where the rich get rich­er and every­one else suffers. 

The January 20 pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion is on track to be the “most lucra­tive yet.” Donations to Trump’s inau­gur­al fund are not restrict­ed by cam­paign finance laws, so many self-serv­ing oli­garchs are using their dol­lars to cur­ry favor with the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Ford, Toyota, and Uber are all giv­ing at least a mil­lion dol­lars to gain influ­ence and access with Trump (and, let’s be hon­est, Elon). 

Trump has pub­licly stat­ed he would fast-track and approve any per­mit request made to the gov­ern­ment if the per­son or com­pa­ny fil­ing donates one bil­lion dol­lars to the U.S. Treasury. Basically, if you are rich enough, you can now bribe the US gov­ern­ment into doing your bid­ding with no regard to envi­ron­men­tal impact. 

Elon Musk will cer­tain­ly use that promise to expe­dite per­mits for SpaceX. Trump also made Musk the leader of the new­ly cre­at­ed DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a made-up office that won’t be a fed­er­al exec­u­tive depart­ment, so it doesn’t need Congress’ approval. Elon’s first order of busi­ness was to kill a bipar­ti­san bill that would fund research for pedi­atric can­cer. So, bil­lion­aires who want to go to Mars win while kids with leukemia die. 

It isn’t just that Harris lost the elec­tion. Liberty and jus­tice have lost. We have all lost. 

No won­der I’ve been so with­drawn. I’m prep­ping for a dark time, prep­ping to help those who will suf­fer most, prep­ping to say the right, hard things in a world that doesn’t want to hear them. 

It’s apt I write this at the sol­stice, a time of wait­ing for a return of the sun. It is also Advent sea­son, a time of wait­ing for a return of the son (who was, ahem, both an immi­grant and a refugee). Symbolically, this is a time of dark­ness, a time to pre­pare for brighter days. 

May we all pre­pare to show up as the best ver­sion of our­selves. I’m prep­ping to show up with as much com­pas­sion and kind­ness as I can.