This Is A Doom Post

There are bluebirds in our apple tree this morning and I am sad for them. Sad for the tree, too. The tree is a crabapple tree, technically. It’s an old tree, bursting with fruit. The tree doesn’t know who won or lost an election or what an election is. The birds don’t know, either, and I’m happy they get to have that. We also haven’t had meaningful, measurable rain in five, six weeks now. We’ve wildfires popping up just a few miles away. It’s November 6th and will be 80 degrees today. The tree and the birds must know they’re thirsty. They will know if fire comes for them.

I’m sure the rain will come, and I’m hopeful we will be untouched by fire, but I also know the lack of rain will dry us out more often, just as I know it’ll flood more often, and I know the fires will come more often, and the tornadoes, too. And you like to hope that someone in charge has a plan, that they believe in this reality going on around us, that they share in the same reality we do. But we’re not there anymore. We lost that yesterday. We lost a lot yesterday. (Perhaps chief among them the illusion that we shared one country, or even one collective reality.) I don’t know why or how we lost it, precisely. We can unpack it however we want to — the mainstream media sanewashed the man; the woman was a woman and men would rather choose to control women than vote for them; don’t forget the racism, can’t forget the racism; the woman ran the wrong campaign and cozied up to the GOP and didn’t say enough about Gaza and global warming; it was the economy, stupid; it’s Russia; it’s disinformation and misinformation and Musk and RFK and the price of milk and the cost of rent and something about the border and something about COVID and —

What I know is that I don’t know. What I know is the things I thought I knew, or that I believed were true, really aren’t, and that once more I exist in need of a word, perhaps a German one, that expresses both the act of being shocked and a total lack of shock at the exact same time.

I knew he could win. I half-expected it. And yet all parts of me strained against the illogic of it, the sheer incredulity of the possibility of his win. People looked at his first four years, at COVID, at January 6th, at all his promises, his crimes, at all his people, at all the ones who told us he was a fascist, a dictator, an anti-democratic nightmare, and they said, “Yeah, him again, let’s fucking go.” And they pressed the self-destruct button, using the system of democracy to attempt to undo the system of democracy.

People chose this. In considerable number. This, grotesquely, is democracy in action. Though a democracy mauled into a cruder shape by disinformation.

This is a doom post. I don’t want it to be (and I’m sorry for it) but I also don’t want to be flippant or twee. I don’t want to hashtag-resist you into trying to have hope on a dark day. Perhaps some dark days must simply be dark and we must be in that darkness. Maybe we need to let people have their hopelessness today. Let them have their doom. Do not scold. Give them no stirring platitudes nor poetry of resistance. Just let people sit and ruminate however they must on the hard mad road ahead.

Because that road ahead is hard, and it will be maddening. We’re in some very serious trouble. The climate, the environment, those bluebirds and that tree, are at stake here. Our friends — especially transgender folks, cisgender women, really anybody who isn’t a straight white Christian dude with money — is going to be worse for wear at some point soon, even if they voted for him. It’ll be up to us to help them, to protect our friends, even when we don’t know how, even when we may need that protection ourselves.

Our democracy is in danger — all the lights on the console are blinking red, and the klaxons are deafening. Is there a deportation force coming? Are we really going to ban vaccines? Are we going to put Musk and RFK Jr. in charge of important levers and buttons? How deeply will we cement a corroded, cruel SCOTUS majority and for how long, and will we even be able to turn the tables on that again? I don’t know. It really isn’t good. A lot was on the line yesterday and while I like to think we, as the at-this-point-cringey-cliche goes, left it all on the field. The stakes were high and we lost. And there may be a lot of suffering in the wake of that.

This isn’t a post with a plan, this isn’t a pep talk, this isn’t about hope. I’m wallowing in the doom for a moment. Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that, or telling you about it. But I wanted to say it, to be true to where my head and my heart are at. I want it to be okay to feel shitty. To not force joy. I don’t want some artifice of hope. To be a lantern in this tunnel right now feels false. I feel like I need to be in the darkness here, to be one with it, to become part of this new, lightless reality. I’ll get there. I’ll get back to a better place. But right now I want to realize how much trouble we’re in before I tell you how we deal with it. Maybe the worry and the fear will motivate me. I don’t know. I’m sitting with it. I’m considering the trouble, the doom, the darkness. I’m thinking about the bluebirds and the crabapple tree. And I’m hoping somewhere in the darkness I find a way forward.

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