Defensive Driving

I have a big desk in my studio where I used to write, but most days now I sit on my couch in the den at the front of the house. I don’t know why or what changed — it might be that I set it up when my house was full of my own teenage kids and also their friends, so I’d have somewhere quiet to go if I needed it. Now I like to write near the bay window where the sun streams in and hummingbirds hover in midair frequently — as if that isn’t a miraculous and outrageous thing for them to do.

These days, there’s just one of my kids in the house and she’s sixteen, and I see the back of her walking out the door with my car keys most of the time. I run to get a kiss and hug and ask questions like, “Do you have a sweater?” As if that might keep her safe from harm, and me, too. Then I watch her location move around on my phone to make sure she gets where she’s going in one piece.

I had to add her as a driver to my car insurance policy recently, so now both kids are on it. I was Googling different discounts to see if there was any way to save, and saw that if they take defensive driving courses it’s 15% less annually to cover them. I texted my son about it. He’s in his second year of college and also works, and I didn’t want to put too much on his plate, but he was ready to take a course anytime. I said maybe it would be fun, and he said he doubted that, but not to worry, he’d definitely do it.

In my head, I thought a defensive driving course would be an in-person course you took with a driving instructor, like when you first learned to drive — only this time it would be more advanced. Like you’d go on the freeways and if someone tailgated you or a truck started veering into your lane — or a pickup truck was in front of you two car-lengths away and a pipe came loose and started flying toward your window Final Destination-style — the instructor would yell, “THINK FAST!”

And then give you feedback or tips based on what you did.

WATCH OUT! Photo by Orkun Azap on Unsplash

My son said he was pretty sure it was an online course, though, and sadly he was right. I think we can agree my idea is much better. Unhinged, yes, but at least it would be fun.

Fun still matters. Hummingbirds, too. People whose locations you watch on your phone, who carry your entire heart with them wherever they go on the map. Friends you go to bat for, who also have your back.

I was out with some of those friends last night, and we were talking about this feeling like there’s a tear in the space-time continuum and we are straddling whatever the world normally is — and Hades.

For example, I opened instagram a few days ago and saw Sara Bareilles discover decrepit carcasses in a pillar of her house, and dig them out with a shovel into a PETCO paper bag — calmly. Just as I was yelling, “At least get gloves!” she was like, “I should at least get gloves,” so I think we had a Dionne Warwick Psychic Friends moment. As she was shoveling she said, “I watch ‘Alone’ and you have to be tough.” She said it unironically, and I nodded seriously. You do have to be tough these days.

I think she should star on CSI, or get her own spin-off — or head to Congress with her shovel. I’d meet her there in a hot second, I think we could get rid of some decrepit carcasses together.

A rip in the space-time continuum would also explain the video I saw of Melania at some presser in the “East Room” — since her husband demolished the East Wing — with a humanoid named Plato (no doubt rolling in his grave), suggesting everyone should just homeschool their kids, and let robots teach them about critical thinking and “independent reasoning abilities.” Yes! Fantastic idea. Why pay teachers more, or invest in education or the arts or free school lunches or universal healthcare?

Just keep the kids at home and let a robot teach them about reading, writing, arithmetic, classic literature (the stuff that isn’t banned, of course), history (the kind that isn’t upsetting for white children), and also life. Who cares about empathy or having a soul? Who cares about learning to work things out with other human beings? The AI company can program the robot with an appropriately patriotic and decidedly un-woke curriculum, and you’ll have plenty of time to churn butter while your husband does the voting, ladies! What could go wrong?

Funny thing, naming it Plato. It’s true Plato was distrustful of democracy, so I see why they thought they were doing something. Plato believed democracy was vulnerable and could be toppled by the uprising of unchecked passionate group-think — and looking around right now, I’d have to agree. I mean, we had guardrails in place to protect us, but I guess if the group-think is strong enough and the spines of senators are weak enough, billionaires can enter the building disguised as Republicans and that’s how we find ourselves in The In-Between.

Not Plato. Imagine a longer beard. Shino Nakamura on Unsplash

Maybe if any of these people had read Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Odyssey — or even Project 2025 — they would have seen it coming, but whatever. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. They don’t believe in education or the arts or even souls, apparently, which is funny for people pretending to be Christian — but who has time to pay attention to details anymore?

Plato distrusted democracy after his teacher, Socrates was imprisoned, put on trial and sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth” of Athens and teaching them to question authority. I must add a footnote here and say Socrates learned his oratory skills from the scant-mentioned Aspasia of Miletus, partner to Pericles.

Pretty sure we all learned about Socrates and Plato … but not Aspasia. Because why teach children about important women in history? Then they might know women are intelligent, important, strong, interesting, just as capable of being in leadership positions, more than baby-making machines, not here to shrink themselves, et cetera and so on.

I think we can feel sure Aspasia won’t make it into the AI Plato curriculum, since she didn’t even make it into ours. And still, these toxic men (and the women who love them) don’t want women — and so many other Americans — to vote or have a voice. They are anti-diversity, anti-equity and anti-inclusion. I spelled it out that way in case anyone wants to ponder how abhorrent it is to admit to any one of those stances. Imagine proudly stating you are against inclusion. Let me please not sit next to you at a wedding, or anywhere.

This president and his administration went out of their way to wipe women, BIPOC, and the LGBTQ community from government websites celebrating their achievements because that’s too WOKE, boohoo. How fragile do you have to be to run code trying to wipe all important people from the history books if they aren’t straight, white men? As if we ever have had diversity, equity or inclusion as a thing we could count on.

This same breed of men (and some women) show up in our comments sections. They tell Black writers not to make it about race. They tell women they hate feminists, and writing about women’s issues is divisive.

I wrote about growing up as a girl and then a woman in this world recently, and a man in my comments asked me to write about some good men next time, instead of all the “deviants” I’d mentioned. That was his response. Sir. When there are tons of men demeaning, harassing and/or assaulting girls and women all the time, everywhere, that is not deviance — they are the norm. It’s children, too, not just girls, but I was speaking to my own experience. These men are average. They are common. Deviance happens with the men who are not like that, sad to say — and you failed to be one of them. You might not be predatory or violent (I have no idea about that), but you are no ally. Good men don’t leave comments like that, and they don’t need to be coddled.

Back to Plato — he thought society should be ruled by Philosopher Kings (Our King’s philosophy: “Whatever is Good for Me and the Rest of You Can GFY!”) and he believed certain people were better suited to certain jobs, and therefore belonged in different social classes: Guardians (rulers/philosophers), Auxiliaries (soldiers/warriors), and Producers (farmers/artisans).

How would children be sorted into the correct category, you might be wondering? The education system! Bwahahaha. Kids would go to school and they’d all receive the same education and testing, and the Guardians (philosophers, teachers) would sort them! Kind of like The Sorting Hat meets The Hunger Games which feels like where we are heading if you throw in The Handmaid’s Tale, too.

Grab your magic wand, your bow-and-arrow and your cake knife, friends — the road ahead looks gnarly. See? Maybe you can learn defensive driving online.

If they weren’t smart enough to be rulers (guardians, philosophers), or courageous enough to be auxiliaries (soldiers), they’d become producers (workers, farmers). But I guess the AI humanoid can do the sorting now, assuming MAGA parents continue to be “all in” on whatever King Conman wants to do next. I truly feel sorry for historians of the future, assuming we can pull ourselves out of this tailspin and find our way to a better timeline. How would you ever make sense of this insanity?

“...On January 6th, 2021, for the first time in American history, there was no peaceful transfer of power. Instead, supporters of the former president, a man who refused to accept the results of a free and fair election, attacked the Capitol…”

You realize, of course, these people would sell all of our souls — if they believed in souls — to the highest bidder. That’s not a question. It’s all about money and power.

It’s so weird to me how this president’s supporters will scream about Nancy Pelosi’s net worth and ask how it’s possible when senators only make so much money — but somehow they are totally mum about billions of dollars when the president and his family are cashing in at the expense of the American people.

Why are they not bothered that the president and his family have made billions off crypto currency? Or that the president has not divested from his business dealings? Or that he issues pardons to people who donate to his ventures? It’s all a matter of public record.

Now this president and his family are putting our military at risk as if our military is just another asset they can use to do their personal business. Why not use the military, I guess. They treat the DOJ like their personal law firm.

Even Republicans in Congress are frustrated because they can’t get straight answers about why we’re in Iran, what the goals are, what the timeline is, any of it. Half the time the administration pretends it isn’t a war so they can get around the fact that the president did not have congressional approval or public support (aka he violated the Constitution again). And of course, what are they supposed to say? We’re there so Jared Kushner can make a few more billion dollars? So his partners at Affinity are happy?

I’ll never get the appeal, or what his supporters are getting out of it. Do they just like hearing him bluster about men being men, and “no men on women’s sports’ teams”? When he says his dumb word salad thing about “liberals wanting transgender for everyone” do they think that’s true and that it means something?

Do they believe the lie that “immigrants are stealing their jobs” — and not realize it’s billionaires who are doing that, through AI and a total lack of empathy and ethics — and that it will continue to get worse? Do they want women back in the kitchen? I guess it is the culture wars stuff, because that’s all they’re getting. AI videos of the president shitting on liberals. Seems like they’re pissed about the price of gas, though. Everyone has their hard line.

As soon as millionaires and billionaires started making decisions for the rest of us, we were screwed, and it didn’t and doesn’t matter which side of the aisle they’re on. We need to get dark money out of our government. We need to overturn Citizens United. We need to rethink the requirements for members of Congress and federal officials so they have to disclose all their investments. If you want to be a public servant, you have to be willing to be financially transparent. If you don’t like that, do something else.

“There’s no loyalty amongst thieves” as the saying goes, and that’s the way to think about the people in power. They’re playing a different game. When we’re talking about the president and his family, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel — they aren’t thinking about the country, they’re thinking globally — the global market. The deals to be made. This president has no loyalty to America or Americans or anyone.

He doesn’t care. It’s just another grift, but dang is it a good one. All he ever wanted was to play with the big boys, and 77 million people decided to give him the keys to this castle. In his mind, it’s all leverage, and it’s all for him. The East Wing? He’ll knock it down if he wants to, it’s his now, and the Kennedy Center, too. He’ll slap his name in tacky gold letters anywhere he pleases.

The midterms? Yeah, he’s probably concerned. He doesn’t want to have a bloodbath in the streets, that wouldn’t be good for business, but he certainly doesn’t want to lose control of this cash cow, either. I have no doubt he’ll use any and every method available to him to retain power. I don’t know what they’ll do. Almost every special election is going wildly blue, even in deeply red districts. Even in Florida, in the district that includes the garish Mar-a-Lago where a certain octogenarian spends most of his time. Sorry, sucker. A Democrat won, and that Democrat is a woman. Two things you hate, pass the ketchup!

The blue flipping and winning is no fluke, that’s a rebuke. It also means we are still having free and fair elections for now. What happens next? Maybe we’ll finally march on Washington. I think we should have done that the day Musk entered the Treasury with a kid named Big Balls and his frat-boy friends, because that was the first sign we were totally off the rails. It was even more bizarre that our representatives told us about it on instagram lives from their couches at home because it happened on a Friday evening. That was a five-alarm fire and the people we sent to Washington to represent us could not be bothered to turn around immediately and ask as many of us as possible to join them. We would have. We wanted direction, fire, leadership.

Now we know we have to lead ourselves. We have to “be the change we want to see.” I know a march on Washington is hard. Where do we sleep at night? How do we get there? How do we pay the bills if we’re in Washington and not at work? Who is watching the kids and walking the dog? Who is paying for this trip? How long are we staying? Not everyone can go, but I bet a lot of people could and would. If this war in Iran isn’t stopped, it’s likely going to take care of itself, because no one will be able to afford gas or food or groceries or anything. Food arrives at grocery stores via trucks, and some of the time it gets to the truck after it’s been on a boat.

I’m thinking we should get to D.C. before they create an army of AI robots who shoot us dead and teach our children we were enemies of the state. Maybe we can all start walking there if things get nuts, like the monks did. Maybe people will feed us along the way.

Maybe Sara Bareilles will come with her shovel, and also sing. Stranger things have occurred. I’ve given up predicting, I’m just trying to stay calm, trying to fight back, trying to help every way I can, trying to be kind, trying to give people slack because everyone I know is struggling at least some of the time.

If you can, get out there tomorrow. People saying the protests don’t do anything? They don’t do anything as far as changing policy, that’s true. I don’t believe the majority of people attending protests stop there, and sit on their hands until the next one. Protests are another tool in the toolbox, and they’re good for morale. They make all of us feel less alone. They tell the rest of the world that millions of Americans are not okay with what’s happening here. They help organizers build email lists which may come in very handy one day soon. They show young people that there are adults in the room who don’t want the world to be like this. They are not the be-all end-all, no one action is. But they show that you care, and if good people stop caring, then we’re doomed.

Defensive driving is about predicting hazards. Developing techniques to stay safe regardless of what other drivers do. It’s about learning how to minimize risks and pay attention to the weather so you aren’t caught unprepared. It’s about knowing when to pull to the side of the road because you need a rest. It’s probably about knowing who to call when you need help. I bet we’re all better at it by now than we realize. See you in the streets, friends. Please stay safe. Take a sweater. I’d watch your location on my map to make sure you got where you wanted to go any day.

Don’t give up.

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