Desecration

Once upon a Greek myth, there was a beautiful maiden, a young woman named Medusa. You might have heard of her. Medusa wanted nothing more than to spend her days as a priestess serving Athena - goddess of wisdom, war, and reason. Athena was a virgin, immune to romantic love, flowers, playlists, dudes or gods trying to slide into her DMs, and any other bullshit that might make her vulnerable to men. Her priestesses were supposed to be chaste, meaning they were supposed to adopt the 4B plan.

One day Poseidon saw the beautiful Medusa outside Athena’s temple. He decided, her body, my choice. He moved on her like a bitch, chased her into the temple and took what he wanted whether she liked it or not. 

A short while later, Athena arrived to find her temple desecrated. It’s unclear what the evidence was, but it didn’t end up mattering. Medusa told Athena what happened. She was beside herself, because what mortal stands a chance against a god? Surely Athena would understand and defend her - she would make Poseidon pay. But Poseidon said Medusa wanted it. He said, look at what she’s wearing, she was asking for it. 

Instead of fighting for Medusa, Athena cursed her. She didn’t even shed any white goddess tears while she did it. She turned Medusa’s beautiful hair into snakes. She turned her skin green. She made it so that if anyone looked at Medusa, they’d turn to stone. She doomed her to a life at the ends of the earth, alone, so no innocent human being would be turned to stone accidentally. Maybe Athena thought it was safer for her that way. To align herself with an angry, selfish god who controlled the waters everyone was swimming in. Or maybe she just didn’t feel like going to war over something that didn’t affect her, personally. 

Eventually, Athena helped Perseus kill Medusa by chopping off her head. Perhaps on some deep, uncomfortable level she felt guilty and just wanted to be rid of Medusa completely, so she wouldn’t have this nagging reminder of her own horrifying betrayal. Or maybe she just wanted Medusa’s head, so she could turn her opponents to stone at will. Some goddesses only care about what is expedient for them, after all.

It turned out Poseidon had impregnated Medusa during the assault, and because it happened in Florida, Medusa had to carry those babies to term. When Perseus cut off her head, out flew Pegasus, and the giant Chrysaor, symbolizing the power of creation, even in the face of destruction. Or symbolizing the fact that women will rise up no matter what the fuck you do to us. Sometimes we just need a week to process, recover, and come back stronger. We will heal, we will find a way, we will dig deep, we will scorch the earth, we will keep creating even when half the country says they hate us. 

Photo by deepigoyal on Unsplash

Once upon a Danish folktale, there was an emperor with a tremendous ego who wanted some new clothes, but not just any new clothes. He wanted the best clothes anyone had ever seen. He wanted people to come up to him and say, sir, those are the greatest clothes that have ever been created, even the engineers at MIT have never seen anything like them. 

He went to the best weavers in the land - Cohn, Miller, Putin & Musk and they put him in front of a mirror, because he loved his own reflection more than any other. They told him his golden comb-over was brilliant, his orange face like the deep tan of a Greek god. They fed his ego and backed him up no matter what he said. They told him they would weave him the most magnificent clothes ever worn. They had plans of their own after all, and he was their Trojan horse.

He rode down his golden escalator and out into the cities, and wherever he went, he told his people the crowds were the biggest crowds of any emperor or king, of anyone, anywhere, in all of time. His people cheered. He said women were women and men were men and children were leaving for school as boys and coming home as girls, and he was going to stop it. He said Hannibal Lecter was crossing the border and eating citizens with fava beans and a nice chianti and he would fix that. He said people who had come to this country legally were eating cats and dogs, and as a result schools were shut down and people stayed home in fear, but he didn’t care. He said women did not deserve the same rights as men, and each state should decide how many rights to give their women, because that is what everyone wanted. He said the blood of the country was being poisoned by outsiders. 

Meanwhile, Cohn, Miller, Putin & Musk were back at Heritage Headquarters getting things ready. Vance was on alert, so was Thiel. When the emperor returned for his new, magnificent wardrobe, they told him to undress to his skivvies so they could show him what they’d made. They let him know they’d used threads that only the best people could see, they’d be invisible to anyone with woke eyes, but the righteous would see the beauty, the craftsmanship, the attention to detail. The emperor stood on the fitting stand and they dressed him carefully, oo-ing and ahh-ing. Vance did not get up off the couch, he murmured his enthusiasm and approval from across the room. The emperor looked magnificent. When he turned to face the mirror, he was horrified to find he could not see clothing. Everyone around him spoke glowingly of the work, the fit, the way the fabric hung just so. 

The emperor stood taller. He would not admit he could not see what they saw. After all, if they weren’t seeing his Big Mac belly hanging over his tighty-whities, he wasn’t going to feel embarrassed by it. Surely he was just tired. He’d been forgetting things lately, like what state he was in, or what point he was trying to make. He’d covered for it, said he was doing “the weave” and his people believed him. Only a stable genius could pull that off. His supporters never wavered, anyway. No matter what he said or did, they were with him. He could walk out on Fifth Avenue in his underwear and they’d say he was just joking around. He had nothing to fear. And he was right. The people with things to fear were the people who could see the emperor had no clothes.

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

Once upon a Grimm fairytale, there was a beautiful, openhearted, powerful fairy named Maleficent. She lived in the Moors, a magical forest that bordered a human kingdom. One day, a young Scotsman named Stefan came traipsing through the forest, enamored of all the lush green he saw around him - the waterfalls, and sounds of the wind through the leaves of the trees. “This is pure tidy,” he said softly to himself, because that is a thing Scottish people say according to Google. Maleficent saw him and thought he was giving 90s Leo DiCaprio, plus that accent. She flew closer, hovering over him. He looked up and was amazed by her. She was smart and funny, kind and curious, and she could fly! 

They fell in love. They shared secrets and laughs and dreams about the future, but they both knew humans and fairies can’t live in the real world together. No one would understand, and eventually, the humans would come for Maleficent. Then they’d discover the Moors and chop down the trees for wood and shit all over everything. So they kept their love a secret, and eventually Stefan came to the forest less and less. He’d already been with Maleficent, and like so many dudes, once he’d been there he took it for granted. He stopped seeing how unbelievable she was. How magical and strong and special. Maleficent was heartbroken, but she’d known they were doomed from the beginning. She’d just allowed herself to hope Stefan might be different.

One day, King Henry - the guy who ruled the kingdom next to the Moors - decided he wanted the magical forest for himself. He came with his army and his horses and his arrows and spears and tried to take what he wanted whether the forest creatures liked it or not. Maleficent wasn’t going to stand by and watch that happen, so she fought, and she fought hard. She was so magnificent in her loyalty to her family and her friends and all the forest creatures she’d grown up with, she mortally wounded King Henry, and his army retreated.

From his bed, as he lay dying, he sent word that anyone who killed Maleficent could marry his daughter and rule the kingdom. Stefan had long since turned into a douchebag. He was the guy who’d take a girl out and then ghost her. He’d become arrogant in his young adult years - after all, a fairy had wanted to give herself to him, so any girl was lucky for his time. And that was just puppy love he and Maleficent had, anyway. Surely she couldn’t have taken it seriously, and if she had, well, there was nothing he could do about that. She wasn’t even human, anyway. She had wings, it would be like killing a bird. He was tired of being a peasant, and the king’s daughter was hot. He headed to the forest with a plan.

Maleficent was amazed when she saw Stefan. Her heart raced, her wings fluttered. She had missed him so much. He told her he missed her, too. He thought about her every day. It had devastated him not to see her. She fell into his arms. He drugged her, and took what he wanted like Andrew and Brock and Dominique did, along with 72 other men - but found he could not kill her. Instead, he cut off her wings - her source of magic and power, or so he believed. He returned to the castle, presented the wings to the king, and married the princess, Leila. Eventually King Stefan and Queen Leila had a daughter named Aurora - otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty - and the rest is fairytale history. 

Except it really isn’t, because in Sleeping Beauty you never know why Maleficent is so angry. You’re told it’s because she wasn’t invited to the christening of Aurora, and she’s pissed at the King and Queen because of such a tiny oversight. She’s presented as a petty, vindictive creature, not a fairy who was deeply betrayed, assaulted, and maimed by the King. And even after all the shit he put her through, ultimately Maleficent is unable to harm Aurora. In fact, she realizes she’s developed maternal love for the girl and breaks her own curse by kissing Aurora on the forehead. Because women have to stick together for fuck’s sake. And because she has a fucking heart. 

Photo by Gary Ellis on Unsplash

Once upon an American nightmare, more than half the public decided to vote for a man whose naked greed was on display for anyone to see, if only they'd wanted to. A man who is already threatening to deport the abuelas, and their whole families along with them if they don’t want to be separated. He’s hired a man to do his bidding, who is, in fact, one of the authors of Project 2025, and one of the more soulless creatures I’ve ever seen, Tom Homan.

He’s announced that he will dismantle the Department of Education, and if you think it will be hard for him to see that through you are correct, but it will not be hard for him to defund it, thus making it extremely difficult for it to function. This is what you get when you vote for someone without ethics, but the man buried the mother of three of his five children on his golf course for the tax break, so this can’t be a surprise. Parents who voted for him are now asking what this means for student loans, Pell grants, grants to help cover housing and books, and also what about IEPs and 504s? I know this because I’m on parent pages for kids who are in college. These are questions it would have been good to ask before they voted for him.

His announcements are coming fast and furiously. He is planning to defund schools that teach critical race theory, and I hope it goes without saying that you can’t teach true American history if you try to remove the impact of taking this land from the Native Americans because we decided it was “Manifest Destiny ordained by God” which is almost funny considering the folks who fled here did it to liberate themselves from religious persecution. And you can’t teach actual American history without including the fact that we built this land on the backs of slaves. We fought the entire Civil War as a result, so not sure how you can reframe that, but I have no doubt these dudes have ideas - 920 pages of them.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Tom Homan is a white supremacist, and so is Stephen Miller, who, it seems, is going to be Deputy Chief of Staff on policy. Stephen Miller also has serious ties to Project 2025. So good times, way to go if you voted for this. There are still Confederate flags flying in many states. If you think that has no effect on the generations of people who have come after, I’m not sure what to say, but if you’re on the side of keeping Confederate statues and flags, but not teaching about slavery, I hope you pray to whatever god you believe in. Or borrow someone else’s.

He’s going to defund schools that teach inclusion, because why would we want our children to be open-minded and openhearted, to have compassion for people who feel differently than they do, or think differently, or love differently, or pray differently, or don’t pray at all. No, instead he wants schools to teach “The American Way of Life” which means a man and a woman and kids in a house.

He’s in favor of displaying the 10 Commandments in public schools even though, news flash, not everyone in America is Christian, and we have this little thing known as the separation of church and state - along with freedom of religion, and also the 1st Amendment. He doesn’t want schools to talk about homes with two moms or two dads, or any of that “gender ideology,” and he wants to create a new credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace “The American Way of Life.” So if you voted for him, am I to understand you have no queer friends? Or do you just not care about their safety?

And women - let me say, if Trump has to step down due to dementia (likely in my view) or any other health concerns, and we end up with a Vance presidency, you can count on a national abortion ban. You might be able to count on it, anyway. So if you have teenage daughters, maybe think about the copper IUD. They last ten years.

I am coming out of my grief fog. I think it’s being burned off by the flames of rage and sadness that so many people doomed us to such a terrible story. Athenas betrayed Medusas everywhere. The emperor is coming with his team of commanders. But you know who else is on the way? An army of Maleficents. You can cut off our wings and break our hearts and fling your arrows, but we don’t stay down. We don’t get the luxury of broken-heartedness for long in this world. I don’t know how this story ends. But I know those of us who have been heartsick are going to stand up for each other. We’re going to regroup and re-commit to doing everything we can to keep each other safe. There’s no Prince Charming coming. There’s no knight in shining armor on the way. There never was. We have to save ourselves. I sure hope that’s how this story ends, and begins again.

Friends, I wont be here Friday to meet you in real time for the podcast. My son is turning 18 on Thursday, so I am going to drive 6 hours to be with him, and six hours back on Friday :) Otherwise it would have been the first birthday of his when I didn’t get to be with him, and this is not the moment for that. And thankfully he’s happy for me to come. I think we all need to grasp the joy wherever we can find it right now, hug the people we love a little longer and a little tighter, and remember we have each other. I am recording the podcast before I go, and it will go out Saturday as usual. Love to all. I’ll meet you in the comments section which is one of my favorite places anywhere - because you’re amazing, thank you.