I'm the President Now

Everyone says so

I wonder what would happen if we all started lying in the face of reality with absolute confidence — and then walked away. It sounds insane, but there are people who live their lives that way.

A year and change ago — which feels like 94 years ago — my neighbor did a project in her backyard. Her backyard is directly behind mine and her street sits higher — two things it will be helpful to know.

She’d come over with her gardener one day and and asked if we could talk in my backyard, explaining that she wanted to replace the fence along the back wall of her garden. The way it was described to me was that some vines over my studio (directly below her new fence) would be “trimmed and cleared away.” Her gardener would come over after the fence went up to remove anything that might land on my side.

No problem. It’s not like she needed my permission to replace her fence, it was nice of her to let me know. We exchanged numbers so they could tell me when they were going to do the work. It was all very friendly.

As it turned out, I was back east when her fence went up, so I wasn’t there and no one texted. It was not the greatest homecoming.

This is what was left on my roof.

This was a few months after the massive wildfires — so basically, they’d left an outrageous amount of kindling on my roof. As we learned, it doesn’t take much — strong winds, dry heat, and a spark. I was amazed anyone would be that reckless after what we’d lived through, but I thought it was possible my neighbor didn’t know the mess had been left behind.

I took pictures and and texted them to her, and then I called. I was friendly all things considered. Said I’d been away for the weekend, had come back to find this situation, and was worried about the fire hazard. Did she know when the gardener was planning to come by?

She said he was supposed to have cleared everything from my yard, and she’d text me his number. I admit I didn’t love this response. I would have preferred she called him herself and let me know the plan, but who has time to get worked up about “how things should be” anymore? Or “what people should do”?

You can make yourself sick that way.

The gardener — we’ll call him Fernando because that’s his name — picked up on the first ring. I said hi and reminded him we’d met when he was in my yard. He’d been terrific at the time. I explained about all the branches, which seemed unnecessary because he had to know, and asked when he was planning to come by.

He said, “Anything on your side is your responsibility.” I started laughing because I thought he was joking, but he didn’t join in. “Oh. Wait, are you not joking?” I asked after my laughter trailed off into awkward silence, and I realized it was not because we’d lost the signal.

“No, if it’s on your side, you take care of it,” he said.

“Umm, I think maybe you should call Gloria? I just spoke with her and she feels certain hauling the branches away was part of what you all talked about. I know that’s what we said the day you were here.”

“Text me some pictures,” he said. I texted him the pictures I’d taken. “That will be $450.”

“Just so I understand, you want me to pay $450 to haul away the branches that are in my yard because of a project Gloria did, when part of what she paid for was to have the branches removed?”

“Listen! You need to speak to me respectfully!” Fernando yelled.

“I’m sorry, what?” I said. I was starting to wonder if I was being punk’d. “I am being respectful, but there is enough kindling on my roof to start a wildfire, so I’m anxious, and very interested in having it removed as soon as possible. Telling me ‘If it’s on my side it’s my responsibility’ is like letting your dog crap on someone’s lawn and then telling them they should clean up the mess because no one wants to smell it, and someone is going to step in it.”

It’s kind of like … I dunno … starting a war no one asked for, and then when the Strait of Hormuz gets shut down, telling the other NATO countries you’ve been alienating and insulting for months it’s their responsibility to help secure it and get it open again.

Except in the case of the fence, at least they asked first, haha. Maybe I should have been happy Fernando didn’t tell me to “just TAKE it.”

“Grab that fence and cherish it.”

I got someone else to come clear the branches, and Gloria paid for it.

I would think it must feel horrific, shameful and deeply embarrassing to have started a war that has cost about $35 billion dollars at this point — and so much worse, the lives of 170 Iranian school girls and 13 U.S. service members — knowing Americans have spent an estimated $8.4 billion dollars more on gas because of this insanity — while you’ve cut more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention and gun violence is the number one reason children die in this country — millions of people can no longer afford healthcare and are struggling to feed their families — and all you’ve managed to do is close the Strait of Hormuz and throw the world into total economic disarray. Spain, France, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland have restricted base access and/or their airspace to U.S. military flights because they oppose the war in Iran. And now you star in Iranian LEGO animation as a guy named “Loser.”

I don’t think I’d be able to leave the Golden Oval.

But not this guy. He just gets up in front of the American people and says the war will be over in 2-3 weeks maybe somehow probably, says that talks are going really well (Iran refutes this claim), now we have regime change (except there is no regime change — the people who have replaced senior leaders are equally as hard-line or more militant, so…) it isn’t a war, but if it is a war we need to be fighting wars because America is large … So we can’t afford to pay for childcare. Because large countries can’t pay for childcare I guess, the states have to do that, shrug — and Medicaid and Medicare, too — and we in America don’t need the dumb Strait anyway, we are completely energy independent — even though we definitely are not. Also, NATO sucks, the Supreme Court sucks, birthright citizenship sucks and mail-in voting sucks even though he just mailed in his vote.

It’s so weird to me, because if I was going to lie to someone (let alone a whole country), I would have such a hard time looking them in the eye. I don’t think I could do it at this point in my life, it is so not the person I want to be. When I was younger, sometimes I would avoid telling the truth if it would hurt a person’s feelings, but I learned along the way that’s a form of disrespect. Obviously you want to say what’s in your heart with as much compassion as possible, but you do no one any favors by sparing them the truth out of pity or your own fear. If it’s a thing that doesn’t need to be said, that’s another story.

When my kids were little, I remember teaching them how powerful words can be — how they can make people feel so loved, safe, and understood, or they can make a person feel hurt and alone. I taught them the mindful communication concept often attributed to Rumi: Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates — Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Somehow my son thought one of the gates was, Is it funny? But that’s because he’s my kid. I happen to think that’s a legit gate.

Is it funny? No? Go away. Photo by Keith Hardy on Unsplash

I can’t imagine a worse job than getting up in front of the entire world and saying a bunch of things you know are absolutely not kind, true, necessary, or funny, but I guess this president is stuck — not that I believe he cares. I think he cares about losing face. A narcissist will never admit they’ve made a mistake, it’s in the handbook. They don’t say they’re sorry, either — if something goes wrong it’s always someone else’s fault.

Then there are the people who will bend a narrative to make it fit their worldview, no matter how far they have to bend it. I don’t know if you heard about the anesthesiologist who allegedly tried to throw his wife off a cliff in Maui for having an “emotional affair”? Swell guy. He has two older kids from a previous marriage and two young sons with his wife.

After a year of therapy spent working on their relationship, he took her on a birthday hike in Maui and brought syringes full of a heavy sedative. I guess it was that, or a bottle of water. When he allegedly failed to launch her off the cliff, he hit her on the head with a rock multiple times and was only stopped by two hikers who heard his wife screaming for help.

Then he called his nineteen-year-old son and told him to take care of the younger kids. He told his son he’d tried to kill his wife — the boy’s stepmom — but had not succeeded, and now he was going to take his own life. His son told him not to do that.

Somehow this man is pleading Not Guilty, and saying his wife attacked him, and he hit her in self-defense, and I don’t know what possible reason he’s going to come up with for bringing sedative-filled syringes on a hike — but I’m sure he’ll come up with something. He seems very sad in court, but it’s hard to say why. Is it because he’s probably spending the rest of his life in prison? Sad his children will know this is who their dad is?

He’s saying his wife grabbed him by the testicles and wouldn’t let go, and he hit her in self-defense — with those pesky pre-filled syringes in his pocket. Then he called his son and said he tried to kill her, but now he’s saying his son misunderstood that part.

His kid got up and testified as to what happened. Didn’t sound like there was any room for misunderstanding.

People in the comments were saying some wild and terrifying things. She provoked her husband by having an emotional affair. I see. So … it’s okay that he tried to murder her? Really trying to wrap my head around that, and wondering if the same rules apply if a woman tries to push her husband off a cliff for exchanging flirty texts with a coworker. Is that where we are? If people are sending too-familiar texts, have we decided as a society that the appropriate punishment is death by cliffside hike? Or is that just for wives?

Her husband could have seen the view, too, if only. Dannii Coughlan on Unsplash

Then there were comments about the poor son who was going to have to live with the guilt of having betrayed his father for the rest of his life. No. No he won’t. He did not betray his father. His father betrayed him by putting him in that horrendous position. His father betrayed the entire family by not managing his feelings in a normal, rational way. Get a divorce, man. I am truly starting to feel men are too emotional to be holding down important jobs.

Oops! Not all men.

There are a lot of people out there who love to throw stones, and are certainly not thinking about the three gates before they speak. I saw a video of a woman named Karen who has an instagram account for her company, Rapha Farms. They make Goat Milk Skincare but I started following the account because baby goats are pretty much the antidote for everything. She said recently someone had commented that her house didn’t look very clean. Y’all. She is running an entire business out of her kitchen, but she didn’t even say that.

It turns out her daughter died eight months ago. Her voice broke when she said it, and I was crying with her in 0.5 seconds. She didn’t offer this in an angry or defensive way, she shared it as a reminder that you never know what anyone is going through. Ever. It’s a safe bet almost everyone is going through something. She said when her kids were little and they wanted to go swimming or read a book, she always let the cleaning wait, and she never regretted it. I was sobbing by the time she was done.

People like Kristi Noem really ought to take a page out of that book, though I don’t hold out a lot of hope. She has caused so much pain and suffering for so many people. Countless people, and so many of them in the LGBTQ community. She has made life miserable and less safe for transgender kids everywhere. She is loudly and passionately opposed to same-sex marriage. And look what happens, friends. Her own husband must have been in pain all these years, in his own personal hell, living a life of secrets and feeling like he couldn’t share his feelings with his own wife, who claims to be this “traditional family values upstanding Christian woman” — meanwhile she is sending human beings to exist eighty-people-to-a-cage.

It doesn’t work that way, though I know anyone reading this already agrees with me. You can’t claim to be a good and decent person, and also hurt people, and lie and cheat and shoot puppies because you have no patience or empathy or decency. It’s always the people who are screaming the most loudly about how other people should live who have the most work to do on themselves. Always.

You can’t lie and be a mouthpiece for the most despicable human beings doing the most horrific things and think that’s somehow going to be okay. Bye, Pam Bondi. May the suffering of every Epstein victim you did not serve haunt you in your sleep for the rest of your life. Notice it’s the women being thrown out of the club first, to no one’s surprise. No one like me, anyway. Conservative women always think proximity will keep them safe, but the shark will always eat your face when you stop being useful.

I may have started this essay by asking what would happen if we all started stating preposterous things as if they were true, but there are plenty of people doing that these days. Even if there weren’t, there are those of us who grew up being told that our perception was faulty, and what we thought was happening was not happening — we were overly sensitive or dramatic. For people who relate, calling things what they are is grounding. Naming the monster takes the power away from it. It’s reassuring. It makes you feel sane and calm, even if the truth breaks your heart.

It’s okay if your heart breaks — it’s the hardened heart you have to fear. A hardened heart can lie with impunity. An open, loving heart is strong, it’s meant to break, and heal, and break again. If it wasn’t meant to do that, none of us would still be here, shining away, fighting for the world to be better than this.

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