Saturday I went to a No Kings event with one of my closest friends. She’s more my sister than my friend, we’ve been making good trouble together since the 80s. I am so fortunate to have a few people in my life I’ve known since childhood, or maybe it isn’t good fortune, maybe it’s that I hate goodbyes and hold on hard to the people I love. I’m a lifer unless you’re an asshat.
It’s such a wonderful thing to have people who can say, “Remember that time…?” And then mention a thing that happened back in elementary school or high school or college, or a night with details we shall take to our graves, a person someone dated or married or divorced, or an update about someone we knew back in the day — who just got spotted on a dating app.
That is one of the wonderful things about long term friendships — you do not have to be the sole keeper of your memories. A lot of your memories overlap with other people’s past experiences, they’re intermingled and intertwined, but so are all of our histories, all of our present-day circumstances, and all of our futures, whether we know each other or not. Our fates are tied.
This is a reality that was driven home to millions of people Saturday, in this country and around the world. We’re all connected, like it or not. Even if we don’t like it, there’s no way around it — we have to find a way through this, together.
I’m not sure what’s happening with the people who are refusing to recognize that there are choices, but they’re limited - you can be a rat bastard (a phrase my Dad used to use for people who weren’t kind) or a good neighbor — either way, you’re gonna die, and you don’t take anything with you. People remember how you made them feel, though.
I dunno about you, but I move away from people who aren’t kind. I don’t want to spend time with anyone who thinks they know how other people should live, or who uses language I find abhorrent to describe people who look, love, speak, pray (or don’t pray), differently than they do, or anyone who thinks it’s okay for some people to be treated without empathy or dignity or decency. I don’t want to have lunch with a person who thinks it’s okay for other people’s children to be zip-tied and thrown into the back of a U-haul, as long as it isn’t their child, because it’s my belief that there’s no such thing as other people’s children.
I don’t think it’s an “edgy joke” to say you “love Hitler” or that “rape is epic” or to call Black people names I will not repeat here. I don’t think a person who is somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-five years old can be called a “kid” and excused for saying things this despicable, and I think it’s insulting, embarrassing and far below the level of integrity I expect in a vice president to defend these people and call them “promising leaders.”
After Saturday’s record-breaking turnout with more than 8 million people here in this country making it clear they are not okay with the policies of this White House — along with people from other countries who joined in solidarity — the POTUS and the VP took it upon themselves to post more AI garbage on Truth Social and BlueSky, respectively. The president posted a video featuring him — wearing a crown and manning a fighter jet (King BoneSpurs McDraftDodger I guess) dropping feces on protesting American citizens — with a special shoutout to Harry Sisson who got “covered” first. How classy and presidential.
The VP’s contribution was a video featuring the president sitting on a throne wearing a crown, pulling out a sword — and then they cut to the footage of Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall in tribute to George Floyd (performative, embarrassing af Kente cloth notwithstanding), as if they were kneeling down to King Trump. No one seems to be mentioning the George Floyd part, and how despicable it is to be using that footage in a gross AI video (it’s the second of the videos linked in the article above). There really is no bottom for these people.
Funny thing, I saw the last speech President Reagan gave back in 1989 because Jimmy Kimmel posted it. I’m sure I saw it at the time. I was eighteen then, and no fan of a president who would not say the word “AIDS” for years while so many young men died. But watching the speech today, I find it amazing that his last words to the American people were about our immigrant community. It is worth watching if you haven’t seen it for thirty-some-odd years. It’s worth watching if you have.
Then I saw the speech President George W. Bush gave the morning after President Barack Obama won the election. He congratulated President-elect Obama, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden on their “impressive victory” and promised his administration’s help in every way so he could guarantee a smooth and peaceful transition of power. Makes one think of January 6th.
I didn’t agree with President Reagan or either of the presidents Bush on policy, but these were adults who did not defile the Oval Office with their presence, and did not fancy themselves kings. They did not violate the Constitution. They did not hate Democrats. They did not shut down the government and advise Republican senators to refuse to negotiate with their Democrat colleagues.
I miss the days of John McCain telling people in his audience that he was not going to allow them to call President Obama’s decency or citizenship into question, back when President Obama was his opponent.
I wish Republicans missed those days, too. I cannot for the life of me fathom why they are okay with the quality of people representing the GOP now. A president posting AI videos of himself dumping shit on American citizens? Smh.
I don’t think the two-party system is working here, but we can’t even have that conversation right now. The only conversation we can have is the one that is about who we want to be as a country. Millions of people answered that question on Saturday, and this administration didn’t like the answer. They’ve forgotten they work for us, too, and they’re supposed to be listening, not calling names like schoolyard bullies. What kind of leadership is that?
This week’s podcast is not for little ears because I talked about Brainwaves — a film I saw when I was eleven, that I would find disturbing today. I laughed in the comments with some of y’all who also saw JAWS way too young (hi, Kate!), and Rosemary’s Baby (hi, Kendall!) and Manhattan (hi, Wendy!) - and generally commiserated with all my Gen X friends whose parents believed things that were too scary or grown-up for us to understand as children would somehow “go over our heads” instead of directly into them. Not so much!
Maybe in some strange way it was good preparation for this very moment, when so many things are appalling and insane. We’re used to that. We’re grown now. We know what gaslighting is, and we know what boundaries are, too. It doesn’t make any of this easy, but at least we have each other and we can talk about it, we can laugh about it or cry about it or sit on the couch and stare into the middle distance until someone sends a meme or a text that reminds us people are freaking excellent and funny and wise.
We don’t have to try to process these things alone. We have each other. Maybe no one “had us” when we were little (except for Mr. Rogers, obviously), but we have each other, now.
We don’t need kings, but we do need to remember we are all neighbors. Sending you a lot of love.
