Strait Talk
If you’re Gen X, you probably remember Felix Unger and The Odd Couple episode about what happens when you assume. “You make an ass out of you and me.” This is seared into my brain for all eternity:
ass/u/me
Nonetheless, I’m going to guess that those of us who grew up with a certain kind of chaos, violence and uncertainty are feeling pretty exhausted right now. If you were the kind of kid who learned to scan the environment, to read the signs so you could see the danger coming and ward it off, duck-and-cover, or cajole it away, what we’ve been going through over the last few days in this country — and globally — feels all too familiar.
There are few things worse as a child than feeling powerless and knowing you’re not safe. There’s nowhere you can go and nothing you can do. You don’t have the means to get yourself out of the situation you’re in — someone else is calling the shots, and no matter what you do or say, or how hard you try, they can destroy you. They can hurt you physically and emotionally. They can obliterate everything you care about.
We are not children anymore. This awful man is not our mom or dad, but 77 million people gave him the keys to the car, and we’re all buckled into this vehicle. If he drives us off a cliff — and he could — there isn’t a lot we can do about it if the people who are supposed to stop him refuse to act. So far they are refusing to act.
It is the year 2026. Okay, so no flying cars like the Jetsons, but we just had people on the far side of the moon, further from earth than anyone has ever been. It is shameful and pathetic that we are still bombing/shooting/killing people to get what we want like a bunch of Neanderthals. Maybe we aren’t using clubs, but is this our idea of evolution — bigger, more technologically-advanced weapons that can kill more people? What an epic failure.
The United States spends more on its military than the next 9 countries combined. We’re a freaking war machine. Why don’t we have a Department of Diplomacy instead of a Department of Defense — let alone a Department of War?
Why would we choose to head further in the wrong direction, led by the wrong people, with all the wrong ideas? A bunch of billionaires in red hats pretending to be Republicans, surrounded by white Christian nationalists spewing wildly misogynistic, racist, bigoted bro-speak, led by an adulterous friend-to-pedophiles and adjudicated-rapist-convicted-felon, suffering from dementia who thinks he’s a king. Fantastic.
I don’t want to go off a cliff with a crazy mad lunatic, thanks! Doesn’t sound fun to me.
I don’t want robots thinking for me, and I don’t want to give up farmland we need to build huge AI data centers — which are using more water (large AI data centers use roughly 5 million gallons of water PER DAY) — and prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels. At least 17 fossil fuel generators that were scheduled to close are delayed or at risk of delay, and there are 20 new fossil fuel projects being planned.
Guess who benefits? I think you know. The billionaires who own the oil companies, and the billionaires who own the AI companies. Guess who suffers first? I think you know. Low-income communities across the country.
When people from these communities start talking about their kids who suddenly have asthma and other respiratory problems, or they start showing up with disproportionate numbers of cancer cases, or they can’t sleep at night because the hum from these data centers is so loud or the light is so bright … no one cares and no one listens until it’s too late and too many children have died. We’ve seen this film before. Do we have to wait for Julia Roberts to win another Oscar before people care…again?
I know a lot of you love your ChatGPT and your Claude, but please, for the love of your kids, or your friends’ kids, please educate yourself about what you are doing. We need to pull it together. I don’t expect other people to feel the way I do about everything, but I do expect people to face reality when it’s shoved right up in their faces.
I’m tired and sad and utterly sick of this ride. I wish there was a pull cord like they used to have on the public buses I rode in New York City as a kid. It was this plastic-coated wire that ran along the windows and you’d pull on it and it would activate a spring-loaded striker to ring a bell to let the driver know you wanted to get off at the next stop.
The driver of the bus we’re on wouldn’t care, though. He’d yell, “Quiet, Piggy!” and drive wherever he wanted. Not that he’s driving anywhere himself, he’s got a driver who can’t afford health insurance or groceries and has two other jobs just to keep the lights on at home.
I know there are people in other countries watching and wondering why we aren’t fighting harder. Part of me agrees, though I’m not sure everyone understands what we’re dealing with here. If we want to fight — but also keep it legal and constitutional — our options are limited.
We’d need Republican senators to find their morals and ethics, and it seems they lost them a long time ago. I’d love for them to prove me wrong, but what is it going to take? The president openly threatened to commit war crimes with our military on Easter Sunday. His “tweet” was so off the rails I thought it was fake when I saw it. Me. A person who thinks this man is absolutely unhinged.
I went to verify it because I could not imagine he’d hit “post” on something that vile and openly in violation of Geneva Conventions — let alone an on-the-record threat to commit genocide. You don’t go after civilian infrastructure — power plants and bridges? But it was real. He said it. He doubled down on it the next day. He said, ”A whole civilization will die tonight.”
He gave his deadline of 8pm, like it was some kind of reality tv show, and I guess it is. We’re all extras in his reality tv show now, because of 77 million people, in a country of 340 million.
It’s true, we have choices. Those of us in despair could go to the Capitol like a bunch of wild animals and attack capitol police officers with flagpoles and bear spray, and bring a noose and scream for Mike Johnson and break down doors and make our way onto the Senate floor. We could defecate there, and rub feces on the walls. We could run through the halls looking for Nancy Mace’s office, we could demand that this lawless administration be removed, or try to remove them ourselves.
Here’s why that will never happen. The MAGA people who support the current president do things like that, and/or turn a blind eye when their fellow MAGA “compatriots” do. If they weren’t there that day being violent and breaking laws, they defend what happened, or they are absolutely silent on the events of that day. It is very strange, because they are the exact same people who will comment under posts about Liam Ramos and his family, and smugly declare they are getting what they deserve, because they broke the law. Even though they broke no law.
People who do not support this president would never attack the Capitol building of the country we love. I felt sick to my stomach watching what happened that day, I watched with tears in my eyes and my hand over my mouth. My heart raced. We would never attack the capitol police. But you know if we did, ICE would shoot us on the spot, and the supporters of the president would say we got what we deserved and you can’t break the law, shrug. We should have stayed home minding our own business. They’d laugh at our friends crying their lib tears. They’d say we should have thought about our kids, not realizing that’s why we were there, risking our lives in the first place.
What do you do with that kind of hypocrisy and heartlessness? What do you say when people like that throw a little salt at you by professing to be “Christian”? You can’t be pro-life and also support a man who just threatened to wipe out an entire civilization, but if you’re too blind to see how that math doesn’t math, I can’t help you. If you say you’re a Christian who believes in God and thinks Jesus is the son of God, why do you imagine God only cares about the white babies? How do you not know that Jesus was brown? Why don’t you realize Jesus would throw himself in front of every ICE agent with a gun to save every child? To put it really simply for you — wtf?
I think those of us who can, should be in the streets and not just once every few months. I think we’ve passed the breaking point now and we should stop trying to go on with our normal lives. There’s nothing normal about any of this. I think we ought to be at state capitol buildings and our senators’ offices and anywhere and everywhere we can be. I think anyone who can go to D.C. should do it.
I think we absolutely keep it nonviolent because I don’t think they’d hesitate to shoot us, sorry to say. They’ve made that clear. I believe in nonviolence, anyway. The only time I’d change that stance is if you came for my kids, or anyone else’s. All children belong to all of us — the grown ups in charge — and I’d put my body in front of anyone’s baby. I’d do it without thinking and without hesitation, and that’s not a flex. That’s a normal baseline of humanity.
Making phone calls to our reps and boycotting Amazon and Target? Yeah, that is not enough. I know very well “getting out in the streets” is not going to be possible for everyone. It’s not like I can be in the streets every day, I have two kids to feed and a business to run and a book I’m finishing and a dog to love and bills to pay. I get it. I’m saying, as much as possible. As often as we can.
This president is not well. Anyone pretending otherwise at this point is willfully putting themselves and everyone else in danger. Just a real quick recap, since he’s now declaring “victory” and his merry band of soulless enablers is backing him up:
The Strait of Hormuz was open, and ships from all over the world passed through with no issue until this president decided to go to war with Iran without provocation, congressional approval, or the will of the American people. He just did it.
It has cost America — meaning us, the American taxpayers — $47 BILLION dollars so far, and that is not including the estimated $8.4 to $10 billion more Americans have spent on gas since February 28th because of this mess. American bombs have killed 170 Iranian school girls, and thousands of civilians in Iran and Lebanon. At least 13 U.S service members have died, and another 381 have been seriously injured. There are unconfirmed reports that those numbers are much higher. There is no regime change in Iran — the people who have taken over are more radical than the people who were in power before.
So what is this “victory”? In exchange for the very fragile two week ceasefire, the man who managed to get the Strait of Hormuz closed — throwing the entire world into a state of economic disarray while accomplishing nothing but death and economic mayhem — has now agreed to work with the 10-point plan Iran has drawn up to reopen it.
Iran will control the Strait of Hormuz, but now all ships passing through will pay $2 million each to go toward repairing the damage the U.S. just caused. All primary and secondary Iranian sanctions will be lifted. The U.S. will withdraw from the Middle East. There will be an end to the attacks on Iran and its allies, and a release of Iran’s frozen assets.
My god, the winning! What’s next, gonorrhea for everyone?
There are some people who are making a lot of money off this war that is costing countless lives and billions of American taxpayer dollars, though, and everyone should be very clear about who they are: Jared Kushner is making billions for Affinity Partners, Vladimir Putin is a lot richer than he was five weeks ago, and America’s Top Oil Executives are raking in the dough.
No affordable healthcare for Americans, no childcare, no Medicare or Medicaid according to this president — the federal government shouldn’t be expected to provide any of that. More Billions for Billionaires. That should be the name of his show.
He can’t say he’s putting our military at risk and killing Iranian school girls and thousands of civilians because it’s good business. That’s too dark and evil, and anyway, this whole thing spiraled out of control. It was supposed to be easy, like Venezuela. It wasn’t supposed to affect his ratings.
He’s got midterms to rig, and he can’t rig them if his ratings are lower than they’ve ever been. It has to look plausible, and now there is a bipartisan conversation in earnest about the 25th Amendment. The Democrats just tried to pass a war powers resolution, and of course the Republicans defeated it, instantly. People are talking about Article II, Section 4 which allows for the removal of the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers upon Impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. They meet the standard, but who’s going to enforce it?
A quick lesson about the 25th Amendment and why I don’t hold out a lot of hope unless we, the people, get so loud our representatives have no choice but to listen. The VP and several members of the cabinet have to get together and decide their feckless leader has lost it. They undoubtedly already know. Then they have to put it in writing, and the VP has to deliver the missive to the Mad King, and also Mike Johnson.
I don’t think JD possesses the columna vertebralis for that job. I don’t think his legs could walk him to the Golden Oval, but let’s say he managed it. Maybe Peter Thiel holds his hand on the way there and the couch gives him strength. JD gives the man known as “Loser” in Iranian LEGO animation videos this missive, along with a copy for Mike Johnson. JD takes over as president while Loser reads and understands what he’s reading, at which point he could just tell Congress he’s fine — all his doctors say they’ve never seen anyone pass cognitive tests the way he does — unlike sleepy Joe with his auto-pen — which we know he would.
He’d have to put that in writing, but you know he has a Sharpie at the ready. Then the VP, Speaker and Cabinet members can say, yeah … sorry sir, we just don’t think so (in writing), and run for cover. Then Congress has to decide, and vote by ⅔ majority in the House and Senate, whether the President is incapacitated or not, and while they decide, JD takes over again, unless he’s made the mistake of eating anything or leaving the house, lol. So, yeah.
And Article II, Section 4 requires impeachment in the House of Representatives, and a trial in the Senate, presided by the Chief Justice acting as judge — that would be John Roberts who does not hesitate to tell this president what he thinks — but the Judicial branch does not like to get involved in legal matters having to do with impeachment because of our supposed separate but equal three branches of government — which this administration threw out the window long ago. So, I dunno. Neither of those eventualities seem likely, but we can’t go on this way, either.
We need the pull cord, friends. It’s time to get off this ride.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes. Carl Sagan, who urged NASA to have the Voyager 1 turn its probe around and take a picture of earth from space on February 14th, 1990. He thought it was an essential photo, since most of us will never see earth from this vantage point. Although we should, from space, or from right where we are, under the stars:
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
I love you. I'm pulling the cord HARD right now. And I read that Sagan quote to my two best friends when I impromptu married them outside of a Hindu temple under a Banyan tree in Hawaii. Me, a not-so-much-anymore-what-even-am-I? Christian woman, my atheist butterfly and bird loving besties, and my agnostic husband. And Ganesha. And the tree. On the pale blue dot. We can do this, you know? We humans can love each other through so many differences. That brings me hope. And you. You bring me hope. xoxo
This has been the most disorienting season of at least my life. It’s absolutely insane and sad and hopelessness-inducing. It is such an anchor to have you express the inexpressible despair that threatens our sanity every day. My only push back is that I think we could use a little Neanderthal morality, if ongoing archaeological and anthropological studies are any indication. I’m not so sure we haven’t regressed since then.