This is a political post, but bear with me.
In 2015, I was diagnosed with cancer. Spoiler alert: I’m still here, and I’m doing fine. I’ve been extremely fortunate, in so many ways: the kind of cancer I got, the treatments available, an understanding employer, good health insurance, an exceptional oncologist, and an amazing partner who has not only supported me through it all, but researched and found the very clinical trial that has kept me going for the past ten years.
Not that it’s all fun and games. I mean, it’s cancer. Chronic, incurable cancer. I swallow a handful of pills every morning, and there are irritating side effects, and scads of appointments, and looming fears that it might get worse, and that bone marrow biopsy was the single most intensely focused pain I’ve ever experienced. But compared to many cancer patients, I’ve had it easy. I’ve been able to live a full, normal life, which despite emotional ups and downs — and I’m a writer, so that’s to be expected — has been largely fulfilling and happy.
One of the reasons I feel so lucky is that, to this day, for me the single worst part of cancer was the diagnosis. Not the physical battle, but the mental and emotional one. Waiting to find out. The shock, the dread, the uncertainty, the disruption, the fear. And especially the paradigm shift that occurs when you learn the future you were working toward might not arrive — indeed, the present you have could end much sooner than you hoped. Diagnosis was the pits.
It was the second worst diagnosis of my life.
The worst was the election of Donald Trump.
I said as much within a month of that horrible day in November 2016. Because my cancer diagnosis was localized. The Trump diagnosis was universal. It happened to everyone. For four years, he made everybody and everything sick. Political norms, international relations, discourse, institutions, principles, trust, the courts, the rule of law, common decency…and, of course, people. Not just metaphorically, either: hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily on his watch, especially during the pandemic. Even those who flourished during Trump’s first term were sick. Sick with greed, bigotry, spite, close-mindedness, victim complexes, self-serving sociopathy. That sickness intensified, and it infected the rest of us.
I was disgusted by the Trump administration’s first term — angry, depressed, frustrated, appalled. And perplexed. The improbability of a transparent, inarticulate huckster’s ascendance, the sheer Worst Timeline collective madness of it. It had a hobbling effect on me, to say the least. And it showed me what I was made of politically — which is to say, alas, not much. I went to a couple of protests. I wrote my representatives. I pointlessly engaged with right-wing trolls on Facebook now and then. And I quietly slid a left-wing dagger into the odd movie review or blog post, hoping to skewer a racist thought here, a fascist idea there. Acts of resistance, perhaps, but let’s face it: weaksauce. Then again, I thought, maybe Trump’s win was a fluke. Maybe this reactionary, hateful bullshit is just a death rattle for entrenched white boomer grievance. Maybe he would be impeached and removed. Maybe next time he would be impeached and removed. Maybe inspiring his followers to an act of mass violence against the government on his way out the door would change recalcitrant minds and secure the future of democracy. Maybe the nightmare would end.
So I took deep breaths, and lived life, and waited, and hoped we would get through it. After all, what was the point of saying anything? These days, in the United States, you’re either preaching to the choir or talking into a dead phone. One person’s opinion has so little power in this country. And opinions, combined with and weaponized by social media, just make us all crazy. Why even contribute to the noise?
Well, I did survive the first term. (Reminder: many did not.) Mercifully, Joe Biden got elected. REMISSION! Thank fucking god. Insurrectionists went to jail (temporarily). Felony counts landed (ish). Congress (almost) functioned. We could all breathe again (well, metaphorically). We had been diagnosed in 2016, but in 2020 the treatment looked like it might be working.
Not that Biden was a magic bullet. He masked a lot of symptoms and caused a few new ones. But he also laid important groundwork for the next phase of recovery. At least, he did until he grew too weak to continue. Predictably, his party followed suit, and our country — frustrated by the cost of eggs, or something — thought, “Let’s try having cancer again!”
So, here we are, relapse. The right-wing lymphocytes have returned in force, and this time they’re not fucking around. Not only that, but the cagey billionaires who hedged their bets and held wet fingers in the air during the Biden era have jumped on the poison-spewing bandwagon for personal gain. Money goes where the wind blows, I suppose. (Hell, that could easily be another metaphor-laden screed in itself, about end-stage capitalism and metastasis. Sheesh, talk about the future you wanted failing to arrive.)
Anyway, here’s where my belabored metaphor will hopefully fall apart. My cancer may be incurable, but our collective illness is not. Not yet. Watching Trump, Musk, Vance, and their servile cronies gleefully dismantle American democracy from within — either as direct assets for or witless tools of a murderous dictator — may just have triggered my political survival instinct. The United States is desperately ill, but there is so much of it that is good and worth fighting for.
Fighting for it means one thing, above all else: opposing Trump. This is especially true in the wake of the administration’s disgraceful treatment of Volodomyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, a transparent reality-show ambush of spectacular recklessness. There is no “both sides” about this. Because whatever problems you may have with the Democrats, look what the Trump administration is doing:
- Betraying Ukraine and abandoning NATO. (Imperils US allies in Europe. Threatens the security of the free world. Helps Russia.)
- Imposing blanket tariffs. (Makes everything more expensive. Disrupts supply chains. Alienates trade partners. Hurts the economy. Helps Russia.)
- Threatening to annex Canada and Greenland. (Insults and threatens important allies. Helps Russia, who wants to control and exploit the Arctic Circle.)
- Putting an unqualified vaccine denier in charge of public health. (Threatens, well, the public health. Damages our ability to respond to pandemics and other national health crises. Further stigmatizes mental health problems, with an eye to making them harder to manage with medication. Makes people sick. Weakens America. Helps Russia.)
- Pardoning an army of insurrectionists convicted of felony violence. (Threatens public safety. Weaponizes the Department of Justice. Jettisons the rule of law. Weakens America. Helps Russia.)
- Issuing illegal executive orders and ignoring court orders. (Further weakens trust in government institutions. Concentrates power in the executive branch. Disenfranchises literally everyone who disagrees with Trump or the MAGA mindset. Causes domestic chaos. Weakens America. Helps Russia.)
- Implementing tax cuts for the wealthy. (Further increases income inequality. Extends class warfare. Concentrates power. Weakens America. Helps Russia. Hmm, are we seeing a pattern?)
- Eliminating human rights protections for anyone who isn’t a non-white man. (Controls, disempowers, demonizes, and/or endangers millions of American women, minorities, and other marginalized groups. Weakens America. Helps no one, except maybe sociopaths.)
- Gutting the federal government. (Puts people out of work. Hurts the economy. Reduces important public services. Removes consumer protections. Deregulates corrupt, rapacious industries. Reduces tax revenue by hobbling the IRS, adding to the deficit and enabling further corporate and political corruption. Defunds life-saving medical research. Weakens our capacity to respond to natural disasters and weather emergencies. Imperils education. Denies climate science. Ignores science generally. Eliminates foreign aid — and the resulting, positive U.S. diplomatic influence it engenders — thereby emboldening our enemies abroad. Prioritizes the billionaire class. And — yeah, yeah — weakens America, helps Russia.) If this list isn’t long enough for you, give it a day, because Musk isn’t done wielding his psychotic chainsaw against government workers.
All that, in a few short weeks. This isn’t governance. This is nuke-it-from-orbit sabotage. I mean, it’s not like I’m a political scientist or anything, but I can see the end game. This is authoritarian regime change in service to an enemy power, motivated by sheer spite, insatiable greed, and (probably) more than a little kompromat. There’s no other legitimate interpretation.
And here’s the thing: nothing the Trump administration is doing will help you. It won’t reduce the price of eggs. It won’t fix inflation, it won’t reduce the deficit, it won’t make you wealthier. It won’t lower taxes, it won’t keep you healthy, it won’t protect national security, it won’t bring peace. It might not have affected you yet, but it will. The Trump administration is selling you, and all of us, out. It is stripping the country for parts Twitter style, to line its own pockets, without a care in the world for who gets hurt in the process. You are just as important to Trump as the Ukrainians he abandoned to Putin’s invasion.
In the process, incidentally — and talk about burying the lede — all this executive overreach has more or less unilaterally dismantled an international order eighty years in the making. The global influence of the United States, outside of our borders, might not seem relevant to your life, but what Trump is doing to our reputation and standing in the world will create a power vacuum bad actors will happily flow into. As imperfect as the American world order has been, as desperately as it needed to be fixed, what follows will be profoundly worse — everywhere. Including here. The worst of the reputational damage may have already been done, and the overall sitrep is only getting worse.
Upshot: we’re in a severe crisis, and correcting course starts with opposing the current presidential administration.
So. There. I’ve said something. Again, though, what is the point of saying anything? I’ll post this on my blog and share it and maybe a few people will read it. It will change no minds, will mean nothing in the greater scheme of things. Right?
Probably true. Maybe there is no point to saying anything. The world has certainly gone to great lengths to make it feel like nothing we do or say matters, blurring the lines of reality, making us all feel helpless to make a difference. That’s by design, and it sucks. But it’s a legitimate, if unfortunate, emotional response.
Nonetheless, I’ve said something. Because this time, I can’t not speak my conscience. Even if it’s merely a hail mary pass toward one random Trump voter with a capacity for change. Even if it’s just a statement of solidarity with sensible, like-minded people. Or an expression of vehement support for my friends and family members and everyone else out there in the crosshairs of an oppressive neofascist regime hellbent on ending the American experiment.
I am already their enemy, merely for thinking this way. And what has become eminently clear is that saying nothing — even just not saying enough — is already a statement. Saying nothing isn’t apolitical. It is a political choice, a tacit acceptance of what is happening. Maybe it feels safer to remain quiet; it’s certainly easier, and less stressful, and less effort. We all have better things to do than cringe away from Darth Vader and the Empire on our fucking phones every day. Things like going to work, supporting our families, pursuing our passions, hell, just making it to our oncology appointments on time. It’s hard enough getting through the week without resisting narcissistic saboteurs as they torch the very foundations of our society. Political silence is an understandable impulse.
But in the end, silence won’t protect me, or my family, or my friends. Silence in the face of this coup may well endanger us all. I truly believe it amounts to complicity with evil.
I wish I had all the answers, but this isn’t a call to action. I’m not that guy, and probably don’t have a right to be. In the clash that’s coming, I’m pretty much “rear echelon” by sheer virtue of accidental privilege. This statement is merely something it is within my power to do: send a message to those in more imminent danger — here and abroad — from the shocking, egregious betrayal of the free world we’re all witnessing. For what it’s worth, if you’re watching all this in horror, know that you have an ally here. Hopefully, saying something is a start, and I’ll have the courage, resolve, and wherewithal to do more.
