thoughts about what's happening in the u.s.

I haven't been able to write anything coherent about what's happening in the US. All I have is a jumble of disconnected thoughts and emotions. Mostly I push them aside, needing to focus on work, union, and family. 

I guess this is a What's Happening in the US Brain Dump. I'm not even going to try to weave it into an essay. Even this brain dump has been sitting in drafts for more than a week.

* * * * 

Last night, a friend and I had our regular semi-monthly video call. This friend works for the federal government, and is queer. They are also really smart: they are leaving the country. 

As soon as our call started, I said: when are you leaving? I said, please don't wait. And we agreed: they won't be one of those families who waited just too long, not reading the signs around them, and were trapped to a horrific fate. The Jewish families who could have left Nazi Germany, but waited too long.

The words that I find myself repeating again and again: we don't know how far this will go. We don't know how far this will go.

Because these people do not respect the rule of law. 

That's the bottom line. 

They do not respect the rule of law, the Constitution, the checks and balances. Throughout my lifetime, throughout United States history, those safeguards, those imperfect systems, have been stretched, frayed, twisted, corrupted. They have been abused and misused. But they have still existed. They have endured. Now we see the final death throes. This putsch does not recognize any boundaries. As my friend said, no guard rails. 

I loathe hearing and reading "we will get through this". Who is we in that sentence? A comfortable middle-class (or above) income, a cis/hetero family, white skin, may get you through it. Just because you're not being rounded up, your kids aren't in cages, you're not being called vermin, your family is safe: "we'll get through this"? Fuck you. 

I'm a Jew. I know in my bones that we don't always get through this. 

And even worse: Jewish people who defend this. Jewish people who care about Israel more than humanity. My loathing for those people knows no bounds.

I remember being shocked and so angry to learn that in some states, after a law is declared unconstitutional, the state keeps the laws on the books and continues to enforce it. A rogue state, if you will. Now we have a rogue nation.

Which is the other thing I keep asking. When will the nations of the world treat the US for it is, a rogue nation? That there no longer exists the US the ally. The US is North Korea. Iran. And Russia, perhaps literally. 

With the Orwellian pronouncement that Ukraine started the "war" with Russia -- 1984 come to reality -- maybe this has begun. Maybe "allies" are re-thinking.

The sight of Elon Musk in the Oval Office shocked me and turned my stomach. 

Living in a country where the economy is so intertwined with the US's brings that home faster. It's easy to talk about a trade war. It's harder to talk about an actual war. Canada has the world's largest supply of fresh water. Water is more valuable than oil. Where will that go?

None of this came out of nowhere. It's been building since the Reagan era. The steady march to fascism. We can be sure this march has not arrived at its destination.

De-regulation, unchecked capitalism, the revoking of what's left of a social safety net. Neocolonialism; corporate colonialism.

Mass incarceration, voter suppression, fraudulent elections. Bush v Gore. 

The constant disinformation, an Orwellian world where white so-called Christian men are victims, and attempts at inclusion are enemies of the state. 

Solidarity with persecuted Afrikaners. 

The Gulf of Mexico, Panama, Gaza. 

Crippling economics are met with scapegoating, and now round-ups. 

The endless war with shadowy intent, a shifting landscape of enemies.

The racism, both wide and deep, stoked into fury by the advent of a Black POTUS. 

Media amplifying the messages 24/7, broadcasting fiction and fantasy disguised of news. (If you doubt this, watch Fox News if you can stand it, or read Naomi Klein's Doppelganger if you can't.)

No conventional forms of protest are effective. No demonstration, no letter-writing campaign, will save Americans from this nightmare. Those forms of protest are only effective within a democracy. Or at least within a country that cares about world opinion. Or at least a country where sanctions can be brought to bear. Or at least. I don't know what.