I begin writing this piece marginally concerned that it will, at some point, become nothing more than a choleric screed entirely comprised of stream-of-consciousness grumblings about our current political climate. It was Marcus Aurelius, after all, who wrote that you should not “be overheard complaining…not even to yourself.”
Unfortunately for Marcus Aurelius, I don’t mind some tasteful airing of grievances. In fact, you could even make the argument that kvetching is a long and proud Jewish tradition. And I think this particular subject matter goes beyond basic complaint in any case.
Doomscrolling through social media last week, I found myself facing an Associated Press report on how the demolition of USAID continues to affect families in Myanmar — and almost broke into tears at the sheer inhumanity of the situation. It’s almost incomprehensible to me; that the things I think and worry about every day and that feel so real to me could be so inconsequential painted against the backdrop of global injustice. But what stopped me from crying was the quick replacement of sadness with an altogether more appropriate emotion: anger. How can the architects of this devastation sit before an American public, like they did in May, and tell us that “no one has died” from the hasty and sudden bulldozing of American foreign aid infrastructure when there are so many clear and obvious instances of exactly that happening? How stupid can they possibly think we are as a citizenry?
It is clear that the Epstein files have captured public imagination in a way that few other scandals have since this current regime took power almost two years ago, which does feel appropriate, and that they might in fact be the Big Thing that finally sinks Donald Trump. I wish that felt like any kind of consolation instead of immensely frustrating, which is how it makes me personally feel. So many people are suffering right now because of this administration, and it is both appalling and shocking that so many people in the country are incapable of caring unless it involves children and some kind of large-scale conspiracy or cover up. I am a huge proponent of political empathy, and I recognize that there are many, many Americans who would in fact care about the world beyond their own if they consumed honest news media or had the time to think critically about the offenses we’re watching every single day, but there are also too many that do not and would not.
We are being fed so many lies right now that it is increasingly hard to even consider digesting a single one of them. We are witnessing so much self-victimization from the party in total control of the country that it is hard to describe it as anything other than repulsive. Meanwhile pastors are being shot in the head with pepper balls on the streets of American cities for doing nothing other than speaking their mind. The United States Attorney General is using oppo research cliff notes in a desperate bid to discredit minority party leaders and deflect legitimate questions asked of her. People — including American citizens — are being grabbed off sidewalks and packed into unmarked vans for no reason other than that they have a certain skin color, with some deported to countries they’ve never even been to or worse, disappeared without a trace into our “immigration” system. Policymakers are threatening to take away accessible healthcare and tax credits from their own constituents; RFK Jr. is making sweeping changes to national vaccine policy without any scientific backing whatsoever; the Director of the FBI has blown up the integrity of his office multiple times with volatile political statements and incorrect updates on critically important investigations that he refuses even to apologize for. Federal workers have been told that they might not receive backpay during the current shutdown despite a law intended to protect them that Trump himself signed. Our news media is voluntarily complying in advance with what they believe the regime wants from them, censoring anyone that threatens their bottom line. Our federal government is attacking higher education in an unprecedented way and withholding funding for colleges and universities on a strictly ideological basis. Women are losing access to safe abortions across the country. The National Guard is being illegally deployed to American cities against the wishes of state leadership (cities that are now to be used as “training grounds” for the military). Colombian fishing boats are being blown up in interntional waters with murky legal jurisdiction because the United States government has unilaterally and incorrectly decided that they’re Venezuelan terrorists. The GOP has created an illegal internment camp in Florida and sold merch glamorizing the brutality of its conditions. The cost of living is continues to rise across the country while most Americans can barely afford groceries or rent as things stand now. Unprovoked trade wars are destroying businesses and hurting farmers. DEI initiatives are being rolled back everywhere they exist, including within our military. The next generation of the ruling political party is brimming with homophobes, racists, misogynists, including even sitting congressmen unapologetically displaying Swastikas in their offices.
Yes, we are witnessing brazen corruption at an unprecedented level. Trump is a known grifter and there is wildly unethical shit happening with his cryptocurrency and the UAE and the Witkoffs. Yes, “border czar” Tom Homan almost definitely accepted $50,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents. And of course this administration raises grave concerns about the integrity of our democracy and rule of law with its willingness to openly flout court rulings. I don’t mean to downplay any of that. But the pure human cost of this regime is the reason it is so difficult to react with empathy to MAGA conservatives these days. Volunteers in my neighborhood are literally walking children to school in our community because these kids’ own parents are too afraid that if they do it themselves, they’ll be abducted off the street just because of the way they look or sound. And you’re going to tell me that this is the way people should be treated? That this is the country you want to live in?
Because, and I want to be clear, that reactive hostility is the wrong response. We should be reacting with empathy. I know that as a communications professional, as a political scientist who spent years studying political polarization, and as a human with experience talking to other humans. You don’t change anyone’s mind by laughing or yelling at them. Graham Platner knows this, and you can see it in the way he answers questions and interacts with his potential constituents during town halls.
But that is immensely hard to do right now, because all of this is so clearly straight out of the authoritarian playbook that having a conservation with someone who refuses to recognize that truth is infuriating. It is never easy to have a politics-removed conversation with someone about how you think people should be treated at a fundamental level, regardless of who they are or where they come from, but it is almost impossible to do that with someone who is unable or unwilling to set aside their sense of partisan self. And those people are going to get left behind when the new dawn finally breaks. Which it will.
We are witnessing a consolidation of power on an astonishing level. As The Atlantic put it, Stephen Miller is “going for broke” in attempting to categorize preemptively any kind of disagreement with the actions of our current administration — whether it comes in a legitimate judicial decision or in a throwaway social media post from a random citizen — as an illegal act. Which, of course, it obviously is not, as you’d think all of the conservatives that bitched their way through the Biden years would inherently understand. Nobody has a more documented track record of spewing vitriolic, First Amendment-protected criticism of sitting presidents and ruling bodies than Republicans. (Democrats can be outspoken too, but it says something in and of itself that the conventional knock against them is that they’ve always been too soft and afraid of making bold or meaningful statements.) And to their credit, some conservative figureheads have recognized this crackdown on freedom of expression for what it is — I never thought I’d see the day that Tucker Carlson decided to take a public stand against a Republican White House for their behavior. That’s how bad things have gotten.
I can feel this becoming the piece of content I wanted to avoid creating. I’ll try to put a point on it. “Plenary authority” — the phrase Stephen Miller recently used without thinking during an interview — is so antithetical to America as a concept that the slip froze him cold. It is tantamount to admitting complete betrayal of the very reason for the creation of our country; freedom from a single monarchical ruler in search of a better future where people have power over their lives. We are taught from childhood that the United States is a system of checks and balances that protects our citizenry from subjugation, and it is painfully clear in this moment why our founders — escaping persecution in their own time — chose that system.
This is what happens when a nation abandons the ideals that built it. We have already witnessed this administration causing decimation and the loss of human life on a global scale with willful negligence, and the ultimate power grab that is inevitably coming will only perpetuate and reinforce that new world regime. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.