28/05/2025
Just being a Mom, only a couple years away from becoming a Grandma, having thoughts on polarized perspectives and relationships during the American Superiority Revival.
This current administration has made it harder than ever not to take things personally, on a macro and micro scale.
It's impossible not to care about what's happening, no matter how full our cup or schedule might be, and impossible not to notice what matters to others. This has a big, lasting impact on relationships I previously believed in. It's painful how people I used to respect continue to align themselves passionately with a mission and legacy of consequences that is diametrically opposed to all that I care about.
One advantage to the times and how they are playing out is how many people are waking up about things they took for granted as baseline American values and systems in progress, which are now under attack and changing rapidly.
I struggle with daily frustration, desperation, and heartbreak at what is being allowed and encouraged, not just by those in power, but by those who support them. Folks like me still have to work with and be compassionate towards these other types of folks, those who are completely willing to treat other humans and the earth in a way that they would never ever tolerate treating an animal. Whether or not we know their choices and what they stand for, we patch them up, show up for them, problem solve, counsel, assist, teach, and would protect them, despite their smug indifference and geocentric take.
Their policies to restrict immigration, increase border enforcement, reduce asylum pathways and deport non-citizens without due process is viewed as necessary for “national security,” “law and order,” and protecting American safety, yet to people like me these moves are not only human rights violations—particularly regarding child separation policies, treatment in detention centers, and deportation of long-term residents—but they are an alarming, flagrant disregard for the Constitution, which leads to authoritarianism.
They see overturning Roe v. Wade and restricting abortion access as protecting unborn life and returning moral authority to the states, but to people like me this is a devastating, devastating rollback of women's rights, bodily autonomy, and healthcare access, especially impacting poor and rural populations. We never have and never would consider policing men’s bodies, YET men are why trafficking, r**e, abortions, and lifelong trauma are the burden that women bear their whole lives.
Vilifying DEI, and normalizing book bans and the exclusion of certain curricula (e.g., critical race theory, LGBTQ+ materials) are seen as empowering parents and protecting children from “politicized” or “immoral” teachings, yet to people like me this is dystopian censorship and the erasure of marginalized histories and identities, and a slide into authoritarian control over knowledge and free expression.
Rolling back EPA rules and opening up land for oil and gas is seen as supporting energy independence, job growth, and economic development, but to people like me these changes have catastrophic implications for climate change, public health, and Indigenous sovereignty and sacred lands which we have so little of already. These sacrifices of long-term protections for short-term profit are another deal breaker for lovers of the earth and her children.
Expanded gun rights are portrayed as defending constitutional freedoms and ensuring personal safety, yet to people like me the consistent "thoughts and prayers" response, while disabling any regulation, has enabled mass shootings, school shootings, and public endangerment to increase incrementally each year, as though living with domestic terrorism and the needless deaths in schools and other gathering spaces are just a part of being an American—aren't you so blessed to be a possible casualty of our Second Amendment freedoms—hooo-boy.
Many who want to “dismantle the deep state” and “drain the swamp,” who believe existing institutions are corrupt and must be dismantled, don't see how destabilizing democracy and undermining the rule of law paves the way for authoritarianism.
Deregulating USDA and FDA oversight is seen as reducing bureaucracy and encouraging free market efficiency, yet people like me see the increasing of corporate control, lack of transparency and accountability, and the endangering of public health and safety as a betrayal of public trust for the sake of profit. They willfully ignore how the short and long-term impact of this lack of oversight on the well-being of those who have the fewest choices will be seen for decades to come.
Bills targeting gender-affirming care or drag performances are positioned as child protection and moral safeguarding, but to people like me they are a bigoted, direct attack on civil liberties and trans people’s existence while simultaneously disregarding, normalizing, and idolizing "leaders" who have a history of r**e, misogyny, and predatory behavior.
Efforts to reduce or restrict programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance, as well as benefits for veterans and those on Social Security, are seen as encouraging “self-reliance” and reducing “government dependence and waste,” but these cuts are devastating to the most vulnerable among us, particularly poor families, disabled individuals, veterans, and elderly people. It feels to people like me to be a moral failure to refuse to care for each other—not just people like us, but anyone who needs care. To abandon those who are disadvantaged, or to fail to care for veterans, is a base-level decency deal breaker, especially when these same folks are all for tax breaks for the rich while further exacerbating the struggles of the poor, desperate, and disabled. While so many are suffering and no longer able to make ends meet or get benefits or safety they relied on, and lives collapse under the weight of these tariffs and policies, we instead get taxpayer- funded flying castles, golden domes, relic-prison-makeovers, and elaborate military parades.
With our precious time here we are all protecting our peace and our loved ones the best we can, but for people like me, it's not just a casual difference of policies and worldviews.
I don't understand (and am having a hard time being patient with) those who tolerate the suffering of marginalized groups, who are cool with dissolving protections for the earth and for those who are disabled or struggling (veterans, homeless, immigrants, the poor, any humans) while being excited about lifting the tax burdens of the rich and normalizing the horrors of misogyny, bigotry, racism, genocide, and environmental destruction in the name of dogma, progress, and profit.
It's always been a class war, though they want us to think it's anything else. We are all humans, and the "leaders" work for us, but when was the last time most of us had to fight for the ability to ensure peace, liberty, and justice for all? Well, we'ree're going to have to. There is enough for all of us to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, without condoning the pillaging of our lands, the ravaging of our systems and Constitution, and the violation of human rights in the name of American Superiority.
I don't want my legacy to include complacency, indifference or collaboration with the destructive side of history. I don't want to have to say there was nothing I could do, when my kids and grandkids ask me what happened. I will continue having the uncomfortable conversations, and to be like water, to flow and find a way, under, over, through.
