Jeff’s Silly Little Blog

A brief follow-up on my last post. A handful of people have reached out since then, sharing similar struggles with mental health, personal loss, career frustration, and so on. One friend in particular — if you’re reading this, you know who you are — shared at length with me some of the unimaginable struggles that he and his wife faced over the last few years, and how isolated he felt during that time. It was really humbling, and it was an important reminder of a few things:

1. Everyone is fighting their own battles. It’s the most cliche bullshit, I know, but it’s not bullshit.
2. Some battles are more intense than others. I often find myself comparing my problems with those of the people around me and telling myself I don’t have it so bad. Which is absolutely true! All things considered, I’m really blessed. I’m in good health (for the most part), I’m surrounded by loving friends and family, I have a roof over my head and a warm place to sleep at night, I’ve never had to worry about my next meal, and I enjoy endless creature comforts that so many people go without. For fuck’s sake, I’m sitting here in my recliner, sipping a beer and blogging on a Wednesday night, with My Sweet Beautiful Perfect Pearl curled up over there on the couch. How bad can it really be?

But it does get bad sometimes, or maybe it’s during those bad times that I lose sight of the good stuff. Whatever the case, when the bad seems to outweigh the good,

3. Talk about it. Get it all out there. Maybe start a blog!

Maybe don’t start a blog. I’m still on the fence about it. But for real — lean on the people around you. I’m lucky enough to have a lot of great people in my corner, and I recognize that’s not the case for everyone. But if you’re reading this and you’re struggling with something, no matter how small you think it is, please reach out. DM me (or text or whatever). I say that with the caveat that I’m pretty shit at giving actual life advice, but I’m an okay listener, and I promise just getting that stuff off your chest will feel good. I made one post and now I have some deeper friendships because of it.

There’s my “brief” follow-up. Now for some fresh content.

WordPress.com’s prompt for today’s blog post is “what are your favorite sports to watch and play?” That’s a real thought provoker, but I think I can handle it. Watch: basketball. Play: golf. Okay, now that I got that off my chest, on to the real topic.

I should probably give a disclaimer. If you support Donald Trump, you may not want to hear what I have to say. If you want to scoff and roll your eyes and close this tab and unfriend/unfollow me, do what you gotta do. But if you decide to keep reading, just understand that I’m not attacking you, nor do I hate you. I may hate the person you voted for (and believe me, I do), but I hope that you’re able to separate your identity from his. It’s the people who can’t that I take issue with, but I imagine they aren’t reading this anyway, so fuck ‘em.

But that sucks, doesn’t it? I want to be more understanding. I want someone to make a convincing case for why I have it all wrong, and why Donald Trump is a decent human being and a good leader, and why I shouldn’t assume everyone who supports him is either willfully ignorant, or downright evil, or both. I would love nothing more than to look back four years from now and laugh at how much I was overreacting. Someone make the case for me, because that would be so much easier than being left to grapple with whatever the fuck this is.

It’s the confusion that hits the hardest, I think. It’s difficult to comprehend how a convicted felon (34 times over), self-confessed sexual assailant (God knows how many times over), serial adulterer, pathological liar, who directly or indirectly orchestrated a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the result of a democratic election (and has since pardoned those who took part in it), who openly expresses admiration for foreign dictators, who openly embraces fascist ideas himself, who ran a campaign fueled on fear-mongering and hate toward immigrants and the LGBT community, and who, in just nine days in office, has already begun dismantling the U.S. Constitution and consolidating power to himself, just like he promised he would… I mean, what am I missing here? How did he convince 77 million people to vote for him?

What’s really crazy is I feel like that’s just scratching the surface of how awful he is. When you start to fully realize how much he’s gotten away with — his name plastered all over the Epstein island flight logs, the Bibles he sold with his name on the cover, the whole classified documents thing, the way he handled COVID, the way he responded to the BLM movement and the murder of George Floyd, all the abominable shit he did prior to getting elected the first time — it makes me actually sick to my stomach. I really do try to see the good in people, and I just can’t find a single redeeming quality about him. He’s as bad as it gets. And he’s our Commander in Chief? That fucking guy? How am I supposed to feel? How is anyone supposed to feel when the man occupying the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world can do whatever he wants and get away with it? How is that a good thing?

So there’s plenty of confusion, yes, but also disgust, anger, dread, fear.

Fear, in particular, is a powerful one. About a year ago, I started telling myself (and some friends and family members) I would leave the country if Trump got re-elected. I don’t know if I meant it. Maybe I did, and maybe I will. I was scared then and I’m scared now. It’s such a helpless feeling, seeing people I care about get sucked into this cult. It’s even more helpless seeing marginalized groups of people have their fundamental rights stripped away by the very institutions that are supposed to protect them. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, right? Why doesn’t that apply to immigrants, or transgender people, or people of color, or impoverished people? Who’s protecting their rights? And how long before any opposition is silenced? Am I putting myself in danger by speaking out against him?

Maybe that’s far too self-important. After all, my blog has a total of six subscribers. I’d like to believe my freedom of speech will remain intact for the next four years, if four years is all it ends up being. But I don’t think either of those things is guaranteed.

Perhaps the scariest part is how quickly it’s all happening. It’s been nine days. Nine fucking days, and already birthright citizenship is at risk. Immigrants are being loaded onto military aircraft and dropped off thousands of miles away. Non-binary people are being told they don’t exist. Social media algorithms are being pumped full of alt-right content. Swarms of government drones are being released into U.S. airspace for “research” purposes (seriously, look it up. Or, depending on where you live, just look up). I’m sure I’m missing a hundred other things, and that seems to be the point — it’s too much to keep track of. I’m reminded of a quote from Andor: “The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. […] It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”

(Listen, I don’t care if you’re a Star Wars fan or not, if you haven’t seen Andor, and you’re reading this and find yourself agreeing with me, please, do yourself a favor and go watch it right now. I promise it’ll stir up something inside of you.)

Another quote from the same show:

”There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. […] Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. […] The need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

Here’s what I know. There’s a lot of bad in the world, and from a big picture standpoint, right now feels about as bad as I can remember. But when I zoom in a little bit, I see so much good as well. There are a lot of good people in the world, and a lot of good people in this country. I know this because I’m surrounded by them. I see them every day — my family, my friends, my coworkers, my patients, my neighbors. People at the dog park, at the gym, at the bar, at the grocery store, in my social media spheres. Everywhere.

A few weeks ago, a group of four complete strangers spent more than two hours in the freezing cold to help me pull my car out of the snow, because I’m an idiot and tried to drive a Hyundai Elantra on an unplowed road, a day after the biggest blizzard we’ve had in decades. This was in Manhattan, Kansas. Statistically speaking, two or three of those people voted for Donald Trump. Maybe none of them did. Maybe all of them did. It matters, but it also doesn’t matter, because they’re good people. Yes, my KU friends, there are even good people in Manhattan.

So yes, I’m confused, I’m sad, I’m angry, and I’m afraid. But I’m also hopeful. I’m hopeful that at some point, the good people who support that bad person will come to their senses. The election was a gut punch, no doubt about that, but not a death blow. Trump may have gotten more votes than Harris, but I think there are more good people than bad in this country. Maybe some of them just need a reminder of that. I think it’s up to us — those of us who see that motherfucker for who he really is — to make it happen. Don’t be silent.

Here’s what else I know. The people in power are doing everything they can to distract us, divide us, and discourage us. “Tyranny requires constant effort.” They control what we see in the news and in our social media feeds. They want us fearful and mistrustful and angry at each other so that we turn a blind eye to them. It’s textbook authoritarianism, and it’s effective. How do you overcome that?

I don’t have much actionable advice, but I do have this. Stay aware of what’s going on. Find a news source that you trust (I prefer NPR and the Associated Press) and spend some time each day educating yourself. Allow yourself to react to what you see. Be upset, be angry, be sad; don’t become numb to those feelings. Post it to your instagram story, or whatever you need to do. But don’t let it consume you. Tune in, gather the information you need, and tune out. For me, that means setting screentime limits on social media apps, and actually sticking to them (not to brag). It’s not easy, but it’s 100% necessary for my own sanity.

There may come a time when it does become all-consuming and impossible to tune out. Some people may feel like that time is already here, and I can’t really argue with that. But for me (and I realize this comes from a place of immense privilege as a straight, white, middle-class male), there’s still life to be lived. There are still places to visit, and friends to laugh with, and football games to watch, and mountains to ski down (I’m going skiing next month and I’m fucking pumped — just needed to tell everyone that). That orange clown can’t take those things away from us. At least not yet.

Seek out the things that bring you joy, and find ways to speak and act against the things that bring you grief. Take some sort of stand, no matter how small it feels, and lean on the people around you. Don’t be afraid to get political, because it’s not “just politics” anymore, is it? Start conversations with people who may not see things the same way as you. If you truly care about them, and they truly care about you, you may find that they’re receptive to it.

I suspect things will get worse, perhaps much worse, before they get better. That’s how these things tend to go. I don’t think the fear is going away anytime soon, nor is the confusion or anger. But if that’s all I’m feeling, then those fascist dipshits have already won. So I’m choosing to leave some room for hope.