On Despair, Politics, and Intuition
Despair. Verb: to be without or give up all hope. Derives from Latin despero, des (dis-, prefix: without or lacking) + esperer (hope). See also: “my natural state these days.”
To borrow a portion of an underappreciated monologue from Pulp Fiction: “On the night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting.” Boy, did we ever.
A few weeks ago, my partner and I watched a standup show of Henry Rollins, who had previously only been on my radar in terms of the band Black Flag. The show was called Keep Talking, Pal, and it was produced in 2018.
Oh, how far we’ve come. Or should I say, look how far things have gone.
Rollins has great energy, and I recommend the show to anyone who can find it. The part that really stuck with me, though, was his account of a show he did in Washington, D.C., on the night of the general election in 2016. He talks about how everything he said that night seemed to bomb, and he couldn’t figure out why. And that’s how he found out that Donald Trump had been elected.
He describes the lost, confused look on many of the faces that looked back at him from the audience. It seemed to hit some of them in waves: they’d be thinking normal thoughts about the babysitter or the kids or whatever else, and suddenly they’d remember and feel their head explode all over again.
I haven’t felt that kind of nameless dread in a while. There’s a lot to dislike about this presidency, but I spent a lot of my time social-distancing trying to look forward rather than getting stuck on how bad things are now. My stomach still turned at a lot of news stories and such, but I’d developed a sort of rhythm with that. I still felt it, but it was predictable: on any given day, there was a nonzero chance that Donald Trump and his not-so-clandestine cabal would do something completely messed up, making the situation worse by degree after degree.
Then I heard the news about Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and it was like that night in 2016 all over again.
My History with Intuition
I’ve learned to trust my intuition when it comes to this sort of physical manifestation of emotional response in my body. I mean to say that, even if I can’t articulate what’s making me react, I can tell by my own physiological responses (with near certainty) when there is something close to me that ought to be feared or farther away for my safety and/or that of others, or else that the decision to walk into a given situation is not going to work out well for me.
Once upon a time, I was in marching band. I played clarinet in high school. In early 2004, concert band went to a contest out of town. I was a freshman, so it was unusual for me to be in that group, but I tried out and made it. We stopped on the way for pizza, which I did not eat. I changed into the uniform I was given, since I was being raised as a girl then: a long dress with a lacy white section over the chest and a flowing faux-satin skirt that went down to my ankles. I also wore pearls, as per instructions.
So, we go in, we play some songs, and we start getting back on the bus. Girls went on the bus first to change back into street clothes, then they disembarked to let the boys change. By the time everyone boarded for the last time and we took off on the 90-minute or so drive back to my hometown, I felt an unfathomable level of anxiety. I was shaky and short of breath, but the real kicker was that my backside felt completely cold, from my head and neck down to my thighs.
I had no way of knowing this — cell phones had been invented, but I was too broke to get one, and service was quite spotty in the semi-rural community I reluctantly called home — but some serious shit had hit the fan in the preceding hours.
Some quick background information: I was a cutter for several years. My brother found out about it and used it to blackmail me, so I had been helping him slowly steal from our parents. I had written a note to a close friend about how I just wished they’d let me do it. In my 14-year-old brain, I had concocted a pretty ridiculous idea: I would pretend it wasn’t a mental health thing and that my cutting was a sexual thing.
Bizarre? Yes, very much so. I knew that. But I was committed to continuing with the behavior.
I saw it as a necessary evil: I had feelings that I couldn’t handle. There was noise in my head that got very, very loud, and sometimes cutting was the only thing that would cut through that noise and given me even a momentary bout of relief. I’m not saying that’s ideal or even close. I’m saying I felt that it was my only choice.
People think that cutters and those who engage in other types of self-harm are always suicidal. In my extensive experience, that’s not typically the case. If anything, the cutting kept me from becoming suicidal. I couldn’t handle things without it. That’s what I thought, so I endured my brother’s blackmail, figuring that things were at least predictable that way. I could manage that for a little while.
Well, my brother got in trouble with our parents. To this day, I’m not sure exactly what happened, but what I do know is what happened next: he threw me under the bus, too.
My aforementioned friend sat under an afghan with me on the bench where I usually waited for my mom or dad to pick me up after a band function. It was like she knew there was something up with me. I don’t remember if it was my mom or dad who picked me up. I think it was mom, but that’s not the point.
We didn’t chat or anything on the way home. I had the gut-wrenching feeling that I was walking into a trap as I walked in the front door.
I’m not going to go into any further details here on the subject of the aftermath, but rest assured that my physical symptoms were quite appropriate in terms of what they were warning me about.
I felt similarly on election night in 2016, and when I found out about RBG, the same reaction occurred.
What Does This Mean?
RBG dying had been on my radar for a while. My partner and I have talked about it many times, both in agreement that, if anything happened to her, it would be devastating for anything progressive.
Now we can see that Trump would like to replace her, post-haste, in order to have that in his deck when it comes to contesting the election this November or suspending it altogether, or worse.
These are the bullies our moms told us to “just ignore,” in grade school. Fun fact: it didn’t work then, and it isn’t going to work now. I’ve been trying to frame Trump as a sort of blight, one that can eventually be taken care of but that, for now, we’re stuck with. Prior to the pandemic, we talked about our relationships with foreign countries as being, in some sense or other, on the line due to Trump’s nonsense. I had been telling myself that all we need to do is survive this, elect someone relatively left-leaning, and start rebuilding, in every sense of that word.
A part of me really wishes we could have just done something a la Weekend at Bernie’s in the case of RBG, even though I know it wouldn’t fly. The other side of the coin is a bit intriguing: put Donald in a limo with some hot ladies, drug him somehow (nothing harmful, just send him to la-la land for an hour or three), then have him wake up as they arrive at a “secure location,” and tell Donald he’s still president but that the libs are coming for blood, so he needs to lay low. We create a Twitter clone that uses bots to simulate a social network environment, and we do similar things with a few television networks, including Fox News.
Let him think he’s in charge. The man clearly does not have a strong grip on truth or falsehood as important concepts, so you wouldn’t need to make the fake stuff ultra convincing. You just need to make them plausible.
There are maybe 50 reasons why that wouldn’t work, not the least of which is people running their mouths. It’s still fun to think about.
Honestly, I don’t know what to suggest. If he were assassinated, or if an attempt was made, he would be martyred and held up as an example of how mean the democrats are and how (if the attempt failed) terrible dems are at doing stuff and/or how awesome Trump is for evading them. (In case the NSA is listening, I have no plan or ability to harm or kill anyone, least of all the president. Y’all probably know that from my bank account alone, but still. I’m not trying to get arrested or “detained,” for any of this.)
What Options Do We Have?
Honestly, not many. For the average person, there is little that can be done aside from making sure your vote counts, but that’s not necessarily as easy as it may sound.
We can’t travel freely right now, because many countries are ahead of us in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and understandably do not want to be infected by countries who can’t or won’t get their act together. But you may be able to start working on getting your documents together to apply for a passport so you’ll have the theoretical ability to fly the coop if necessary.
I myself am considering applying to graduate school in Germany, mostly because I have some German language courses in my background, but it’s far too early to tell whether that’s even going to be possible.
It’s risky, but you can theoretically acquire a passport through less-than-legitimate means. I’m not suggesting or advising that anyone take that course of action, and I will not be liable for any consequences that occur as a result. If someone were to try that, I imagine it would only be worth the risk if you were in danger if you stay where you are, which is why I mention it as a theoretical possibility. I don’t know any of the details on how that might work, if it would work at all, though.
The fact that I’m mentioning it at all is a testament to how completely bonkers the situation is. Either way, I myself do not have the funds for it, I assume. (I’m pretty broke.) However, if anyone would like to offer financial help to get me a legit passport, I would be very interested.
In general, though, we have to keep pushing. If my physiological intuition indicators have told me anything, it’s this: we have to assume it’s going to be a close election. I badly hope that it won’t, but we have to treat it like that’s the likely outcome, no matter what we hear or read about stats and approval ratings.
It feels like we’re teetering on the edge of something very bad. That’s the only thing I can say with certainty: this has all the makings of a total catastrophe, and that catastrophe may be prolonged indefinitely depending on what happens with SCOTUS, the mail, and so on.
But it’s not over yet.
