from the they-can't-kill-us-all dept

The World Is Yours

Forgive me for this digression. I know it’s usually left to Mike Masnick to lift us up from our collective doldrums when things seem even more hopeless than they did last year. His New Year’s posts are never wrong. There are always silver linings, even if the filigree is more difficult to detect with each passing year.

This isn’t about Mike or silver linings or the as of yet unfulfilled promise of the New Year. This is a post written by a die hard defeatist and cynic who generally views each passing moment with increasing levels of defeatism.

But I’m wrong. Mike is actually right, even if my spirits often pretend they’re anchored to the ground like so many pre-oh-the-humanity German-built dirigibles.

I will tell you why I’m wrong. And it’s embarrassing. I have plenty to say about lots of stuff but I rarely convert my words into action. Recently, however, I did. And it has made all the difference.

At the request of my oldest kid, we attended the recent “No Kings” rally in Sioux Falls. I was clad in my finest Da Share Zone anti-ICE gear:

He was wearing my protest alternate, a Black Sabbath-inspired bit of rhetoric sure to piss off white Christian nationalists:

Suitably suited, we headed to the protest with a friend of mine and his wife.

Long story short, it was life-affirming. It was exactly what anyone who feels they are losing hope needs. I feel I’m pretty good with word stuff, but I think Will Bunch absolutely nailed it in his post-No Kings column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Quoting Marlon Brando’s mantra in The Wild One (“What are you rebelling against? Whaddya got?”), Bunch moves on to quote real people engaged in protests against something both nebulous and evil… and finding solace in being around people just like them.

“You feel less isolated when you see everybody here, and then they feel less isolated,” Nancy Harris, a 62-year-old retired mental-health crisis counselor from Prospect Park, told me over the steady car honks from supportive motorists. “And I think it just motivates people in general…just putting good vibes out into the universe.”

There’s more. Here’s a 75-year-old protester who not only knows what’s at stake, but knows why you should never give up:

“I’ve been going up against the establishment my whole life,” said [John] Coia, speaking for a generation that grew up exercising its all-American right of free speech and, now in old age, is determined to keep using it while they still can. I asked him what was the last straw with Trump that convinced him to join “No Kings.”

“There is no last straw,” he said over the car honks. “It just keeps going. There’s a new straw every day.”

Both of these things can be true.

You can find hope in being with people who share your beliefs. You can also feel the fight is never-ending because the current administration just won’t stop being abjectly evil.

But the first thing is what matters: the government may never stop being evil, no matter who’s currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk. And people who want the government to serve the people and be less evil will always exist. The ebb and flow of these constants may shift the prevailing narrative, but it can’t undermine the actual truth — something Mike highlighted in a recent post about the horrors perpetrated by the administration in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Here’s the quote from the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer that Mike highlighted in a long, must-read post that pointed out everything that’s right about America, even when everything seems to be going wrong:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone.

This is where we come together. Until recently, I believed that “coming together” was just a meeting of the minds. But that’s just preaching to the converted, which doesn’t really do much, even if my “converted” are objectively better people than the MAGA “converted.”

What really matters is that people are resisting in increasingly large numbers. We often consider the word “community” to be a cliche because that’s how the government uses it (for example, “Intelligence Community”). We view it with the same (healthy!) suspicion as we would statements delivered by company officials claiming they treat employees like “family.”

It never means anything until you’ve actually experienced (firsthand) a good one. “Family” isn’t a compliment if yours sucks. The same can be said for any “community.”

Unlike families, you can choose your community. You don’t have to align yourselves with empty mouths spewing even emptier platitudes. You just need to go out and see for yourself. Sure, I’m my own anecdata in this post. But trust me, if things feel hopeless, all you really need is the company of people who do this day in and day out, despite the table being stacked against them.

I’m sure many (if not nearly all) of you have already had this experience. My greatest regret is that I put it off for so long. No one who truly believes in the cause will care one way or another about your day-to-day devotion. They’ll welcome you and stand beside you. Participation can be its own reward. And you’ll leave feeling more inspired to be the change we need in this world.

I just wish I had done this sooner. The world is ours. Let’s go take it.