It’s been a good few months since I’ve written here. I kept meaning to return, intending to make it part of my regular writing practice again. It’s funny to think that I started this blog in 2012, the same year that I participated in National Novel Writing Month. Since then, NaNoWriMo has bitten the dust, WordPress no longer has centralized community features like Freshly Pressed while shoving AI up its own ass, and blogs have become these free-floating spaces – placeholders for those of us who seek publication in case anyone asks us, god forbid, about our platforms.
I couldn’t write about politics, because I truly did not have the agility to navigate the shitstorm that has blasted our country over the last 9 months. Seasoned journalists were barely up to the task. Mainstream media sources, educational institutions, and corporate entities flinched in cowardice. What could I possibly contribute that wouldn’t just be more noise? I have a tiny (but beloved) readership and have no wish to monetize, so this little space began to collect dustballs. Every time I returned to it, I wrote yet another draft that would not see the light of day.
It would be easy to call it writer’s block, but I tend not to use that phrase. If I’m not writing, there’s a reason. Perhaps it is because I feel incapable of enunciating the depression, anxiety, and righteous anger in a way that wouldn’t be a spluttering of curse words and ad hominem attacks. But if I’m to take the job of writer seriously, I’d better get over that and get on with things.
While I deride the institutions that have bowed down, I have more control over whether or not I obey in advance. I am self-censoring more than I used to and I recognize that it might be time for me to gird my loins, stand up straight, and speak clearly, instead of muttering angrily in the corner. I’ve never been great on social media, because I’m always a month late with a witticism or thoughtful comment. It is not a place for slow discourse and the world itself, warp-speeding into destruction, is not going to wait for or be remotely impacted by my words.
I find myself turning to moral philosophers and to writers who have lived through authoritarian times, desperate to find a deeper meaning or sense of purpose. What I’ve found most rattling and consequential is that there are no rewards for staying silent. You suffer the indignity of being a coward on top of whatever fascist bulldozer eventually rolls over you.
There’s no magic answer to any of this. We know history. We know what happens to people under pressure, people who are taught to be afraid, people who are hungry, people who thirst for hope and light but who cannot see beyond the obstacles in front of them. What we don’t know is who we will be under those circumstances. Right now, I’m a coward, sitting quietly, trying to process what my priorities should be, where my attention should land, who needs the help I could offer, and realizing that as each minute and second passes, someone else is suffering from my inability to act.
Silence, however, comes in different forms. There are people doing the hard work of protection, defiance, support, resistance, and empowerment without announcing it to the world. The problem is representation. We need representation of opposition, of understanding that we are not alone in our fears and anger. Of seeing people who share our ideals out in the world. To know that there are things we can do, believe in, and pursue. That requires some of us to show ourselves and be seen.
I believe the old adage that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather acting in spite of fear. I can’t imagine living the rest of my life guided only by fear. At the moment, I feel a bit like a fly caught in a spider web. All these threads of chaos holding me in place, not allowing me to escape, to change direction, to believe that anything I do matters, just a constant, tiring struggle. It is a deadly powerlessness which must be challenged.
A lifelong polite activist, I’ve shown up to volunteer at food banks, worked at nonprofits, donated to causes, even brought my introvert self to several protests. These are the polite things that nice middle class white ladies do. The protests in the middle of the afternoon in a suburb where people don’t step on the grass and let others through. Shouts are call and response murmurs, signs aren’t vulgar or violent. We smile, wave at honkers, and then hustle off to our daily chores at the appointed hour.
I shouldn’t mock it – people are showing up how they can, but seeing protesters in Chicago coldcocked by government-appointed thugs and sprayed with gas and rubber bullets – or the pictures from the 60s in Selma, Alabama – well, you can see why sanitized protests seem a little empty. But one must be careful what they wish for – the utilization of military might and police brutality against protesting citizens is happening now. It’s just a matter of time before the most anodyne protest becomes a risk one must decide to take.
The warnings are dire, a four-alarm fire for our democracy, moves straight out of every dictator’s playbook. Inch by depressing inch. We’ve been taught to view each other as the enemy, while our pockets are picked and our rights diminished. The “fringe” groups are becoming a creepingly larger category until it will eventually envelop anyone who thinks this administration is bad for the country.
The meaning of words is quickly losing its foothold in reality. The opinion that racism and misogyny is a bad foundational policy is now being called radical. It will be the first time in my life I will be extremist anything. Hearing and reading the language being abused and manipulated by high-ranking members of government behooves us as writers and readers and bearers of history to hold our ground.
It is critical to keep writing and to keep talking to each other and to keep reminding ourselves that it is good to imagine and fight for a better, more equitable world.
It is also good to laugh, to find joy, to say to one another, we are not alone. Love is radical. Peace is radical. Creativity is radical. Showing up in solidarity is radical. There are monsters in the world who seek only to dominate, control, and diminish others, because they themselves are small human beings. We must challenge ourselves to grow, to learn, and to say aloud there is a better way.
Perhaps my opening salvo after such a long period of silence is a rallying cry. For myself. To stop being frozen and overwhelmed and scared. My reach is small; my language, underdeveloped for the times. Here begins the first lesson.
Hello, my name is Michelle. I am a writer. This is my voice.
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