Tag hope

Opening The Window

Dusty Leave a comment

…Maybe Shouting Out of It

I have been thinking about writing. I do that a lot: mostly because I haven’t been writing a lot. But I just don’t know what to write.

Then I saw this:

@therapyjeff

You’ve got, like, 1 to 3 business days before hypernormalization drags you back under. #mentalhealth #therapy

♬ original sound – TherapyJeff

It hit me.

It’s hard to predict what will hit you, what will have an impact; that’s part of why I haven’t been writing as much — I don’t know what to say to have an impact on my audience (if I even have any audience left), and I can’t predict what will have an impact on me. And the hypernormalization that he talks about is definitely real, and strongly controlling of my day-to-day interactions with the world and the world of current events. I will also say that my role as a teacher is partly to encourage some of that hypernormalization, because my students freak out, often because they enjoy freaking out and more often because they are young people in a terrifying and confusing world; and whether they are freaking out for the sake of their shattered nerves, or for the sake of the meme (or freaking out for the meme as a way to disassociate from their shattered nerves) , the answer is always to remain calm and to try to pour water on the flames they are fanning. So I spend part of pretty much every working day trying to calm the tempestuous waters of teenaged souls. Then I come home, and sometimes my wife is freaking out — in that case it is never for the meme, it is only because of her shattered nerves or because the world really is a dumpster fire and sometimes we are caught in the flames (which is NOT FINE) — and then sometimes, again, my job is to make awful things seem normal and manageable and not a big deal. Sometimes my job is to freak out with her, which, sadly, I am bad at, because my freaking out usually looks like me getting really mad, and that doesn’t always make people around me feel peachy; but I do my level best anyway, Partly because my nerves are shattered, too.

But this is counterproductive for my writing, because I don’t want to write about how things are normal, how they are just fine. I want to write about how they are fucked up. I don’t want to freak out, because nobody wants to read pages and pages of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuyckfukfuyckfuckfuckfukfuckfuckfuck Hey that’s pretty fun when you get the rhythm going!

But it’s hard to write, calmly and rationally, about how things are fucked up when you are yourself freaking out. Which is, of course, what the powers that be want: they want us to draw into our individual isolated shells and hide from the horrors they have put into the world, because that makes us easier to control, and easier to eliminate; and that’s why this very nice therapist made this TikTok, in which he tells us to take a step, even a small step, towards interacting and connecting with others during this particular moment of jarring insanity; because, as he says at the close of that video, even that small step of having a conversation or connecting with a group of potentially like-minded people, is much bigger than sinking back into the hypernormalization without having done anything other than twitch bonelessly for the 1-3 business days of this moment when we can break loose.

So let’s break loose. Rationally. Without freaking out, but also without rationalizing everything into normality. Because this is not normal: a man shot Charlie Kirk in the throat. Charlie Kirk is dead — apparently assassinated, though one thing I will say is that we absolutely must stop speculating about shit we know nothing about, until we actually know what is going on. We don’t know that the murderer was an assassin in the sense that we know for sure that the killing was politically motivated, and that Kirk was murdered because he was a prominent political voice; he was a prominent political voice, so in the case that we see any such death as an assassination, then it was, but I think it is important to distinguish between John Hinckley’s attempted killing of Ronald Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald’s successful killing of John F. Kennedy: Oswald intended to kill the US President because he disagreed with Kennedy’s political stances and actions, and maybe what Kennedy represented; Hinckley thought Jodie Foster would notice him if he shot the President. That second one is not, to me, an (attempted) assassination. If we assume that this one was an assassination, which is a reasonable assumption but not a certainty because the killer carved fucking memes into his bullet casings — “If you read this you are gay LMAO” is not a political statement — it is also not clear if it was done because Kirk was too right wing, or if he was not right wing enough, which means we may be able to label it as an assassination, but not then go on to say anything meaningful about that fact other than it was a terrible, horrible thing, like every murder, especially unnecessary ones. (Yes, there are necessary murders. Not many, and they are still terrible, but there are. Not this one, so that is not our topic.) We do not know, and I will disagree with the people saying all over the internet and TV, that Kirk was killed for his political views, or his ideological beliefs, or his past statements which the killer may have found too offensive or not offensive enough; when all of that becomes clear, then we can discuss it — though we are unlikely to come to any useful consensus about it. And that’s partly because of Charlie Kirk.

I don’t want it to be because of me, too. I like to think it never could be, because I, of course, am rational and reasonable — and also correct, which, as I like to tell my students (quoting the late great Bill Hicks), gives my argument that extra oomph — but of course we all think that about ourselves. I do certainly write divisive things, both because my arguments are aggressive and confident, sometimes even spoken in words as hard as cannonballs (to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson), and because my language and my personal statements about my opponents and enemies are frequently deeply offensive. If people who disagree with me read these posts, they probably get pretty mad at me, and at them. Though they may deny it, because of course online debaters must never admit that they are upset, that they are emotional and out of control.

I am quite emotional. I am often somewhat out of control, usually, as I said, because I have a temper, and because my nerves are shattered. Anybody who doesn’t feel the same, at least that last part, is either lying or a sociopath.

Because stuff is fucked up. Deeply, multifariously, evilly fucked up. A man was murdered, and we all flipped our shit about it: and on the same day, two children were wounded by a third, who shot them at their school and then killed himself. I don’t even know how many other people have died in the days since Kirk was killed, but if we keep up this year with last year’s average it would have been about 47 per day. The right accused the left of causing Kirk’s murder with our political rhetoric; the left accused the right of causing Kirk’s murder with their violent fascism; people posted about how saddened they were by the death, especially because his wife and children were there and saw it happen; other people posted about how they were glad Kirk had been killed because of the awful things he had said and the positions he had espoused in the past, including racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia.

It’s all fucked up. And even the virtuoso guitar playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan (Who was only five years older than Kirk — 36 to Kirk’s 31 — when SRV died in a helicopter crash) can’t make it better, can’t make me feel calmer and more in control at this moment.

So I had a thought. A step to take, in this window (which may have closed already, because it’s been four days since he died; but I’m going to try to do this anyway because I don’t think I’ve sunk back into the hypernormalization yet) of opportunity. Not to argue for gun control, though I am doing that on social media; not to argue against hyperpartisanship because arguing against people arguing badly is a losing endeavor, no matter how you slice it; not to lament the loss of free speech in this country, because Malcolm X was assassinated sixty years ago — also in front of his wife and children — and the Alien Enemies Act signed into law by President John Adams in 1798 was used by President Donald Trump in 2025 as a legal justification for deporting both citizens and non-citizens without due process, so I would argue that we have never had fully free speech in this country.

I want to try to reverse the polarity of this moment. I want to try to speak positively. Not about Kirk’s murder, which is nothing but horrendous; I just want to use this moment to try to imagine a world in which Kirk would not have been murdered. A world that certainly could have existed, if we had made different choices as a nation and a people, and one that we can certainly bring into existence if we try. Maybe if I try to normalize hope, then we can have some when we sink back into our absurd routines.

Let’s start with a beautiful image. This one came from here, and is advertised as using no AI.

I don’t see why not. Hope is not any harder than despair: hope takes work, but we have to work to keep our despair gurgling inside of us, just as much. We have to spend time looking for more reasons to feel despair, have to keep thinking negatively about what is in our world or in ourselves — or what is not there — have to keep all of that front of mind, or else we might spot a video of a cute puppy and not be sad any more. If you’ve ever felt sorrow or despair, then you know the struggle to keep it that I am talking about. (Depression, now: depression does not require any work to maintain; that’s why it is depression. But I’m not talking about mental health, other than to say that hope and positivity in a non-toxic way might help with depression, as well. Not going to oversimplify the facts of depression, but still. Here’s that puppy.)

Your Puppy: What to Expect at 13 to 16 weeks - Vetstreet | Vetstreet
This is my favorite ear configuration: one up, one down. And nobody does it better than Corgis. This image is from here.

I’m not trying to slap some pretty pictures up over the horrors: that kind of forced, hollow veneer just makes things feel worse because we know how thin it is. I’m just using the images to counteract the — let’s call it the acidity of the first part of this post, the corrosiveness of horror and violence and conflict. But for the hope, I want to speak genuinely. Because I think the hope is real.

First, what am I hoping for? I’m hoping for a society that recognizes the value of all of its members, and takes all stakeholders seriously when considering what to do collectively. I’m hoping for a world where people are able to find and create joy, consistently, throughout their lives. A country where we try to find our common ground, and respect our common humanity, before we disagree about what our country should look like. A life where people recognize the liars and conmen, the gaslighters and manipulators, and see the corruption for what it is, and don’t tolerate it because it smells just like our own. A world of integrity and trust.

No. It isn’t impossible. I’m certainly speaking in broad generalities, because no, I don’t expect any world to reach a point where problems are eliminated, where there is no conflict, where liars are vanished and corruption is prevented before it taints everything. But I do know that our world, our society, our ethos, used to be different, in at least some ways and to some degree; and that means that change is possible. We talk about the pendulum swinging, and it does, and it will — though I suspect that the pendulum, like most other political machinery in this ever-so-exploitable country, has been manipulated in some way to ensure that the people in power don’t lose that power when the pendulum swings; but the power of the pendulum metaphor is that the swings are inevitable, and reactive: you can hold back the pendulum, you can even push it farther away from plumb; it’s just going to swing harder and faster when it finally goes, and swing farther in the other direction when it does. It can’t be stopped. And it can’t be stopped because people are essentially good, despite what our cynical profiteers would have us all believe — because they want us all hiding in our individual isolated shells, hiding from the horrors, easily controlled and easily exploited. No: people are essentially good. We are just — we’re really, really scared. That’s what we have to overcome.

Here’s a nice picture of individual shells:

🔥 Cuban snails ( Also said to be the most beautiful land snails ) : r/NatureIsFuckingLit
These are Cuban snails. Image from the subReddit NatureIsFuckingLit. Hell yeah.

And it begins with trust.

That’s the message I want to share today. Hope is possible, and achieving what we hope for is possible, especially if we all hope for (essentially) the same things. It begins with trust: we need to trust each other, to believe that we all will cooperate, so far as we can, to achieve those things we hope for.

I know this because I am a high school English teacher. And I have watched my classes struggle more, in some ways, every year, as their attentions spans wane, as their interest in reading disintegrates, as they become less and less literate. I have certainly lost hope at times; I have certainly lost trust in my students, have believed that they do not want to learn what I have to teach, that they do not want to read, that they do not want to do anything other than play video games, watch TikToks, and be annoying. I have believed all of those things because there are days when they act like that. Some of my students act that way all the time, and some of those even say that they have no interest in learning to read better, no interest in ever reading as long as they live. It’s hard to keep trusting kids who say that to me, especially the ones who know the impact on me of what they are saying.

But those are only some days. And those kids? They are only kids. They don’t want to read because they don’t have any hope. They are not incapable of reading, and they are not incapable of hope. On my worst days, I don’t believe that; but on my best days, I inspire hope in them. I know it: I’ve seen it, and I’ve been told about it, both in the moment and years afterwards. I was having a rough day this last Friday: and then one of my students — now former student, because they have departed my school for online schooling — came back to thank me for being their teacher. They gave me a lovely hardback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, the book I taught them. Because they saw it and they thought of me, and they wanted me to have it. They saw a book: and they recognized the value of that book, because I taught them that book had value. And, I mean, I’m a good teacher: but I’m no miracle worker. This was just an ordinary interaction, a regular unmotivated and difficult student, who I happened to connect with enough that they trusted me when I said that TKAM was worth reading: and then I proved it. And for the rest of their life, they will know at least one book that has value, that is something worth giving to another person as a thank-you gift.

That’s hope.

And it starts with trust.

I’m going to keep going with this idea, because I like it, and I think there is value in it. Hopefully I can get some of you (if there are any of you — but I trust that there are) to trust me enough to start hoping, as well. And if we can agree on what we should be hoping for, then we can make it happen. We’ll turn that goddamn pendulum into a wrecking ball — one made of candy.

@rbxraw

The ball got tired of his yapping🤣🤣😂 #fyp #foryou #neildegrassetyson #astrophsics #comedyvideo #meme #wreckingball #whydidntiflinch #noflinch #funny #foryoupage #viral #fypシ #blowthisup #trending #cutoff #caughtoffguard

♬ original sound – RbxRaw

That’s how we’ll change it.

Waking Up

Dusty Leave a comment

I had a nightmare the other night.

We all had one two weeks ago. But that one is just beginning.

I don’t have very many nightmares. Although, I don’t remember my dreams very often, so it’s possible that I am running through a constant string of terrifying dreams all night and then blanking my mind of them when I wake; I do suffer from insomnia, and so I frequently wake up in the middle of the night and think anxious and frustrated thoughts for a while before I manage to get back to sleep — if I do get back to sleep. That might be from that hypothetical string of nightmares suddenly reaching some kind of tipping point, driving me out of sleep and into waking anxiety.

Hmmm… a series of nightmares that build up to a climax of anxiety which ruins sleep. That does sound like the current situation of this country, doesn’t it?

In my nightmare the other night, my wife and I were going through a zombie apocalypse scenario. I don’t remember the whole thing, but at the end, we were hurrying through the halls of a Generic School-In-A-Dream™, and it was right at the point of the zombie plague where you look around, and you realize that the people around you are not people, but are rather zombies: and not only that, but the people are giving you that sullen, angry stare that zombies tend to have right before they charge. In my dream it was particularly creepy because the one I saw and recognized as a zombie was a child, and the signal that the kid was zombied up was a bloody rip across his cheek. In the dream, Toni and I ran; but we didn’t get very far.

Zombie children staring at cell phones in dark theater. - Stock Image & Prompt | 2Moons
Not the kind of zombies I was thinking of — but also, isn’t it?

I am scared of zombies. Of course I am, and not just because the idea of being eaten alive is utterly horrifying; I am also scared of the zombie apocalypse because I know how it would go: I would die. Quickly. I have no survival skills, I have no combat ability, I have nothing that I could even offer to a group of survivors that would make them want to take me in, other than how well I could correct their grammar and help them interpret poems: two skills that I expect will not be highly prized in the apocalypse.

As they are not prized now.

But that is much less frightening to me than this: what would happen to my family?

My wife is a badass; she can fight, she can shoot a gun (which I never have), she is tough as nails. She could make it, at least for a while — as long as I was not slowing her down. But she wouldn’t leave me, so I would definitely be slowing her down; and that means I would have to worry about her survival, because I would be a liability for it — I would be putting her at risk. And then, even if we decided we would run for the hills or something, we also have pets: two dogs, a great big tortoise, and a tiny bird in a cage. Okay, the tortoise I could release into the wild; he would probably be fine — would zombies even eat tortoises? (Note to self: story idea — zombie turtle. Talk about slow zombies.) — but my dogs and my bird would not be fine. And I wouldn’t leave them. And that, of course, makes me think about the horror of watching my loved ones get hurt. Which is, far and away and always, the worst nightmare imaginable.

And that — watching people we love get hurt — is also the current situation of this country.

So look: I said in my last post that, if you were looking to solve certain problems and thought voting for Donald Trump and the Republicans was the way to solve those problems, that doesn’t by itself make you my enemy. I don’t agree with you, but if you did it without meaning harm, I don’t have to consider you that way, with full and vituperative enmity. But the thing is, voting for Trump was unquestionably voting for someone who will do harm: and while that doesn’t mean you wanted harm to be done, it sure as hell means you accepted the fact that harm will be done. Maybe you lied to yourself, and convinced yourself Trump would not do harm; but that was a lie, and you probably know it. The man not only did harm to people in his first term, he promised extensive harm for this term, and he has been accused and found liable for causing quite a bit of harm entirely separate from the trials he was able to maneuver out of because too many people voted for Trump over the rule of law. Again, I assume that if you voted for Trump, you weren’t actually thinking, “I don’t want the rule of law any more!” Maybe you even thought that Trump and the Republicans are the law and order party; which is fine, in some ways they are — but Trump himself is not, and you should have been cognizant of that.

More likely was that you expected harm would be done, but you expected it will not be done to you or your family, and you were willing to accept that outcome. If you weren’t willing to accept that outcome, obviously, you didn’t vote for Trump. If you voted for Harris, thank you, and I’m sorry; if you didn’t vote, well. You’re not my enemy. But you’re pretty damn pathetic. And if you voted for harm that won’t fall on you, then I want you to think about that, for the next four years, and then hopefully for the rest of your life.

(And don’t try to both-sides me: I recognize that voting for Harris was voting for harm to continue in Gaza with American support. I would have been thinking about that for the rest of my life. I probably already will be, as I voted for Joe Biden, who has been supporting that genocide for a full year now.)

So, when I had this nightmare about the zombies rising up to kill my wife and I, I woke up scared. I realized immediately that it was a nightmare and it wasn’t real (Unlike the current situation in this country, which feels just like a nightmare but unfortunately is quite real), but like an idiot, I thought this thought: What if the situation were real? How would I actually deal with a zombie apocalypse? And while most of the time (I don’t think about zombie apocalypse survival strategies all the time, but I have thought of them, when it isn’t 3:00 am on a school night) I can fool myself (See? I do it too.) into thinking that I would escape by hiding or running or just being super clever, on this particular night, lying in the darkness, I faced the truth: I’d be screwed. I would die. Probably in an awful way. And I would have to either hope to die first (which would break my most important promise to my wife), or I would have to watch my loved ones killed in awful ways in front of me, while I couldn’t do anything about it.

And that feels just like the situation in this country today.

I know that there are people who would read this and think, “Psssh. You’re just being dramatic. Come on, comparing the second Trump term to a zombie apocalypse? That’s ridiculous! He’s just gonna lower taxes and deport some people. Maybe ban trans people. Maybe go after abortion and birth control. No big deal! He’s not gonna end the world!” To be fair, maybe people who would think that way wouldn’t read this, but my point is that there are people, probably the majority of the 76 million people who voted for Trump, who would think I was exaggerating with this analogy.

You know those people in zombie movies who act like complete idiots? Who refuse to accept the truth? They deny that the zombies are rising, or that they are eating people; they refuse to accept the obvious danger, or to accept that their own actions — making too much noise, for instance, or opening doors without knowing what is on the other side — are unacceptably risky? You know how those people almost always get other people killed before themselves succumbing to the ravenous horde?

Humans vs. Zombies: Fight of the living dead – Basement Medicine

Right. This country has at least 76 million of those people.

No, I don’t know if that is true. Not all the people who voted for Trump are fools who think he won’t do any harm. Many of them want him to do harm. They are gleefully rubbing their hands together in eager anticipation of all that harm he will do; they probably have a list of intended victims they are especially eager to enjoy the suffering of. Maybe they have a pool, and are laying odds on who will get it, and who will be first. (To be clear, these people are my enemies.)

You know those characters in zombie movies who are rooting for the zombies, and hoping all of humanity dies in hideous agony?

Right: you don’t. Because there aren’t any people like that in zombie movies. There are no people, in a story of struggle between humanity itself and the vile corruption that is bent on destroying humanity, who want humanity to lose. (Note to self: zombie movie in which some people actually want the zombies to win and talk about how much cheaper eggs will be when most of the population has been eaten. Maybe include the zombie turtles in this?) Which just tells you that some proportion of Trump’s voters are even worse than the people in zombie apocalypse movies.

Which is pretty damn terrible to think about.

I really don’t understand it. I understand (though I condemn) the partisanship that kept people from being able to vote for Harris or any Democrat; I understand (though I deplore) the willful ignorance that allowed people to “forget” that Trump will do harm, or the barely concealed hatred and aversion that allowed people to accept the limited harm they think Trump will do, which they think won’t affect them directly. I understand and agree with the anger that I know many people felt over the DNC’s choice of Kamala Harris, who is not and never was the best candidate the left could have produced for President; though also, I have to say this: people are nervous about what Trump will do now that he doesn’t have the same guardrails keeping him in line as he had the first time, and the truth is that the biggest guardrail Trump had to get over was — us. We are the guardrail. We are the defenders of democracy and freedom in this country, because the actual political power in this country resides in our votes. And we had one job: to vote against Trump’s return to the White House. As people trying to get our apathetic, lethargic, cynical, disjointed, selfish political class to produce an actually good candidate who could provide actual positive outcomes, we had several things we could have and should have done; but as defenders of democracy, we had one job: don’t let the would-be tyrant get back into power.

And we failed. We let the zombie virus out of the lab. For the second time, too, because this is the sequel: and as with every sequel, the stupidity of those who fail to take the zombie apocalypse seriously has to be even more appalling and egregious — because Jesus Christ, we already went through this once, weren’t you paying attention when all those zombies were eating people?!? — and the violence and gore the zombies inflict on people has to be even more shocking, even more horrendous, either more disgusting or on a much wider scale; because the sequel has to up the ante from the first installment, or there’s no point to having a sequel. Right?

Zombieworld 2 - Movies on Google Play
Love the zombie in the bottom right looking the wrong way.

What kills me is the breadth and depth of Trump’s win. I can’t just blame those frickin Pennsylvanians: every swing state went to Trump. My state, Arizona, went to Trump. There are Trump supporters all around me, wishing harm but not talking to me about it. You know how the worst thing in a zombie movie is when the people are actually turning into zombies, and you don’t know who is going to turn next? Who has already been infected? Who is suddenly going to surprise you by revealing themselves as your enemy, as the person who wishes you harm, or even as the monster who is going to do you harm themselves, who is going to take a bite out of your shoulder on the way up to your jugular? Everyone looks the same, all looking normal, all talking about things the same way — and then suddenly someone’s eyes roll up in their heads, their skin turns chartreuse, and they groan and start nomming on their neighbors? Don’t you think that’s the worst part of zombie movies?

Okay, no, the worst is probably when people get dragged screaming into a horde that tears them apart and eats them alive.

I hope that there won’t be anything even metaphorically like that in this situation. It is just an analogy; I don’t think the world is going to go through even a human apocalypse, let alone something like a zombie apocalypse. I know we will survive this.

But also, Nazis marched in Ohio this past weekend. So I’m really not sure there won’t be a scene of savage and shocking violence where someone innocent is dragged screaming to their horrible bloody death.

So my dark-of-night thought about the zombie apocalypse was: I’d probably just give up. I’d run for a while — if we’re starting with my dream, I’d be with Toni — and then I’d end up giving in to despair, and I’d have to do one of those hideously sad scenes where two people say goodbye and then let themselves die together. And when I heard the election results, I thought sort of the same thing: maybe I should just give up. I mean, this is clearly what the people of this country want, more than I want to believe they want it. But they do. I don’t just think ignorant and evil people voted for Trump; I think there were rational people, good people, who made a bad decision, but who thought it was the right decision. I want to think that, given a chance to talk to them honestly and openly, I could convince those people that they made a bad decision: and then maybe they won’t make the same kind of mistake again — but also, I failed to convince them before this election. I failed to make any difference in this election. However hard I tried, it wasn’t good enough; I wasn’t good enough to solve the problem, to prevent this terrible outcome, to protect people from harm. I thought, Why would I try again when I failed the last time?

And that’s actually why I recognized this parallel between Trump’s election and the zombie apocalypse, and why I wanted to write about it.

Because what zombies represent is hopelessness.

The basic concept of the zombie trope is this: people, who are unique and special and valuable individuals, become zombies, a horde of identityless, soulless, lifeless husks, taken over and corrupted by some vile invader — a virus, an alien parasite, Disney. Having been corrupted, the former humans stalk other humans relentlessly, and turn those individual people into more indistinguishable members of the horde. It represents all of our fears of losing our selves, our identities, in the larger society, which grinds us up and devours us (along with the visceral horror of cannibalism, the idea of being devoured, reduced to mere sustenance and then destroyed and consumed by those who should shield and succour you). Zombies are seen as representing our fear of the future, particularly of technology, and the advancement and growth of our society into something that either doesn’t recognize our individual human value — or doesn’t care about it. Zombies don’t care that I am a teacher, or a husband, or a writer, or a man who loves animals; to them I’m just meat. And zombies are the meat grinder.

Zombies are the Machine. Zombies are the Man, in the abstract sense of an authority that doesn’t respect or value us, that sees us only as grist for the mill, or at best fuel for the engine.

But none of that is the horror of zombies. (That’s not true: much of the horror of zombies is in the eating, particularly in the eating alive, which is just appalling in and of itself.) The horror of zombies is in their relentlessness: the horde keeps coming after you, and nothing can make them stop. They do not get tired or bored or distracted (mostly), because they are lifeless and thoughtless and devoid of all desires other than hunger. They can not be killed, can not be scared off. You can sometimes destroy them, such as with the famed head shot, or with something like an explosion, a consuming fire, a bulldozer: some kind of overwhelming force, far more than would be needed to stop a human who was coming after you, which shows the sheer power to be found in giving up (or losing) humanity. But even if you fight the zombies, and win the battle, you can’t win the war, because you will run out of ammunition, you will use up all of your resources, and the zombies will keep coming: because we got the guns, but they got the numbers, to misquote the Doors. And of course, every one of ours we lose is one that they gain. You can outrun them — but eventually they will catch up with you, because you will get exhausted, simply because you are alive and therefore you need to rest. The dead — or rather, the undead — do not need to rest.

That’s the main horror of zombie apocalypse stories. There is no escape, and no way to stop what is coming for you. What is going to eat you, or turn you into another part of itself. And the result of that inevitability, (I have to link that clip. Also, the third movie is an interesting re-interpretation of the same fear, being consumed and turned into the corrupted enemy.) of course, is despair: a loss of hope, and the subsequent surrendering to apathy and lethargy and numbness, and then death and destruction.

Hm. Sounds like depression. Also sounds like the situation in this country right now.

So that’s what I felt, what I thought, when I heard that Trump had won the election. Fortunately, because I spend most of my time outside of politics, I didn’t feel that total despair, I didn’t lose all hope — because hey, the zombie hordes aren’t outside my door. They aren’t stalking me. I understand that some people don’t have that luxury, that solace, because the hordes are stalking them, and they are in real danger; but, without being selfish or trying to sound callous, I am glad that I can take solace in that I can still live. I can still teach — and while some of my students are a different kind of soulless zombie horde, many of them are vital and wonderful young people who learn from me. So there is hope there. I can still write, even though it is harder to find the time and energy to do it, these days. Because this is neither a movie nor my dream, I do not in fact need to sacrifice my wife, or hold her while we both die; actually, we are both quite healthy, which is nice to say. And the pets are safe and well. So no, it is not the apocalypse, not for me. I have hope, and hope means I can fight.

And it is not time to give up hope.

I mean that. While many of the guardrails that held Trump back from his worst impulses last time are gone now, and he will act like what he is, a cross between Veruca Salt (not the band) and a shit-throwing gibbon (Note to self: that would be a good punk band name.), there are still guardrails in place. We should be disturbed by the ones that are gone, and we should work to put them back in place, or even replace them with improved versions; but don’t think that Trump will be able to do all the worst things he or we could ever imagine. He won’t. The military will not betray this country, the Constitution, and their oaths, for Donald freaking Trump: and without the military, he can never have a coup or become dictator for life. He can get every single one of the Proud Boys, and the 3%ers, and the Neo-Nazis, and the Karens for Trump or whatever, and march them all on Washington: and a single armored division would wipe them out in minutes. So he cannot overthrow the government. And while the Supreme Court, themselves corrupted by something vile and awful and alien — namely a level of arrogance that we haven’t seen, I think, since literal nobles before the French Revolution — have given Trump the green light to do whatever official act he wants — they also reserved for themselves the right to decide what is an official act. And if you think they would ever give up that control over Trump, or any other President, well. You haven’t seen any movies with the nobility in them. Honestly, the people backing Trump don’t want him to overthrow the government and destroy this country; this country is where they keep their money. The Supreme Court serves that crowd, the billionaire class who want to retain the rule of law because that protects their billions — and, not coincidentally, the Court’s own power. So anything that looks like Trump trying to overthrow the Constitution and set himself up as a king will be thrown down by those who already consider themselves our overlords.

Let Them Make Mistakes: Marie Antoinette's Life and Wedding
Is this the Supreme Court — or is this:
This Week in Genre History: Mars Attacks! wanted to destroy Earth a bit too much | SYFY WIRE

So no, Trump won’t destroy the country, or our democracy.

But he’ll hurt people. A lot of people. Starting with the immigrants he deports, the women he strips of rights, and the trans people he tries to exterminate by allowing bigots to say trans people shouldn’t exist. And all of the people who love them, and will have to watch those people get hurt.

So in the face of that, we shouldn’t feel helpless or hopeless, and we shouldn’t despair.

We should feel sober. And frightened, especially for those who are in Trump’s crosshairs, although that may not be us and our families; it is surely people we know and care about, and people we should protect, support and succour.

We should feel so. Fucking. Angry.

And we should then focus that anger, that fear, that seriousness, on the task at hand: to fight the horde. To stop them from breaking down all of the doors, tearing down all of the walls, and especially to stop them from devouring people, whether they are our people or not. Because now it’s down to this: you are human, and you are unwilling to sacrifice those who are threatened for your own sake, especially for your own convenience, or for something as trivial as the price of eggs — or you are not. If you are not, you are of the horde, and you are our enemy.

All of you humans, all of my kin and friends and allies: don’t stop. Don’t give up hope: this horde will be defeated. This will be one of those zombie apocalypses where the zombie plague is cured, or something happens to wipe all the monsters out. You know why?

Because Donald Trump is an unhealthy 78-year-old, who very carefully and determinedly built a cult of personality around himself. For reasons I can’t really fathom, he was incredibly successful at that — more successful than any demogogue since 1945, probably. He turned the United States of America on its head, and got us to choose the path that leads to our own destruction — twice — and to cheer while we did it. It’s goddamn 1984. (And by the way: I’ve read 1984. And I understood it. My allusion is accurate.) But the best and most secure guardrail that will help protect us from total collapse into the evil and anarchy of Trump’s world vision is that Donald Trump will not live forever — and while he is alive, he is old, and unhealthy, and lazy. Half the stuff he could do, he won’t do, because he’ll be too busy watching Fox News and telling his cronies that he really is smarter than everyone else. And because only he himself is the focus of that cult of personality, nobody else will be able to step into his shoes when he dies.

In the meantime, before he leaves office with his diaper and his hands full of his own feces, or before he drops dead of a massive coronary, he will do harm. To people we know. To people we love. To people. And so that is our fight. To stop that harm when we can, to mitigate it when we can, and to balance it always by being so fucking aggressively kind that even the zombies would decide not to eat us, would instead pick us a flower and smile with their broken teeth in their rotted mouths, and say, “Thaaaaangk yyyooouuuuuuuu!”

Cartoon Green Zombie Monster with Flower Stock Vector - Illustration of death, yellow: 75571689

I’m going to shoot for that result with my classes, too. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

As for me? After I thought I would give up in the zombie apocalypse, and then told myself that I would never give up — and then thought that I am too weak, too ignorant, too pathetic and lame to actually be of any use to anyone in that dystopian scenario, I remembered something. I remembered a different post-apocalyptic book I read, years ago: one where the collapse is due to a disease that simply kills people, not one that reanimates the dead — you know, a much more realistic book. Science fiction, of course, as the most accurate and truthful books often are. And in that book, the main character is, at first, a conman, a liar who manages to get accepted into the broken anarchic society that replaces our modern one after the collapse; he gains food, shelter, allies — a life. And he does it first by lying. And then, he does it by storytelling, and entertainment: he puts on plays for the fortified groups he visits; he recites poetry. As years turn into decades, he helps to teach the children born into this terrible world, and because he travels from place to place, around and around a particular circuit, he becomes something of a messenger, helping these small, isolated communities to build connections, and to unite, in the end, against the common foe.

By the end of the book, it becomes clear that the conman, the entertainer, has actually done something genuinely valuable for the people he thought he was just lying to: he has given them hope. He has inspired them to keep going, even in the face of despair, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. He has brought people together, and reminded them of what it means to be human, to be more than savages slaughtering each other for food and warmth. To be people, rather than part of the faceless horde.

The name of the book is The Postman, by David Brin, a wonderful SF writer. It was turned into a reeeaaalllllyy bad movie with Kevin Costner in the lead role; it was so bad it has probably been entirely forgotten. But the book was actually good.

The Postman - Wikipedia

And you know what? I can do that. I could do all of that. (Not the lying, hopefully, because I am not good at it and I very much hate doing it. But I can.) I can be entertaining, and I can bring people together, and I can maybe inspire people to keep going, even in the face of despair and the seemingly insurmountable numbers of the horde.

I can survive the zombie apocalypse.

We all can.

Let’s go.

Indie Film Box Office: 'Shaun Of The Dead' Lives In Bloody Good 20th Anniversary Re-Release

Looking Up

Dusty 2 Comments
Still one of the best movie songs ever.

You know what?

Things are actually looking up.

No, really: I mean it. 

Tomorrow is the beginning of classes, which means I now have to deal with students — but as always, though teenagers are frustrating, they are the reason why my job exists, and the aspect of it I actually enjoy. Teaching is hard — but it’s better than inservice. And since classes start tomorrow, that means inservice is over. (My district tried to extend it, pushing a two-day training on how to teach ACT prep — actually there are somehow three two-day trainings for English, one in reading, one in writing, and one in…English… but when I said I didn’t want to go, my direct supervisor said I didn’t have to go, in contrast to his supervisor who said he “strongly recommended” that ACT prep teachers be SENT to this training. But my boss said I didn’t have to go. Which means that inservice is over. And also that my boss is on my side, which is — well, it’s lovely.) My students make me laugh as often as they make me grit my teeth in rage; and they sometimes tell me that I helped them, that I taught them, even that I inspired them. And I like that.

I am typing this on my brand-new MacBook Air, which I got for my birthday as a present from my brother. Which means not only that I have this sweet new machine (Which, admittedly, I am having trouble adjusting to, but that’s only because it doesn’t have a ten-key pad on the right side of the keyboard, and because the Command key I have to use to copy and paste and so on is in a different place than it has been on the last two laptops I’ve had, both Windows machines — and because I didn’t know that you ran two fingers together over the touchpad to make the screen scroll BUT IT TURNS OUT YOU DO THAT ON THE GODDAMN WINDOWS MACHINES TOO I JUST DIDN’T KNOW IT BECAUSE I MOSTLY USE A PLUG-IN MOUSE AND TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE WINDOW ON THIS LOVELY NEW MACHINE WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SCROLL WAS A TRIAL, BELIEVE ME but then I figured this out, and now it’s easy. And now I know this new thing, so that means I’ll never have this struggle again.

That’s amazing, isn’t it? That there can be single pieces of knowledge that you don’t have, and without them things are hard or confusing or even frightening; but then you find out that one thing — and the problem is gone. Gone entirely. Never going to be a problem again. Things can actually get solved. Not everything, certainly, but there are situations that are like that: you find the answer, and then you have it. The answer. The solution.

But also, anyway, the other thing about getting this beautiful new (EXPENSIVE) computer as a gift from my brother is this: my brother gave it to me. He and I haven’t always gotten along, sometimes even emphatically not; but that, too, has gotten better. I don’t think the relationship has been solved by a single answer that suddenly came clear, because relationships aren’t really like that; but definitely things have gotten better, and they will stay that way as long as we keep working on them — and he got me this absolutely lovely and generous gift, which I think was a very nice thing for him to do.

Thank you, Marv. I love the laptop. Though I feel dumb about the touchpad scrolling thing. Also it just autocorrected your name to Marc, so. Something to think about. And I’ll make you a deal: if you go by Marc (Or Marcin, in full), I’ll go by Dussy. Which was recently given me as an interpretation of my name at my optometrist’s office. It’s a new one.

Though to be honest, I’m not sure how it would benefit you for me to go by Dussy. Or how it would help me if you went by Marc. Nah, forget the whole thing. I’m still grateful for the gift, and glad that we’re doing well with each other.

And speaking of family, I finally mailed away my spit, in the tube my wife bought for me, to ancestry.com (That was a Christmas present, if you weren’t aware of how bad I am at following through on some things in a timely manner), and so I found out a little bit more about my family: mostly German and Scottish and English and French, all of which I knew — but also, about 3% African. Which I did not know. 1% each from Ivory Coast and Ghana, Benin and Togo, and Cameroon, Congo, and Western Bantu peoples. Obviously it is not a significant amount of my heritage — but it is significant that it is there, that I am that much of a mutt, that I have a little bit of African DNA in me. I think that’s wonderful and fascinating. I can relate even more closely to my dogs now, as they are both mutts.Which are obviously the best kind of dog.

So thank you, Toni. It was a very cool gift, and I’m sorry it took me so long to use it. 

Oh — and speaking of white people with just a tiny bit of Africa in them, and also speaking of  things I would spit on: Elon Musk is now not only a goddamn idiot, but he’s a goddamn idiot that has shown himself to be a goddamn idiot, and therefore proof positive that there is no meritocracy in capitalism, that even complete dipshits like Musk — who, I’m sure, would prefer to be called Xxxx Xxxx, so that’s what I’m going to be calling him from now on. Or maybe just Muxx? (Or Marc?) — have too much money and absolutely do not deserve it, and do not deserve our respect for their ridiculous hoarding of wealth. Because their wealth does not show their brilliance.

So the guy buys Twitter, right, and it isn’t really clear why. It seems mostly like he wanted to prove to everyone that he could do it, because Xxxx obviously believes his own hype to a truly epic degree, like Trumpian level delusion here: and literally every choice he’s made in running this company has been a bad one: first he let all the extremists and slanderers and liars and shitbags back onto the platform, which made the platform not only actively worse for everyone but also genuinely dangerous for some; and then he destroyed the verification system, which reduced the value of being a name on Twitter and of following names on Twitter, which reduced the value of the site and of the company; then he introduced a bad subscription model, which is still a cheap gag for everyone on the site who doesn’t have a blue check; and then he expanded the length of the Tweets; and then he limited the number of Tweets that someone could see in a day; and somewhere in there he also threatened to remove (and did remove) a number of people and a number of tweets that he disliked or disagreed with, thus proving to everyone but his legion of sycophants (Also suffering from Trumpian levels of delusion) that he as not actually interested in protecting free speech like he pretended do be doing when he bought the site; and now the crowning glory, his most recent conversion of Twitter to — X. Twitter is a household name, with Tweet a known slang verb used across the internet; and he threw all of that away. Because he thinks X is cool. And X, in actuality, is a shit name for a company, and a shit name for an app, and he picked a shit logo, and the rollout has been absolutely terrible — mine just switched over today, and it still says Tweet and Twitter all over the site. I mean, even I could do a rebranding better than this, and not because of my business acumen or my marketing skills — but just because I’m not a goddamn idiot. I can tell you that I am already filled with a visceral loathing for the X app, and am really just hopeful that it will go ahead and finally die so I can stop looking at it. 

Just look at that garbage.

It’s possible that that’s what Musk wants, too. There is profit to be made in breaking a company up and selling off the pieces; but it doesn’t really seem like Musk is doing that, because everything he’s done, other than fire all the workers and refuse to pay bills (In the short term, dumping salary and holding onto cash would be profitable if you meant to destroy the company and sell the pieces — but he hasn’t done that yet.), everything has reduced the value of the company: which would seem to really reduce the potential profit he could be making as a vulture capitalist. On the other hand, if he planned on keeping the company and building something bigger out of it, which is what he has claimed to want to do, then firing half the staff and refusing to pay bills is a shit-stupid way to handle a company that does an incredibly difficult and complicated thing like maintain a free marketplace of ideas on the internet — let alone grow it into an all-inclusive financial network where people can handle literally all of their business interactions. I saw an article that said this:

Expanding the platform’s reach to include things like shopping and paid subscription content could actually help it flourish in the long term by creating several revenue streams and making it less reliant on large companies’ willingness to spend money, analysts said. 

In the short term, building out those capabilities would require a massive investment in staff and infrastructure. It’s far from clear if a company that slashed about three-quarters of its staff and is now embroiled in multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills can deliver that.  

“The investment is a lot in terms of cloud infrastructure — we’re talking about $40 billion, $50 billion in upfront investments,” Singh said. “Twitter as a standalone app doesn’t have the infrastructure to become an everything app.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-rebrand-x-name-change-elon-musk-what-it-means/

And also this:

But the name change suggests Musk is likely to keep control of the company for the near future, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. After Musk’s takeover in April of 2022, some observers believed the billionaire could make some changes to Twitter and quickly flip it to a different owner, Singh said.

“That option is off the table now given the name change — I don’t think there’s any other prospective buyer who will take it now,” he said.

So maybe Xxxx is shit-stupid.

I will note that his new sign got turned off because it was too bright.

There is also a profit to be made in being a corrupt oligarch who opposes and helps to suppress free speech and the free exchange of ideas; and one of the ways you could achieve that, as a corrupt oligarch, would be to buy the marketplace of ideas and just set the whole thing on fire. And it very well could be that this is really want Xxxx wants, and if so, on this front, he’s doing a bang-up job.

I will definitely say that that is a sad thing. Communication is one of the highest forms of human endeavor and accomplishment: our ability to share ideas and spark new ideas in each other is unmatched in the natural world, so far as we know. And the internet and social media have made that possible on a scale unheard of before now; Twitter was part of that. But now it’s not. Because now it’s X.

Speaking of corrupt oligarchs fucking up things that were once worthwhile: Trump is another example of something that actually seems to be going right. I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, because I, like most of us rational, thinking people, was deeply overconfident in 2016, and I just could not believe it when TFG won the election. But it does really seem like he is facing a whooooooole lot of serious legal trouble, and at least in the Mar a Lago documents case, he’s clearly as guilty as sin: and when you put that shithead in front of a jury (Not that he’ll show up for his own trial, if he can possibly avoid it), he’s not going to get a pass like he did in both impeachments under a corrupt senate. 

Oh right — and let me take a moment to wish Mitch McConnell ill. Forgive my schadenfreude, but that fucking no-neck piece of shit has ruined untold numbers of lives with his power mongering, so fuck him. I hope he did have a stroke, and I hope he suffers in his declining years.

Anyway, the court system is not as easily bought as Congress: so Trump will likely go to jail. And while that doesn’t mean he can’t run for president, it surely does mean that most Republicans will not vote for him, and his base still will, or they won’t vote at all; and that likely means a runaway victory for the Democratic Party — which, if Biden is the nominee (And I personally hope he will withdraw from the race and let someone younger take it over), and wins a second term, I will say that he has actually been doing a goddamn good job so far at restoring the American government to what it should be, and we could do a whole lot worse than the guy who has re-established NATO even while supporting Ukraine in the war, and who is establishing new alliances across Asia, and who has passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better Infrastructure Act, and who has therefore done more for American manufacturing and industry and for fighting climate change than literally any other American president. We could do a whole lot worse.

So let me just say that, too: this time we all have to try to do our part to make sure we don’t do a whole lot worse. Joe Biden is old, yes. I do not want an octogenarian President. But he’s actually doing a good job. And if Trump goes to jail, the democrats might just win both houses of Congress — and then maybe we can name a couple of new Supreme Court justices, too. But if we’re too overconfident going in, we might get another TFG presidency, and that might just turn all of this back around, and send us all spiraling down until we crash. Let’s try to make sure it doesn’t go that way. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, and keep things looking up, okay?

So okay, this wasn’t exactly the most cheerful blog, because things have been pretty bad for a while. But hey. School starts tomorrow.

Let’s make this a good year.

Actually just found this. The band is donating proceeds to the ACLU. Plus a player piano!

Keep Going. Don’t Stop.

Dusty Leave a comment

Hey: do me a favor.

Don’t give up.

It’s tough, I know. Tough for me, too. So very tempting to just let it all go. Just say “Forget it.” There’s too much to deal with, and too little that we can do to deal with it.

That’s pretty much why I haven’t been writing. I can’t find the confidence, can’t find the belief in myself and the value of my writing, to commit the time and energy to it, when there are so many other things I need to spend time on — and so many more things that take my energy away from me, that drain my faith and my hope. So many voices whispering in my ear, telling me to just– stop.

But.

This is not a sprint. It’s not a one-shot. Nothing is. Ever. You never get only one chance. Maybe only one chance at a specific target on a specific occasion; but there’s always another occasion, another target, and though it isn’t the same, it is as good.

So you never give up.

Ever.

Certainly not now.

And not next Tuesday: nor in the days following. Whether we win or we lose, don’t stop. Just don’t stop. Keep pushing until we have what we want, what we need. If we keep going, we’ll make it. We’ll do it.

You can do it.

I believe in you.

Keep going.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning, I think I have an answer to my question from yesterday morning.

Yesterday, I was wondering what I could say to my wife, to my students, to myself, that would help comfort us in the face of inevitable suffering, and I wished that I could rely on God as that answer, because then I could at least stop thinking about it — and I should have said worrying about it and fretting about it, because that’s the point; it’s not the idea of not thinking, it’s the idea of “let go and let God.” Which I can’t do, but I appreciate that people can.

But I have another cliche that I have gleaned from outside of the fields of the Lord (And that enormously obscure reference is brought to you by the podcast I’ve been listening to, Sunday School Dropouts. Probably also why God has shown up in this atheist’s morning ramblings.), that as I understand it, many churches focus on as the heart of their message (and others may sprinkle in, in between railing against homosexuals and abortion and Democrats in Washington), which is this: God is love.

Once again, that doesn’t work for me. But it comes with another way of looking at it, that I think does fit in nicely with what I’ve been looking for:

Love is God.

That is to say, love is everything. Everything that matters. It is the alpha and the omega, it is the answer to all questions, all doubts and fears. Love. And love, I think, can offer an answer precisely as satisfying  — and not any more satisfying — as can the answer “God.”

What should I tell my students when the future looms ominously over them? Love. Look for love in your life, look for love in what you do; if you don’t find any love in your life, then change it, and if you don’t find any love in what you do, then stop doing it. Don’t work for money, work for love: and I don’t mean to be flippant there, because I am a person who works for money precisely because he cannot live on what he loves; but for me, the money I earn is spent on those I love, and used to give me an opportunity to do what I love, which I am doing right now. So I never mind my job very much, because it is done for love, if not always in love. And yes, sometimes I love my job: I do love books and poetry, and I love writing, and I guess I don’t entirely loathe my students. (No, I love some of them. More, I love the people they become, and the potential I see in them when they are young.)

What do I tell myself when I am in my darkest, foulest, most hopeless moods? Love. I have lost some of my liberal idealism in these last few years, and I have begun to lean a wee bit more conservative; it has made me worry, because I know that this is a common pattern, especially among aging white men, as we start to get a taste of power and become greedy and start worrying about people taking away what we have. And I do not want to be that guy. But I think that so long as I focus on love, so long as my actions and intentions are begun with love in mind, then I won’t turn into someone I would hate. At least some of my shifting to the right is based on the consideration that people on the right can’t be bad people, can’t be evil people, not all of them. (Trump is.) Not any more than there are evil people on the left. It’s not reasonable to take a person’s political leanings as the sole evidence of their morality or their value, or anything else apart from their political leanings; evil people are conservatives, conservatives aren’t evil people. Thinking that makes me give some conservative ideas (like the free market and lower regulation, the independence of states and, perhaps most shocking to me and those who know me, the value of the Second Amendment) the benefit of the doubt, and that makes me move away from my liberal roots.

But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I’m a liberal or a libertarian or a moderate or an anarchist: so long as I consider what is best for my fellow men, and treat them always with respect and with love, then my ideas will never be bad, even if they are wrong.

I also need to remember this for myself when I am disappointed in my writing career. When I think about how old I am compared to other writers, and when I realize how good I am compared to some other writers — and then when I think about how entirely devoid of success I am compared to most other writers; I need to remember: love. I do this because I love it, because I love the me who does this. And so long as I write for love, with love, and out of love, then I can’t be a failure. I am a writer.

What do I tell my wife when she worries about our future, about what we’ll do for money, about where we’ll live, about how we’ll see the world and how we’ll live in it? I will tell her, as I do as often as I possibly can, that I love her, without limits and without end, and that I always will, and that love will see us through, no matter what else happens. Always. Love.

It doesn’t solve the problems we all face. But then, neither does God. I hope that it brings you some comfort, as it brings me some. I hope that it gives us all the strength to keep fighting towards our goals, and I hope it keeps us from hating those who fight against us, or at least in the opposite direction. I hope that the love in your life is enough to make you smile, as it is for me, even on a Monday morning.

Thank you for reading what I write. I won’t say I love you, because I don’t know you, but I love the fact of you and the existence of you, and what you give to me. Thank you.

Now go love!

This Morning

Dusty 1 Comment

This morning I understand why people talk about God.

Not why they believe in a god; that is, I think, an entirely personal choice, based on individual feelings, and it’s a choice I haven’t made and feelings I haven’t felt.

But I think I see why people use God in arguments, why they rely on God as an explanation, why they write books and sermons and songs that describe God as the answer. It’s because doing so is comforting. I don’t think it’s easy, because relying on God as the answer means you have to accept some stupid and disturbing answers — like killing is bad unless God does it, war is hell unless it is a holy war in God’s name, the suffering of innocents helps others to recognize the horror of sin — that’s a lot to swallow right there, and you need a whole lot of soul butter to get it down.

Okay, I only said that last  metaphor so I could use the phrase “soul butter.” One of my absolute favorite phrases. Mark Twain. So good. Really, though, it takes a lot of faith to accept those answers, and faith is generally hard to maintain. So I don’t think that God as an answer is easy. But I do think it’s comforting.

The world is large. It is large, and it is inevitable: things happen that are terrible, and they keep happening, and will always keep happening, because even if we conquer the world, the universe is larger still. Disease and disaster and death, disappointment and despair and devastation. And the worst part of all of this is that the world is not only large, but it comes into our small lives and crushes us and those around us intently, intensely, instantly. It would be one thing if the profound absurdity that is the U.S. government affected only those in Washington, only those who wanted to be movers and shakers; I could sit here in my living room, with my dogs beside me and my wife sleeping in the next room, and write my tiny blogs for my few dozen readers (if that), and work with my teacher-friends at my little school teaching literature to my young students, and everything would be fine. But it’s not like that: the government in Washington has a direct and substantial impact on me personally, on my wife, on my friends, on my students. Hell, it has an impact on my dogs: it has an impact on my literature. I keep seeing references to our current political situation in things I read; last night I was re-reading The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, one of my absolute favorite fantasy epics, and I got to the chapter about  Aridhol, the city that had been great, one of the allied nations that fought back the tide of evil, until they grew too desperate, and a man came who whispered poison in the ear of the king, and the city grew dark and evil, paranoid and cold and harsh, until the people turned in on themselves and destroyed themselves out of fear and anger and mistrust, and now the city was Shadar Logoth, Where the Shadow Waits, and the evil is palpable and visible and able to kill anyone who comes inside its borders; and if that isn’t precisely what is happening in this country, right now, then I’m a devout Christian  and a Republican.

The world is large, and because it is large, the things that happen are beyond our control: we can’t stop the world from turning, I can’t stop famine and cancer and drug addiction and rape and death. But those things affect me and those around me directly, all the time. Even when I am insulated from the worst suffering because I am a white middle-class American. Famine, along with other terrible travails in Central America, makes people come to this country; the government cracks down, and one of my students loses his mother because she is deported. Another of my students, one of the smartest kids at the school, can’t get his visa for a month because he needs to be extremely vetted. Cancer and drug addiction are in my family. Rape culture and the violence in our society means that people cannot be vulnerable, they must be on guard at all times — and even then we are not safe from violation, from degradation. And death? How do we deal with death?

How do I tell my wife that things will be all right? How do I tell my students that their lives won’t be devastated by circumstances beyond their control? How do I tell myself those things?

That’s why it must be comforting to be able to say, in all of those difficulties: “God.” God is the answer. God is the reason, and God has a plan. It doesn’t change those terrible things, but it means you at least don’t have to think about them. God is a replacement for thinking, and though that clearly isn’t a good thing, it does sound relaxing, particularly when all the thinking in the world isn’t going to change the fact that we’re all going to die, and we’re not going to die at the same time, and that means all of us will be devastated by loss, one by one, until we are lost ourselves.

And wouldn’t it be nice to think that there is another place where we all get to go hang out together, forever, where everything is nice and nothing is inevitable because nothing changes.

Yes. I understand.

You know what, though? I still don’t wish I believed.