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Living Under the Pagan Right: When You Don’t Know How to Fight, How Do You Survive?
The second Trump presidency has cracked something open in the American psyche. You feel it. Don’t pretend you don’t.
The dread creeping in before you check the headlines. The pit in your stomach as another cruel policy drops. The exhaustion of trying to care, trying to fight, trying to stay morally intact while the world around you seems to harden into something uglier, colder, and meaner by the day.
People talk a lot about strategy. How do we resist? How do we organize? Where’s the plan, the coalition, the next movement? But here’s the truth, at least for me most days: I don’t know what to do right now.
It’s not laziness. It’s not indifference. It’s standing in front of a tidal wave of bad news, cruelty, and institutional power and realizing that you — as one person — can’t stop it.
And instead of clarity, you feel shame. You feel like you’re failing the moral test of the moment. If you’re not fighting every second, are you just letting it happen?
I originally set out to write a piece that could serve as a roadmap of sorts for saving America. Which protest to join, which tactic will finally bring the whole rotten structure down, what I’m doing to stand up.
