Yesterday was a rough day politically, folks. I almost wish I’d just been offline all day, because I got pretty stressed, which isn’t good for health, and tracking everything that was happening was difficult and not really productive.
I should try to stick to a short summary once / day, I think — I read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily summaries, and if I can find a complementary ‘this is the priority task for today’ targeted assignment on how to help, that would be manageable, I think.
But feeling so grateful to judges and some Congresspeople who I guess had enough constituents screaming at them that it stiffened their spines; at least some of the worst of it is on pause. The system is not entirely broken; at least not yet.
I know that a majority of Americans want to shrink the federal government, but they don’t seem to understand that what that actually means for Trump is making sweeping pronouncements that lead to shutting down medical research, shutting down patient care, shutting down programs like Meals on Wheels and WIC, shutting down education, etc. and so on. (I can’t even think about what’s happening to AIDS patients in Africa right now; it’s too heartbreaking, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.)
I feel like we’re fighting this terrible battle on the media and education fronts, and we’re losing that battle.
It’s like a race, to try to get the actual facts in front of people, with enough context that they can understand why the things that sound good initially are actually going to hurt them. And many of those people are living in media bubbles shouting the opposite at them 24/7.
I’m honestly not sure where we start to reverse those trends. More education at every level (while he and his cronies try to gut what education we have.) Better media (while good journalists get fired for actually reporting the facts).
How fast can we move to set up alternatives to the big legacy media? Who is working on that? I read recently that Heather Cox Richardson may have more reach now online than the Washington Post — gods, I hope that’s true.
Well. I’m going to try to mostly stay off the news today, regain my equilibrium. Focus on local efforts — the immigration attacks on neighboring Berwyn and Cicero are having serious effects already, with businesses suddenly hit hard by the lack of customers who are afraid to leave their homes. (Thanks to Paul Goyette for reporting on that.) On our local mom’s list, we just had a post from someone whose best friend’s husband was taken by ICE yesterday, leaving this poor woman with five children to feed and no income.
I’m going to keep putting my house in order — I think more clearly in an ordered space. I’m going to keep working on my health — I’m going to need strength and energy for the next four years. I’m going to keep trying to clear the e-mail backlog, because stressing about unfinished tasks (many of which are five minute things that I’m just avoidant about for no good reason) is stress I just don’t need right now.
And I’m going to keep making art. Writing and crocheting and resining (is that a verb?) and more. Here is a new experiment, a little rose paperweight. It is warm and cheery and I’ll probably bring it down to Berwyn Sprout later today, if I can find the UV resin bottle to do the finishing work on the base. The basement studio is a little chaotic right now; I need to fix that.
I hope it brings someone joy in a dark time.
