This is a time to let love guide each step, but it doesn’t seem like that. It seems like time to obsess over how bad it all is. It’s really bad. It’s a hard time for those who have to think in terms of short-term conditions — of surviving deportation, prison, attacks on our personhood.
Watching a caravan of displaced people approach our border, as families are violently separated and children are traumatized there; watching as members of our community are killed by police; watching as the language of trans identity is threatened out of existence… it can feel hard to see what we can do that will matter.
It’s also a devastating time for those who can lift their eyes to the horizon and see our long-term conditions: the changing climate, the weakness of infrastructure, the desperation of old systems like patriarchy and white supremacy as we shed them. It’s a balmy December so far in this golden age of global warming — it feels lovely if we don’t question how quickly our climate is changing in spite of the climate change deniers in positions of power over our policies. Our global reputation is appalling as we simultaneously disrespect the UN and cozy up to the leaders who order the assassination of journalists, including but not at all limited to Jamal Khashoggi.
