The Stupid Coup

I’d like to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to talk about politics for a moment. I will understand if you choose not to read this one (I love you, sis!), but it feels like the elephant in the room as I go about my regular life planning trips and adventures. While not directly affected (yet), it is important to me to acknowledge the destruction and wanton cruelty delivered daily by the current administration.

There was a time when I regularly posted about politics on Facebook. It was a completely different time, when people debated the issues without demonizing those who disagreed with them. Posting felt like I was doing something, rather than nothing, but I doubt I changed anyone’s mind. Maybe I complicated the thinking of one or two of my ex-husband’s cousins in South Carolina, but more likely they just muted me.

I rarely talk about politics anymore. That is not to say that I’m burying my head in the sand, I’m just very selective about what I let in. People like Ruth Ben-Ghiat who study the rise of authoritarian regimes put current events in the context of four areas: engineered incompetence (war planning in an unsecured Signal chat group), plunder and takedown (Ukrainian minerals or Columbia University’s funding), national sabotage (public health, education, scientific research, climate crisis mitigation), and leader enrichment (Musk government contracts, Trump’s crypto). Even if I had the emotional bandwidth, it is genuinely difficult to stay on top of the news these days because of the sheer volume of stories generated by this administration.

Every day I read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. Her newsletter has been a lighthouse in these dark times. I also read Rebecca Solnit’s weekly newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency. It was Solnit who coined the term, “stupid coup,” to describe the first couple months of the current administration. I am grateful for the incompetence. Lastly, I scan the daily news digests from the New York Times and Washington Post to gain some sense of what is happening in the broader world, but I find their coverage of the federal government to be spineless, and their “business as usual” approach in these anything-but-normal times to be nauseating.

These days I don’t post about politics at all. Who is even listening? I’m very careful about my exposure to the news as I do not consent to being outrage farmed. I’m exhausted by it all and it takes very little to start feeling overwhelmed and demoralized. Giving in to despair is a form of pre-submitting to this authoritarian nightmare. Instead I choose joy. And creativity, and community. There is a groundswell of resistance, and protests are picking up steam.

“Hope is a discipline,” says Mariam Kaba, and I sincerely hope that this country is able to recover. In the meantime, I will savor the small moments, stay connected with my people, and cherish the little things; the leafing out of spring (my favorite season), time spent with the people I love, the incredible privilege of not being in Trump’s crosshairs like hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans. We will get through this. But unfortunately not all of us will survive it.