Hope Scrolling

There are plenty of things I want to write about here that have nothing to do with the current political movement, not to mention some fiction pieces aspiring towards other outlets that I’ve been moving between different back burners. I’m finding it hard however to focus enough of my attention on these things when it feels like we’re careening into darkness and insanity. Even if I was able to focus on other things, what’s the point of working on them? One of my favorite essayists, Tim Kreider recently published a good piece about this:

If You Call This Victory

Kreider notes that 80 years ago we declared victory against Hitler’s Third Reich, and then just one lifetime later Americans elected a vile ignoramus whose minions attempted a putsch just a few years ago. He laments that “it takes the span of just one human lifetime for people… to collectively forget that fascism is bad.” The MAGA tribe embraces its mad king, while millions more of our fellow countrymen find ways to rationalize reality or avoid seeing it. This collective amnesia is spreading. Kreider observes that even Poland—a “country you’d think would have reason to be jumpy about any signs of resurgent fascism—elected a thuggy populist who sucks up to Trump.” This aptly describes Israel as well, along with Hungary, Brazil, El Salvador, The Philippines, and a number of other countries whose people had first-hand experiences with authoritarianism and presumably ought to know better.

Another favorite author of mine, George Saunders, observed near the beginning of his wonderful book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain that Russia followed a similar arc. They gifted the world with wisdom and beauty via the likes of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov. Then just one lifetime later, half the population turned against the other half, all too happy to sacrifice friends and neighbors in the name of Stalin.

I admire people like

Heather Cox Richardson

and

Amy Siskind

for their diligent work cataloging the daily assault of ignorance, lies, incompetence, and cruelty. I suppose their kind of total immersion is one way to process it all, but I couldn’t do it. Yet neither am I able to stop thinking about it for more than five minutes. My heart aches from each blow in the steady onslaught—a frightened father roughly arrested, a mother’s pregnancy lost, medical research curtailed, critical medicines withheld. On and on. All of it presented on Instagram by MAGA (and often by the White House itself) as entertainment, as bloodsport.

It may be pointless to write about other things (that is, when I can actually focus), but writing about this stuff seems equally so. It feels like an act of resistance, although I know it’s a small and ineffectual act if I’m being honest. For one thing I have probably chased away all the readers who don’t already agree with me politically, so it’s not as if my ramblings are changing any minds. It’s better than nothing maybe, but not much. I don’t have a unique perspective or any kind of plan. I’m just a person looking for ways to process my rage and despair.

I feel enraged by what the current administration is doing on so many fronts but especially with respect to immigrants. I can’t fathom the kind of sadist who dons a mask and inflicts needless pain on people and communities that don’t want them around. Neither can I fathom the kind of person who defends it. Right now we are literally paying to hold mothers, fathers, and even children in squalid, crowded detention centers. Most of these people previously worked and paid taxes. They were a net positive just in terms of our national finances. Now we are paying $200 per day per person to lock them in cages, not to mention whatever it costs to employ squads of masked goons. It’s as insane as it is cruel.

I’m furious at the people who voted for this, because it was entirely predictable. It’s exactly what the Trump campaign promised to do with immigrants. They always said mass deportation, not targeted, or smart, or humane. His supporters lusted for this:

A vote for Trump meant you wanted this, or at the very least it didn’t bother you. I can’t fathom it.

I can’t stop thinking about it, or scrolling. I know I do too much scrolling, and it’s not helping me or anyone else, but I feel guilty when I look away, as if I’m abandoning the people who are hiding from ICE or already locked in cages. At the same time, I don’t think of it as doomscrolling. I’m not looking for doom or wallowing in it. I’m hope scrolling, looking for any signs that the fever is breaking, that people are starting to recognize cruelty for what it is.

One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this. — Omar El Akkad

Beside the Point

Last week I wrote about different ways that people defend the cruel targeting of regular workers and families in the current anti-immigrant crackdown, and how I think that anyone whose first impulse is to rationalize it rather than recoil from it or repudiate it is simply a bad person. In that piece I failed to mention a couple more arguments I see people put forward to defend what ICE is doing, or not defend it exactly but at least accept it.

The gist of one of these is that “the libs” have no standing to call out tyranny or government overreach on behalf of immigrants or anyone else, because we were on board with tyranny in the form of lockdowns and mask mandates during the pandemic. It’s an attempt from the anti-vax / COVID-hoaxer crowd to expose a double standard, but instead it represents a false equivalence that only reveals a blackness in their own hearts. No matter what someone believes about COVID or the effectiveness of masks, it’s just gross to think that being asked to cover mouths and noses to protect the public is on the same level as rounding up people with no due process, tearing families apart, and orphaning little kids. To pretend those are remotely equivalent just makes someone an asshole (though actually believing they are equivalent is worse).

The other argument is also a false equivalence, and it’s even stupider. Regarding the lack of due process specifically, I see quite a few MAGA types point to the prosecutions of Jan 6 rioters and say basically that the Jan 6ers didn’t get due process, so why should immigrants? This is obviously stupid for at least two-and-a-half reasons. The first is that the Jan 6 rioters who were prosecuted did in fact receive due process via formal charges, hearings, etc. The second is that what they were charged with and prosecuted for were actual crimes. And lastly the half reason is that they were all eventually pardoned, even the most violent offenders, via the president’s blanket “fuck it” (actual quote, reportedly).