A Nearly Fatal Dose of Fatalism

"Calling It Quits" by Aimee Mann is on my mind right now

After the 2016 election I did some soul-searching, and realized that I had been far too willing to not engage myself directly in politics. During the Bush years I had gone to anti-war protests and was involved in a successful grad student unionization movement at my university. When I lived in Texas I contacted my representatives so that they could not pretend that all of their constituents supported their Tea Party agenda. After moving to bluer New Jersey I got apathetic, and with new family obligations, I was not staying active. The presence of the Obama administration also helped put me at ease.

Since the election I have been very involved. My Senators are basically on my speed dial. I left an angry message on the leader of the state senate's voicemail when he was talking about maintaining budget austerity. I have been involved in too many protests to count in the past year and a half. I have led teach-ins at my school. I have donated not insignificant sums of money to political candidates. 

All of a sudden this month in the dog days of summer I lost the spirit, as they say in church. For example, I did not attend any of the protests in nearby Bedminster while Trump was staying there. I had always been there during his prior stays.

Looking back on it, I think the Helsinki meeting and my visit back home set me on a path to fatalism. I think that the family separation policy is by far the most monstrous thing that the Trump administration has done (right up there with banning Syrian refugees), the Helsinki debacle was the kind of thing that was so transparent and public that the media and a good chunk of Republicans would be unable to deny that this presidency is not normal. For maybe a day or two, media figures seemed genuinely outraged, and let the bullshit "objectivity" -which is mostly cowardice- drop. Within a week, however, no member of the administration had resigned, and the press was back to covering Trump the way they always did, as if their viewing public had all gotten lobotomies. Going home was a lesson that even conservatives who do not personally like Trump will not turn on him as long as they a union-busting, anti-abortion judge. Literally nothing is ever going to change their minds, including the proverbial shooting on Fifth Avenue.

This was a fact that I had KNOWN abstractly in my head for awhile, but for the first time I truly FELT it palpably in my soul.

Earlier this week I started to wonder if I should be focused on how to survive and protect others in the inevitable autocratic oligarchy, rather than thinking that my resistance to it can matter in any meaningful way. I had hope for the election, but hearing about the extent of voter suppression and the Democrats' weak appeals has drained that hope. A friend who feels similarly came up with the word I had been searching for: fatalism.

I had three hours behind the wheel today driving alone from Baltimore to Maplewood, and that gave me the opportunity to really think about all this. I concluded that I am right to be pessimistic. I think what we are witnessing has a 50-50 chance to be like the destruction of Reconstruction after 1877, and that thought scares the hell out of me. At the same time, I think it is dangerous to let that pessimism turn into fatalism. If the stakes are truly that high, I cannot live with myself sitting on the sidelines.

I am, however, going to think long and hard about whether the kinds of political action I am taking are fruitful, and how I might use my time, money, effort, and abilities more effectively. This has included the odd thought of running for local offices controlled by the godawful New Jersey Democratic machine. As I reminded myself, I could not live with myself otherwise. Now time to go out and push that boulder.