I was short with my father on the phone today. I couldn’t take his fatalist “it will get worse,” (and he’s a Trump voter) point of view. It may seem ironic to some who know me, because I also can say “It will get worse” — before it gets better. I think I am still not fatalistic, but my hoarder, prepper, some-kind-of-Republican father, who doesn’t even think Trump will fix things, is. It enrages me.
Then, I learn about five-year-olds telling aide workers they’d rather die and aide workers having to invent abbreviations like WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family), and active duty USAF airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolating outside the Israeli embassy, and general awareness of so much more horror in the world, in this country, in this city and just local dysfunction making itself manifest as personal injustices and barriers and becoming whatever excuses… and it overwhelms me. (I didn’t even get to crimes of ecocide and climate inaction.)
So I’m heartbroken, hoping, crushed, dragging myself forward, just trying to be a present father for my own pre-k son, saving my rage and despair for private moments.
Who are we?