💥The Things I Can Do💥

The morning after the election (was it only three days ago, my God!) I told myself and anyone who would listen that I wasn’t going back. It felt so important to say it out loud that dreadful morning, to stake my claim to my future sanity as clearly as I could. I wrote my first Substack note to make it real, hoping that announcing it to the world would make it harder to slip up. 

I know the policies of another DJT admin will sadden and appall me.  Of course they will.  But I can’t, won’t, on top of that, allow the man to destroy my peace and equanimity as I did the first go round. This time I want to hang on to my ideals, my purpose, my serenity and it seems to me, I wrote in that note, that the way to do that is to refuse to give the once and future president any real estate in my head.

I meant and I mean every word of that.

What I hadn’t thought about so much in that moment of fierce determination was how to pull it off.  Much as I wish at times that I were an accountant, or that I had retired when my husband did three years ago, I’m not and I didn’t. I am still today what I have been for more than 40 years, a person who teaches and writes about American politics for a living.  A person, in fact, who loves politics – an activity that, at its best, gives us the ability to transcend the limits of our animal nature, to organize our collective lives in peace.  I tell my students politics has the capacity to be our saving grace, and I deeply believe that.

I can’t tune it all out even if I wanted to. And I don’t really want to.  I want to keep believing in our capacity to be and do better.

The morning after the election I was full of purpose but still reeling, devoid of a plan.

Since then I’ve started to cobble together a list of things I can do.  There are only three on the list so far and they are all pretty life-disrupting for me, but maybe in a good way.  I will have to break some long-standing habits for getting my news but I will be happier and, bonus – I have already noticed I have more free time to make good choices with!

⭐️Thing One (with apologies and appreciation to Theodore Geisel):  I won’t listen to DJT’s voice. I get that that might sound petty, but it’s a hard no for me.  I’ve heard so many hateful, inane and obscene things said in that voice that it activates all my anxiety and fury receptors, no matter what he is saying.  I can read the transcript of what he says, if need be.  He thrives on holding the nation’s attention; it’s within my power and agency to withhold mine. 

⭐️⭐️Thing Two:  I won’t listen to people bash the Democrats for sport, entertainment, or political gain.  Especially, I am done listening to Democrats bashing Democrats.

There is some excellent analysis out there about what happened in this election and as we get more data there will be more useful things to read. I will read all of it. But people trying to manage their own anxiety by berating others in public or picking apart the party, the president, the candidate and her strategy just for ratings or political ambition only makes me want to fight battles that don’t matter.    

Getting away from superficial performative partisanship means mostly turning off political TV and also some podcasts.  I’ll miss “my shows” on MSNBC, but not enough to listen to Dems doing DJT’s work for him.

⭐️⭐️⭐️Thing Three. This is big for me. Yesterday I deactivated my Twitter account!  I’ve said I was going to do it a million times and then, I just did it, just like that!  What a cleansing and liberating feeling!!

It’s not just that it’s owned by Musk.  I still drive my Tesla.  It’s that, God, it’s turned into such a foul-smelling cesspool.  Reminds me of the French metro, when the smell of urine hangs so heavy in the air that it’s hard to take a breath and it clings to your hair and you think, “God, I’d rather walk.” 

As I hit the “Deactivate” button I mourned the breaking news I’d have to wait a little longer for and the funny memes I’d maybe never see.  But the air smells pretty sweet over on Threads and Substack.  Might take longer to get where I’m going, but I’d much rather walk there. 

~~~~~

I’m still working on my list.  I have some other things in mind, but I am vetting them for practicality and actual (vs performative) benefit.  They have to actually help me balance job and serenity, and they can’t feed the toxicity.  Anything I do to be vengeful or unkind, well, I might just as well abandon the whole project if I am going back there.   

What are y’all doing to get by in these terrible early days?