long musings
I've been hoping to be able to write a coherent journal post, but clearly that's not going to happen, so. Have a rambly one.
My deep thanks to everyone who commented here through the twenty-four hours of my cat's diagnosis and death, by the way; I wasn't able to respond individually, but it meant a lot. We are in no doubt that we did the right thing. And if it had all developed one day earlier, it would have been on Wednesday when I was largely nonfunctional; one day later and Geoff would already have left for Toronto, leaving me to make the call and see it through on my own. (Well, a friend was standing by in case she was needed; but it's not the same as having Geoff there.) So, there's that.
And then there's the political situation. Which is where I stop being able to be quite so coherent.
I've seen several petitions and other activism hoping to get members of the electoral college to renounce their commitments to vote for Trump, in hopes that it's still not too late for Clinton. I've had mixed feelings about this over the past week. On the one hand, obviously I think Trump and his cronies and handlers and fellow travelers are a disaster for the country and the world; on the other, overturning the initial result in that way would overturn the polite fiction on which the system rests, that the electors will do as they said they would/as they were told. A few have changed their votes in past elections, but their changes of heart have never affected the outcome. If enough electors defected to actually overturn the apparent result, I wonder whether our political system would survive (I'd expect significant violence in the streets, civil unrest, from Trump supporters); it feels a bit like the queen suddenly deciding to exercise direct rule, as she is still teccccchnically empowered to do but as the whole British Commonwealth system relies on her politely abstaining from doing.
However, I'm not at all certain that that would be worse than what might happen otherwise. And, I mean, there's an increase in violence in the streets already.
ETA: The petition discussed in these next two paragraphs has been closed, for violating the whitehouse.gov Terms of Participation. Oh well. So I've signed this petition at whitehouse.gov to force DT to release his tax returns for the past six years so that the electors can judge his potential impeachable conflicts of interest. (Whitehouse.gov petitions may not "expressly urge the support or opposition of candidates for elected office," but it's clear where this one is aiming.)
I learned about this petition from a friend who forwarded an email from a Women in Law mailing list (which was marked "please share widely!"), and the email included a lot more info on the petition's background and reasoning. Unfortunately it's not conveniently available on the Web, and it's longer than I want to include in this post, which I can tell already will be plenty long itself. I'll post it separately, I guess.
There's also a Change.org petition to ask electors to change their votes, which I've signed as well. I have even less faith in the potential of Change.org petitions to make anything actually happen than I do in the potential of WhiteHouse.gov ones, but symbolic actions are not a bad thing in themselves; they're only a bad thing if people think they're sufficient and stop there.
And that last remark is a good segue into musing on safety pins.
When I started seeing the widely spread suggestion that people pin safety pins on their clothes to show that they will be a safe place for people who are being threatened or harassed, that they will come to their defense in the moment as well as working for their safety in the long term, I pinned one to every coat and jacket I have.
Then, in the next twenty-four hours, I heard blistering denunciations of safety-pin-wearing as useless, merely symbolic, insultingly trivial. I heard people who are especially at risk express fury at the pins and at the people wearing them. I saw these reactions both online and in person. I took all the pins off again.
But I'm really torn about it. I don't want to do something that will cause more pain to people who are scared and hurting. But I've also seen people in similar situations say that they appreciate seeing safety pins on people; they feel reassured, they feel supported. And I've also heard a few stories of people nudging into concrete action safety-pin-wearers who might not have gone beyond the symbolic act on their own -- but because they were wearing a pin, someone was apparently able to say, "Hey, let's talk about what else you could do" and get specific, real results. (Small-scale ones, sure -- but something is better than nothing. A starting point is better than immobility.)
I can't know how for sure I would react if faced with an actual verbally or physically violent situation. I know that I've done so twice in my life before: once physically intervening in a physically violent situation, and once verbally intervening in a verbally violent one (and then calling the police). I believe that I intervened successfully in the first one (on the grounds that the victim expressed gratitude and talked with me for fifteen minutes or so afterward); I don't know if my intervention helped in the second, but I think I did the right thing. I think and hope that I'd do so again; that my safety pin, if I were wearing one, wouldn't be merely symbolic.
(I also know that the odds are that any such situation I might encounter up here would probably be happening in such rapid, colloquial French that I wouldn't fully understand what was going on...)
But ultimately I can't know how many people would see it and feel better, versus how many people would see it and feel worse. And even if I could know, how could I decide what ratio of others' pain to others' gladness makes it right? If I put them back on, how do I explain that choice to the friend at my church who is far more connected to social justice work than I am and who says that the trans people she knows are livid at the safety pin movement? If I decide to wear them only while I'm in the States, is that a chickenshit avoidance of a confrontation with her, or a reasonable balance, given the different salience of the issues in the US and in Canada? (Okay, as I reread this I see that the obvious answer is to ask if she'll discuss the issue with me.)
And I said above that merely symbolic actions are not a bad thing in themselves; they're only a bad thing if people think they're sufficient and stop there. But I actually think it's more complex than that. If someone who might otherwise do something more concrete and effective instead limits themselves to a merely symbolic act, obviously that's bad. But if someone who would otherwise do nothing does a merely symbolic act, I believe that that's still better than doing nothing. And that it eases the path toward getting them to do more.
Which lets me segue into talking about action.
I've been following the various lists I've seen of good causes to support, and I've donated to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood (though I forgot to make the donation in honor of Pence, dammit), NARAL, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (for electronic security and privacy), Mother Jones (for investigative journalism), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (which does great work for all sexual and gender minorities, not just lesbians), and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'm trying to maintain a balance between noting good groups to support, and getting totally paralyzed because there are so many... My stepmother is deeply involved in environmental work and is sending me all kinds of info about good causes there. And I've called my senators; since I vote in Massachusetts I'm lucky enough to be able to begin the messages I left on their offices' answering machines with "I want to thank the Senator" as well as adding "I urge the Senator."
rydra_wong has fantastic scripts for how to do this in her post here, and the comments to it -- including how to phrase a message to a congressperson who is not so supportive as mine.
And my church has just been notified that the first Syrian refugee family we're sponsoring will probably arrive at the end of the month; they've been notified to be ready to travel on the 28th. Thank god we already had an apartment lined up for them; we're told that some refugees are arriving in Canada on only four days' notice, and it's hard to find a landlord willing to rent to a refugee family of nine. (The second family we're sponsoring is only four people, so if we have minimal notice there it'll be easier to find them emergency housing somewhere for a while.) That has nothing to do with the situation in the US, but it's still good work. I'm a very small part of it, but I'm glad of it.
Sometimes I despair, especially about the possibility of nuclear or environmental armageddon. Which I fear is genuinely quite possible.
But the other day I remembered having heard, years ago, that it had been determined that at least one astronaut on the Challenger had survived the explosion, and that they knew this because someone had put safety equipment on someone else as the wrecked shuttle fell toward the ocean. I've just verified this (though I had a minor detail wrong; she turned it on rather than putting it on, and I'll warn you that reading that account almost made me cry again...) And I remembered that that act struck me, when I heard about it, as a quintessence of heroism: still trying to help not just oneself but someone else, even in the face of what seems certain disaster.
And there's a line that has stuck in my head for years. I honestly had no idea whether it was from a book -- my best guess was 1984, but even that didn't seem quite right -- or from a fan story, or if it was something I'd invented on my own, perhaps as part of one of the stories I sometimes tell myself as I'm falling asleep. But I've just Googled it, and it turns out to be from R. A. MacAvoy's novel Damiano, first in a trilogy that I adore but haven't reread in maybe twenty years. Damiano, a musician and witch in medieval Italy, has agreed, in extremis, to sell his life and soul to the Devil in return for peace and prosperity for his beloved city and the whole Piedmont, which is staggering under war and plague. But he doesn't want earthly power in the little time he'll have left to live, and he refuses to renounce God and curse the world, all of which confuses and enrages the Devil. Satan scowled, and his huge anger cracked through the carnelian mask. "What game do you think you're playing? You can gain nothing by theatrics, boy! The Beginning has cast you off already, and mankind will never know!"
Damiano placed both hands on top of his head and rubbed his face against his knees. "Eh? Yes, but I will know, Signor Satan, and that is something."
The Devil stood up and flung the spindly chair into nothingness. He spat on the forest floor in front of Damiano, leaving a spot of smoking ash. "You will know, boy? When you are in my hand you will know what I permit you to know, no more. You will remember only the idiocy of your actions, forever!"
Damiano rose slowly. "Then I know it now, and that will have to be enough. Come, Signor Satan. It was our bargain to begin with; hold to it."
I don't believe in heaven or hell, in any kind of life after death. In five billion years, as the subtitle of a friend's journal says, none of this will matter. That doesn't mean that what happens now doesn't matter. As Damiano said, I may forget, but I know it now, and that will have to be enough. If we go out, we can still strive to go out well.
read
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My deep thanks to everyone who commented here through the twenty-four hours of my cat's diagnosis and death, by the way; I wasn't able to respond individually, but it meant a lot. We are in no doubt that we did the right thing. And if it had all developed one day earlier, it would have been on Wednesday when I was largely nonfunctional; one day later and Geoff would already have left for Toronto, leaving me to make the call and see it through on my own. (Well, a friend was standing by in case she was needed; but it's not the same as having Geoff there.) So, there's that.
And then there's the political situation. Which is where I stop being able to be quite so coherent.
I've seen several petitions and other activism hoping to get members of the electoral college to renounce their commitments to vote for Trump, in hopes that it's still not too late for Clinton. I've had mixed feelings about this over the past week. On the one hand, obviously I think Trump and his cronies and handlers and fellow travelers are a disaster for the country and the world; on the other, overturning the initial result in that way would overturn the polite fiction on which the system rests, that the electors will do as they said they would/as they were told. A few have changed their votes in past elections, but their changes of heart have never affected the outcome. If enough electors defected to actually overturn the apparent result, I wonder whether our political system would survive (I'd expect significant violence in the streets, civil unrest, from Trump supporters); it feels a bit like the queen suddenly deciding to exercise direct rule, as she is still teccccchnically empowered to do but as the whole British Commonwealth system relies on her politely abstaining from doing.
However, I'm not at all certain that that would be worse than what might happen otherwise. And, I mean, there's an increase in violence in the streets already.
ETA: The petition discussed in these next two paragraphs has been closed, for violating the whitehouse.gov Terms of Participation. Oh well. So I've signed this petition at whitehouse.gov to force DT to release his tax returns for the past six years so that the electors can judge his potential impeachable conflicts of interest. (Whitehouse.gov petitions may not "expressly urge the support or opposition of candidates for elected office," but it's clear where this one is aiming.)
I learned about this petition from a friend who forwarded an email from a Women in Law mailing list (which was marked "please share widely!"), and the email included a lot more info on the petition's background and reasoning. Unfortunately it's not conveniently available on the Web, and it's longer than I want to include in this post, which I can tell already will be plenty long itself. I'll post it separately, I guess.
There's also a Change.org petition to ask electors to change their votes, which I've signed as well. I have even less faith in the potential of Change.org petitions to make anything actually happen than I do in the potential of WhiteHouse.gov ones, but symbolic actions are not a bad thing in themselves; they're only a bad thing if people think they're sufficient and stop there.
And that last remark is a good segue into musing on safety pins.
When I started seeing the widely spread suggestion that people pin safety pins on their clothes to show that they will be a safe place for people who are being threatened or harassed, that they will come to their defense in the moment as well as working for their safety in the long term, I pinned one to every coat and jacket I have.
Then, in the next twenty-four hours, I heard blistering denunciations of safety-pin-wearing as useless, merely symbolic, insultingly trivial. I heard people who are especially at risk express fury at the pins and at the people wearing them. I saw these reactions both online and in person. I took all the pins off again.
But I'm really torn about it. I don't want to do something that will cause more pain to people who are scared and hurting. But I've also seen people in similar situations say that they appreciate seeing safety pins on people; they feel reassured, they feel supported. And I've also heard a few stories of people nudging into concrete action safety-pin-wearers who might not have gone beyond the symbolic act on their own -- but because they were wearing a pin, someone was apparently able to say, "Hey, let's talk about what else you could do" and get specific, real results. (Small-scale ones, sure -- but something is better than nothing. A starting point is better than immobility.)
I can't know how for sure I would react if faced with an actual verbally or physically violent situation. I know that I've done so twice in my life before: once physically intervening in a physically violent situation, and once verbally intervening in a verbally violent one (and then calling the police). I believe that I intervened successfully in the first one (on the grounds that the victim expressed gratitude and talked with me for fifteen minutes or so afterward); I don't know if my intervention helped in the second, but I think I did the right thing. I think and hope that I'd do so again; that my safety pin, if I were wearing one, wouldn't be merely symbolic.
(I also know that the odds are that any such situation I might encounter up here would probably be happening in such rapid, colloquial French that I wouldn't fully understand what was going on...)
But ultimately I can't know how many people would see it and feel better, versus how many people would see it and feel worse. And even if I could know, how could I decide what ratio of others' pain to others' gladness makes it right? If I put them back on, how do I explain that choice to the friend at my church who is far more connected to social justice work than I am and who says that the trans people she knows are livid at the safety pin movement? If I decide to wear them only while I'm in the States, is that a chickenshit avoidance of a confrontation with her, or a reasonable balance, given the different salience of the issues in the US and in Canada? (Okay, as I reread this I see that the obvious answer is to ask if she'll discuss the issue with me.)
And I said above that merely symbolic actions are not a bad thing in themselves; they're only a bad thing if people think they're sufficient and stop there. But I actually think it's more complex than that. If someone who might otherwise do something more concrete and effective instead limits themselves to a merely symbolic act, obviously that's bad. But if someone who would otherwise do nothing does a merely symbolic act, I believe that that's still better than doing nothing. And that it eases the path toward getting them to do more.
Which lets me segue into talking about action.
I've been following the various lists I've seen of good causes to support, and I've donated to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood (though I forgot to make the donation in honor of Pence, dammit), NARAL, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (for electronic security and privacy), Mother Jones (for investigative journalism), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (which does great work for all sexual and gender minorities, not just lesbians), and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'm trying to maintain a balance between noting good groups to support, and getting totally paralyzed because there are so many... My stepmother is deeply involved in environmental work and is sending me all kinds of info about good causes there. And I've called my senators; since I vote in Massachusetts I'm lucky enough to be able to begin the messages I left on their offices' answering machines with "I want to thank the Senator" as well as adding "I urge the Senator."
rydra_wong has fantastic scripts for how to do this in her post here, and the comments to it -- including how to phrase a message to a congressperson who is not so supportive as mine.
And my church has just been notified that the first Syrian refugee family we're sponsoring will probably arrive at the end of the month; they've been notified to be ready to travel on the 28th. Thank god we already had an apartment lined up for them; we're told that some refugees are arriving in Canada on only four days' notice, and it's hard to find a landlord willing to rent to a refugee family of nine. (The second family we're sponsoring is only four people, so if we have minimal notice there it'll be easier to find them emergency housing somewhere for a while.) That has nothing to do with the situation in the US, but it's still good work. I'm a very small part of it, but I'm glad of it.
Sometimes I despair, especially about the possibility of nuclear or environmental armageddon. Which I fear is genuinely quite possible.
But the other day I remembered having heard, years ago, that it had been determined that at least one astronaut on the Challenger had survived the explosion, and that they knew this because someone had put safety equipment on someone else as the wrecked shuttle fell toward the ocean. I've just verified this (though I had a minor detail wrong; she turned it on rather than putting it on, and I'll warn you that reading that account almost made me cry again...) And I remembered that that act struck me, when I heard about it, as a quintessence of heroism: still trying to help not just oneself but someone else, even in the face of what seems certain disaster.
And there's a line that has stuck in my head for years. I honestly had no idea whether it was from a book -- my best guess was 1984, but even that didn't seem quite right -- or from a fan story, or if it was something I'd invented on my own, perhaps as part of one of the stories I sometimes tell myself as I'm falling asleep. But I've just Googled it, and it turns out to be from R. A. MacAvoy's novel Damiano, first in a trilogy that I adore but haven't reread in maybe twenty years. Damiano, a musician and witch in medieval Italy, has agreed, in extremis, to sell his life and soul to the Devil in return for peace and prosperity for his beloved city and the whole Piedmont, which is staggering under war and plague. But he doesn't want earthly power in the little time he'll have left to live, and he refuses to renounce God and curse the world, all of which confuses and enrages the Devil. Satan scowled, and his huge anger cracked through the carnelian mask. "What game do you think you're playing? You can gain nothing by theatrics, boy! The Beginning has cast you off already, and mankind will never know!"
Damiano placed both hands on top of his head and rubbed his face against his knees. "Eh? Yes, but I will know, Signor Satan, and that is something."
The Devil stood up and flung the spindly chair into nothingness. He spat on the forest floor in front of Damiano, leaving a spot of smoking ash. "You will know, boy? When you are in my hand you will know what I permit you to know, no more. You will remember only the idiocy of your actions, forever!"
Damiano rose slowly. "Then I know it now, and that will have to be enough. Come, Signor Satan. It was our bargain to begin with; hold to it."
I don't believe in heaven or hell, in any kind of life after death. In five billion years, as the subtitle of a friend's journal says, none of this will matter. That doesn't mean that what happens now doesn't matter. As Damiano said, I may forget, but I know it now, and that will have to be enough. If we go out, we can still strive to go out well.
read
comments | post a comment at Dreamwidth
How to use OpenID (optional unless you are commenting on a locked post)