Last month I wrote about social media and my dilemma on how to be on the various platforms. I wrote about a reality in my life. The next day I read Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter and wanted to retract my blog, which in comparison seemed like insipid drivel. HCR wrote of the gutting of the CDC, the restricting of who gets Covid vaccines, Social Security data breaches, firings at the EPA, and the tariffs that have and will continue to wreak havoc with our economy. We are losing the civil servants who work to protect us from illnesses, identity theft, environmental degradation, the effects of climate change, and who strive to keep the economy on an even keel. Our tax dollars are not being used for our benefit.
HCR wrote about all of that and more, and I wrote about whether to be more consistent in posting pictures of my cat.
There are reasons for my doing so. Remaining sane to start. To dwell on the dismantling of our democracy, of the harm being inflicted on people in this country, and around the world, every day by the actions, and inactions, of our federal government, is bad for my mental health. I am outraged and saddened, and I don’t want to write about that. Remaining physically healthy is another. It’s been almost a year since a cardiac ablation stopped the electrical signals that made my heart go into atrial fibrillation (AFib). I can’t know for sure what brought the AFib on, but stress is a contributing factor. But the main reason I don’t engage with this US crisis in my blog is that my privilege allows me to prioritize my mental and physical health, at least for now. We are all in the same storm of the crumbling US democracy but we are not riding out this storm in the same boat.
I’m cisgender, straight, and white. The vulnerability of my gender in a patriarchal society is offset somewhat by the fact I am married to a benevolent cisgender straight white male. No matter my Armenian grandmother, after surviving the Genocide of 1915-1923, immigrated to the United States in 1930. No matter my father is a first-generation American citizen on his mother’s side. No matter because a 1909 US court case decided Armenians would be classified as white, the sorting of humans like buttons by color. White self-servingly considered superior to brown and black.
And the main reason I don’t feel compelled to write about the injustices occurring daily in my country is also the main reason I should: in theory, I can talk back to this extreme, corrupt, and inept federal administration with little if any serious consequences.
But then, I tell myself, people like HCR and Rebecca Solnit are writing better and with more impact than I could.
Still, keeping all of the above in mind, I do have something to say to this federal administration:
Recent Comments