Hanging by a Thread
We forget who laid it out for us a lifetime ago, but civilization is inherently fragile, and can collapse in an instant. Everything is handed off from one generation to the next, one life to the next, and the chain only goes back a few thousand years. We haven’t been at this very long.
The friend who explained this to us was Jewish. He had some specific examples in mind.
The last time we faced this moment, we were venturing into the unknown. We knew, deep in our gut, that it would be bad, very bad, but the form it would take was uncertain. And as it played out, one of our running themes was institutional collapse: legal, social, informational. There was little stopping it from being bad, or getting worse.
And that was before the pandemic.
We know what we’re facing this time. They even published a handy guide this year, full of details. We don’t know what’s stopping them from implementing any or all of it. There are no guardrails. Guardrails are only as strong as the people maintaining them, and we’ve already seen that the people entrusted with that responsibility aren’t up to the task.
As we said when the pandemic hit, we’re on our own. No point despairing about it. Been there, done that.
So what’s to be done about it? We don’t have a formula for success. We acknowledge the privilege of being a Nice White Boy from Oregon (now in Brooklyn!), where we don’t have generations of family horror stories living in this same land, or even our own stories to add to them. Our relationship to the enduring struggles of the past century is Witness and Student, not Forced Participant. Learn from them, not from us.
But we can say this: We’re an American. Our values are the values that America professes, if not those it often painfully demonstrates. Where we live now, it’s a short walk to the bay, and from there we can see the Statue of Liberty in the distance. We take that seriously, even if millions of our fellow citizens don’t.
And as an American, at the very least we can be true to ourself and our country, to our values. If civilization itself must hang by a thread, we won’t be the one that cuts it.
Wrote through it last time, writing through it this time.
Hey. I know.
So, I’m kinda drunk and tired and many things that might mess up this story. You probably know it, so please feel free to fact check me cuz I’m going by memory.
A lot of people confuse the Statue of Liberty with Marianne which is kind of understandable because Americans are a bit dumb when it comes to history and Europe in general. I mean, they’re both French, right?
But my (possibly faulty American) understanding is that the Statue of Liberty (real name: Liberty Enlightening the World) was gifted to us to celebrate the both the US centennial and the end of slavery by some dude (Bartholdi) who liked to make BIG ART.
Problem was everyone was broke because civil wars and crazy Prussians kinda break the national bank. I mean, he got it built. It was shipped. And then it sort of languished because no one could afford to install it somewhere.
This is the sadness of Liberty Enlightening the World: they finally get her installed, but they put her on a plinth as big as American exceptionalism.
Yeah, the torch is great. The crown is great. It’s a fantastic piece, and my cousins and I ran up all her internal Eiffel stairs to stare out of her crown before I developed my debilitating fear of heights, or fear or falling, because that’s the truth of it. My adult brain tells me, “Child, why the hell are you looking at the tops of those trees? You ain’t no eagle. You best sit down now before you fall off this rock and bust your head wide open. Here…let me make you dizzy for a bit.” And then I go to ground right about here and wonder if they’ll send a helicopter for me, and if so, how the hell am I going to climb in the basket? And who’s gonna pay for that shit? And maybe I shouldn’t have left my kid in the car listening to Seal while I decided to go on a quick jaunt up a precipice.
So, yeah. La Liberté éclairant le monde is fabulous, except for the plinth. Because the plinth hides what the torch is meant to illuminate. The thing we’re supposed to ponder. The thing that we’re being celebrated for.
So here we are, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’m considering overstaying my visa outside this country in February. And maybe I started looking at real estate in another country last July when I started wondering if we were gonna pull a Grover Cleveland. I just have to make sure I don’t leave my kid in the car this time.
I think the edit button is broken. But this is where I got the vertigo https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/images/IMG_1901_edited_lg_1.jpg?maxwidth=1200&maxheight=1200&autorotate=false
Ugh. What the torch is meant to illuminate: https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000.YZCF_gIrGg/fit=1000×750/Rajs-980126CD-0251noretouch.jpg
I’m in shock. It’s like an asteroid strike.
The majority of Americans just voted for the fascist dicktatorship of soulless, lying, rapist, psychopathic AntiChrist Tr666p. They’re fully onboard with racism, fascism, sexism, rape, kleptocracy, all of it. He vowed to crash the eCONomy with punishing tariffs and mass deportations, and they want it.
There is no silver lining here. Just know that I love you all, we’re resourceful, and we’ll figure out how to survive this national calamity.
Crossed my mind but didn’t include a bit about the end of Fahrenheit 451, when after all the books are burned, regime survivors gather in the woods to memorize those that remain — preserving them in a new oral tradition. That’s the thread of civilization. What little we can do elsewhere, we’ll always have that.
Not sure what time I finally passed out, but imma tell you what I DON’T want to see when I start to read the various post mortems:
It’s the Hispanics’ fault!
It’s Black men’s fault!
It’s white women’s fault!
It’s Muslims’ fault!
It’s Jews’ fault!
It’s uneducated white dudes’ fault!
It’s the white nationalists’ fault!
It’s the Catholics’ fault! The Protestants! The Jains! The Asians, NDNs, drag queens, gays, queers, lesbians, transfolks, asexual folks…in other words, alllll the people who should be thanking the Democratic Party for this awesome world where we’re all accepted, appreciated, loved and protected.
Maybe it’s the party’s fault for clinging too long to a VISIBLY dottering man who also thought that he alone could fix it and said so.
Maybe it’s the party’s fault for once again bringing out their quadrennial, “But we love the poors!” bullshit that means zero to the poors in their day-to-day lives.
Maybe it’s racism, misogyny, bigotry, cruelty and hate.
Maybe it’s weariness.
Maybe it’s a symptom of the way our country was constructed on the backs of enslaved people while other poor non-landed people and women couldn’t vote and we have the gall to tell ourselves that we built something special here and labelled it a revolution when it was only the same ole same ole to people who were either enslaved or otherwise disenfranchised.
We need true representation. A parliamentary system. Not gonna happen, but that’s the only way crazy bitches like me can be like like “Up against the wall, MOTHERFUCKER and elect someone equally crazy to sit in one seat in an American Parliament and try to find consensus with some nutty bastard elected by Those Who Live in Bunkers.
I swear to fucking GOD that if I go through a bunch of rigamarole to log into my computer with the hope of being able to edit my comments and that shit doesn’t work, I guess that shit just won’t work.
Think of my shit links as baked losing her password once a week. I miss her terribly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Against_the_Wall_Motherfucker
Save your empties for the molotov cocktails, people!
Didn’t appreciate it until I got here, but the Statue of Liberty shows Jersey her ass.
@nojo: I boo you, sir.
We’re slowly coming to grips with what it might mean to be living in a county that voted 6o+% for fascism. Having a trans kid (adult kid but still MY kid) and her non-binary partner plus two of us being Black has us wondering just how safe we’ll be over the next four years.
We got them out of TN, and there’s a lot of fear for the LGBTQIA+ community they left behind. Lots of tears. People who have transitioned and now presenting as female thinking about going off hormones and binding their breasts out of fear of violence.
I think we’ll be getting our documents in order. One of us needs a passport.
We’re not with it enough yet to balance our personal safety with our duty to the safety of other minority communities in our town. There’s an ICE detention center up the road. We have skills. We can help.
I think getting my kid’s partner their passport should be priority #1, even if we’re just going to Canada for a bit. The idea that we can leave, what a friggin’ luxury!, is complicated by the immorality of leaving. The impulse to grab one of them under each arm and flee is strong. I also don’t want to freak them out, because they’re dealing with their own shit and don’t need my shit, but my shit does break through.
Power is power, but…
About 11 million votes remain to be counted. Nate Silver (I know, I know) is estimating Trump 50%, Harris 2.5 million votes less. Turnout a bit higher than 2020 — which was the highest percentage since 1900, about two-thirds the voting-age population.
Meaning: Yes, Harris lost Biden votes to Trump, around 4 million. But we’re not looking at a popular mandate. We have to live with them, but they have to live with us, too. Be ornery.
@nojo: The Long View:
1972: Nixon 61%
1984: Reagan 59%
2004: Bush 51%
2024: Trump 50% (est.)
Point being: Blowouts ain’t what they used to be. The most depressing thing about Reagan was knowing he was backed by a solid majority. Our system amplifies marginal wins, but that’s not the same as popular support. We still have each other — and there’s a lot of us.
Glad you’re feeling sunny. I have my moments which are then squashed by some shitheads’ actions that either directly affect our lives or others in our small community. But I don’t think leaving is the answer. I’ve contacted a group up north that runs a community fridge. I was thinking about setting one up down here several months ago. Sometimes the act of gathering information is empowering.
I’m also going to look into whether that shithead at the local store has a contract with the local public schools to rent instruments. That is such a scam. I hate it. But if he does, maybe I’ll hit up a school board meeting if I have the receipts, and maybe there’s something we can do to ensure kids don’t have to rent instruments because the ones the school has are in bad condition.
About to eat some mac n cheese, missing the hell outta Wawa, and read some fiction. These adrenaline spikes can’t be good for me.
Oh! My edits worked! Praise nojo!
@JNOV: Haven’t touched a thing — checked it the other day, worked from here. But that’s my life as a geek.
@nojo: yeah. I had a feeling you’d say that.
NOJO • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! @ManchuCandidate: So, can you guys annex us now?
MANCHUCANDIDATE • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! PP is done. 51st state, my ass.
NOJO • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! @FlyingChainSaw: No, but my government was.
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! @nojo: Were you kidnapped?
NOJO • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! @FlyingChainSaw: I’ve spent the past five weeks looking like Astronaut Dave going through the…
FLYINGCHAINSAW • TRUMP TARIFFS UNLEASHING FURY OF CANADIANS - AND THEIR LEGENDARY SNIPERS! NOJO - HOW COME WE'RE NOT COVERING KRASNOV?
NOJO • The Reckoning Four years later: Uhhh, how’d that work out?
JNOV • Hanging by a Thread @nojo: yeah. I had a feeling you’d say that.
NOJO • Hanging by a Thread @JNOV: Haven’t touched a thing — checked it the other day, worked from here. But that’s my…
JNOV • Hanging by a Thread Oh! My edits worked! Praise nojo!