Listening to: Rät by Penelope Scott

I am distracted.

I have deadlines, and I am distracted.

I have chores that need doing, and I am distracted.

Our democracy is collapsing, and I am distracted.

It is quiet, and it is all-consuming, and I am at a loss, because what is there to say? I know how we got here.

I don’t want to be here, of course. I wish I was anywhere else, but I can’t help but think it was always going to come to this. We were always going to have this spectacular of a reckoning. Because we couldn’t give the stewards of Turtle Island and Hawai’i their land back. And we (I am being very charitable using “we” here) couldn’t apologize for slavery. And we couldn’t protect trans people. And we couldn’t protect disabled people. And we couldn’t house the unhoused. And we couldn’t recognize the State of Palestine. And we let Ronald Reagan set foot in the White House. And we have let the poison of colonialism leak across the world.

Because we were always going to have to reckon with ourselves, one way or another, and we’ve chosen this, I guess.

I thought of leaving, once. Moving to another country. South Korea, that has a piece of my heart. Ireland, that has another. I stayed, though, because I couldn’t imagine myself outrunning the shadow of the United States, and I could not see a place where colonialism couldn’t reach.

And because someone’s got to stay and clean up the mess.

And I’ve got other messes I’d rather focus on. I have to clean out the basement, and I have to fix the porch screen, and I have to paint the bathrooms and the guestroom and the hallways, and I have to prepare the garden for Spring, and I have to build shelves in the shed, and I have to keep my chickens safe from bird flu, and my industry is imploding thanks to corporate greed so I have to figure out how I’m going to make a living and keep paying bills that keep getting higher and higher.

But the United States is our mess. My mess.

I was born here. My ancestors were sold here. My family is here. My history is here.

And we are still a democracy, after all. That means power doesn’t belong only to the president (or the petulant babies he’s surrounded himself with). It doesn’t belong to Congress, or to the Supreme Court, or to the police, or to the military.

It belongs to us. The people.

And there’s more of us than there are of them.