{"id":555,"date":"2025-02-04T19:15:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T00:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2025-02-04T19:29:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T00:29:23","slug":"have-we-hit-rock-bottom-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/04\/have-we-hit-rock-bottom-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Have We Hit Rock Bottom, Yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"A
This WordPress template wants a preview image, so I’m sharing Ann Telnaes’s cartoon<\/a> that The Washington Post refused to publish.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Listening to: R\u00e4t by Penelope Scott<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am distracted.<\/p>\n

I have deadlines, and I am distracted.<\/p>\n

I have chores that need doing, and I am distracted.<\/p>\n

Our democracy is collapsing, and I am distracted.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be here, of course. I wish I was anywhere else, but I can\u2019t 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\u2019t give the stewards of Turtle Island and Hawai\u2019i their land back. And we (I am being very charitable using \u201cwe\u201d here) couldn\u2019t apologize for slavery. And we couldn\u2019t protect trans people. And we couldn\u2019t protect disabled people. And we couldn\u2019t house the unhoused. And we couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Because we were always going to have to reckon with ourselves, one way or another, and we’ve chosen this, I guess.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t imagine myself outrunning the shadow of the United States, and I could not see a place where colonialism couldn\u2019t reach.<\/p>\n

And because someone\u2019s got to stay and clean up the mess.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve got other messes I\u2019d 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\u2019m going to make a living and keep paying bills that keep getting higher and higher.<\/p>\n

But the United States is our mess. My mess.<\/p>\n

I was born here. My ancestors were sold here. My family is here. My history is here.<\/p>\n

And we are still a democracy, after all. That means power doesn\u2019t belong only to the president (or the petulant babies he\u2019s surrounded himself with). It doesn\u2019t belong to Congress, or to the Supreme Court, or to the police, or to the military.<\/p>\n

It belongs to us. The people.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s more of us than there are of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listening to: R\u00e4t 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,32],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-as-usual","tag-current-events","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilahmagruder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}