Once, I would have written screeds about any number of things happening in our collective reality. Now it's hard to know where to put my focus. Which thread do I pull, and why that one, and not the ones just a millimeter to the right and left of it, which feel equally as urgent. The assaults are coming from all directions, in every moment, and I'm overwhelmed, off balance, whiplashed, which is just how they want us to be. I'm taking it all in. I just don't have the resources to process the ungoldly avalanche and move through the disturbing reverberations to my spirit, psyche, intellect, physical health, to my frail, compassionate, outraged, sorrowful, humanness in ways that might keep me whole. It's why I feel so fractured. It's why sometimes I feel so shut down, so suspended and invisible and gray, because there's too much to feel, too much to rake through, the implications too extreme to fully reconcile.
I said to my husband the other morning, you know if they come for us, and it was only us, I would be okay, as long as we were together, you and me. We'd face whatever came together. But what I cannot face, what I cannot countenance, is them coming for my children, or separating me from my children, and so that means I am not okay with them coming for us at all, because that means directly or indirectly they are also coming for my children. I know exactly what you mean, he said.
This morning I learned that Timothy Synder, former professor at Yale and much-quoted author of On Tyranny, along with his wife and Yale colleague, Marci Shore, and another Yale colleague, Jason Stanley, have all accepted professorships at the University of Toronto. After the election last fall, they decided to move their families out of the United States. Synder objected to the characterization that he had "fled" the country. No, he responded, he simply decided to leave and live elsewhere. Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, was more blunt. He stated that he was choosing to raise his children in a country that was not "tilting toward a fascist dictatorship" just as his grandmother had chosen to leave Germany with his father, then seven years old, in 1939. Marci Shore didn't mince words either. "The lesson of 1933 was that you get out," she said. I felt a chill, reading all this.
How did the Germans who left in the 1930s know it was time to do so? And how many stayed because they could not imagine leaving their grown children behind. My children are American born, and their roots are sunk deep in this land. Where would we go and what would we do there if, like Timothy Snyder, we were to exercise our choice, not to "flee" but to "leave." The thing is, none of us can fathom doing this, and yet it has become so clear that we are the wrong color for the future that the current regime envisions for this country, and the whole truth of it is, there is no way to know in this incendiary moment what that means for our family.
I am remembering a Jewish man I interviewed. He and his siblings were born in America, as were his parents, but his grandparents had come here from Germany and from Poland during the second world war. He told me that all his life, his mother grouped people into two and only two categories. "Whenever we had people over to dinner," he said, "after they left, "my mother would look at us and say, 'Okay, would they hide us or would they turn us in?' Sometimes it would be 'He would hide us, but she would definitely turn us in.' That was how she taught her children and grandchildren to assess people, even though we were two and three generations removed from the war." He chuckled as he told me this two years ago now, as if it was a funny story about his quirky mother. I bet neither of us thinks it's a funny story now.
I am so insanely proud of Harvard for standing up to the bullying and extortion of the regime, which aims to crush intellectual freedom by destroying citadels of learning. Sad to say, my alma mater Columbia rolled over only to discover that the bullies only come back to crush you some more. Harvard decided to stand firm from the start, come what may. And the vengeance is raining down for sure, $2.2 billion is federal funding withdrawn, threats to end the school's tax exempt status, and to forbid international students from being able to enroll through the government canceling or refusing to grant them visas. Meanwhile, donations from proud alums are pouring in, and of course, Harvard's coffers are already quite deep, so good for them in knowing that they are in a position to take the courageous stand. Within 24 hours, the new acting president of Columbia got the message, announcing that they, too, would not allow the administration to curtail (they should have said "further curtail") their academic independence and autonomy. You can't give in to bullies. You can't negotiate with vengeful toddlers.
Also, overnight, the Supreme Court acted to order a halt on all deportations based on the Alien Enemies Act, until the court has had a chance to consider the case and rule fully. The American gestapo was getting ready to fly another planeload of men to the gulag in El Salvador, but the high court put a stop to it, with Thomas and Alito dissenting, of course. Must have be a long wakeful night for the justices. On social media, somebody said, "So we know where they're taking the men, but where are they taking the women and children?" Because make no mistake. Women and children are being kidnapped from the streets in broad daylight, too.
There are so many other threads I could pull, but I'm already tired. Take care of yourselves, people. Right now, I'm going to pull my consciousness back into the smallness of the present moment, and notice that outside my window, spring is more than a blush on the trees, and up on the small hill, a team of gardeners is planting white tulips along the fence line. Surely the world is still beautiful.
