THOUGHTS ON THE END OF THE WORLD

LegalDispatch 115

“It’s hard to keep a good man down.

“But I won’t be getting up today.”

- Billy Joel

Even the most casual reader of this newsletter will have pegged me as a compulsive multitasker. Given that, it’s probably little surprise that since Tuesday night, I’ve been mainlining the five stages of grief, often experiencing multiple stages simultaneously.

I spent the first twenty-four hours firmly in denial, however. The developments were so shocking, so unexpected, that I was able to disassociate and wrap myself in a warm blanket of numbness.

Then the depression stage hit . I struggle with depression and anxiety and Cymbalta can only do so much in the wake of the ultimate bully’s ultimate victory. My therapist will tell you that bullies are a thing for me. I was bullied — physically and emotionally — pretty severely as a kid and they remain a (and I hate this word) trigger. What’s happening now is, for me, the mother of all triggers.

But like I said, I’m a multitasker, so in the midst of the depressive stage, I’ll also occasionally retreat to denial, my brain unable to make sense of what’s transpired. I can’t shape my thoughts to conform with this new reality. I’ve never experienced such cognitive dissonance. I’m talking Republican-level cognitive dissonance — which is, to say, an Everest-high amount.

I’ll also dabble in bargaining, straining to console myself with fleeting and alternating amounts of hopium (maybe it won’t be as bad as I fear) and copium (at least I have some schadenfreude to look forward to once the majority of the country moves from “fuck around” to the “find out” stage).

And I feel flickers of the anger stage like little licks of flame at the back of my neck. They scare me. I can feel the incandescent rage churning deep within and I am terrified. I’m self-aware enough — and had sufficient therapy, lord knows — to know that when my wrath has no target that can be reached, as in this case, I will turn it inward. I have experience with self-harm. I’m all too familiar with the vicious cycle of anger leading to more depression leading to more anger leading to self-destructive impulses, leading to more depression and so on and so forth.

And while I struggle to keep anger at bay with an emotional whip and pharmaceutical chair, the fifth and final stage — acceptance — feels as distant and ephemeral as the possibility of a Democrat standing on the steps of the Capitol and placing their hand on the Bible on January 21, 2029.

So what to do?

Two friends of mine, writers both, have pointed out that America and the world will need artists now more than ever. My therapist encourages me to write because that’s what I do; it’s who I am. Guilty as charged.

However, I’ve long maintained that any writing without an audience to read/watch it is nothing more than a grocery list. Writing requires readers and viewers at least as much as it requires a writer. And Hollywood has become a wasteland, an abyss which takes writing and silences it in a never-ending morass of notes and passes. Even in the statistically unlikely event a script stumbles onto a set and into the mouths of actors, the odds of it ever being released are as long as the odds of it getting to the production stage in the first place. And even by dint of an Old Testament-caliber miracle that script’s TV show or movie finds an audience, by this point the creative impulse, the message, the entire impetus for writing the thing will, I assure you, have been scrubbed away by an army of executives, producers, lawyers, and studio heads.

So what to do?

The tears of my eldest forced me to conjure an answer to this question. Left to my own devices, I would continue to wallow. I would continue to mourn. I still do both — again, multitasking — but she had questions — How do we go on? What do we do now? — and if I’ve learned anything in my past nineteen years as a father it’s that when your child asks you a question, you make sure to reach behind and up into your ass from which to pull out an answer. So this is what I told her:

You make the world small.

For now, while the tears are not yet dry and the pain is still fresh, you shrink the world to your friends and loved ones. You try — for a little while, just long enough to get past all the agony — not to think about the consequences for America and the world. You focus on those closest to you and make a tiny country of love.

Making the world small also extends to time. Don’t think about Inauguration Day or the horrors that will be unleashed. Think only about today or, if you must, tomorrow. Shorten the horizon. Day by day. Hour by hour if that’s what gets you through. Put your oxygen mask on first. Practice self-care.

(A friend of mine made me promise her that by the end of the weekend I would do one good thing for myself. I had to ask her what she does for herself because, to be honest, no options sprang to my mind. I preach practicing self-care, but — full disclosure — I don’t know what self-care looks like.)

I also told my daughter to do something nice for someone. Right now — more than ever — we need to be reminded that there is still good in the world. I fear that so much of my foregoing “advice” is full of just so much shit, but I am at least confident that performing one random act of kindness is restorative to the soul.

And last but not least, I advise drawing some boundaries and making some resolutions. Build some protective emotional walls (regardless of whether Mexico will pay for them). Recognize what’s pained you over these past nine years and do what you can to prevent it from continuing to vex you. America rejected the notion of “turning the page” but we must still look for opportunities to turn small pages wherever we can find them.

An example: Yesterday, a friend of mine posted the following on Threads (I’ve gotten off of Twitter, post-election):

Alarmed by my surging distrust of straight white males now. You guys used to be fun but now, I just see people who like rapist bigoted con men.

This is just one example of the rhetoric I’ve seen, post-election, and it’s hardly unsurprising. For the past nine years, I’ve watched and read and listened as cis straight white men were vilified because people couldn’t attack the cis straight white (well, orange) man they were really angry at.

In reaction, some cis straight white men cried #NotAllMen. They were informed, however, that their reaction was somehow offensive or, at least, impolite to the moment. “If you’re one of the good ones,” the argument went, “you know it and, therefore, shouldn’t be offended.” Another argument, equally reasonable on its face, is “You’ve had your time. It’s time for other people to speak — even if that speech offends or hurts you.” Another: “And if it does offend or hurt you, well, that’s the smallest of prices to pay for all the privilege you enjoy.”

Nine years of that. All good. Respect.

But I’m done.

If someone says or writes something about my race/gender/orientation that they would never say about any other race/gender/orientation, I’m going to call them out on it. I will no longer bite my tongue. I will no longer swallow the obvious hypocrisy. I will no longer convince myself that my “privilege” requires me to be silent. Because nine years of doing so has let in too much toxicity into my psyche and, quite frankly, I can’t do another four.

I’ve floated versions of this sentiment online already and they’ve been met with the kind of crickets that I can only assume is silent offense. And I get it. People are as unable to attack the ultimate cis straight white (orange) man, so they’re lashing out. And it seems particularly justified because a lot of those guys voted orange.

I’m also probably failing to recognize all the reasons why marginalized groups are right and correct to denigrate cis straight white men writ large. To those of you who fall into this camp, I’m sorry (not sorry) for offending you with this part of my missive. But let me make a different argument against the temptation to paint all cis straight white men with the same brush:

It’s bad politics.

The number of people — men and women, gay and straight, melanated and not — who told me they were flirting on not voting for Harris or not voting because they (their words) “are tired of all this woke shit” was startling to me. Shocking. And it made one thing painfully clear: Identity politics is costing Democrats votes. It’s driving people away from — rather than towards — the party.

And lest you think that that cost is worth the price, consider that progressives have gotten painfully little ROI on our fetish for identity politics. Pro-reproductive rights measures passed in places where Harris lost. One in three voters of color voted against Harris. More Hispanic voters voted Republican than they did in 2020 by double digits. Harris lost Latino men by 10 points.

The list goes on.

If Democrats are ever going to have a voice in politics again, we have to stop saying “When they go low, we go… is ‘they’ really the right pronoun to use in this context?” We have to stop being the party of censoriousness. We have to fight for liberal values without being illiberal ourselves. We have to meet people where they are instead of proclaiming from atop our high horses where we think they should be.

Instead of constantly telling people they need to be better, we need to be better.

But that’s tomorrow.

Today, we grieve.

Be good to each other. Now more than ever.

Best,

Marc

Encino, California

11.8.24