"made me realize how much my current gloom is due, not just to concern and fear over what the next Trump presidency will bring but the feeling of being pulled back into a thick, suffocating swamp that once seemed like a temporary roadblock to the future but that I now experience as a more-or-less permanent environment. It’s shown that it’s too sticky to be drained, too spread out over everything to be contained. It’s continually regenerating, regrowing its clinging sludge. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And no effective rinse agent." I think this really effectively captures how a lot of people are feeling these days
I’m glad to hear that, as I struggled to find imagery that would capture what others are feeling. The media are so upbeat and normalizing; I felt I needed to speak for the non-sanitized awfulness.
As long as we remain in our left/center left bubble and just rely on liberal legacy media, we will not understand why a majority of those who voted for Trump and gave the GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. That includes why Trump got the votes of even a greater percentage of Hispanics and Blacks and working class Whites than in 2016. Subscribe to The Free Press!
I do subscribe to The Free Press. And have myself posted quite a few notes and a couple of stacks that address the question you raise—which is of course an extremely important one. You probably won’t find a stronger critic of the corporate media than I am—and have been writing about it for decades. I hope you’ll subscribe!
I hear you, Susan. Thank you for expressing the rage so many of us feel about Trump being back in power and not being held accountable. When Biden announced Merrick Garland as Attorney General, I turned to my husband with disgust, thinking he wasn't strong enough to hold Trump accountable and would allow Trump to skate by. Then I was upset that Biden and the Dems didn't use the opportunity to reform the Supreme Court and add at least two other justices to make up for the two McConnel stole from us. So many mistakes were made. But at this point I have to bend and let the storm of rage pass over me or I will break. Change the things you can change, and accept what can't be changed--yet. Perhaps in 2026 or 2028.
Thanks Deborah! I began to feel as though not expressing my own rage was keeping me from “bending”—which for me meant continuing to write despite everything. That metaphor in your comment really spoke to me because a few days ago, after I’d posted a pretty despairing note on FB, one of my longtime readers said “Oh no, they’ve broken Susan!” That really got to me! Having written this stack—and in that way establishing connection with so many people who feel similarly—I do feel like a more “flexible” tree. I’m not going to stifle myself (as I was trying to do by avoiding writing any more about the election) but I’m feeling freer to write about other things now too. I think…..!
okay, so I put on my big girl pants and read the piece you cautioned was "a downer." But as is often with your pieces, I find your role as maybe the only Truth-Teller to be found, to be strangely calming, reassuring me that I'm not crazy. Last night a friend I hadn't seen since the election due to her extra-long unfortunate Covid infection (she and husband were sleeping 12-14 hours a day for 17 days.) I'm used to seeing them once a week; they're our oldest friends. When she came in, she collapsed in my arms and I in hers, and we cried. She mumbled something about the election, and I realized this was possibly her first opportunity to grief with a like-minded person post Covid. I realized that I was crying for my own pitiful state of late, super-depressed, and struggling with a nasty pinched nerve in my neck. There's something happening where Democrats, progressives, reasonable people, whatever...are trying to "get on with their lives." It is reminding me of how I felt when the pandemic presumably "ended," and people were photographed at concerts and restaurants and a felt like a scared, overly self-protective child. I wasn't ready, but there was this immense peer pressure. Last night I watched one of the few bits of outside world "news" or analysis since the election. I've been on a fast; had to do it. It was a video from Amy Siskind, a journalist I respect immensely, and who was so reliably attentive to all of Trump's errors in the previous administration. She was earnest and wearing a sporty cap. She was kind and compassionate with a message that I'll paraphrase as "I'm with you; let's stay together, it's going to be all right (sort of), but I don't want any doom and gloom on my pages. The people who are doing "well" are becoming activists again. Like they did before. We're just going to do it again." There is absolutely nothing wrong with Siskind's nurturance and encouragement. I admire her energy and dedication. But I felt incredibly depressed after watching it. All those tiny hearts and thumbs up for the leader of the troop. She'd tell us which mushrooms were safe to eat. As for the phenomenlogy of our various feeling states (and oh boy can I relate to Bordo's/probably partly our shared DNA and childhood), I find it near impossible to tease out what are the factors of my inertia and depression. Is it personal? It is the world? Is it aging? Am I once again, going to leave myself behind the girl scout troop, and sink into isolation? After the pandemic, a talented bubbly musician I interviewed, said people felt like they weren't seeing the "old her." She wasn't as light-hearted and spontaneous. This IS the new me now, she replied. That one's gone. Thank you for this piece.
This is such a wonderful comment—like many of your comments, it’s a brilliant little piece of its own. This prescriptive business of “no gloom” was really getting to me. I read Amy’s Facebook post to that effect, and actually was furious about it. For one thing, although she’s free to “ban” whatever she wants on her own page, I don’t think there are any single prescriptions right now that people should be instructed to follow, and I resent being told what I “should” do. For another thing, I still had/have a lot to say that falls into the censored category, and felt as if I expressed how I felt I’d lose readers. And I need my readers in order to feel any sense of community at all!! What the responses to this piece reinforce for me is that the ebb and flow of “gloom” and anger and surreality and anxiety, etc. has to be allowed expression or, paradoxically, it will swallow us up. At least, was threatening to swallow me up. I do feel less burdened by it now that I’ve allowed the depressed and anxious voice to still have some air. I don’t want to get trapped by it, though! And that’s something I’m trying to figure out. The next chapter, you know….
Wow. Your rage comes through. Good. It's almost the only ammunition we have.
Everyone should be aware of what's behind us and what's ahead of us by now, but repeating it keeps it alive. This isn't gloom, it's awareness. We can have our moments of respite, our R&R, but then it's back to work.
If this is what you need to do now, if this is what you need to say, then use your platform to say it. No apologies necessary to those who wish you would get off of your soapbox and write the nice stuff. This is your space and your time.
Just know there are many of us who appreciate what you're doing. The resistance needs this.
Thank you Ramona, dear friend! I’m so glad you see that the point is not just to “vent,” it’s to keep the facts of what happened alive, to the extent and in the only way that I am able. I’m not a tv personality, I’m not even asked to be a guest commentator anymore, it’s only through my writing that I get to speak up in any way for the realities that keep getting disappeared by the corporate media as well as the MAGAs. I suspect a lot of people don’t even remember, maybe never actually followed, what the Hush Money case was all about, let alone how Trump and his lawyers were able to weasel out of accountability. And browsing through my past political and election stacks, I’m proud of having at least kept a record of this awful period in our history. Same with my Hillary book. People may want to “move on”—which I appreciate—but we need to remember, too—especially “re-member” those events that were distorted as they were happening. So again, thanks for recognizing this as a form of resistance! It’s pretty much the only one I’ve got (other than having raised a daughter with a fighting spirit.)
Rage is not going to change what needs to be changed. The majority of Americans no longer trust powerful institutions like SCOTUS, the Democratic Party, the U.S. AG and FBI, legacy media, etc. They feel betrayed, as well they (we!) should by the attempt to conceal Biden's increasing mental incapacity and by not being given a choice of who would replace him on the ticket because party elders decided to foist Harris on us instead of us having the chance to select any of several to many more qualified Dems, which could have happened in an open convention.
Who would have been better than Kamala Harris? She moved millions of us. She shook us out of our complacency. She chose a good guy as her Veep, and together they told us their plans to take us to whole new levels in the coming years.
The numbers at her rallies were awesome.
If she didn’t win, it wasn’t because she didn’t do everything she could have. Too bad not enough listened. Too bad not enough voted. Too bad single-issue voters couldn’t get past their single issue to think about the vulnerable in this country who would suffer terribly under a Trump regime.
I agree that the whole Biden leaving thing was terribly handled—for different reasons than you give, but still terribly handled. Where I strongly disagree with you is about both Kamala AND what would have happened at an open convention. But I’ve written stacks and stacks about all that, so I’ll just leave it at that.
I'm not as hopeless, because I think the constant stream of awful news creates only an illusion of solidity. Reality is solid, lies eventually explode like soap bubbles.
Josh Marshall wrote recently, "The real work of an opposition party is to oppose. It’s not to originate new theories of governance or have 'reckonings.' It’s to oppose. It’s to hold the people in power accountable." He cites the failure of GW Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security as a successful opposition. I'm here (in Oregon) to help with that opposition.
Meanwhile, this morning's Times lists the ways in which Trump's cabinet will not quite be able to implement all of his crazy schemes: "Trump’s Cabinet: Many Ideologies Behind the Veil of ‘America First.’" He couldn't get it all done the first time around and he won't have it easy this time either. We still have the Affordable Care Act, and I'm still waiting for Mexico to Pay For The Wall, among various instances of his unsuccess.
So hang in there Susan, don't let the bastards grind you down. I wish for you again to revel in acts of creation, of communication, your splendid facility, like a birthday wish over the cake candles.
I am reminded of something we all work at: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."
Thanks, Larry! You’re an optimistic sort, like my husband. And I appreciate your encouragement—especially in the paragraph that begins “Hang in there,” it’s lovely. I have to argue with Marx, though (it was Marx, wasn’t it?)—l’ve always thought of “interpreting the world” as part of rather than an alternative to “changing” it. If I didn’t, I’d have to stop doing what I do. And if Marx truly believed it, he’d never have written a word either….
Agreed, “interpreting the world” as part of rather than only an alternative to “changing” it. And I think of you as a philosopher who has worked to change the world. Incidentally, the extent and quality of your replies to your commenters has me thinking that it would be fun to take your classes! Those replies bear a family resemblance to your notes on student papers, no?
I have lots of platitudes today but not so much clarity. We all react to trauma in different ways. It takes time to process disappointment and grief. Life and hope go hand in hand. Everyday is a time to give thanks. Blah, blah, blah. I only know this. "Fuck Trump, the people who work for him, and the voters who enabled him." I will oppose him until my last second on earth. My parents and grandparents had their Holocaust and now we have ours!
I know there are people who would be furious at you for comparing this to the Holocaust. But I don’t think you’re really making that comparison. I think you’re saying “Fuck you!” In the strongest way you can think of, right?
It troubles me to think that somehow I have let you down Susan. I respect and admire you. In all honesty I meant what I wrote as a direct comparison between Hindenburg choosing Hitler to replace Kurt von Schleicher as Weimar Chancellor and voters putting Trump back in the White House. We're not at the Night of the Long Knives yet. But it's getting closer every day.
Ah, that’s clarifying! Very much so. I’m glad I raised the issue so you could elaborate on what you meant. And you didn’t let me down. I was actually trying to help you clarify, as I was recently trashed on Substack for daring to make a connection between Nazi ideology about women and MAGA ideology about women. She blasted into me, and I didn’t want the same to happen to you.
I'm so relieved. Actually I have been criticized by comparing Trump to Hitler. My critic said making that comparison denigrated Holocaust victims and survivors. I wrote an analytical essay looking into that issue. The similarities between the two are stark. I don't understand how someone could claim that comparing Trump to Hitler denigrated victims and survivors of the Shoah. My departed uncle of blessed memory was a survivor. He told me about his time at Auschwitz. I would never do anything to besmirch his memory.
Hey Susan people probably hated Henry the 8th just as much, but you wrote a great book about him. Or rather Anne Boleyn. Future writers will have the same fun : )
"made me realize how much my current gloom is due, not just to concern and fear over what the next Trump presidency will bring but the feeling of being pulled back into a thick, suffocating swamp that once seemed like a temporary roadblock to the future but that I now experience as a more-or-less permanent environment. It’s shown that it’s too sticky to be drained, too spread out over everything to be contained. It’s continually regenerating, regrowing its clinging sludge. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And no effective rinse agent." I think this really effectively captures how a lot of people are feeling these days
I’m glad to hear that, as I struggled to find imagery that would capture what others are feeling. The media are so upbeat and normalizing; I felt I needed to speak for the non-sanitized awfulness.
Yeah, you both survived DJT45. You'll be fine this time as well.
Now and then I too feel like I'm suffocating, so thoroughly have the fascist sealed us off in their cartoon nightmare.
As long as we remain in our left/center left bubble and just rely on liberal legacy media, we will not understand why a majority of those who voted for Trump and gave the GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. That includes why Trump got the votes of even a greater percentage of Hispanics and Blacks and working class Whites than in 2016. Subscribe to The Free Press!
I do subscribe to The Free Press. And have myself posted quite a few notes and a couple of stacks that address the question you raise—which is of course an extremely important one. You probably won’t find a stronger critic of the corporate media than I am—and have been writing about it for decades. I hope you’ll subscribe!
I hear you, Susan. Thank you for expressing the rage so many of us feel about Trump being back in power and not being held accountable. When Biden announced Merrick Garland as Attorney General, I turned to my husband with disgust, thinking he wasn't strong enough to hold Trump accountable and would allow Trump to skate by. Then I was upset that Biden and the Dems didn't use the opportunity to reform the Supreme Court and add at least two other justices to make up for the two McConnel stole from us. So many mistakes were made. But at this point I have to bend and let the storm of rage pass over me or I will break. Change the things you can change, and accept what can't be changed--yet. Perhaps in 2026 or 2028.
Thanks Deborah! I began to feel as though not expressing my own rage was keeping me from “bending”—which for me meant continuing to write despite everything. That metaphor in your comment really spoke to me because a few days ago, after I’d posted a pretty despairing note on FB, one of my longtime readers said “Oh no, they’ve broken Susan!” That really got to me! Having written this stack—and in that way establishing connection with so many people who feel similarly—I do feel like a more “flexible” tree. I’m not going to stifle myself (as I was trying to do by avoiding writing any more about the election) but I’m feeling freer to write about other things now too. I think…..!
okay, so I put on my big girl pants and read the piece you cautioned was "a downer." But as is often with your pieces, I find your role as maybe the only Truth-Teller to be found, to be strangely calming, reassuring me that I'm not crazy. Last night a friend I hadn't seen since the election due to her extra-long unfortunate Covid infection (she and husband were sleeping 12-14 hours a day for 17 days.) I'm used to seeing them once a week; they're our oldest friends. When she came in, she collapsed in my arms and I in hers, and we cried. She mumbled something about the election, and I realized this was possibly her first opportunity to grief with a like-minded person post Covid. I realized that I was crying for my own pitiful state of late, super-depressed, and struggling with a nasty pinched nerve in my neck. There's something happening where Democrats, progressives, reasonable people, whatever...are trying to "get on with their lives." It is reminding me of how I felt when the pandemic presumably "ended," and people were photographed at concerts and restaurants and a felt like a scared, overly self-protective child. I wasn't ready, but there was this immense peer pressure. Last night I watched one of the few bits of outside world "news" or analysis since the election. I've been on a fast; had to do it. It was a video from Amy Siskind, a journalist I respect immensely, and who was so reliably attentive to all of Trump's errors in the previous administration. She was earnest and wearing a sporty cap. She was kind and compassionate with a message that I'll paraphrase as "I'm with you; let's stay together, it's going to be all right (sort of), but I don't want any doom and gloom on my pages. The people who are doing "well" are becoming activists again. Like they did before. We're just going to do it again." There is absolutely nothing wrong with Siskind's nurturance and encouragement. I admire her energy and dedication. But I felt incredibly depressed after watching it. All those tiny hearts and thumbs up for the leader of the troop. She'd tell us which mushrooms were safe to eat. As for the phenomenlogy of our various feeling states (and oh boy can I relate to Bordo's/probably partly our shared DNA and childhood), I find it near impossible to tease out what are the factors of my inertia and depression. Is it personal? It is the world? Is it aging? Am I once again, going to leave myself behind the girl scout troop, and sink into isolation? After the pandemic, a talented bubbly musician I interviewed, said people felt like they weren't seeing the "old her." She wasn't as light-hearted and spontaneous. This IS the new me now, she replied. That one's gone. Thank you for this piece.
This is such a wonderful comment—like many of your comments, it’s a brilliant little piece of its own. This prescriptive business of “no gloom” was really getting to me. I read Amy’s Facebook post to that effect, and actually was furious about it. For one thing, although she’s free to “ban” whatever she wants on her own page, I don’t think there are any single prescriptions right now that people should be instructed to follow, and I resent being told what I “should” do. For another thing, I still had/have a lot to say that falls into the censored category, and felt as if I expressed how I felt I’d lose readers. And I need my readers in order to feel any sense of community at all!! What the responses to this piece reinforce for me is that the ebb and flow of “gloom” and anger and surreality and anxiety, etc. has to be allowed expression or, paradoxically, it will swallow us up. At least, was threatening to swallow me up. I do feel less burdened by it now that I’ve allowed the depressed and anxious voice to still have some air. I don’t want to get trapped by it, though! And that’s something I’m trying to figure out. The next chapter, you know….
Wow. Your rage comes through. Good. It's almost the only ammunition we have.
Everyone should be aware of what's behind us and what's ahead of us by now, but repeating it keeps it alive. This isn't gloom, it's awareness. We can have our moments of respite, our R&R, but then it's back to work.
If this is what you need to do now, if this is what you need to say, then use your platform to say it. No apologies necessary to those who wish you would get off of your soapbox and write the nice stuff. This is your space and your time.
Just know there are many of us who appreciate what you're doing. The resistance needs this.
Thank you Ramona, dear friend! I’m so glad you see that the point is not just to “vent,” it’s to keep the facts of what happened alive, to the extent and in the only way that I am able. I’m not a tv personality, I’m not even asked to be a guest commentator anymore, it’s only through my writing that I get to speak up in any way for the realities that keep getting disappeared by the corporate media as well as the MAGAs. I suspect a lot of people don’t even remember, maybe never actually followed, what the Hush Money case was all about, let alone how Trump and his lawyers were able to weasel out of accountability. And browsing through my past political and election stacks, I’m proud of having at least kept a record of this awful period in our history. Same with my Hillary book. People may want to “move on”—which I appreciate—but we need to remember, too—especially “re-member” those events that were distorted as they were happening. So again, thanks for recognizing this as a form of resistance! It’s pretty much the only one I’ve got (other than having raised a daughter with a fighting spirit.)
Rage is not going to change what needs to be changed. The majority of Americans no longer trust powerful institutions like SCOTUS, the Democratic Party, the U.S. AG and FBI, legacy media, etc. They feel betrayed, as well they (we!) should by the attempt to conceal Biden's increasing mental incapacity and by not being given a choice of who would replace him on the ticket because party elders decided to foist Harris on us instead of us having the chance to select any of several to many more qualified Dems, which could have happened in an open convention.
Who would have been better than Kamala Harris? She moved millions of us. She shook us out of our complacency. She chose a good guy as her Veep, and together they told us their plans to take us to whole new levels in the coming years.
The numbers at her rallies were awesome.
If she didn’t win, it wasn’t because she didn’t do everything she could have. Too bad not enough listened. Too bad not enough voted. Too bad single-issue voters couldn’t get past their single issue to think about the vulnerable in this country who would suffer terribly under a Trump regime.
Too bad.
Yes.yes, and yes.
I agree that the whole Biden leaving thing was terribly handled—for different reasons than you give, but still terribly handled. Where I strongly disagree with you is about both Kamala AND what would have happened at an open convention. But I’ve written stacks and stacks about all that, so I’ll just leave it at that.
I'm not as hopeless, because I think the constant stream of awful news creates only an illusion of solidity. Reality is solid, lies eventually explode like soap bubbles.
Josh Marshall wrote recently, "The real work of an opposition party is to oppose. It’s not to originate new theories of governance or have 'reckonings.' It’s to oppose. It’s to hold the people in power accountable." He cites the failure of GW Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security as a successful opposition. I'm here (in Oregon) to help with that opposition.
Meanwhile, this morning's Times lists the ways in which Trump's cabinet will not quite be able to implement all of his crazy schemes: "Trump’s Cabinet: Many Ideologies Behind the Veil of ‘America First.’" He couldn't get it all done the first time around and he won't have it easy this time either. We still have the Affordable Care Act, and I'm still waiting for Mexico to Pay For The Wall, among various instances of his unsuccess.
So hang in there Susan, don't let the bastards grind you down. I wish for you again to revel in acts of creation, of communication, your splendid facility, like a birthday wish over the cake candles.
I am reminded of something we all work at: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."
Thanks, Larry! You’re an optimistic sort, like my husband. And I appreciate your encouragement—especially in the paragraph that begins “Hang in there,” it’s lovely. I have to argue with Marx, though (it was Marx, wasn’t it?)—l’ve always thought of “interpreting the world” as part of rather than an alternative to “changing” it. If I didn’t, I’d have to stop doing what I do. And if Marx truly believed it, he’d never have written a word either….
Hugs!!!
Agreed, “interpreting the world” as part of rather than only an alternative to “changing” it. And I think of you as a philosopher who has worked to change the world. Incidentally, the extent and quality of your replies to your commenters has me thinking that it would be fun to take your classes! Those replies bear a family resemblance to your notes on student papers, no?
Susan, excellent article. Trump is punishment enough, but don't punish yourself. Take care of yourself.
I’m trying!!
I have lots of platitudes today but not so much clarity. We all react to trauma in different ways. It takes time to process disappointment and grief. Life and hope go hand in hand. Everyday is a time to give thanks. Blah, blah, blah. I only know this. "Fuck Trump, the people who work for him, and the voters who enabled him." I will oppose him until my last second on earth. My parents and grandparents had their Holocaust and now we have ours!
I know there are people who would be furious at you for comparing this to the Holocaust. But I don’t think you’re really making that comparison. I think you’re saying “Fuck you!” In the strongest way you can think of, right?
It troubles me to think that somehow I have let you down Susan. I respect and admire you. In all honesty I meant what I wrote as a direct comparison between Hindenburg choosing Hitler to replace Kurt von Schleicher as Weimar Chancellor and voters putting Trump back in the White House. We're not at the Night of the Long Knives yet. But it's getting closer every day.
Ah, that’s clarifying! Very much so. I’m glad I raised the issue so you could elaborate on what you meant. And you didn’t let me down. I was actually trying to help you clarify, as I was recently trashed on Substack for daring to make a connection between Nazi ideology about women and MAGA ideology about women. She blasted into me, and I didn’t want the same to happen to you.
I'm so relieved. Actually I have been criticized by comparing Trump to Hitler. My critic said making that comparison denigrated Holocaust victims and survivors. I wrote an analytical essay looking into that issue. The similarities between the two are stark. I don't understand how someone could claim that comparing Trump to Hitler denigrated victims and survivors of the Shoah. My departed uncle of blessed memory was a survivor. He told me about his time at Auschwitz. I would never do anything to besmirch his memory.
Hey Susan people probably hated Henry the 8th just as much, but you wrote a great book about him. Or rather Anne Boleyn. Future writers will have the same fun : )
Maybe future writers, maybe me, haha!!
And thanks for the words about my Boleyn book!