What is there to say about the past eight days that hasn’t already been said elsewhere and better? Nothing, except to say that I’m honestly terrified — by what has already happened to my country, and what the immediate future undoubtedly holds.

Every day I’ve been taking some sort of action in opposition. I marched in the women’s march (and, yes, there were 750,000 of us crammed into downtown Los Angeles in a remarkably friendly, peaceful, thoughtful, considerate protest). I’ve been doing emails and phone calls (and we’ll see if they have any impact). I agreed to help out with the endorsement meeting for Congressman Xavier Becerra’s replacement next Sunday. (Becerra is our new state attorney general, so there’s an opening.) I signed up to help swing a district near me from red to blue.

And, importantly, every day I’m looking for some comfort that, maybe, the reign of terror won’t be permanent. Here are some that I’ve found:

• On Thursday, I went to a local Democratic club meeting. Normally, it’s hard to get eight people out for this thing. Thirty-eight people showed up — the vast majority of them new to political engagement, and eager to take on Trump.
• I have many Republican friends — conservative, patriotic, Republican friends who consider Trump a radical and not a conservative, and also a traitor. Some of my well-connected Republican friends have reassured me that we haven’t lost the Republic (yet?) and that we’ll bounce back from this. This piece in The Atlantic, from an actual conservative Republican, supports this line of thought.
• The ACLU won some victories against the immigration ban.
• Three million people showed up to march against Trump last Saturday. That’s a lot of people. Assuming that we have elections in two years, that could make quite a difference.
• Finally, even Dick Cheney says Trump’s immigration ban is un-American: “Well, I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from.”

I have no idea what’s going to happen with all this, and neither does anyone else. Except I’m sure it’s going to get worse. In the meantime, we need to do our best to enjoy the day, be grateful for what we’ve got, and fight for what we believe in.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2017 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Politics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.