14 Comments

It feels like what I thought America was died last night and I don't know how we're going to tell the children.

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Anand, I feel as is my family got taken away from me. I feel afraid and lonely. I hope... hard to say... but I hope you know how much I appreciate your work. Please stay safe and continue shining your light. We will need it

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Thank you for the Rebecca Solnit quote and reference. I need all the help I can get this morning.

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Hate wins, this is who we are as a nation. And this is our high point, where a capable candidate and an energized core (which has been proven to be a minority ) tried mightily to set a path toward decency. America wants nothing of the sort. It certainly goes downhill from here. Hope in this country is certainly a worthless construct. Imagine the worst and watch unfolding events surpass your imagination.

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Tom, excuse my writing like a logician, but you've overgeneralized, a logical fallacy. You know the majority rules. So please don't condemn the whole country. Downhill may be certain for many, but not for all of us. You're entitled to imagine the worst and cite every example of decadence as proof of your thesis. But many will say, we'll try and hope for others to join us in improving the experiment in democracy. Determination and persistence can lead to progress, even to legislation that protects the weak. The man Spike Lee called "Agent Orange" is as vulnerable as any human, and so are the MAGAns. A much quoted set of sayings, attributed to several authors, can offer encouragement. It starts with:

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

My mantra is "Nevertheless."

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Sadly it would have been a miracle for America to choose a female person of color over a convicted criminal and rapist. We didn't see that miracle but we did experience an amazing coalition of people who stood with the poor and oppressed, who recognized the core biblical value that all people are created in God's image. I know we will continue to work for our values and look forward to The.Ink as a clearing house for wise steps forward.

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I am not sure hope is a useful emotion right now as the situation seems quite hopeless. This isn't like 2016 when it was easy enough to believe that we would live through a single, unpleasant four-year term and then emerge on the other side, ready to resume being America again. Then, we could maybe find a way to excuse the misjudgments of our fellow Americans and believe that after four years of chaos and mismanagement, a sufficient number of them would come to their senses. Now in retrospect, the 2016 election doesn't look like an aberration, but like a leading indicator of who we had become as a nation. In 2016 I took some small amount of comfort thinking that maybe we needed to hit bottom before we could recover and that Trump would bring us there quickly. Now I know that we can't even see the bottom yet, and that the forces that are taking us there are much broader and more powerful than I could then imagine.

What makes me hopeless is that even on my most optimistic days I cannot envision the scenario in which America returns to being the nation I grew up thinking it was, let alone a better version of itself. The reasons for our current situation are complex and deeply rooted. We are a nation ruled by greed and money. Too many people have figured out that there are great riches to be made by controlling the information ecosystem and stoking the resentments of large segments of the American population. The playbook is not new, but the methods for implementing the playbook now are far more effective and powerful than they were in the pre-internet age. Meanwhile, our citizens become dumber and less curious by the day. One of the beauties of the right wing misinformation is that it relieves its consumers of any responsibility for themselves, and provides a constant stream of enemies on whom to focus their rage. All the rugged individualists and pseudo-libertarians who support the Republican Party seem content to blame others for all of their problems. As the writer Adam Serwer has said, for many right leaning Americans, the cruelty is the point.

At the same time, the problems we face as a society and a world are more complicated than ever. Climate change, global conflicts, AI, etc. We cannot even begin to think about addressing these issues without a functioning government in which elected representatives cooperate and compromise and view it as their responsibility to accept difficult facts and explain hard choices to their constituents. Instead, on the right wing especially, these people see themselves as media personalities with brands that permit them to monetize their public service. Only a disaster will upset this dynamic in any kind of meaningful way. At some point, despite the best efforts of a driver, a car will stop careening out of control only when it hits a tree or plunges over a cliff.

No, my focus now is not on naive hope. To me, that is about as comforting as being told to put my faith in god. Better to focus on my own life and what I have the ability to control and make better. People are going to do what they do, and today more than any day in my life, I don't have faith in human nature, and I certainly don't see any cause to believe that the downward slide of the past 25-30 years is about to end. And, to be clear, by this I am referring largely to the evolution of the Republican Party from a mostly responsible, conservative organization to a dishonest, insurgent, nihilistic vehicle for the destruction of America. There are many social, political, and technological factors that have led us here, but none is more significant than the transformation of the Republican Party.

Maybe I can come around to hope some day when I see cause for it. At the moment, I don't. Many hundreds of millions of humans have lived their lives in despotic, repressive societies with little hope that the future would be much better than the present, and they have found ways to live decent lives notwithstanding. Our task now is to focus on our lives, our friends and our families. That focus can certainly include efforts to change the current course of the nation, but we should be realistic about what we can achieve. Let's be clear-eyed and unswayed by false hope, and by all means, if the rules of the game have changed, let's adapt to those rules.

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Thank you for Rebecca's piece. One step in front the other.

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Excellent advice. I realize a lot of my friends and family are still spinning and are not able to begin to cope with this unwanted future that's been thrust upon us. I find comfort in the fact smoke and mirrors will have a short shelf life when the reality sets in his concepts are recipes for disaster.

Sharing this widely, thanks again for being there Anand.

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Your words and the Solnit piece helped immeasurably this morning. It reminded me of the words Myles Horton/Paolo Freire quoted in their work, "We make the road by walking." And as I sat on my personal pitty-pot of thinking of my own losses this past month, you thoughtfulness caused me to consider the words of James Baldwin in "James Baldwin Speaks: Social Change and the Writer's Responsibility." Thanks for that gift, Anand! The work goes on...

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Thank you so much for these words of solace and uplift. I am sending the link to many despairing friends right now, with a message that supporting brilliant minds and efforts such as yours is one tangible thing we can all "do" in this moment.

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Thank you Anand… We know the drill. Strength through resistance. Our generational wisdom and practice. Defiance is the word of the day... I defy anyone who wants to dampen my resolve to be hopeful. Stay strong Anand, your newsletters will continue to serve as wisdom and comfort. Stay well.

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Today, we in the rest of the world are in shock.

'Where is the condolences book?' Where do I write, 'I am so sorry for your loss?'

But then I remembered the educated, kindness and decency of 'The.Ink Community' inspired and led by Anand Giridharadas.

He stands in solid empathy, pulls us together and included clear-eyed Rebecca Solnit.

This Canadian stands with you and will further enlarge the circle with my friends who are grieving, and also need to be embraced.

Thank you

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Thank you for all that you do, Anand. This is such a precious resource, we are lucky to have you 🙏💔🇺🇸

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