Chomping at the Bit

The time to hesitate is through.

I admit to a certain amount of denial and avoidance with regards to the presidential election. No small amount of numbness and escapism. I allowed myself this between November 7 and now. I built little routines to keep myself sane. I looked inward and to my immediate community in order to feel safe in the face of this administration. This was important, don’t get me wrong.

But now he’s here. He’s in the White House and he’s vomiting up executive orders and doing such an astonishing impersonation of Hitler that my breath catches in my chest.

In the immortal words of The Doors: “The time to hesitate is through.”

I’m seeing a lot of people groggily waking up from the same stupor I’ve been in. We are seeing sociologists and psychologists reminding us that this overwhelm we’re feeling is exactly the goal. If he does dozens and dozens of things, no one knows where to target their outrage, so it gets spread very thin, so he encounters very little resistance that holds any impact. Great, noted.

But now what?

I wanted to march on January 18. I saw that the Women’s March had morphed into the People’s March, and I was game to don my pussy hat and my hell boots just like I did in 2017. Make signs, yell chants. Feel the pressing weight of ten thousand bodies moving down a street together toward a common cause. But there wasn’t a People’s March on my island. The most populous island in Hawaii, the one with one MILLION people living on it, wasn’t hosting a People’s March.

This scared me, immediately. It seemed like evidence of apathy. I marched with 10,000 people to the Honolulu capital building in the summer of 2020 to protest the senseless killings of black people by police across our country. Where were those 10,000 people now? Why aren’t we marching?

We didn’t vote for this guy in Hawaii. We have our abortion rights protected, a thriving queer community, and white people only make up 21% of the population. Multiracial families are eight times more prevalent than the national average here. The Hawaiian culture recognizes a third gender. The Hawaiian nation’s last monarch was a woman. The environment is a critical issue for us, because we have more endangered and endemic wildlife than any other state. Our remoteness means our ecosystem evolved without any land-dwelling predators, and our oceanic nature means that the people here have always relied on clean oceans for their survival. Food sovereignty is a major concern here. It is rapidly becoming the case that people who are born here cannot afford to live here.

So why aren’t we horrified to the point of SCREAMING by this administration of hapless rich white dudes, who are clearly only here to look out for themselves, led by the most hapless of all rich white dudes, who is only here to keep himself out of prison?

I think we are scared, but not outraged. We are paralyzed. In shock, maybe. But it’s time to snap the fuck out of it, people. It’s time.

I’ve been searching, somewhat casually but in ever more of a panic, for things to do to change what is occurring right now in our government and across our country. When I search on social media and online for activist groups near me, protests, marches, etc., I’m not coming up with any obvious groups to join. If you are in Hawaii and politically active for progressive causes, please comment here and tell me about your work and how I can help.

Meanwhile, while searching for my local chapter of the ACLU, I found their Take Action page, which did let me, in a matter of moments, sign petitions and send out messages to my representatives about abortion, book bans, deportations, birthright citizenship, trans freedom, voting rights, and more. It felt good. It felt like something.

I’ve been sharing information in a frenzy. In January, it felt good to share resources for the fire victims in California who needed shelters, animal shelters, horse shelters, supplies. Now I’m sharing ways to help if you witness an ICE raid, ways to help if you need an abortion, ways to help, ways to help, ways to help.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Well, Bane, it sounds like maybe YOU should organize a community group,” then please know I have thought of that, and it might just be what’s next for me. I’m not sure community organization is in my wheelhouse, and I’d much prefer to lend my existing skills to an existing organization or two. So we’ll see.

I come here, to Substack, to write about big feelings.

The big feelings I’m having now start with fear. Everything I’ve ever read about the Holocaust and every scene from The Handmaid’s Tale live rent-free in my mind now. Visions of torture. Of women under the control of men. “Go back to where you came from.” “God Hates F*gs.” “Your body, my choice.”

There’s also a rage that is getting less and less quiet. I’m angry that we elected this man and that he is being allowed, by the Senate, to appoint his cronies to positions of power despite their total lack of qualification (again). The temptation is strong to be angry at the people who voted for him, and yes, some of them are truly assholes, but some of them are also good people. Some of them have to be, otherwise our country is majority hateful, and I refuse to believe that. I’m angry at the people who know better, and still put this man in power. There are plenty of those.

I’m feeling disgust and nausea, that it’s the beginning of Black History Month and our president is rolling back DEI practices and firing leaders who uphold them. My stomach turned when I heard that the president declared that there are only two genders; my heart broke for so many nonbinary people and trans people who were finally, FINALLY living their best life. There is no good reason to deny people the expression of their true identity, which can certainly change with time. There is every reason to support them in that journey.

I’m feeling shame, because I’m finding myself praying for him to be taken out. For him to be assassinated. And that is a horrible thing to feel about another human being. It hurts me to feel that. But when I think of the Holocaust, I always wonder how history would have unfolded, how much suffering would have been avoided, if that one man had been taken out of the picture, ten or five or even one year sooner.

Finally, though, I’m feeling a new big feeling. I’m feeling a ravenous hunger. I’m starving for justice and I’m craving action. I’m already voting, boycotting, donating, writing, signing, etc., but I am nowhere near satiation. I haven’t yet put my finger on the particular actions that will satisfy me, but I will not rest until we see this man removed. He is a poison that has infected more than half of our country, and I will see this country healed.

If this turns into the Holocaust, I will be hiding people in my house. If this turns into the Handmaid’s Tale, I might be the one fleeing. But what I will not be doing, goddammit, is watching it all unfold in a shocked stupor.