Get mad and get busy
Whenever I came in, a friend who owned a neighborhood restaurant would drop by the table to hear the latest poop on local and national politics. One summer evening when I was feeling less gloomy than you likely are this morning, I said glumly that I remembered when I had a life.
She stiffened and wagged a finger in my face.
“No! This is your life now,” she scolded.
Damn, that brought me up short. Sometimes we feel that the work we do online and in the field is pointless, endless, and unappreciated locally, statewide, and nationally. Apparently not. Except for it being endless.
Perhaps you got this little propaganda piece from the Social Security Administration in your in-box late Thursday night:
The spouse thought it was a fishing phishing scam. Nope. Another friend texted that she nearly threw up when she read it the next morning.
Our opponents win because they are relentless. Their propaganda is relentless. It’s as galling as it is disheartening. They mean it to be. Don’t give in to despair or else they win.
A friend’s late mother was an English war bride who survived the Blitz. Whenever anyone around her started throwing a pity party, she’d have none of it. She’d threaten to retell stories of hunkering down overnight in the Underground and walking home in the morning through fires and rubble.
So, buck up buckos. Cop an attitude. Fake it until you make it.
This guy doesn’t have to:
Ken Casey, the founder and front man of the Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys, is the physical, attitudinal, and linguistic personification of Boston. Proof of this can be found in the way he pronounces MAGA. To wit: “Magger,” as in, “This Magger guy in the audience was waving his fucking Trump hat in people’s faces, and I could just tell he wanted to enter into discourse with me.” A second proof is that “enter into discourse” is a thing Ben Affleck would say in a movie about South Boston right before punching someone in the face. The third is Casey’s articulation of what I took to be a personal code: “I’m not going to shut up, just out of spite.”
The left needs more of that “eat shit” attitude around MAGAs. It’s why I wore my 2024 Democratic Convention tee shirt to the block party yesterday should anyone care to enter into discourse. (Precious few MAGAs in my neighborhood, TBH.)
[Casey would] rather not have to think about electoral politics this much, he said at Fenway. But he is still shocked that so many people in his life fell for Trumpism. “My father died when I was young, and I was raised by my grandfather, who was basically like, ‘If I ever see you bullying someone, I’ll kick the shit out of you. And if I ever see you back down from a bully, I’ll kick the shit out of you.’”
Casey might not like thinking about electoral politics, but this is his life now. You don’t back down from bullies.
My late FIL was a front-line infantryman in Europe in WWII. He fought Nazis. He shot Nazis. If he were alive today to see what’s become of his country, he might be reaching for a rifle again. Or at least fantasize about it. Nobody with a shred of decency and American spirit likes where we are right now.
So have a listen to the new Dropkick Murphys. Then listen again.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense