At the End
“What,” I have often asked myself, “must it have been to live through the rise of Nazi Germany? What did people do?”
Until recent years, I didn’t think I’d have first-hand knowledge of what it was like to experience the rise of fascism. The thing that surprises me the most is how mundane it is.
I wake up. I make coffee. I knit, I read, I talk with friends. I go to the doctor, eat, clean. Hell, I’ve managed to both buy a car and sell a house over the last few months.
I read the news of the day and wonder how people can be so hateful and cruel. I wonder how the people who have the most money can take mercilessly from those who have the least. I wonder how AI tech bros can be so committed to advancing technology that does such environmental and societal harm. I wonder how one person can snatch another off the street and be paid, by the government, to do so. I wonder how those who have told me my whole life to read the Constitution and take it to heart can cheer while it is rendered more and more meaningless day by day by day.
I try to find the logic, to make it make sense. I fail.
I call my representatives (while recognizing that it does little). I donate money to people who need it (and to those who are doing the work I cannot). I contemplate what more I could be doing.
I feel hopeless.
I wake up. I make coffee. I knit, I read, I talk with friends.
And I wish for a better world.