"2023 was one of the worst years of my life. I had anticipatory grief for my father, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer that spring (this is mentioned briefly in the book, so I can mention it here, I suppose). I had anticipatory grief for my homeland, because officials do not let a seditionist run, unpunished, for president, unless the plan is reinstallation."
— "Someday, This Will Only Be a Memory" On my new book, and cold and warm comforts. Sarah Kendzior, Apr 1, 2025
Trump always plans to win before the die is cast. He plans to win arguments before going to court.
"I can sum up the Trump/Musk/Vance theory of power in five words: "We have power; you don't." Alternative version in six words: "we can do anything we want." They seem to believe that nothing is really connected to anything else and nothing should be. This is why they're hacking away at the US government and international alliances and good relationships with everything and everyone from the European Union to Canada and Mexico to a whole lot of the American people. They think they can go it alone.
* * *
These isolationists confuse coercion with power and cooperation with weakness, when in truth it is more or less the other way around. Coercion and violence are what you resort to when you have failed at convincing and allying and negotiating. Meanwhile our power lies in cooperation and connection, those of us who are still striving toward a more perfect union. We now must do it by opposing and obstructing the attempt to shatter and corrupt that union. We have power, and our power arises when we connect, when we join organizations like Indivisible (whose very name proclaims this truth), when we come together as civil society, when we act together to protect the vulnerable, to defend what we love."
— Rebecca Solnit, "No One Knows How This Will End (But I Do Not Think It Will End Well for Them)," Meditations in an Emergency, 16 Feb 2025
Solnit recommends these books:
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