“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And a people that can no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Hannah Arendt
Writing keeps me company. It’s the one way my thoughts and I actually work together. Without writing, my undisciplined mind goes on the attack in spite of the daily mediating I do or the wise words I read from those who know better or even the practice of noticing what my mind is doing and saying, “Oh, yeah, that again.”
Philip, too, keeps me company. He’s there when I turn to him and after nearly 14 years I still hear him, I still take dictation from him. This, I think, is no special skill. I think anyone who has lost someone can pick up a pen and a piece of paper and listen for them. Much as I’ve been doing it for all these years – some years less so than others – I do understand how hard it is. I still wonder every time I open my journal if he’ll be there, if I’m kidding myself, is this going to be the time there is…nothing? It never turns out that way. He’s always there and the things he says are often things I’ve never thought. I’d think there a thousand ways anyone reading this could explain it away. It doesn’t matter. I listen, he speaks, that is enough for me.
Back in February, my friend John suggested I go back to writing the book I started about Philip and that I should ask Philip to help me. I’d started a memoir and really can’t say why I put it down. Not writing begets not writing and for a long time I did nothing. But not writing also begets an illness of sorts, one that corrodes my mind, my soul, my psyche and is so potent that I look fine and mostly act fine, but that unseen corrosion is hell bent on driving me toward that final, that terrible, that very last crash.
So I took myself to Greece in June for a writing retreat and then to upstate New York in August for another at a Buddhist Center. I’ve reduced my hours at work and am finally writing every day. I am closer to Philip than ever as he helps me navigate this, closer to Natalie because she is the one I share his death – and my life – with the most.
None of this is what I meant to write about. It’s easier, though, than trying to write about what I see happening in this country because that is so big and so awful and seems to require an intellect far greater than mine with a grasp of history and politics that I do not have. So I sat with Philip before I wrote this and he reminded me there are all kinds of readers for all kinds of writers and my job is to find my heart. It’s nothing more than what I work toward no matter what I’m writing about. What else can I do – it is rotten out there, the stench of this administration is overpowering and putting the covers over my head to keep out the rankness isn’t working. It is exactly what Trump et al are going for. Manufacture crises to divert attention from the real problems, lie, lie and then lie some more, make “the other” the enemy which means anyone who disagrees with Trump, degrade institutions, ignore courts and precedents, surround yourself with sycophants who fawn over you, turn the economically disadvantaged into losers – and illegal losers at that! – who are taking advantage of YOUR hard earned money so let’s take away their health care and their SNAP benefits and that will show them.
And that’s just in our country. If the administration sees no moral imperative to take care of their own, they’re certainly not going to help anyone else. So USAID is withdrawn and people all over the world are suffering, dying. Yet Trump came up with $20 billion to prop up a right wing government in Argentina. Where’s the outrage? He’s spending over $1 billion to outfit an illegal gift of a plane for Air Force One from Qatar. And he’s building a ballroom while the cost of groceries and daily essentials rises.
What is happening? How is this happening? How does any sane person listen to Trump’s unhinged ranting and proudly think, “That is the president of my country, the greatest country in the world!” How can anyone watch a cabinet meeting where everyone at the table, one by one, fawns over Trump, stopping short of kneeling and kissing his ring? It’s like watching a terribly acted play except it isn’t fiction. It is actually happening. There are no adults in the room with Trump. The one child missing is the one who would know enough to cry out, “The emperor has no clothes.”
Maybe once we were the greatest country in the world, maybe one day we will be again. But a country that could elect a Trump has lost its moral authority. Under his rule we are living in an authoritarian state. If an election doesn’t go the way of the ruling power, it is challenged (check). Civil servants have to profess loyalty to dear leader (check). Supposedly independent government officers – prosecutors, inspectors general, federal commissioners – have to do dear leader’s bidding or they are replaced with inexperienced loyalists (check). Private institutions have to do as dear leader says or they are punished (check). Independent journalism is attacked and threatened if it reports what dear leader doesn’t want to hear (check). Even our comedians – COMEDIANS! – are under attack as the thin skin of dear leader is so easily wounded. What kinds of countries take their comedians off the air? And which party are the “snowflakes” now, which party is the party of cancel culture?
I could go on and on, but to what end? There’s plenty of information about what Trump is doing if you want to know, and if you don’t, nothing I say matters. But this is what does matter. Words matter. Trump has made a mockery of this and his administration follows suit. He is cruel. This matters. He is heartless and soulless. He thrives on divisiveness and has not a clue nor a care about how to bring the country together. He is not a serious man except in his will to destroy and his rigid hold on power. Our national landscape is littered with the corpses of justice, equality and freedom. Decency – there is no decency. And if these concepts don’t matter to you, perhaps the cost of groceries or the loss of healthcare or the freedoms of the wealthy that are denied to the rest of us, do. Something of his gross unfitness to be president must matter to you. It simply must.
I’ve never felt particularly compelled to “do” anything politically. I vote, of course. But this is different, this is urgent. I can’t say I know exactly what to do, but I made a start by writing this post. I’ve joined a political group called Third Act for people over sixty who want to make the world a better place. I read and listen to Heather Cox Richardson – she is a brilliant historian and a voice of sanity and reason. And the one thing I know not to do is to give in to exhaustion and like so many, I am plenty tired. That’s part of Trump’s playbook. We are whacked daily, we are whacked multiple times daily, with his degradations. This not only creates exhaustion, it creates a storm of chaos that blinds us to what this is administration is doing to us, to our institutions, to our way of life. And I’d like to end with some grand conclusion, or at least a witty last sentence. I haven’t any. I would just ask that we pay attention, that we all wake the fuck up.
© 2025 Denise Smyth
Forever 21 