How far in the future do we need to be to look back

I wasn’t going to write about protesting anymore but…

Then someone told me that my diary of sorts, my record of protesting in late winter and spring meant something to them. I don’t know whether to believe it or not. But it reminded me that writing my thoughts about the experience of standing in the road, holding a sign, waving at care – that meant something to me, trying to watch the changes week by week, month by month.

Change is a funny thing. How does one describe change, or even notice something has moved, shifted. It seems that some people never change. Others do in slow increments but they appear to not want to acknowledge any changes, and resist all mention of them. Others change regularly, but perhaps somewhere within that mobility is something that remains the same. A north star. 

Maybe everyone has a north star. Or maybe the people that don’t are the ones who are truly lost. 

How to measure what someone believes. How to tell if someone is honest. Like change, maybe the movement against a background is all that can be described. A shift from a point.

Like in 1984 they who control the narrative in the world want us to ignore the signs of our feelings, until it’s some self-help book they can make money off of, or a movement they can exploit for money, for power. 

What was that line…the root of all evil?

October 18 was the No Kings protest. Just looking at the map with its digital dots indicating where protests had been registered – that was inspiring. And there were other protests that weren’t registered. Not everything gets sucked into the big internet digital mass for better or worse. I know of at least one protest that wasn’t listed. 

I went to two different protests – unpaid – and it was heartening to see more of a mix of people – teenagers, college students, families, older people, in groups, alone, with dogs. A cross section of the community. People who eat hamburgers and knit, walk their dogs and buy them fake pigs in blanket treats. People who know each other from shared health issues or fitness classes. 

Nothing strange or unusual about any of these people. Certainly nothing like the hated horde of communists, criminals or antifa (shouldn’t that be antifi, in the Latin) – or any other label that the evil people in power use to describe protestors. A young woman was giving out stickers to people who wanted one – they said – I love America. This was the extent of the free perks we received, other than steps and fresh air, and the bracing refreshment of being around people in person, not viewed on a screen. 

The French say – or at least one thing I read said, but I imagine it’s not an unusual sentiment, that the trouble with Americans is that we schedule our protests. 

We also tend to believe what we see or hear on TV. 

Imagine if both those changed.

There need to be more young people involved, and that must be why the people in power are worried about gaining a grip on young fascists. The VP saying that men in their mid 20s or 30s are boys. What a thought. What a confession.

But the normality of the people made the few counter protesters and their anger even more striking in contrast. Revving engines, playing loud country music, shouting at the group of families and dog owners and older men and women. They didn’t see them as people. They were a group labeled for them, a target to express and expel all their hatred and frustration at. Better than at the hedge fund billionaires who made a world where you work all your life and now you don’t get time, or health care, or a house – blame those heathens. 

Later in the day I saw a jeep going by – t flag at the back, sign on either side that said, “Thank God for T”, again playing country music. 

I thought, if there is a god, or something, perhaps they decided they need to make the current situation so obvious – the poisoning of our lands, the takeover of education, the chemicals in our food – the billionaires willing to spend money on bailouts that mean they get their investments back while the rest of us – farmers who had their soybean crops and livelihood destroyed by tariffs, people with 401ks watching them bounce up and down while crony capitalists and insiders make money from knowing every pronouncement before it comes out – so obvious that we do something. But most people don’t really want to know about these things, much less discuss them with friends, after work, on a Saturday. Certainly not at work. Fear has silenced us.

The attorney general of Maine spoke at one event and said sensible things about what is going on in terms of laws around financial dealings and judicial decisions, but people started to drift away. Thinking on a Saturday. Not a song, or a cheer. The too long did not finish attitude that has been propagandized into us. Because our time is too precious, they say. Precious – from 8-5 for the people we work for. Precious in the evening to watch the shows they build for us. Precious to make money and try to teach children that there is a future when we don’t really know what that future will be.

Where will it end. At this point all bets are off, I think. Propaganda grows ever more insidious, and like class in America, no one wants to admit it exists or that they have been affected by it.

This is why the best part of all these protests is getting out to see people in person. There is no AI sentence finisher in the real world that gives you a few stock phases to stick on to the end of an email.

The truth is not digital – it is human and animal and plant and ocean and air. 

They’d like us to forget that, or keep parts of the outdoors only for those who have made money and can now buy up waterfront and acreage and houses and insure themselves against what they think is coming, to ringfence what they made money from, what they want to maintain.

The people shouting that T is saving America from immigrants and heathens are often the people who bought into all the lies, all the pesticides, all the fast foods, all the images of masculinity being acquired with a pickup truck and a cheerleader.

No one wants to admit they have been lied to. Or that their friends have changed. Or that the promise of the internet now means that they steal your creativity. 

Where are the people from 20-35 at these rallies? That’s the age where you want so much to believe in what you’ve been sold. It’s your last time, or so it seems, to get a piece of whatever is on offer. 

If you’d even seen the circle that those with wealth surround themselves with, you might be skeptical that any amount of adulting could replace the phone call between CEOs that procures a job for one of their children.        

But no matter. Fight in whatever way you can – but the digital world, even this – pathetic outpouring, that at least one friend will tell me is too long or maudlin or disjointed – they want us all to be the same. In a world of incredible diversity, snowflake is an insult. Think on that for a moment – snow – something shoveled, salted, plowed, thrown – is made up of crystal forms that are each unique. Each snowflake expressing the infinity of nature.  

And they want to sell us a brand that we all can wear to cover up what can’t be explained. They tell us it is so we know where we belong, where we fit in. Unique can’t be mass produced, can’t be sold. They don’t make money off you being you.