In the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling as silenced as if a gag order had been issued on all commentary on the Trump administration’s reckless and dangerous actions in the past month. I’ve begun posts in my mind on “Fascism 101” and “The Myth of Meritocracy” and “Trump: The New Caligula” but have not been able to put pen to paper. As much as I’ve tried to buffer myself from the trauma of the news cycle, I’ve also felt a certain obligation to remain aware of the various attacks being made on federal agencies and international diplomacy. As much as I’ve wanted to remain insulated, I’ve not wanted to become insular. Yet each new horror has left me increasingly speechless. There are no words. And yet it is precisely voices of opposition that are most needed right now.
So many who fear for their jobs and for their very lives are afraid to speak out right now. I’m thinking particularly of the federal workers who have had to follow silently along in order not to lose their positions, of the teachers and professors in the 23 states who have to abide by their state censorship of certain curricula -- mostly regarding what they are permitted to teach about race and gender in their educational institutions, of the physicians who would risk incarceration if they were to provide the needed procedures for pregnant women in their care.[i]
But I have no such threats on my livelihood and position keeping me silent. The advantage of being retired is that I can speak without fear of retribution by my employer. Nor, as Lorde suggested, has the fear of visibility or “the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death”[ii] kept me from writing. So why my puzzling silence?
In part, I haven’t been able to form my thoughts coherently enough to write. Perhaps that is part of the intent of the overwhelm – to render us speechless. I know enough about trauma to know that one of its effects is to shut down the speech centers in our brain. I have not wanted to succumb to the overwhelm, but it has happened nonetheless. I feel this vague shroud muffling every attempt to be articulate. The combination of not wanting to add to the doom and gloom, the sheer volume of actions begging for response, and a certain paralysis that invades my being on the worst days have all contributed. I’m sure, as well, that I’m suffering from the loss a few months ago of my dear friend who was my most steadfast reader and respondent and whose questions, comments, and insights provoked, inspired, and urged me on.
My silence has not been total. I have spoken out to my friends and family, and to my Congressperson and Senators, but I’m either preaching to the choir or, in the case of my Republican Congressperson, speaking to a brick wall.
In the past three years, when immunosuppression has left me fairly isolated, writing this blog has been such an important avenue of connection and community, , and we certainly need community now more than ever. It has been a valued outlet to me for sharing those things that I’ve learned or observed or witnessed that beg to be shared, and for what George Orwell has called “aesthetic enthusiasm” – “perception of beauty in the external world, or on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another . . . .“ [iii] Orwell, who lived in a time of one tyranny after another, [iv]wrote of how he’d had no desire to be solely a “pamphleteer” – writing primarily with political purposes, but found himself thrust into that role given the politics of the time. Nor had I wanted to focus entirely on political themes in this blog, though that was certainly part of my motivation. I’ve loved writing about snow, woodland flowers, waterfalls, and murmurations of birds. So much that is beautiful in the world, in human interaction, in wise and carefully crafted words, in the profound and mundane moments of life, want to claim my attention, yet the perpetual pounding of the political prevents their rising to the surface, and the absurdities of the administration obliterate my ability to give them witness. So instead, I’ve not written at all. Yet, increasingly I’m feeling what Audre Lorde’s daughter told her mother – “’ . . . you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out. . . .”[v]
That’s it. I’m not feeling like a whole person in this numbing silence. Perhaps some of you have felt the same. The truth of the matter is that many of the writings that I have valued most in my life -- whose truths that have shaped my deepest understandings of the political, of justice, of truth, of our capacities both for capitulation and for resistance -- have been by those who continued to write during similar circumstances to those we are facing now– George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus among others. While I don’t pretend to rival their brilliance, I do, like them, feel the imperative of remaining a voice in this political landscape.
As Lorde wrote, “For those of us who write . . . for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.”[vi]
So this is my first attempt to chip away at what feels like a dome of ice over my being, in hopes that it will begin to let the water of words flow. In this turbulent time, may my writing do justice to the insight of Ta-Nehisi Coates, “. . .that it should do the work of illuminating, of confronting and undoing, the violence . . .around me, [and ] that beauty must be joined to politics, . . .”[vii] Reminders of the beauty around us may be the key to surviving these times intact. As Camus wrote, “Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to acclaim the nature of [humankind] and the beauty of the world? Our answer is yes. . . In upholding beauty, we prepare the way for the day of regeneration when civilization will give first place . . .to this living virtue on which is founded the common dignity of [humankind] and the world [we] live in. . . .” [viii]
Sources
America’s Censored Classrooms 2024 - PEN America
Camus, Albert. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Message. New York: BCP Literary, Penguin Random House, 2024.
Lorde, Audre. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984. 40-44.
Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” In Why I Write. First published 1946. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. 1-10.
[i] While I’ve tried mustering compassion for the hundreds of Republican Senators and Congresspeople who have remained silent out of fear for their positions, power, prestige, and perhaps their lives, I must admit I have primarily contempt, for it is their job and sworn oath to defend the Constitution. If they did not have the courage to do so, they never should have run for office. My own silent and compliant Republican Congressperson has told me in a form letter that he actually applauds the actions of Trump. Not only has he remained silent, he has added fuel to the firestorm that is raging in Washington, DC.
[ii] Lorde, 43.
[iii] Orwell, 5.
[iv] Orwell’s first encounter with tyranny was as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then the Spanish Civil War, then the regimes of Hitler and Stalin.
[v] Lorde, 42.
[vi] Lorde, 43.
[vii] Coates, 15.
{viii] Camus, 276-277. Certain words altered to be more inclusive.