I'm Back(ish)

A little sumpin'-sumpin' on ambivalence and Substacking one day at a time.

Hello again, friends! It is I, fresh from the chrysalis! The June cocoon was good. But I don’t feel entirely back yet and I’m not entirely convinced I want to be. Honestly, it was a little hard to leave the underworld, which felt sane and serene and unexpectedly cozy. So, I’m in a bit of a straddle stance. One foot in the underworld, the other in the daze of days above-ground.

In addition to one of my legs, I left a few other things down in the Great Below. And Substack was nearly one of them. You see, after 30+ Substack-free days, something remarkable happened. All my senses came alive (quite a surprise, since I’d not really noticed they were offline). Then, something even more extraordinary kicked in. Something I hadn’t felt in a good, long while:

FREEDOM.

It may seem ironic that it was in the darkness of the underworld that I found, softly illumined, my longing for a more analog, tactile way of life. But that’s what happened. And really, that’s so often how it seems to work. Best efforts at staying grounded, present, and clear-eyed notwithstanding, the sensory glare of modern life dazzles, distracts, and (alas) deludes. Next thing you know, you’re doing a trance-dance.

The dark womb brought other things into focus, too. Like the way in which Substack somehow sneakily mutated from a pokey little platform for and of writers into a social media monster lurking in a den of AI-niquity. The sort of monster that silently claws its way into the unassuming substack citizen, then turns on a spigot of inner drugs. From just such a spigot streams a steady supply of a corrosive little cocktail. It blends just the right amount of feel-good + feel-bad to make it damn near impossible to pull and stay away. I could see it, alright. Substack was both filling way too much of my time, and leaving me empty. It was leaving me hangry.

Despite that revelation, here I am. Back(ish) at it and jabbering away at you. The choice to step once again upon the slippery Substack slope is not without trepidation, friends. But I’ve been here for a minute now (almost 3 years) and formed relationships with real, wonderful humans. And truth be told, sharing my thoughts here has, on the whole, helped meet some important need to be seen and known. It really has supported my quest to find that sweet spot between belonging and authenticity.

So, I’ve asked myself, how can I stay here safely? The answer, I believe, is that I must wear Substack more like a loose-fitting garment and less like a strait-jacket. And so it is that I hereby declare my aspiration (which is not to be confused with a commitment) to become one of those free-spirited Substack virtuosos who posts only when true inspiration strikes. And who surfs with grace the waves of genre and voice. In other words, things from here on out could get curious. They could get weird.

Ooh, I hope they do, don’t you?

Ah, but there is one full-throated and iron-clad commitment I can make, and make it I shall: everything you read here will always and forever come directly from my very human brain. Never AI, dammit.

And that’s what I’ve got for you today, friends. Oh, but wait. I’ve also got a little throwback from the not-too-wayback machine. It’s an adaptation of the post I did last year for Inthedeepend-ence day. What a happy thing it is that I can forget my own words then find them to have remained aligned enough to recycle. It’s the little things.

Independence Day, Orwell-style

Well, friends. Here we are again at the 4th of July. Indefatigable Earth just keeps circling the sun, despite our best efforts to kill it off. Generally I take this to be a very good thing, indeed. But when I look around, I notice that that we keep plundering and pillaging the Earth willy-nilly. And that strikes me as a really not-good thing. But that’s a different story for a different day.

Last year at this time, I was feeling a little disillusioned about the state of the nation on its birthday, so I wrote a little rant about it. Welp, that was then. And halfway+ through 2025, I can say with equal parts confidence and chagrin that we’ve rocketed right past disillusionment and seem to be hurtling straight into dystopic despair.

Yesterday afternoon, I was outside on a bench in my neighborhood park, pondering the whole mess of it. And it occurred to me that with just four little words, strung together like two pairs of handcuffs, the far right successfully incanted a terrible spell. These four little words, with their cumulative eight syllables, speak tomes about the tone-deaf times we’re in.

1. Make 2. America 3. Great 4. Again.

Now, in order to embrace this slogan as a rallying cry, one must first believe that America was once great. And in order to believe that, we would need to deny the following historical facts:

1. White colonial settlers committed violent genocidal acts against Indigenous people to procure the land now known as America.

2. Said colonizers, having procured said land, then kidnapped and enslaved primarily Black and brown people to build America to their specifications, for their benefit.

3. Two of the primary legacy burdens of the foregoing facts are: A) ongoing, unrelenting systemic oppression; and B) the generational effects of the aforementioned fuckery— albeit in different ways — on all bodies in America.

“Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.” [Quote by Slavoj Žižek] Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Whoa, whoa, whoa, some of you might be thinking. MAGA isn’t my thing! What’s the harm in fireworks and hot dogs? I feel you, friends. I’ve eaten my fair share of hot dogs and oohed and aahed at my fair share of fireworks.

But regardless of our politics, it’s next to impossible — if we’re even remotely in our right minds — to get past the barbarism required to glorify the ignominious history of this country. And especially to do it with big-ass, in-your-face bravado.

Let’s take umbrage with just one of the more glaring aspects of big-ass bravado we see, hear and smell on this holiday. Setting off faux munitions (and that’s what fireworks are, really) requires us to seriously disconnect from any emotions we might otherwise have about the following: (A) American history and its ongoing toxic legacies; and (B) a whole slew of other realities. Including, but not limited to America’s problem with gun violence¹. And the fact that our tax dollars are financing the unspeakably heinous genocide of the Palestinian people². And that fireworks have devastating effects on pets and wildlife and the entire nature scape³.

Sigh. And if all that isn’t quite enough proverbial rain on the parade, there’s the heartbreak of Congress having passed, on the eve of “Independence Day,” Trump’s poisonous budget bill. This means millions of the most vulnerable people will lose health insurance and other social safety nets. It also means, broadly speaking, the vast majority of us will have reduced resources, while the minority at the top of the earnings heap will have more⁴.

So I ask again…why exactly (or approximately) are we celebrating ?

The face of fascism fatigue.

Friends, I know I’m trampling some pretty sacred territory here for most anyone conditioned as a white person in America. I get that. I really do, because I was conditioned as a white person in America. And the story I got was that everything *was* great. America was the world savior, the paragon of principled democracy, the best of the rest. And at least parts of me believed it.

In fact, it’s only in the past couple decades that I’ve fallen of my stars and stripes cloud. And it’s only in the past couple of years that I’ve remained seated during the national anthem or pledge of allegiance. Before that, it never occurred to me that I had any choice but to follow the herd rather than my own sense of integrity.

When we know better, we do better, which sometimes looks like this.

And of course I didn’t; like everyone else, I was programmed at an early age to stand at attention and sing or recite on cue. Not-very-fun fact: I recently estimated that I was mandated to recite the pledge of allegiance some 2,200+ times between first grade and my senior year of high school.

But now, friends…now, I realize I have choices. And by golly, I’m exercising my right to stay off the band wagon while I can. Because who knows just how dystopic the future may become. Sitting on that park bench, I penned a little alt “pledge” I could fall back on, should a fascist future demand it. I like to think of it as a little call and response between me and Uncle Sam:

I pledge allegiance [I seethe with grief when] to the flag [I see the flag] of the United States [of the Divided States] of America and [of America and] to the republic [suffer empty rhetoric] for which it stands [on stolen lands] one nation under God [an outrage before God] indivisible with liberty [incomprehensible, with a legacy] and justice for all [of trauma for all]

Here’s my bespoke version, in toto:

I seethe with grief when I see the flag of the Divided States of America and suffer empty rhetoric on stolen lands, an outrage before God, incomprehensible, with a legacy of trauma for all.

It’s a work in progress, friends. Subject to change, because…choice! You know what else we have choices over, at least for the time being? How we spend not just our holidays, but all our days. And what values we choose to center in our lives. And how, if at all, we express our patriotism. And whether or not we go numb.

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” [Quote by George Orwell; Photo by Bird Bird on Unsplash]

I happily accept tips to support my work, should you feel so inclined (and thank you kindly):

1. Nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023.

2. The US has spent billions on Israel’s military operations since 10/7/2023.

3. Fireworks have a multitude of negative effects on animals.

4. Center for American Progress.