Stay angry. It's good for your mental health.

The last week has been bad. ICE murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Donald Trump raided Venezuela on shifting pretexts and apparently has no coherent plan for the aftermath. Oh yeah, and he's threatening more mischief in Greenland.

We're ruled by a dangerous sociopath. Of course that's depressing and disorienting. It's a lot worse than simply being ruled by bad politicians who start stupid wars and funnel the product of our land and labor to rich people.

Garrett Graff offers a cogent description of what it does to us: 

... unfortunately some communities and populations have long had reasons to fear government in various forms or question the “protection” of the police, but never have Americans collectively experienced anything like the accumulation of mental weight we have in this last year.

All that weight is piled upon all that we also accumulated in 2020, from Covid to George Floyd to January 6th — the last, also disastrous year of another Trump presidency — and all that other mental weight we’ve accumulated that comes from the rising fear and collective understanding that because of GOP policies, far-right culture and media, and a nation that has lost its collective mind, you cannot count on being safe in the places where we should feel safest — synagogues, churches, schools, universities, offices, and more — and that when you kiss your children and send them to school, you can’t guarantee that they will come home at the end of the day.

That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like yesterday, is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism....

But, dammit, let's remember who we are. We're the descendants and successors of a gritty, fractious bunch of migrants who defied a king, overthrew an enslaving oligarchy, fought 19th and 20th century capitalists, fought Nazis, and inspired colonized people all over the world to dump their overlords. (Even to dump us, sometimes.) The Trumpian crew are greedy second-raters who want to steal for themselves what a great people built together.

Resistance to tyranny is what people in this country have done, over and over. And don't forget it.

These women and the flag waver at the top of the post came out today even though the main local demonstration of disgust, defiance and determination happened on Thursday here. The population is small in January; the Indivisible lead volunteer organizer had already put on one good sized rally in Vineyard Haven this week. 

But she exhorted any who wished to get in sync with so many taking a stand this Saturday across the country: "Old School - Just Show Up!"

Some folks did.