When the Heat Breaks

a short little ramble this week

It’s too hot to think, and so I don’t.

I don’t think about the polling that has our candidates down in all of the states we need to win if we want to take back the Senate. If it were easy we would have done it already, in the last election, or the one before that. If it were easy to convince my fellow countrymen that elected Republicans only govern by greed or cowardice, that by picking apart our faith in our country and our faith in each other they’ve successfully also picked our pockets, then I’d be a lot less anxious at the start of my canvassing and phone banking shifts.

For all of Trump’s corruption and bigotry, for all of his obvious hatred for the things that truly make this country great, and his easy disdain for his own voters, every election we’ve had since he made his way down that gaudy gold escalator in 2015 has been way, way too close. This was always going to be hard. We were always going to have to fight, again and again, over and over and over. No use in agonizing about it - we don’t have the time. I don’t think about the polling, it’s too hot. I just get back to work.

I don’t think about the planet, melting around us. Did you know we’re still in an ice age, because there are still ice sheets at the poles? I learned that at Chicago’s Field Museum last week. I don’t want to think about this ice age ending, about rising seas and the islands we’re losing in the Pacific. I don’t want to think about a future pinballing violently between extremes, losing the crisp and clarifying cold of winter or the sultry and languid heat of summer to a life lived mostly indoors. I don’t want to think about the sweat dripping from the backs of my knees or the press of too many bodies on the subway. It’s too hot to think and so I don’t - I just imagine the ocean rolling towards me and then back again, about the gentle pressure of the sun on a perfectly warm day, about ice cream and the perfect sandwich and a fizzy drink. I imagine reading in the shade.

Even though it was too hot to be doing much of anything, I visited the Obama Presidential Center last week while I was in Chicago. Even though my friend and I couldn’t get tickets to the museum, there were plenty of other things for us to see, including the beautiful grounds, a vegetable garden, the art in the lobby of the museum, and even a branch of the Chicago Public Library. So much of it is set up not to venerate and memorialize President Obama, but to remind us what we are capable of when we work together, and what it means to celebrate community and honor the humanity in all of us.

It’s in vogue these days in some progressive circles to caveat your nostalgia for the Obama era, to say “yes, but…” and to follow that up with drones or deportations or the Supreme Court. And these are, of course, valid critiques of the Obama presidency. Presidents have immense power over people’s lives, and their decisions are life or death. There is no perfect president, and those imperfections will have significant consequences. But for eight years we had a president who took that seriously, who cared not just about the wellbeing of those who voted for him, but of everyone in this country and people all over the world. We had a president who wanted to make life more affordable, healthier and brighter and full of potential; a president who made an effort to listen to people, to respect where they came from and their place in our vast national tapestry.

It’s been too hot to think about what American means right now, about how to make sense of our contradictions, our violence and our heroes, the good we have done and the good there is still left to do, the bloody bigotry of our beginnings and the way it perseveres, insidiously wound through our future too. It’s too hot to think about how Trump and his cronies think this is the best of us, more worthy of celebration than the fight to take the promises our founders made for a few and keep it for the many.

I still believe in this country, in our capacity for change and our willingness to fight for it. I believe in Americans - in our generosity and exuberance, in our diversity of experiences and in our curiosity. I believe in persuasion and potential. But that belief is jagged now, rough around the edges, broken and glued back together, and sometimes a very tired and flickering light.

Perhaps it’s the relentlessness of the Trump era. Perhaps it’s just getting older. I’ll revisit it when the heat breaks.