Author: Doyce

Maybe you don't want to punch Nazis because you don't want to punch anybody, but you want to do SOMETHING. That's fair. (I don't want to punch anyone either, though I've decided I will make an exception in the case of Nazis, but that is my choice, not yours.)

Maybe you wouldn't mind punching Nazis, and there are no Nazis around to punch, but you feel you must to do something. Also fair.

Here's what you do.

Love somebody who needs it right now.

Talk to the brown-skinned guy with the accent who, like you, is standing in the Home Depot, waiting to see if the employee can find any eclipse-rated welding goggle lenses in inventory.

Tell your black or jewish coworkers how sorry and frustrated and goddamn ANGRY you are that this country has allowed this poison for so long, pretending it wasn't there.

They will know what you mean. They've always known. We're the ones who've just figured it out, and shame on us.

Find your lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer friends and ask them what they need. (Don't ask how you can help – don't make them do the mental labor of finding a place for self-important YOU in their trouble – ask them what they NEED and fit yourself to that.)

If you don't have such friends, get out in the world and fucking FIX that.

Love someone who needs it right now.

Love someone who needs it, right now.

Someone who isn't like you.

Someone Other.

There are a lot of them, and they need it right now.

WE need it right now.

If you need to do something. Do that.

"The blue marker makes me look like the ocean!"

“[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.”

— Joseph Heller, Catch-22

My kids are alike in many ways, but they are definitely individuals in ways I've tried to articulate in the past.

Yesterday, they gave me a single story that illustrates each of them, perfectly.

We had to drop off Kaylee at camp, and after the paperwork and unpacking in the cabin, everyone was supposed to assemble at 'the field' to say goodbyes and play games.

So we went down there, and see about forty kids milling around, visiting, et cetera. There's a makeshift kickball field, and a couple boys about a year younger than Kaylee, kicking a soccer ball back and forth.

Sean goes over near them, and is watching intently.

One of the kids notices this, and veers off his direction, letting the soccer ball roll over near the edge of the field by the trees and long grass.

"Do you want a ball too?" he asks Sean, extending a old, dirty, yellow rubber ball. "You can have this one. Do you want it?"

He keeps offering it, and asking, over and over, until Sean finally shrugs and reaches for it.

At which point the kid chucks it backwards over his own shoulder and has a good laugh with his buddy.

And here are my kids:

Sean frowns at the kid, shrugs as if to say "whatever man, I don't even know you, and that ball was gross anyway" and stalks off to do something else.

Kaylee, who'd been standing next to me, takes a couple steps forward and starts in. "Really?!? You're starting off a week of camp, WITH ME, and the first thing you do is pick on my little brother? THAT seemed like a good idea? Really?!?"

And the boy backs off and rejoins his friend. They both realize they don't have the soccer ball anymore. It's over at the edge of the field.

Actually, while all this was going on, Zoe went over and picked it up, and she's standing right where it had rolled.

They walk over, bending over and talking in that "charm little kids" high voice.

"Hiiiii. Can we have that? Can you give that to us?" They pause. "Do you want to kick it to us?"

Zoe looks at the ball, extends it out toward them…

… and CHUCKS it back over her shoulder, into the trees and long grass.

Then walks away, without even looking at them.

So… my kids, in summary:

– Indifference
– Drama
– REVENGE

In Album 6/26/17

"Americans will honor and fulfill the Paris Agreement by leading from the bottom up – and there isn't anything Washington can do to stop us," Bloomberg said.

Actually, let me take that "not going to lie" a bit further: I cried a little when I read this, grateful and a little shocked.

I don't know much about Bloomberg (though I like what I do know); I certainly don't know if he's a good person or not.

But the guy just stepped up and promised concrete action to protect my kids, and a ball of tension I didn't even realize I was holding unwound a little.

‘Washington can’t stop Americans’: Michael Bloomberg pledges to pay US share of Paris climate funding
US billionaire Michael Bloomberg has offered $15 million to UN efforts to tackle climate change after President Donald Trump announced he is pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord.

I mean, members of his campaign staff could have been on the phone with lots of different foreign countries. It didn't have to be that one. They could have been on the phone with friendly foreign countries like England, or France, or Spain.

They could have been on the phone with countries that we're not particularly friendly with that we don't take especially seriously as a threat. Like Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or North Korea or something like that.

But no. It had to be Russia. They had to pick the one country that literally every generation of voting Americans is going to think of as the biggest baddest most ENEMY enemy country that we have.

It's like a caricature. It's like a cartoon of people being evil and corrupt. It's like they thought if they were bad enough, they'd be so bad no one would take any of it seriously, because it all sounds so ridiculous.

If this were an espionage novel, no one would publish it. It's ridiculous; it has every terrible trope in it, executed poorly, and obviously.

And it's only chapter 3.