Toast

Holding on to what we know

I must have made toast yesterday. When I tried to slot two pieces of bread into the toaster this morning, they jammed. Two slices of already toasted bread sat in there, cold.Yesterday, I made myself some toast -- nature’s perfect January food -- and left it.

What a metaphor for the week we’ve had.

All week, I’ve heard from friends who are struggling with the reality of the second Trump presidency. As much as they thought they were prepared, they’re feeling like cold toast. So am I.

The difficulty about beginnings -- for a regular person -- is not knowing what to do. Nausea rises from the executive orders, but it’s hard to know what someone in Kentucky or Indiana or Iowa can do besides despair.

By Wednesday in our house, it was clear that we needed to take a pledge as a family to limit our news consumption to certain hours of the day: not during school and not right before bed. It feels like knowledge is action, but it isn’t. I tried to repeat all the things that I say all the time to my children: we can’t let the news so paralyze us with despair and fear that it saps our energy to take meaningful action within our sphere of control. Our community will need us and does need us..

And yet, during my own allotted news consumption period of the morning -- 5:46 AM -- my stomach twisted. My breath caught. I wanted to do the same kind of rage shouting that my son did the evening before.

I believe -- I hold onto the belief -- that right action will reveal itself as we continue into 2025. At every sea change of life -- whether personal or political -- I found that to be the case. “We make the road by walking,” said Machado, Freire, and Horton.

What else can be held onto in this first week of the Trump presidency?

I believe we can hold onto the truth even as we are lied to. Holding onto reality, facts, and truth will allow us to be ready for the needs of the years to come. The idea of truth is uncool in this twenty-first century world. The “truth” sounds foolish, something from a Vacation Bible School Lesson of the 1980s. Truth is irrelevant in an AI world and a Trump world. How naive.

So maybe this first act is to believe in some truths in a nation of propaganda. The first act in week one is not to take at face value the capitalized words in dozens of executive orders.

Here a few pieces of reality I’m holding to:

January 6th was a violent insurrection, not a day of love -- There have been only two days when I’ve put down work to watch history unfold on television: September 11th, 2001 and January 6th, 2021. I know what I saw: violent masses of people shoving into the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of the election. That they didn’t succeed, doesn’t make what happened any less real. Their failure did not turn the events of the day into what Trump calls a “day of love.” There was no love on display. By pardoning and commuting the senses of every January 6th criminal, the President has not changed the reality of what happened. I will hold onto reality.

Civil rights, non-discrimination laws are meant to prevent discrimination -- The president says that non-discrimination policies “terminat[e] radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting.” Not true. These policies seek to ensure that qualified candidates are not eliminated from consideration because of race, sex, religion, disability, status, etc. They are not quota systems. They are not designed to eliminate qualified white men from working. I will hold onto reality.

Churches and schools ARE sanctuaries --- For churches, “sanctuary” is right there in the name. Churches, hospitals, and schools often fail to be safe spaces for those in their care. But it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t keep trying to live up to their missions of sanctuary for people to worship, for children to learn, and for the sick to heal. I will hold onto reality.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. -- George Orwell