The Fascism Red Line Moment

It’s here.

The other evening, I was at a celebratory business dinner with some new colleagues. After we did an initial cheer and exchanged some pleasantries, I, because I am so fun at parties, briefly made a comment about The Current Political Situation. One of the people at my table chuckled. “It’s always gotta come up at least once at everything, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s like all the side effects they say real fast in a pharmaceutical ad. We have to acknowledge it and get it out of the way so everybody knows we’re not pretending it’s not happening, even though we all still have shit to do.” Everybody at the table nodded, and then we went back to our dinner. After a few drinks, it came back up again. How could it not?

I have written, often, maybe too often, about the exhaustion of living through this moment in history, about how overwhelming it can be, how there is so much awfulness around that thinking too hard about all of it at once can legitimately make you feel like you are going insane. I know people who have been dragged down by it, to the point that they can no longer think about anything else, and I understand why. But I also understand why we also try to carve our places away from it, how we work to find our escapes, in entertainment, in sports, in travel, in simply focusing on the things in our lives that we can…