You Will Not Survive 2018 Unless You Do This

I am not going to ask you to be reasonable. 2017 was a year when un-reason plowed through our nation like a gritter, churning up toxic misinformation and rancid truth with such destructive force that many of us are still standing in slack-jawed disbelief, buffering and struggling to find our bearings in a world we hardly recognize as our own. There is nothing reasonable about a GOP Congress embracing the deficit to transfer billions of dollars to those who need it the least. There is nothing reasonable about telling trans Americans our volunteer military won’t take them, even as it gasps to fill its ranks during the lowest rate of enlistment in our lifetimes. There is nothing reasonable about threatening the Children’s Health Insurance Program, 800,000 DACA kids, our relationship with foreign allies, or our commitment to responsible stewardship of this planet. So I’m not going to ask you to be reasonable.

There is also nothing reasonable about millions of women & families & allies taking to the street in pink pussy hats to be counted in the Resistance. There’s nothing reasonable about average Americans saving our nation’s healthcare system from ruin by flooding Congress with hundreds of thousands of phone calls. Or a Democrat winning a Senate seat in Ala-fucking-bama. There’s nothing reasonable about sexual assault survivors forcing a sea change in how assault & harassment are viewed around the globe by breaking a silence that has lasted literally forever. Even when it hurt, when the truth was a magnet, pulling shrapnel from our bodies, tearing through scar tissue and shame. There is nothing reasonable about survival. If it were reasonable, they’d just call it living.

Now Dr. Jones knows what it’s like to be a woman in any public space.

So I’m asking you to do something unreasonable in 2018 —

I’m asking you to HOPE.

2017 was exhausting, demoralizing and sad. It would be reasonable to despair. It would even be reasonable to give up.

I intend to survive.

What I’m saying is: FUCK REASON, BE HOPEFUL.

Not naively hopeful, not ignorantly hopeful. Be fiercely hopeful. Bloody grin hopeful. Let HOPE fill your body like steam, like rage, like maniacal laughter. If you want out of this shit-pile, you have to grab HOPE like a shovel and dig your way out. Because there is no path to the other side that doesn’t go through your heart. Because we will not be able to protect healthcare, our planet, each other, unless we first HOPE that we can. Hope’s ability to inception a human being out of destitution is backed both by hard science and the High Priestess of Twitter herself. I’m not asking for your blind belief, or your confidence, or your faith in humanity. Those come later. I’m asking you to crank up the pilot light in your battered spirit and let HOPE turn you into a goddamn Roman candle. Because the alternative is wet wicked bullshit. Because even if you lose, you’ll win.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, my loves. Be unreasonable in 2018 — BE HOPEFUL. It’s the only way you’ll survive.

The arc of history is long, but it bends towards rapists getting their faces chewed off.