One Nation, Worlds Apart

Here in the high desert of New Mexico, Washington has never felt more distant

Photo illustration courtesy of the author | Landscape photo by Leonardo Chávez on Unsplash

Distance has defined so much of our lives in the last almost-year. There’s distance learning. Distance work, for those of us who can do our jobs remotely. Long-distance relationships, which now includes not just out-of-state friends and family but those up the road who we can no longer invite into our homes.

Everything feels far away these days.

Never has that been truer than for the treasonous insurrection in Washington this week.

Here in Albuquerque, news hit around lunchtime: pro-Trump protesters had mobbed the Capitol building and gone full fascist terrorist, smashing glass and breaking into offices.

I stopped to scroll through all-caps headlines and click through graphic photos of the violence. The absurdity of what I was seeing stunned me into numb silence for a few minutes… and then I went back to work at my dining room table like it was any other Wednesday afternoon.

What else was there for me to do?

Of course, I accomplished almost nothing for the rest of the day. My attention was glued to the screen across the room, where I let the live coverage stream in for hours. Shaky footage from the capital’s streets was…