What we are given to hold

Every day, my inbox, as I’m sure yours, is replete with articles, substack posts, notes about the various hells being unleashed at any given time, more now than ever. It is easy to begin to believe that light is receding at, well, lightspeed. However, a few caveats may be helpful in dispelling, if not the darkness itself, than its seeming power to render us dispirited or despairing.

As I mentioned elsewhere, whenever you find yourself confronted with the questions of what good is it? What can one person do?, you can pin a reminder in your mind that it’s never about just one person. There are many doing many good things. Some in concert with one another, some individually here and there. However, it is important not to succumb to doomscrolling out of habit. 

I’m not sure that I completely agree with Janus Rose’s thesis in her 2025 article You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism, that more time spent posting about injustice and the latest outrage takes time away from actually doing the work of engaging to do something more actively about it. I take her point, and I am sympathetic; however, very often, I think most people post about an issue less out of frustration about not being able to do anything about it than to draw attention to the issue and if they do have a platform for dialog, to engage with it to at least that degree.

Speaking strictly for myself, I post what I post and write what I write because I do enjoy the feedback and engagement and I often learn a lot about how to move forward in my smallish activism. Before I go further along that line, I do want to acknowledge where and how deeply I do agree with Janus.

She points out that the corporate masters of social media know that outrage fuels very often vociferous and volatile activities on their respective platforms. In other words, whether aware of it or now, we feed the corporate beast with each post, particularly those that go viral, the gift that keeps on giving. This is one of the greatest checks on just how much I want to be online and even how I choose what I’m going to write about.

This blog, in particular, does reflect my concerns and interests, of course, but I also try to point out that there are actions each of us can take in response to any given affront. Make a mess, but after you clean it up, leave the place a bit cleaner than it was before you started messing about writing.

Today, however, as I scrolled through my inbox, I asked myself (as I try do daily) to decide why this issue lands more than another, why choose one thing to dive into as opposed to another, or simply table everything and when so moved, then make the decision. 

For example, today, Thursday, April 16, 2026, Jonathan V. Last at the Bulwark has a gripping look at Christian Nationalism and how Evangelicals and some Catholics are swerving more to Trumpism than Christianity. Indeed, Last points out graphically that Catholics have migrated to voting Republican 55% to 43% Democrat. Trump’s attack on the Pope has created an interesting schism such that some of the faithful are saying the Pope should be silent on speaking against Trump’s Iran War. The lack of self-awareness is staggering; however, is it really unexpected? 

Meanwhile, at the Nation, Rafi Schwartz abjures not to conflate the anti-war statements by former allies like Carson Tucker, Megyn Kelly, or Candace Owens with allyship. He points out the idea that too many people - however well-intentioned - who drive readers to, say, a piece by Tucker, because “it’s worth reading” - may be unintentionally planting the idea that a rightward swing, at least in approach, may be useful or warrant consideration or to my mind (I don’t recall if Schwartz says as much), there is an implicit endorsement of these right wing pundits as fellow travelers. They are not, of course, but the critique stands and it proves vital.

What Schwartz’s piece does an exemplary job of doing is locating Carlson et al., as people who “agree with you” not that you “agree with him” and this is the sort of nuance that does get lost in “doom posting” to which Janus’s article alerts us. It’s too easy and too comforting to say, “oh, look! Marjorie Taylor-Green’s not so bad! She’s turning on Trump! Look at what she just said!” This is nice to hear, I guess, but anyone who has spent any amount of time just living through the past ten to twelve years at least should have a bullshit meter finely tuned to “and what else do we remember about Marjorie?” In other words, and Schwartz’s piece speaks to this, as well; let’s make concerted efforts not to neglect history and context. 

Character is a large part of both history and context and lest it be forgotten, none of the people I have mentioned here are exactly “allies” on other salient points about the Occupier of the White House. They are - and I don’t think I’m being judgmental here, just accurate - bigots, grifters, and withal, empty TV personalities who have profited greatly from stoking anger and hatred. 

Janus’s points remain and Schwartz supports her. Again, my response that I disagree that time spent posting and reposting stuff takes away from time spent doing more hands-on work stands, too. What I might offer is that if you are going to post a meme or a graphic, add context or at least some observational material along with it so that it isn’t mere “outrage fuel.” 

Also, consider the platform. If it’s X we’re talking about, additional context might well be necessary, if only so that if your post is reposted, it isn’t opposite in intent, say. If it’s Bluesky, then chances are most people will get it and the most you’ll hear back is “right, right! Thanks for posting!” I get that a bit, myself.

Then, there’s today’s Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson, where we endure the assassination of President Lincoln and how “while Americans mourned Lincoln, the new president, Andrew Johnson, restored the political power or the Confederates.” In one of her most comprehensive missives, Professor Richardson threads the needle of sedition all the way up to yesterday’s decision by the so-called Department of Justice to remove the convictions for seditious conspiracy from the commuted sentences of fourteen of the leading Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Unlike, say, calling something by Carlson Tucker “worth reading”, Richardson’s work truly is.

Then, there’s Dropsight’s digest, “Israel destroys last bridge to southern Lebanon; Russia kills at least 16 in massive overnight attack on Ukraine; Johnson postpones then cancels FISA vote.” I won’t recap anything here nor, at this point, do I feel it necessary to do so, because it is here where I feel that something else is being asked of us.

We could set aside a list of the issues inventoried here and might well come away feeling dispirited. That word again. We might come away better informed. We might feel overwhelmed and at a loss to decide where to focus our energies. I believe all these are both necessary and useful.

We task ourselves with being “well-informed” and if you are a policy geek like me, you don’t just not mind reading regulations and legal motions, you get a kind of sick pleasure from it. You read it because you sense that it will deepen your understanding of whatever the next move is that a politician you support or that you do not, does. It can also be useful at organizational levels in framing concerted responses to a law or piece of proposed legislation. And so on. I don’t expect that of everyone, by the way. 

However, I do think that if you have decided that you want to be part of the solution to the ills that beset us, you are inviting or opening up to a near-infinite ocean of information. Much of it will be “important”, but try to decide what is important for you, and for what you are working on - alone or with others - and then determine what you may need to filter out, what you may need to keep to work with.

What we are given to hold in this life is a lot at any given time. At any given time, we are beset with these sociopolitical demands on our attention, let alone the daily demands of work, of life. At any given moment, we may receive calls we dread about someone we love or bad news of our own. We may discover our time might required elsewhere of necessity. 

Life happens and sometimes it happens hard. This is what we are given to hold. Those we love require our love more than than those whom we do not care for require our attention. This does not mean we forsake our sense of justice or ratiocination for heinous acts, but if someone you care for needs you, then set the protest sign aside and tend them. That is all you need to hold.

Then come back and pick up and hold what you can as you can.