I’ve become more reluctant than ever to write about politics lately, given how extreme our discourse has become, in the United States and seemingly everywhere else as well. Other people seem to be better at dealing with this, or at least more willing to embrace the fight, and I keep sitting here, listening to people conflate so many things, as if all the pages of their books are glued together, and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t remember politics being this stupid, or this futile, before. We seem to have reached the point where you can present solid evidence, and make a thorough and convincing argument, and still be knocked out by someone without any facts on their side, because they’re louder, and more persistent, and willing to blow raspberries into the wind.
It feels like people on either end of the political spectrum have decided that the truth doesn’t matter, and the winning argument is the one that can fit into a hashtag or be repeated over and over like the chorus in a Tik Tok video. And I’m exhausted. I keep trying to engage with the world with an open mind, and curiosity and fairness, to challenge myself by reading and watching and listening to a wide array of media and opinions and develop a more comprehensive and nuanced view of what’s going on in the world around me. And every time, the simplistic, usually incorrect, but oft-repeated mantra wins out over the nuance and becomes common wisdom. And I’m tired. I’m tired of having to make sense of nonsense. I’m tired of being told that everything is fine when it’s not, and being told that A equals Z when it doesn’t.
The noise of it all is overwhelming, and I’ve been struggling to find anything calm and reasonable in the middle of it all, and feeling like I don’t have the skills to fight the kind of war that’s being waged right now.
But in the midst of yet another week full of stupid political theater, I remembered that I’d sent myself a video a couple of weeks ago, to watch when I feel this way. When I first watched Renee Good’s brothers give testimony in congress about the killing of their sister by ICE, I felt something shift. Instead of screaming, or blowing raspberries, which they had every right to do, they gave a eulogy for their sister that stopped me in my tracks and made me listen. The love, and hope, in their voices was shattering, and the politicians had to just sit there and listen, and allow us to listen, to remind us that we are still capable of being kind, and poetic, and reasonable, and inspiring. I sent myself this video to remind me that I can choose to listen to voices like these. There are so many things in our lives today that we have no choice about, but I can choose to hear the voices of people who make life seem worth living. While I still have a choice, I choose this.
WATCH: Brothers of Renee Good, woman fatally shot by ICE: https://youtu.be/HX0zWgHc1cg?si=Dd08Dqn7y4zZu2bz
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 