sunday energy #54
some notes on contradiction
Hi, hello. I’ve been away for some time. Thank you for being patient with me, and thank you especially to the paid subscribers who stayed — your support sustains me. I have now emerged from my depression cave, bleary eyed and disheveled, to write to you about contradiction. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past few weeks, you see. Witnessing the contradictions in others, grappling with the contradiction within myself.
How to begin?
OK, this: Last Sunday, when Joe Biden announced that he was finally dropping out of the presidential race (after declaring only weeks prior that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to quit), I became witness to a fascinating and sobering phenomenon. I didn’t realize so many people have selfies/official portraits with Kamala Harris, waiting patiently in their camera rolls for this very moment.
That day, I had just taught the last session of my pop culture/personal essay workshop, riding on the high of being in community with other Black femme writers, when I collided into the wall of a seemingly never-ending string of images. Images of Black women, mostly Gen X and older, smiling with VP Harris, gleefully celebrating the possibility of a Black woman president.
At least twenty if not more people I follow on social media breathlessly rushed to post these pictures and declare their fealty to Harris, accompanying the photos with fawning, sentimental, 2008-coded captions about how, finally, there was hope for this country after all. “Black women will save us,” they said. “I’m with her,” they said. “Vote for Harris if you want to protect reproductive rights and you’re against racism!” they said. Many of these people have, in the past seven months, expressed solidarity (at varying levels of investment) with the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people who are currently facing total annihilation in Gaza, in a genocide funded by the Biden-Harris administration.
(Yesterday, I saw the image of a young Palestinian child’s head laying next to their body. It is not the first time I have seen a decapitated child in the past several months. I fear, and know, that it will not be the last.)
In the past week, I’ve seen people I know IRL solemnly thank Joe Biden for being an “honorable” man. I’ve seen tens of thousands of Black and white women “answer the call” to speedily mobilize on Zoom meetings, to raise millions of dollars for Harris. I’ve seen LGBTQ activists passionately declare that when they look at Harris they see themselves and that’s why they are voting for her. The contradiction here is not subtle. The past week has made me feel insane. I’ve felt like Mugatu in Zoolander screaming: “Doesn’t anyone notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” I’ve been so deeply confused.
I posted this on my IG story shortly after I started spiraling over how many people I know are, after everything we’ve witnessed over the last decade in American politics alone, buying into the idea that a charismatic Black leader will save us from fascism: