Surviving the Orcs

Remembering Impermanence

It has been a draining year for me, from near burnout in the Spring, to Kings Days, to anti-ICE actions, to protecting queer spaces. Like many of us, I am tired of the constant assault on truth, reason, the facts, and good judgment by a fascist regime that is shrill, manipulative, immoral, and cruel.

Every single day brings bad news as the regime races ahead against the curve of resistance. They lie without shame, shame without truth, attack relentlessly. The death of two white people in Minneapolis aroused consciences and anger, but while language changed, policies did not. The attack on America is now weaponized.

I admit to being discouraged, at times. To worrying about the world, family, friends, and carrying a sense of doom. I am old enough to have been around for Joe McCarthy, the Soviet Union, the people who fought the fascists in the 1940s, bigotry and repression carried out against Black people. I have seen the beginnings of today’s dystopia in the 1970s move to the right in the Republican party and the famous Powell Memorandum of 1971. The arrival of Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America, aimed at destroying the Democratic Party.

How many generations will it be before a new order appears, a kind one, a democratic one, a humanistic one? How many decades of cruel, random murders by goons recruited because they were thugs already or had been trained in thuggery in the ill-fated efforts to “build nations” in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the so-called “war on terror.”

These are our state-supported terrorists now, our counterpart to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, enforcing their order in our streets. Our more heartless Frankenstein-ian monster. The orcs of our own Sauron in the White House. Pick your metaphor.

I sometimes fear it will never stop, fear for my own safety, for the futures of my children and grandchildren, for so many in this country who did not bargain for an unprincipled, criminal regime intent on acquiring total power.

We waited too long. We stood by as the MAGA orcs took over school boards across the country, redistricted state and federal elections so authoritarians could be in safe seats and majorities. We failed for years, decades, to keep money out of politics. We let the Federalist Society go unanswered as they seized control of hunks of the judicial system and, ultimately, the Supreme Court, ensuring that fascist priorities will inform their decisions for decades to come.

What is the road now; how will each of us handle this destruction of the founding documents and the nation we thought we knew?

Some insist we find a way to talk to the orcs; find common ground. With dedicated MAGA orcs, there is no such conversation.

Some search to placate, find political compromises. Are willing to throw some Americans under the bus – like trans people and immigrants – in the hopes of placating the monster.

Some gather together over opinion poll data showing most Americans don’t support the regime. But thinking something and doing something are two different things; most opinions are just that, opinions. They do not lead to action; the structures of dictatorship impede effective action. Public opinion data is a kind of fools’ gold, appearing real until you try to buy action with it.

Some with money and youth scamper into other countries where they can get or buy citizenship and hope it will all go away and they will survive untouched.

Leading law firms, universities, and especially hospitals, capitulate to survive.

Some retreat into broadcasts of sports, crime series, games, social media about cats and dogs, mystery novels, cooking, eating, drinking, shutting out the dystopia.

For those who act, a tiny minority of the people, there is the burn-out that comes from choosing to do too many things at once, from caring about all of it, from sleepless nights of worry, or the threat to your undocumented future, from the fear of repression by your own government.

I ask myself: how can I cope; how do we all cope? How do I want to show up in this moment? In my 85^th year? How do I, how do all of us recuperate, recover, and begin again?

As Bishop Mariann Budde of the District of Columbia said more than a year ago after the first signs of cruelty appeared, “how can I live in a way that puts wind in the sails of those coming up behind me in the years I have left.”

I start with community. For me, that is often in my Sangha, where the context for my fear emerges. I sat in one this week, where we recalled the Five Remembrances:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of a nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions; my karma. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

At its very core, this seemingly sad vision carries a message of hope. It tells me it is important to live now, in the present. To act in a skillful, peaceful and loving way. To act in community, where I live.

Because change is constant. Everything we see and do is impermanent. Reality is fluid, like a river, never running quite the same.

For me, this is the key; where I start: the law of the universe is change. All things, all regimes, our very lives are impermanent. This government of orcs is impermanent. I cannot tell you exactly how or in what direction it will change. Following the laws of history, it contains the seeds of its own undoing.

I want to be one of the seeds, a tiny green shoot growing through the cracks in the pavement of authoritarianism. Greeted by other shoots, all reaching up. It means hanging in there, taking care of myself, engaging in action that might make a difference, helping the evolving future appear, one action, one resistance, at a time.

As someone whose own sense of self gender is fluid, impermanence is common sense, a comforting solid surface in which I swim. That sounds like a contradiction; to me it is a koan to be turned over and over.

This is where I start.

Let Audre Lorde fill in the details:

A Litany for Survival*

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;

….

when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

*Credit: “A Litany for Survival.” Copyright © 1978 by Audre Lorde, from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF AUDRE LORDE by Audre Lorde. As reprinted at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival