How To Perform Liberalism

I did it wrong and it hurt my feelings.

(Quick note: If you enjoy this post, please feel free to ♥️ it! A ♥️ will probably not affect meaningful change, but it will make me feel good.)

A couple weeks ago, my family hit up Baby Happy Hour to celebrate an unusually spring-y day. The scene was joyful and slightly unhinged, like a Palm Springs White Party, a state school frat party, and a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party all rolled into one. The parking-lot-turned-beer-garden was so packed I would have cut a bitch for a picnic table, though fortunately I didn’t have to. So when I saw a younger couple I know and like very much searching for a place to sit, I was happy to shove my screaming children over to make room.

Because this younger couple is cool and does not have kids, I find myself trying to resist switching into “mom mode” when I’m around them. (Oh these sticky-handed humans who smell like dirty dogs and look exactly like me? They didn’t come with you? No, no, that’s right, they’re mine. I was just so busy thinking about the intersection of art and politics, I almost forgot!) To be clear, no one asks this of me. I do it because I dread the idea of boring people. Anyway, there I was, half-listening — because one of my kids was licking the ketchup meant for the table directly out of its container — but trying to appear as if I was fully listening, when the younger man mentioned seeing one of those I-bought-this-before-we-knew-Elon-was-crazy bumper stickers slapped on the back of a Tesla. Without thinking, I responded with an enthusiastic, “That’s awesome!”. As I’ve said before, that barrel chested tech bro dipshit is crazy, right? From the expression on the younger man’s face that followed, I could tell I’d missed the point. He explained (KINDLY!) “Yeah, but a bumper sticker is the textbook definition of the least you can do,” then moved on. But I didn’t move on. Clearly I didn’t, because weeks later, I’m still trembling in fear that I’ve been misjudged (or perhaps judged fairly?) as lib-tard hack, reciting my politics like a tight five, without an ounce of critical thinking in my incurious ovine brain. That someone could be thinking that, that I could actually be that, hurts my feelings.

There is so much circulating about the small actions average citizens can take to prevent the slow motion car crash of democracy, it feels disingenuous to whimper, but what can we do?! We can print out ILRC red cards and carry them in our wallets! We can download the 5 Calls app! We can boycott businesses owned by shitty rich people who want to keep collecting billions like baseball cards while the world around them burns! We can practice self-care 🙏. And crucially, we can tell other people we’ve done these things and encourage them to do them too, all via social media. Does any of this make a difference? I don’t know. I see people reposting that message about “My brother works in Representative so-and-so’s office and they’ve never gotten so many calls! Keep calling!” But I don’t see those representatives behaving in meaningfully different ways. Cory Booker broke the filibuster record a couple of days ago. But what is a filibuster if not a literal performance? Just like the circulation of these call-to-actions and the receipts that we’ve acted are a performance. I don’t fault the performance. I participate, and agonize when I do it incorrectly (see: Baby Happy Hour story above). But, like my husband said a few days ago, it seems like, at some point, we’re going to have to all get together in person, and do something bigger? I never said he was a great planner, (try going on vacation with him!) but the sentiment stands to reason.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say, except that I think there’s a level of artifice slowing us all down from repairing the world’s brokenness. I have always been exceedingly judgmental. I let one stupid thing a stranger says define them entirely, then pass along my judgment to other people, mostly because it sounds funny. Oh him? He said public school ruined his kid’s personality, so… Or, she actually made her husband a list of gifts he should give her for Mother’s Day… What if someone reduced my essence to she thinks those Elon-is-crazy bumper stickers are awesome!? (And I don’t! I swear! I was just a little behind on my what-enlightened-leftists-are-supposed-to-believe reading. I got kids to raise!) I thought by starting this newsletter, a kind of confessional to the pettiest of what eats away at me, I could cut through some of my own bullshit. But sometimes it feels like the petty confessions are their own form of artifice. So, I don’t know. Fuck?

The other day, while my husband was off doing something sporty, I took my sons to the arcade. As they stood on tippy toes to see the screen of the first-person shooter game they were playing, I snapped a picture of them, looking gleeful with plastic revolvers in their tiny hands. The absolute hideousness of the image, the deep perversity, seemed hilarious to me. What kind of a mother am I? I wondered, as I laughed at the perfectly nauseating shot I’d captured. But I know what kind of a mother I am. I don’t think this small moment at an arcade matters. I don’t think it will imbue them with bloodlust and grow to dominate their worldview. I think the gentleness, the presence, the kindness my husband and I show them every day, will be what actually makes the difference. I say all this because I know what really matters to me to be a good mother. I wish it was clearer to me what matters to be a good citizen.