Welcome back to the dystopian present. While you were out, I began to lose my senses in a vast dysphoria of events ranging from descriptions of non-livable conditions in supposed migrant detention centers. Stephen Miller wants 3,000 victims plucked from the fields and warehoused in unlivable conditions: packed together on floors, inadequate health care, “the worst conditions…” It’s another big example of the problem. Violence against the innocents. I tried to imagine what it was like and had to stop. The New York Times article describes “one toilet for 35 to 40 men, who had no privacy.” That’s what’s happening.

We’ve seen and know how violence and hatred are summarily inflicted without consequence. That’s the new normal. Goon squads roam cities and migrant quarters. There are never enough victims to satiate the appetite for fear-induced discrimination.

LGBTQ+ folks were on the upswing, almost feeling like we had a secure placemat at society’s table. But if Donald Trump and Co. can find a way to chisel at its foundations, that’s part of the plan. It’s all death by degrees. LGBTQ elders in New York and transgender folks are now on Trump’s hit list. Groups like SAGE for gay elders in NYC got an immediate 25% cut in funds. The government’s more specific aim is the elimination of all public funds for any such group that is allied with what are DEI initiatives. The DEI issue is the new bete noir of right wing anti-democratic vitriol.

But worse, or as unproductive, is the reaction to LGBTQ+ desire to express the current zeitgeist as they see it. Andrew Sullivan crosses it off as a useless tangent and has trouble with anything that doesn’t codify men and women’s sexuality in more traditional gay contexts. All these gender identifiers and desire for sex alteration prior to puberty he views as always potentially harmful. But I have to say, carping about that while the most detrimental problem is groups like SAGE are about to lose all government funding, and funding from sources that don’t want to be seen as supporting DEI initiatives. Federal funds are a lifeline for the “roughly 5,000 older adults who use its services” in New York.

Zohran Mamdani sweeps the Democratic mayoral race. So everyone panics of course. Young, articulate, personable, smart, so the political machines go to work to minimize his presence. So dumb, so out of touch. A real leader. The political machine gears into overdrive. So predictable. These are the people we need the most! And there’s sizable murmurs of candidates starting to step up. The next mid-term is essential to block the Trump kleptocracy.

Sullivan’s main beef is that the previous gay identifiers worked well and allowed the right to accept its modus operendi as less threatening. The new iterations become so complex and overloaded with correctness as to become a satire of itself. Sullivan has a point when he writes that the absolutism of “TRANS WOMEN are WOMEN, and TRANS MEN are MEN” is less an argument than a command. Correctness has conquered discourse. “Total unanimity of thought is demanded,” But advocating for this expansion and reassignment of roles and descriptions get as easily lost in the politics, and don’t the traditionalists become a bit stuffy? If it’s all a fad, then it will fade. If it rises to the level of accepted merit, then where was the harm in the first place. Sex has always been the subject of contention rather than the support of what works for the participant.

The Trump party is really against pretty much anything constructive or imaginative. All those politicians fluttering around doing absolutely nothing other than grinding down freedom and imagination. Here’s where our real concern and efforts lie. The latest flap in Congress, voting on the One, Big Beautiful Bill, is so lengthy an erosion of just about anything that supports our society and the many millions whose lives are reduced due to the idea that we should support the billion-trillionaires at the expense of the rest. We know who these recipients are and their hypocritical posturing and shifts in focus away from people policies to fat the rich. It’s all so tacky and disgusting.

As I write this, Congress is up all night waiting for word whether four Republicans will defect. Fat chance. Monstrosity rules in this new age of “take the money and run,” as I’ve written before. There is a resistance out here that only needs a uniform vision. Our nets have to be out to catch the affected who realize the Republican Party was never out for their interests and never will be. So many world issues remain like Ukraine and Israeli-Iran ceasefire. Vast numbers are dead and dying, but here we find ourselves burdened by pure greed and self-service. A leader with neither love of country nor its role in the world. So support resistance at all costs. We are so much better than this.

Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls.