I wasn’t planning on writing about the inauguration, but when there’s a member of the president’s inner circle throwing Nazi salutes while Trump himself is pardoning everyone who tried to overthrow the government four years ago, ending birthright citizenship and setting the stage for undoing every legal trans protection we’ve gotten in the last 20 years, everything else seems inconsequential.
The point of fascism is to rule utterly, to perform horrors with no consequence and to deny that they are horrors at all. It is the power that comes from control, not just political control but narrative control. They define the truth is, even if what they say flies in the face of what you witnessed with your own eyes.
Now, I have studied fascism, but I cannot claim to be a political expert. I am, however, a narrative expert. I can claim that one. So believe me when I tell you that the most important things you can do to armor yourself in the coming years to remember one thing: they get off on your despair.
Gross, right? Good. These horrible little boys with old men’s faces wearing their father’s ill-fitting suits are going to try to convince us they are invincible, they are inevitable, that they are somehow than human, or at the very least more human than we are. They will get into our heads. But not if we know what sick little puppies they are, desperately jerking off to the sadness and panic they create.
I know its ridiculous, but we live in ridiculous times. And if telling myself that by not dissolving into sadness I am denying a disgusting power-grabber from getting an erection keeps me from succumbing to despair, maybe it will do the same for you.
Another thing you can do is quit Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and TikTok, as it has become quite clear that they intend to be the propaganda arm of the new regime. I’m just down to Bluesky, but I’m prepared to leave that, too, if needs must. Get the phone numbers and emails of the folks you want to stay in touch with, and delete your accounts. Keeping our minds clear is going to be hard enough as it is, without the manufactured outrage that is these services stock and trade.
Here’s a comic about mice with swords. Seems silly to post it now, but we also need silliness in our lives.
I’ve been reading Brian Jacques’s REDWALL series to my daughter, and while it is just as delightful as I remember from when I read it at her age, I can’t fail to notice that the girls don’t do anything as cool as what the boys do. This is lessoned somewhat in the later books, but it’s still a boy’s world. That got me thinking about a fantasy world full of female mice who are funny and clever and others who wield swords, and what if those two of those mousemaids were in love?
So, that’s COWSILK. I haven’t thought of a larger story with Cowsilk and Mayblossom yet, but I already love these characters, so I imagine one will come to me.
Over at my Patreon, there’s something completely different, an riff on Alison Bechdel and Hergé about being a trans woman in 2025. Maybe you should check it out.
