Following the Trump takeover of Washington, D.C., my regular morning runs have become an inventory of the missing unhoused people, gone from their usual places.
She’s gone. She was by the Washington Monument.
He’s gone. He sat in a wheelchair, by the Metro.
Gone, gone, gone. So many gone. Have they been shipped to El Salvador? Sudan? Louisiana? They have committed no crime, no crime but homelessness. Poverty. Mental illness. In no true reading of a law book are these actually crimes. They simply have nowhere else to go.
Until the troops came. God, the troops are so young. I see them on my runs, early in the morning. I study their faces. Do they know what this country was, not so long ago? A democracy. An imperfect democracy where you could work on making it more of a democracy.
So this is the context in which White House hatelord Stephen Miller sneered at pro-democracy protesters shouting down his press conference as “elderly hippies,” “stupid white hippies,” who “all need to go home and take a nap because they’re over 90 years old.”
My dear elderly white hippies, please keep it going. We love you so much. Take all the naps you need, friends. We all should. This will be a long fight and we’re best served by people willing to take care of themselves and fight to the end.
And if you think calling us names is going to make us go away? You’re wrong.
Domestic violence is terrorism. While anyone can be a target, and anyone can be a perpetrator, domestic violence’s primary form is the domination of individual men over individual women. But the individual stories that make up domestic violence are not one-offs, or even a pattern: they are a systemic expression of male domination. Domestic violence is patriarchy, most literally weaponized at the most elemental building block of society: within the human relationship of family.
I’m going to start with some definitions, and then discuss how they fall short. Finally, I’d like to examine how acknowledging domestic violence as terrorism further elaborates upon the dangerous, unqualified nature of Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense.
I do need to disclaimer these definitions of domestic violence and terrorism to follow, because at the time of writing (January 22), we are three days into the second Trump administration and it seems that any moment the Department of Justice will no longer have an Office on Violence Against Women, or if it does, this page will become really fucking weird. So, too, the FBI website is about to become a new outpost of RT or some such, and one can only imagine what definition of terrorism is going to slide onto this website when the top priority of the authoritarian president and wack-a-doodle FBI director is ‘RETRIBUTION.’ (And how long until someone is punished either directly by the state or by agents operating on its behalf for writing a paragraph such as this? Oh well, part of the way autocracy works is fear on the part of the people, including self-censorship, and I will be calling for free speech from the rafters until I’m hauled out!)
At the time of writing, here’s the definition of domestic violence from the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, quoted, and with a screen shot below for posterity:
Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
And also at the time of writing, the definition of terrorism from the FBI before inevitably Trump 2.0 changes it, again with a screen shot to help future us remember ‘the way we were’: International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
The domination of men over women in abusive relationships is absolutely a “violent, criminal act committed … to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, or social … nature.” In fact, keeping women in line with rigid gender roles in which men reign supreme is one of the chief outcomes of domestic violence. It’s an ideological goal absolutely supported by a toxic culture. I’d argue the only reason why this no-brainer isn’t already recognized is because of, you guessed it, systemic sexism that has permeated societies for literal ages.
Which brings me to the latest news of Pete Hegseth, that allegedly alcoholic and misogynistic (both allegations backed by piles of eyewitness accounts and unsavory quotes that have been reported in the media!) television anchor who has never managed a large, sophisticated organization. He is incredibly unqualified to run the Department of Defense, and in normal times within our democracy, when both parties had a commitment to vetting nominees regardless of how much power they held, his nomination would not remain a going concern.
But these are not normal times within our democracy.
Now Mr. Hegseth’s former sister-in-laws says he abused his second wife. The other disqualifications were disqualifying. This is even more disqualification, and perhaps the most of the most disqualification. The Department of Defense is intimately engaged in the battle against terrorism. If we accept that domestic violence is terrorism (as we should), then it follows that these allegations, if true, mean that Mr. Hegseth has no place in a position that is at least supposed to fight for the ideals of freedom, justice, and security.
For the past two weeks, nearly every conversation I’ve had starts with:
How are you doing?
Well, of course we’re all doing terrible, generally speaking. There is a looming fascist dictatorship. It’s a variant of the doom feeling before throwing up is certain:
It’s coming. Nothing can be done.
Some days the check-in is cathartic. Other days, it’s draining. And throughout these conversations, even conversations occurring on the same days, my answers change.
Because sometimes I get really sad. I’m human.
But mostly I’m okay. Fighting authoritarianism is something I’ve thought seriously about for several years at this point. And I’ve been studying and working to address an important segment of this issue—the anti-abortion movement is an anti-democracy movement, full stop—for years.
So, I feel equipped to fight in my own corner, and I have resources to do so. And, I’m not afraid to keep fighting if and as crackdowns on activists get more intense than anything previously seen. And I do believe that’s going to happen. While I’m not seeking to martyr, and I hope this is not necessary, I’m willing to make sacrifices in service of my commitment to living in a democracy where there is rule of law, freedom of expression, and equality for all.
Because I’m a motherfucking American, dammit.
I’m not jejune about our collective predicament. What’s ahead will be much uglier than the first time around with Mr. Dictator. He’s going to go for it. Some people are going to be rounded up and put in jail. Others are going to die. He will simultaneously seek to dismantle the government and replace it with a retribution chamber in the mirror of his own whims. This is what authoritarian governments do. And that is what our looming collective future is.
I’m not really joking when my husband calls out to ask what the hell I’m listening to, and I answer, Pussy Riot, while I can still listen to it without going to jail.
But also, I want to share the most wonderful thing from the past two weeks. I have drastically changed my relationship to social media, as well as news consumption.
Acknowledging the concerning matter of Mr. Musk and setting it aside from its own explication, all social media has created an echo chamber that has promoted the rise of authoritarianism, and the division of neighbor from neighbor. It has also created feeds that are, frankly, a drag. I’m mourning with people all day long, and I don’t want to do it on the Internet as well.
Moreover, dictatorships depend on overwhelming you. The news cycle is purposefully made awful to overwhelm you. I don’t want to consume news through social media anymore. There is no value in having my news curated by for-profit monsters in bed with the regime. It distorts my views and makes it more difficult to understand what is going on.
I’m also stepping back from a robust engagement I had with news alerts. I am and will always be what my mom calls a “news junkie,” but I’m relying more on actual newspapers and occasional check-ins on television. I don’t need to doom scroll anymore.
Protecting my strategic headspace from the steady drip-drip of outrage gives me the space I need to fortify myself for what’s ahead. It keeps me from inadvertently colluding with the algorithms built for our domination. And, it’s giving me more space for reading books and writing for myself.
So, if you want to find me on the internet, erintothemax.com is more likely to be the spot than social media. If you want to, go ahead and subscribe to get emails each time I post, and we can do this together.
A mechanism for forcibly removing women of color from leadership positions
An attack on non-government power structures — the academy and the corporation — during a moment of consolidating government power within the hands of anti-democracy forces
Racist butt hurt
The concerted attack on former Harvard president Claudine Gay did not merely arise in a congressional hearing, and unfurl from there. Rather, her enemies (and enemies of DEI) had been waiting patiently for a flashpoint in order to demonstrate control over the academy.
DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is a series of efforts that organizations may make in order to increase diversity, advance equity, and promote inclusive atmospheres for everyone. DEI is not, as radical reactionaries would have you believe, a zero-sum game where white people are victimized. In fact, embracing and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just the right thing to do (yes, I subscribe to the theory of the late Senator Paul Wellstone that “we all do better when we all do better”), it is also a strategic advantage. In The Journal of Infectious Diseasesarticle “The Science and Value of Diversity: Closing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Inclusion and Diversity” on scientific research, for example:
The benefits of engaging individuals with a wide swath of perspectives have great potential to improve our capacity to innovate. Why? Overwhelming evidence suggests that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogeneous groups on complex tasks, including improved problem solving, increased innovation, and more-accurate predictions—all of which lead to better performance and results when a diverse team is tasked to approach a given problem.
This isn’t rocket science, though. Kids are better equipped for the real world if they were part of a diverse student body in school. Workplaces are better equipped to meet the demands of the market if they reflect the diverse communities within the market. And our civic institutions are most responsive and make their best decisions when there are a diversity of identities and perspectives represented.
I noticed over the past week both an op-ed in Washington Post calling for the resignation of Vice President Kamala Harris (because, supposedly, she is unpopular, though … isn’t it Biden whose unpopularity is the issue most of interest to the upcoming election), and another urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to go. For the good of the country, supposedly. Naw. This is the same crap as all the other anti-DEI crap swirling around. There are organized conservatives who want to see all the women of color in leadership resign or be forced out.
Another piece of this anti-DEI crusade involves steps being taken to minimize, delegitimize, and take control over corporations and academic institutions, which in aggregate overwhelmingly do take steps toward DEI (because it is good for their bottom lines, and for the education they provide). Right-wing actors like Christopher Rufo. In his op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, “How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out,” Rufo writes:
While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning. If America is to reform its academic institutions, the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci called this approach the “war of position,” a grueling form of trench warfare in which each concept, structure and institution must be challenged to change the culture.
Let’s back up. The world is experiencing a shift toward authoritarian models, and the United States is no exception. There is currently a man leading in the polls for the presidency who has promised to be a dictator on day one, who has promised a “bloodbath” if he loses, and recently claimed immigrants are not human. In other words our own home-grown fascist leader. Democracy and the individual freedoms that imperfect model helps advance have never been in this level of peril in the history of the United States.
We cannot consider the anti-DEI crusade in a vacuum, as somehow divorced from the threat to authoritarianism in the United States. Rather, Trump-friendly forces are seeking to simultaneously gut higher learning and take control of the private workings of businesses. Seen in this light, the efforts become scarier still. This is about consolidation of right-wing authoritarian power.
The anti-DEI crusade taps into racist butt hurt as a pretext for kicking non-white men, and especially women of color, out of leadership positions and gutting our institutions at a perilous moment for our democracy. It’s terrifying.
Erin Matson 