Your exhaustion is the price of consciousness that hasn't capitulated. And while I can't make it lighter, I can name it for what it is: honorable. Not in some grandiose sense, but in the quiet sense of keeping faith with what's real even when keeping faith costs you everything comfortable.
The exhaustion is real. The weight is heavy. And you're carrying it anyway.
That's enough. You're enough. Even exhausted. Especially exhausted.
Seeing clearly and holding to ones’ convictions is one thing - courageous, lonely & deeply uncomfortable, I agree. Finding a way to bridge the chasm is quite another. Surely that should be the aspiration. Otherwise we reinforce the fragmentation we so clearly see. I’m not suggesting we dilute the seeing or compromise on values but simultaneously hold compassion for another’s ’limitations/constraints/context’ and the steadfast courage to hold onto our values. Where the blindness is wilful it’s a waste of energy, but where is it psychological defence we need to practice staying in conversation. Perhaps that’s part of the pushing uphill you speak of?
I wonder sometimes how comfortable the choice to not see is. Not that it can be the discomfort of the morally conscious. But I would imagine it as terrifying, deep down. The sort of thing that, suppressed rather than repressed, leads to manic efforts at anything that distracts from the vague unease the deliberate unseeing might perhaps generate. Recall the extreme in bad choosers, Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost: "Myself am hell/Which way I fly am hell." He started with superficial comfort too, in his assumption that he could outwit the Almighty. One need not be religious to see the analogy to less dramatic bad choosers. That superficial comfort is deceptive, deceiving chiefly the self. And Sisyphus' discomfort is by contrast wholesome and good, like doing a hard physical job thoroughly. ( I was raised by a card-carrying Calvinist, apologies. I will see myself out now.)
We live and struggle on many levels. With loved ones across a dinner table might be the most difficult. I’ll keep you in my thoughts.
I have wondered what family conversations occurred during the Civil War and Revolutionary War. I hope this country finds its solution before more violence and division.
Well over 65 years ago my three high school buddies and I would often wonder about our estrangement from our classmates in our highly Republican (Steve Shadegg's daughter was in my class) school. The paragraph here starting with: "And that's uncomfortable." lays it our well. I might add that the prose in this essay rises to eloquent, even poetic, levels. The existential stance is more common than people admit, perhaps because it does challenge their certitudes. Last night my wife and I watched a documentary at a Hispanic/Chicano cultural coop in which our story around housing in a segregated Phoenix was highlighted; it was great to see so many activists and artists sharing that struggle which has returned with a vengeance.
Even from the compatatively safe distance of Australia, this is hard to handle. It's one thing to recognise that the US is over and that whatever replaces it may take a time to arrive. Quite another to work through the consequences, and worry about "will it happen here"
Fortunately very few of my US friends and relations are Trumpists, but there some where I haven't dared to look too hard.
As the big US companies capitulate or collude, I'm cutting ties one at a time. Twitter/X and Amazon were easy, Google harder (still haven't rooted it out complete), Facebook still too hard to break completely. But Apple, which i've followed loyally for 40 years, hardest of all.
I think back to my last visit to the US in 2019, and realise I may never go there again.
So, keep up the good fight, but mostly keep the truth alive and find a way to survive it.
Cheers. We have too many Pollyannas and too few Cassandras. Amazing essay and made me and I imagine many others feel connected as a community of Sisyphuses.
Mike! May I ask whether you live in a Red City and/or a Red State?
That environment, in itself, would be isolating!
I live in Los Angeles!
What a surprise!
Los Angeles is well-named!
City of Angels! It’s heavenly!
I am intimately aware of what you describe, and thank you for putting it so cogently. All I can do now is wait. I am never tempted not to see.
I feel the weight and isolation of knowing. Every. Single. Day. It's utterly exhausting.
Your exhaustion is the price of consciousness that hasn't capitulated. And while I can't make it lighter, I can name it for what it is: honorable. Not in some grandiose sense, but in the quiet sense of keeping faith with what's real even when keeping faith costs you everything comfortable.
The exhaustion is real. The weight is heavy. And you're carrying it anyway.
That's enough. You're enough. Even exhausted. Especially exhausted.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Seeing clearly and holding to ones’ convictions is one thing - courageous, lonely & deeply uncomfortable, I agree. Finding a way to bridge the chasm is quite another. Surely that should be the aspiration. Otherwise we reinforce the fragmentation we so clearly see. I’m not suggesting we dilute the seeing or compromise on values but simultaneously hold compassion for another’s ’limitations/constraints/context’ and the steadfast courage to hold onto our values. Where the blindness is wilful it’s a waste of energy, but where is it psychological defence we need to practice staying in conversation. Perhaps that’s part of the pushing uphill you speak of?
Yes. There's an old rhyme:
To think that two and two are four/
And neither five nor three/
The heart of man has long been sore/
And long is like to be.
I wonder sometimes how comfortable the choice to not see is. Not that it can be the discomfort of the morally conscious. But I would imagine it as terrifying, deep down. The sort of thing that, suppressed rather than repressed, leads to manic efforts at anything that distracts from the vague unease the deliberate unseeing might perhaps generate. Recall the extreme in bad choosers, Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost: "Myself am hell/Which way I fly am hell." He started with superficial comfort too, in his assumption that he could outwit the Almighty. One need not be religious to see the analogy to less dramatic bad choosers. That superficial comfort is deceptive, deceiving chiefly the self. And Sisyphus' discomfort is by contrast wholesome and good, like doing a hard physical job thoroughly. ( I was raised by a card-carrying Calvinist, apologies. I will see myself out now.)
Mike! You hit the target 🎯!
IMHO the vast majority of people just want “to go about their daily lives in peace!”
Lengthy conversations tear at the fragile fabric of their existence!
No pieces, please! Just peace!
Perhaps they see more than you know! They just don’t want the constant negativity & upset!
I was asked by a highly educated, liberal person to stop sending her info on the Resistance!
She understood everything quite well! She agreed with the Resistance!!
However, the constant drumbeat of the attack on our democracy depressed her deeply!
While she was fully informed all on her own, she needed distance to survive it!
We live and struggle on many levels. With loved ones across a dinner table might be the most difficult. I’ll keep you in my thoughts.
I have wondered what family conversations occurred during the Civil War and Revolutionary War. I hope this country finds its solution before more violence and division.
Well over 65 years ago my three high school buddies and I would often wonder about our estrangement from our classmates in our highly Republican (Steve Shadegg's daughter was in my class) school. The paragraph here starting with: "And that's uncomfortable." lays it our well. I might add that the prose in this essay rises to eloquent, even poetic, levels. The existential stance is more common than people admit, perhaps because it does challenge their certitudes. Last night my wife and I watched a documentary at a Hispanic/Chicano cultural coop in which our story around housing in a segregated Phoenix was highlighted; it was great to see so many activists and artists sharing that struggle which has returned with a vengeance.
Yes and . . . The next question, inextricably connected with one’s willingness to face the truth, is what one does with one’s knowledge of the truth.
This is my relatively short, frustratingly inconclusive (I think now, after a reread) take on the matter: https://redbrown.substack.com/p/a-debouche.
I recommend the Orwell essay and Wallace Shawn play I mention toward the end. They’re very illuminating. You might have read or seen them already.
There was also a recent NYT Ethicist rumination on point (subscription required): “My Liberal Friend Won’t Protest. Do I drop her?” (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/magazine/magazine-email/friend-protest-liberal-ethics.html).
And this just today: https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/there-are-no-easy-fights-in-the-struggle
Even from the compatatively safe distance of Australia, this is hard to handle. It's one thing to recognise that the US is over and that whatever replaces it may take a time to arrive. Quite another to work through the consequences, and worry about "will it happen here"
Fortunately very few of my US friends and relations are Trumpists, but there some where I haven't dared to look too hard.
As the big US companies capitulate or collude, I'm cutting ties one at a time. Twitter/X and Amazon were easy, Google harder (still haven't rooted it out complete), Facebook still too hard to break completely. But Apple, which i've followed loyally for 40 years, hardest of all.
I think back to my last visit to the US in 2019, and realise I may never go there again.
So, keep up the good fight, but mostly keep the truth alive and find a way to survive it.
What was the ancient Greek word you describe?
Sorry, that was perhaps a little poorly written. I mean Cassandra's myth. I should have said "words".
Cheers. We have too many Pollyannas and too few Cassandras. Amazing essay and made me and I imagine many others feel connected as a community of Sisyphuses.