My wife and I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. If you have ever been to Chapel Hill, home of the first public University, UNC Chapel Hill, driven down one of the main streets, Franklin Street, with its large houses and beautiful, tree-lined streets, you might imagine that while we may not be rich, we are at least what is sometimes called comfortable. The median home price in twenty twenty-five is estimated to be between 500,000 and 600,000 dollars. Not millionaire mansions, but stately, well kept homes, subtly recalling an earlier time here in the South.
In imagining our comfortable, if not wealthy life, you would however, be mistaken. While the zip code that we live in places our mailing address within the boundaries of Chapel Hill, our house – a fine, if modest three-bedroom home – sits within a small, wooded area on a street with only eight other houses, approximately six miles just west of those grand homes and tree-lined streets. Apart from not having to deal with the daily traffic and bustle within the city of Chapel Hill – that swells each fall through to late spring with the arrival of students – there are many advantages to not living in the middle of Chapel Hill.
One key fiscal advantage of course is that our taxes are lower that they would be if our same fine but modest house were located within the boundaries of the city. But for us the central advantage is that we can walk out the door of our house and stroll into the woods that sit at the edge of our acre-and-a-half property. There we can follow a well-worn path through the woods – pushing aside low branches, dodging spider webs, and crossing a small creek – to a small, pond – Heron Pond – where on some days you might actually see a Heron resting in one of the trees that circle the pond. You will certainly hear the many varieties of birds – Cardinals, Hawks, Pine Warblers, Carolina Wrens, Tufted Titmice, and more – that inhabit those scruffy woods, populated with cedars, pines, oaks, holly trees and others that we have yet to identify.
It was recently while on one such walk that I was pondering the current political situation now facing us in the United States. I had spent the morning, as I almost always do, reading Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson’s articulate, incisive, insightful Substack, followed by a scan of the many Substack writers that I follow, most of whom bring home, in sometimes cool, reasoned tones – Anand Giridharadas (The Ink), Politico Joe, Isn’t that Rich – and sometimes articulate, angry tones – Jo Jo from Jerz, Politics Girl – the threatened state of our Democracy under Trump and the Republicans. As I strolled around the edge of the pond, what struck me was not, however, the sickness that our polity was afflicted with, but how serene and peaceful it was in these woods.
My wife and I are both retired – although she has taken a part-time job for “a little extra spending money for vacations” – and while we are more or less living on a fixed income (with modest, employer-based programs as well) we easily meet all of our expenses and still manage to put money away. One might say that our lives are comfortable. Not by the standards of the truly wealthy, nor even by the standards of the upper-middle class, but we have a home, two cars, health insurance, and maintain the health of our two dogs. In other words, we are okay – not without a worry or a care in the world – but okay. Doing fine one might even say.
So what was troubling me on that afternoon walk in the woods? It was the ease with which one can focus on one’s immediate comfort and forget that our country is on its way to becoming an Autocracy, or what Carole Cadwalladr calls a Broligarchy. How easy it is to forget to care about all of that. How easy it is to forget that there is so much to be angry about, so much that is wrong that is going on every day, all around us. It is that this complacent attitude, this “but my life’s okay” feeling that will, I believe, ultimately lead us to lose what some of us most cherish.
It isn’t that there isn’t anyone paying attention to what’s happening; many of us are. One need only stroll over to Substack and see post after post documenting the many wrongs of the Trump/Republican administration, posts filled with facts that work to counter the daily lies coming out of the White House, coming from all of many “Secretaries” of this administration; pick one, any one, they all lie and fawn. There are posts offering fact-based, countervailing narratives to TikTok posts from the MAGA faithful. Some of these are quiet, calm and reasoned, while still filled with a WTF incredulity at how the ability to see the truth has been so eroded that being “right” – where right mostly means ready to spout the most recent MAGA prattle about how the Democrats should stop whining, that Trump won “fair and square” – how that bland blindness will always win over actually living in the real world. And many are filled with a very, very angry, vitriol. So it is not exactly attentional blindness that worries me. Plenty of people are paying attention.
But as happened to those whose world became constricted to the world according to Fox News and who become lost in a fog of lies, those of us who spend perhaps too much time reading liberal Substack posts, it is possible that we have come to believe that we are seeing the way large segments of the population feel about the sorry state of our country. And while perhaps there is reason to think that this may be true – current polling suggests that Trump is “underwater” in the ratings, meaning only that more of those surveyed don’t approve of what he and his administration are doing than approve, underwater is not equivalent to about to sink. Look around, what real countervailing power exists to the Trump’s destructive juggernaut? Is there actually a way to sink the ship?
And among those who “disapprove” how many are ready to walk away from the routine and comfort of their daily lives and risk everything to stand up to Trump’s version of Autocracy and Constitutional treason? Americans love their comforts and convenience as we know. How many of us who, in spite of our recognition that Jeff Bezos is a billionaire toady, coward who, to protect himself and his fortune from Trump’s wrath, bent his knee – no WP endorsement for Kamala during the campaign, no publishing the effect of Trump’s tariffs on Amazon’s prices -- how many have stopped buying things daily through Amazon, or cancelled their Amazon Prime subscriptions? Are we ready to forgo being “able to get it by tomorrow”, or to not have to pay for shipping? Are these the things that really matter?
Of course there are those of us who can pat ourselves on the back for resisting the impulse to buy a Tesla, providing a small jab to Trump’s financial Harvester in Chief, Elon Musk who has been busy culling the government of “waste and fraud.” But walking away from Amazon or deciding not to buy a Tesla feel more like gestures than like a deep commitment to stand with others and offer true resistance.
In a way, what is happening in this country and the effects it has on our daily lives, is akin to climate change. I often suspect that some (much) of the skepticism about climate change springs from the fact that you can’t really see it happening; not the way you can see that summer brings the heat, autumn the falling leaves, winter the cold and the falling snow, and in spring, the flowers still bloom. Where, many may ask, is the evidence? Of course, those who live in areas that have been impacted – more frequent tornadoes, stronger hurricanes, more and more intense rainfall, or its opposite, drought – some of these folks may believe. Which just underscores the idea that if it doesn’t touch me, doesn’t impact my life in a tangible, unpredicted way, I may be disinclined to think about it, or worse, not believe it’s real.
Perhaps it’s the same with all of the ripples outward from Trump’s many executive orders. Sure, we stood at the roadside, or gathered in large crowds in cities around the country during “Hands Off”, and there are those who continue in ways large and small to protest; all things that may make us feel engaged, but none of them are the equivalent of crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge; and how many of us would; how many of us would risk real physical harm to express our belief in the need for change?
Perhaps most important of all, do any of us have any idea of what change – change that could happen now, not in 2026, or 2028 – what that change looks like, what form it might take? The people cannot impeach the president, and Congress, as it is currently, will not. And impeachment – even if successful – would not stop this dark avalanche of evil, it would only pass it on to the next in line.
So maybe the sensible thing to do is engage in these small acts that express our discontent and, at a deeper level, our grief, at the dissolution of our Democracy, but to hold on to the small comforts that remain, that make life in these New United States, these truly divided states, livable, and dream of a different tomorrow in a future some of us may not see.