I haven’t been a regular Bible reader since my childhood years in Sunday School, when I relished the challenge of memorizing verses and reciting them before the whole church. But when I sat down to write this note to you, three words came to mind: “guard your heart.” Was this a dormant Bible verse resurfacing? I looked it up, and found this:
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
-Proverbs 4:23, New International Version
This moment that we’re all living through is so bad that it seems surreal. Each day brings fresh evidence of cruelty, corruption, carelessness, and capitulation. Now is the time to guard our hearts from taking in the ugliness around us, from absorbing the poison on the arrows and letting it infect our spirits.
Scenes of political carnival and carnage proliferate as Elon Musk adjusts his midnight MAGA hat. Many of us know federal workers who have lost their jobs or been threatened with job loss even as the country is being told that government programs are rife with fraud and civil service employees are a useless drain on the nation’s resources. Many of us know people who have been deported or are under threat of deportation, even as the country is being told that immigrants (of various legal categories) are criminals, or freeloaders, or have no rightful place here. Likely, we will soon see horrifying images of the cost of American abandonment in Ukraine.
While immigrants are bearing the brunt of direct government action, and farmers are starting to feel the funding freeze, many other people are facing a full-frontal war of words. The top-down attacks on so-called DEI in favor of a so-called meritocracy are fronts for targeting people in positions of responsibility or authority who do not fit the white, male, etc. assemblage of traits favored by this administration. “DEI” is now in use as an unsubtle code word for not-white-male. As such, it has become a slur applied to more than half of our society. Delete the acronym from a slew of disparaging phrases and you see the clear meaning behind them: "DEI vice president" means Black female vice president, "DEI mayor" means Black mayor, DEI-caused plane crash means the pilot was a woman, gay, or had a disability. DEI + anyone/anything means undeserving, incompetent, and substandard. Through this short-hand and through other actions (such as re-hiring a DOGE staffer who has identified as a racist in online posts), the Trump administration is signaling that they have no problem with sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, or Confederate generals, or with casting aspersions on a wide swath of the American populace. To the contrary, they seem to be telling us that they relish these things. This all hurts. But we cannot let the mean words in. We cannot let distressing images stick. Feeling injured or demoralized does not help us fight back.
We must guard our hearts against the onslaught of arrows. Turning to one another for support can help. I had a long conversation with an old friend over the weekend. We talked about her Irish American ancestors, my African American ancestors, and our family histories of surviving famine, slavery, poverty, and prejudice. We talked about examples of moral movements in the past and whether they can serve as models for an effective opposition movement today. To a certain extent, yes, based on the findings of political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks. Organized, sustained protest on the part of 3.5% of the population is the formula for toppling autocratic regimes non-violently in the modern era. (So, prepare to protest!)
However, the kind of appeal to empathy and lofty principles that characterized the Civil Rights movement hasn’t done the trick this time around. Millions voted for Donald Trump despite his felony convictions and questionable character, and this includes many evangelical Christians whose professed model is Jesus. Those among us who do public-facing work beyond our own ideological cul-de-sacs need to find other means of communicating the danger that Trump and the Trumpettes (as my mother calls them) pose. If the voting majority won’t reject MAGA out of moral outrage, what will move them? Economic arguments? Material proof of deterioration in their quality of life? Are there other pushes or pulls? We need to find answers to these questions and leverage what we learn.
In the meantime, we need to guard our hearts so we can outlast this storm, give and receive love, and stay true to old-fashioned American values that used to be taken for granted: respect, justice, equality, opportunity, the rule of law, and international cooperation.
Some thoughts my friend and I had for actions this month:
-Send notes of encouragement to people who are speaking out and standing up. It takes tremendous courage to publicly fight this power grab.
-Give your financial support to organizations that are defending vulnerable people, the earth, and democratic values. (Examples that have been coming across my desk and screens lately: Earth Justice, Emily’s List, MoveOn, Indivisible, ACLU, African American Policy Forum).
-Withdraw your vocal and financial support from organizations and public figures that are advancing this administration’s cruel rhetoric and callous agenda.
-Send a Valentine to your Canadian friends and ask if they have an extra house key. (Bonus! If Trump really does try to take over Canada, you’ll be ready to support your friends.)
Media outlets that my friend and I are watching (see last month’s post for more):
Pod Save America (podcast)
The Bulwark (podcast & Substack)
Democracy Now (news & interviews)
The Rachel Maddow Show (news & commentary)
Short reading recommendations:
Robert Reich, “What You Can Do: Revised and Expanded,” Feb. 6, 2025.
River Page, “What DEI Isn’t,” The Free Press, Feb. 11, 2025. (Caveat: I am often frustrated with The Free Press these days, but this piece is worth checking out given how unrelentingly critical the publication has been of DEI.)
Rebecca Solnit, “The Nature of Our Power: A Conversation with Political Scientist Erica Chenowith,” Feb. 8, 2025.
My favorite places to get a cup of love (a.k.a. hot chocolate):
In Cambridge, MA: Flour
In Bozeman, MT: Wild Crumb
In Ann Arbor, MI: Cafe Zola
Thank you for your heartening words and guidance Tiya. Love and strength to you.
Perfect.