if we try to push the bully off a cliff, we’re admonished for it

I don’t want to reach across the aisle to the peo­ple who are cheer­ing the de­struc­tion of Cal­i­for­nia.

I am sick of be­ing asked to com­pro­mise with these peo­ple. To un­der­stand them. To try to find com­mon ground. To have “open con­ver­sa­tions” with them. 

The ef­fort to do so is nev­er en­cour­aged from the op­po­site direction. 

All of this is akin to be­ing back in el­e­men­tary school and be­ing told by the teacher to work it out with the bul­ly. The bul­ly is not in­ter­est­ed. The bul­ly doesn’t care. The bul­ly only wants one thing – to make you as mis­er­able as pos­si­ble even if it’s ul­ti­mate­ly to their own detri­ment. You can­not love your op­pres­sors into giv­ing you your rights back. 

When North Car­oli­na was dev­as­tat­ed by the hur­ri­canes, I did not cheer. I did not celebrate. 

I was not ex­cit­ed. When red states are de­stroyed, when re­pub­li­can can­di­dates are at­tacked, when CEOs are un­alived, we are told we are all Amer­i­cans (a la­bel one can hard­ly be proud of these days) and “we are bet­ter than this.”

Not only are we not bet­ter than this, but for a very long time it has felt like only one side of the equa­tion is be­ing asked to be better. 

How much bet­ter can we be? It’s not mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in how these peo­ple see us, how they choose to vote, how they behave.

“When they go low, we go high” is one of the worst phras­es ever uttered.
 

Also

I told some­one yes­ter­day that I nev­er liked The Flint­stones and when I ex­plained why I spec­i­fied that the only rea­son was Fred.

I fuck­ing hate Fred Flint­stone and think he’s a mas­sive asshole. 

Just the ab­solute worst. 

And if he ex­ist­ed to­day, he’d al­most cer­tain­ly wear a MAGA hat.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2025 Emi­ly Duchaine. Foto swiped from.

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