Nancy Braus, a retired independent bookseller, is a longtime activist.
GUILFORD-It is August. I am not the only person who is feeling rage daily, usually many times a day.
It takes very little to trigger this outrage - just a look at the arrogance of the Trumpers, the killing off of the civil rights of anyone who is not a white, straight Christian who is just fine with fascism, of the passivity of the majority of political figures and institutions in the face of the certain move to fascism.
I have been out on my local highway bridge nearly every Friday holding a sign that states "First they came for the immigrants, but I said not today motherf*ker." In front of our only small-town federal building, the post office, every Saturday for almost two years, I've stood with a group of committed pro-Palestine friends with the sign that says "Starving children is never okay."
So we decided to take a three-day break and visit a beloved beach town an easy drive from home, and try to claim a slice of "normal."
The joy of the surf. Taking a long walk on the beach. Staying in a recently discovered, always surprisingly friendly motel. And a few moments of using my privilege to travel, to relax, to do what all the lifestyle gurus - and even some great political voices - say: Take care of yourself.
* * *
But if you are a person who possesses the slightest bit of the empathy (a quality that the Trumpers are openly disparaging and even trying to eliminate) and even if you take a short news break, it is not possible to forget the suffering being meted out to millions in the name of - what?
Making America great? Reanimating the Confederacy because to the most racist, the Civil War never ended? Putting those uppity women back in their place? Ditto for Blacks, gays, and you know the list?
That suffering is certainly not in service of any of the values that millions of us hold dear: kindness, fairness, justice, acceptance, or any other values that are out of vogue with the fascists.
Our country is deeply flawed, changing for the worse every day, run by a twisted, hideous egomaniac in the throes of some bizarre mental deterioration and who has a pretty poor grasp of the real world. For those of us who have committed ourselves to staying here, it feels impossible to compartmentalize our lives.
I just can't look away from the intentional starvation campaign in Gaza. I am not able to forget about the awful abuse of the many ICE kidnapping victims - held with no charge, trial, lawyer, or conviction.
On the very ride to the beach, one of my closest friends, whose young family is brown skinned, told me she is looking at emigrating if she can - to a far-distant place.
How do I take those images and the knowledge, put them away, and play?
* * *
And yet how do I not do this?
Life is meant to be lived in the moment. I am still making the best dinners I can for friends, worrying about my neurotic dog, loving my grandchildren and awaiting a new one, appreciating the nature in my beloved Vermont, hiking daily in the woods, going to a local organic farm weekly to collect our CSA's bounty.
I have been to therapists to try to sort out how we can move away from a deep and abiding depression about how these heartless men treat the natural world, those with less power and more melanin, anyone who is poor, anyone who dares to claim an unacceptable identity.
Mostly, they suggest finding ways to escape the moment: meditation and other methods of focusing on something else.
Pharmaceuticals? Herbs? A rubber hammer?
* * *
During the travesty of Trump's first term, I went to Berlin, because I needed to see for myself how Hitler's bunker could have become the vibrant, rebellious city it is.
The monument to the murdered Jews of Europe consisted of about 2,500 granite blocks that stood for tombs, and the very wavy ground they stood on.
That is what we are dealing with, and why there is no escape: The ground before us requires vigilance for every step we take.
Fascism does this to us: It works on deep fear and uncertainty about what will happen tomorrow.
That's something even the most beautiful beach cannot blank out.
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