It’s getting darker earlier now, and I dread the oncoming year.
Let December be long. We will look back on 2024 as an excellent year before it soured in November. I am disengaging from the daily grind of politics for the transition period. I will not desist from thinking about politics, nor from talking or writing about politics, but I don’t want to squander my time and burn out my nervous system chasing every piece of transition gossip the way I did in 2016.
I assume Bob Woodward or some other fast-typing long-form journalist will have a book ready to go shortly after the Inauguration, and I can recap from there.
As a Beltway native, I am afraid of January 2025. The weekend preceding Inauguration Day in 2017, the streets of DC were chaotic and unsafe—racists and antiracists turned parts of the city into a street fight. There was a truck driving around with a big Trump logo blasting music, people were throwing firecrackers outside the Deploraball, and guys in skull masks were riding around on bicycles.
Worst of all, I had to look at the same picture of a broken Starbucks window a hundred times.
Will there be violence in the capital’s streets in January every four years? Once again I am scheduling my vacations to avoid political violence.
I’m a subdued person. I shuffle through crowds quietly, without incident. I don’t fantasize that I would ever be targeted for anything, but I don’t want to be a bystander, either. I wish to never be in front of a microphone testifying that I saw this MAGA or this activist doing whatever it is they plan on doing to each other. I fear that even being in the proximity of a news cycle opens people up to scrutiny and conspiracy, and I don’t want to be the subject of any man’s delusions.
I want what all quiet people want: shit to be normal and for people to leave me the hell alone.
These sentiments must seem at odds with what I am doing now: blogging about politics like it’s Huffington Post 2005. This lust for normalcy compels me to speak. I enjoy life more when I don’t feel like I need to keep up with the daily news cycle to make sure the President of the United States hasn’t riled up a group of domestic terrorists and invited them to fuck up my commute into the District by storming the Capitol.
Hell is empty and all the devils are scheduled to come to DC for another nightmarish weekend.
I would like to make a modest pitch: If you intend to go towards the fray, be safe. It will be cold. Wear thick clothes, something with a hood. Keep a spare phone battery.
And if you want to piss people off and have a fight, consider buying a “Trump is a Bitch” shirt or hoodie, available now at my spreadshop.
