Anger begets more anger.
Fear begets more fear, yes, but sharing your fears, now that’s different.
Sharing your fears, in a space of physical and psychological safety (itself a massive privilege), begets connection.
Below are some of my many fears. For real, the things I’ve been afraid of lately.
I share them because I wanna hear yours.
Because we’ve spent too much time lost in our own doom spirals of rage and consequence. Because we’ve forgotten about other people and their dumb irrational fears.
And if there’s one thing I know about people, it’s that we’re all scared as someone who just screamed, “oh my god this is terrifying!!”
More important than my particular list, honestly, is the realization that most every American person has fears that run roughshod through their minds, no matter whether they vote red, blue, or LGBTQ.
I asked my dad (Russian Soviet Emigre, all around good guy) if he had any wisdom to share for Both Are True readers. Here’s what he said, typo and all:
Do your part
Is the best country in the world needs you today
Anyways here goes. I love you, and may god bless our boops.
(after seeing the images above) I’m Jewish. Jewish people aren’t gonna be safe here.
Does Canada have one of those ‘exceptional artist’ programs for immigration and if so, would I qualify? Would their immigration officials like my Substack?
I’m Russian too. Trump’s administration will need ppl who speak Russian, so maybe I could convince them to spare us in exchange for my working to help translate stuff with Putin’s henchmen.
Maybe the Jews will be okay actually, seems like there are other groups he hates more.
But we’re in North Carolina which is split 50/50 and we’re in Asheville which is not. If there’s a war, Asheville will topple so fucking fast we cannot stay here.
Maybe none of this will happen maybe I’m being dramatic or sensitive but the fact that I’m having these thoughts at all, the very presence of them in my head, serious thoughts of making game plans readying for the worst possible shit to happen, that’s not good.
My parents often tell me that people in America feel the way they do because they don’t believe things will ever get that bad. But my parents do. They lived in Russia. They fled Russia. Their parents fled during WWII. They feel in their bones what could happen. And sure it probably won’t, but that’s a game of russian (heh) roulette I don’t think anyone wants to play.
We think about elections wrong. The vote isn’t for the person who you want to be president. The vote is for who will create in the people a more stable, less fearful, sense of things.
I’m genuinely really fucking scared. Maybe that makes me a libtard snowflake brainwashed by the MSM, but it doesn’t change how I feel.
It doesn’t change the fear I had the other day when, riding my bike, I got too close to a guy’s truck and he lowered his window and went “can I help you” but meant “do we have a fucking problem here.”
And how after that happened, I spent the rest of the bike ride thinking about the hebrew letter Aleph tattoo on my shoulder and how I should maybe get it removed.
A country under Trump in which giant swaths of the population - immigrants, Jews, anyone who isn’t white and straight, live in abject fear, each feeling some twisted variation of what I’m feeling - that’s awful.
But it’s just one half of the deal. A country under Harris will have all those people too, plus everyone else and their fears too. Oh and that second group? They’re around in the Trump presidency too!
I can’t even understand my own fears let alone try to grasp the fears of other people, but I know there’s a huge swath (!) of Americans who are terrified about Harris becoming president. People whose country does truly appear to be disappearing from under them.
I do not know their pain first hand and would not speak for them, but I do believe that if we talked through it, issue, by issue, that there’d be a single thing that we’d prefer Trump to be in charge on over Harris. And that includes Gaza.
If you’re reading this, you probably like my writing and maybe even like me.
And if you’re on the fence about who to vote for, or whether or not to vote, I am asking you seriously to, for my sake, vote for Harris.
Do your part
Is the best country in the world needs you today
comments
What fears make your brain run from itself?
What stories make going to the movies pointless cuz the shit happening inside your skull is far more spooky?
Regardless of who wins but for fuck’s sake I hope it’s Harris, regardless — we are stuck with each other.
So grab a seat and get cozy. Things are weird and getting weirder and we can’t control jack diddly doo. But if I love you and you love me, well then maybe we’ll make it through.
Also don’t be weird! If you’re weird or mean I’ll bonk you.
