Thought I'd Never See It

Lately, I'm seeing things I never thought I'd see in government: the blatant attacks on immigrants, both documented and undocumented, the McCarthyist rooting out of "DEI" in every institution, which is just code for purging black and brown employees and influences. It's like a fire hose of incompetence, hate, and grift. We make all these jokes and memes to deal with the madness of it all, the absurdity of an administration that seems to have only two settings - either stepping on the Sideshow Bob rake every day or pursuing the most degrading violations of rights. The fact that we're arguing online and in Congress whether the Constitution applies to noncitizens is insanity. 

"It's like a fire hose of incompetence, hate, and grift."

I'm also seeing unbelievable things in social discourse. All this cultish devotion to a clearly corrupt administration trickles down into excuses for all sorts of hate speech. I'm old enough to remember the early days of the internet, chat rooms and MySpace, when it was like the Final Frontier online, an entirely new territory with no rules, and your truly never new what you might find in some of those threads. I remember the first moderators trying to tame that landscape and kicking people out left and right for abusive language. Now, I've had to quit Twitter for good. I used to cherish it for all the teachers and writers and publishing events, but it's become a hellscape. I stopped posting any text or pictures at all when it became clear that the app was becoming a word and image farm for AI. For a while after that, I just sort of lurked and followed my friends, but then, invariably, every thread led to the most racist nonsense and hateful speech, so much that it messed with my spirit just to see it. A part of me wanted to post back, to make some protest, but now I think the racists and bigots can have it. Anybody left there who thinks otherwise, I salute your tenacity, but for me, it's not the altar I want to sacrifice my mental health on. 

AP photo by Andy Mannis

And it's not just limited to the Twitter streets, the real streets are getting rougher as well. I'm seeing more aggressive behavior towards immigrants and people of color, and not just on the social medias. Sometimes it's overt, and that's easy enough to call out, but lately, especially among young men, I'm seeing them wearing a mask in public, one that has an outward respectability, but also slips sometimes. As a teacher, I've had to deal with a few young men who think they're talking in a code that I don't understand, but one that's not very hard to crack. The social climate has gotten so charged with anger, tribalism, and superiority that it's harder than ever to judge someone's motives. I worry for some members of my family who are either immigrants trying to sort out their status or Black folks trying to navigate through hostile territory. On the one hand, I'm glad to live where I do, in a city and area that's cosmopolitan enough to understand common public decorum and diverse enough that people have to watch what they say and do. On the other hand, it's still Florida, and I'm not a fool. 

I'm seeing judges intimidated and arrested, immigrants arrested at their citizenship interviews or snatched off street corners for speaking out against the current administration. There's talk about suspending habeas corpus, about ICE agents invading schools and churches, and long-standing universities threatened with sanctions or outright appropriation if they refuse to bend to the ruling party. It's like we've gotten all the dictatorship trappings I was told would happen if we went down the slippery slope of socialized health care, except we never got the health care.

But there's something else I'm seeing that I never expected. I'm seeing town halls in the dead center of the reddest districts and states full of angry white folks yelling at their elected representatives to speak up and oppose the administration, even from within the same party. I'm seeing Republican voters barking at Republican senators about bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia home, and sometimes getting escorted or even dragged out for their efforts. I wonder if those people ever pictured themselves on the receiving end of the silencing power of the state. Some of the same people who clamored to get Kaepernick fired for kneeling are shouting about government overreach and human rights, and I'm here for it. I'm seeing corporations using the same greed that got them filthy rich to expose the damage that the tariffs are causing to the economy, threatening to post transparent pricing and warning the same people who voted for tariffs in the first place exactly what that vote will cost them. 

"Some of the same people who clamored to get Kaepernick fired for kneeling are shouting about government overreach and human rights, and I'm here for it."

I'm also seeing the same app that lawmakers wanted to ban because of some Communist threat being used to spread information and resistance. For every new dance I see on TikTok, I see at least five reels attacking government corruption and abuse. The tone might be cute or caustic or downright scathing, but people are using their talents and technology to resist, and being smart about it, too. It might feel dangerous to speak out on TikTok, but that form of protest doesn't give the ruling class the excuse they're looking for to declare martial law. And what it lacks in physical, public presence, it more than makes up for in viral impact and memorability. I don't know where they went to marketing school, but these creators are so focused in their message and so impactful in their style and delivery, they might just turn things around for all of us. 

The one thing I'm still waiting to see is for the church to separate itself from the mess it helped to create. I've noticed a few pastors speaking out, and a few churches getting involved with immigration and human rights, especially now that the specter of ICE agents in their sanctuaries has loomed over them. The new pope, an American for the first time, has already been on record against the abuses of this government. But we could be doing more. Praying, obviously, as a start, but also directing the resources and voice of our churches to oppose all of this greed and hate. I love seeing the older white guy wearing suspenders and a John Deere cap, shouting in the town hall, demanding that his representative do something to stop all this abuse and lawlessness, but I want to see him take that same energy into his church and connect that passion to the Christian mission.

Beside that, I want to see him take that energy into the voting booth in a year and a half. Assuming that elections are still a thing by then, we have midterms to start to turn this thing around. For whatever my vote is worth, I want to see the Capitol full of people who have a track record of opposition and the courage to write new bills, block abusive policies, and fire or impeach all these people chipping away at our democracy and society.

Staycation? More Like Slaycation.

 I love vacations with my family. I had a student ask me what kind of car I was into, like my dream car, and I couldn't even name one. Then he asked what's my favorite anything, any kind of possession or object that I'm really into, and I couldn't name a thing. I like my video games, but I can go days without playing if I'm busy, and not miss a beat. I have gym and workout gear that I use a lot, but I got on fine without it. Couldn't name a single object that I get really excited about. Thinking about it now, I wish I had thought about family vacations, because if I had $10,000 dollars in the budget to spend on anything, that's what it would be.

So when we couldn't afford to go on vacation for spring break this year, I have to admit that I was a little down about it. It's been a tough year financially for a lot of us around the country, and even worse in the last week, but I've usually been able to work it out and pull off some magic. Not this year. This year, we were looking at Disney+ marathons and fast food for the week. Luckily, I got a last minute bonus that gave us a revised budget, but not enough to get out of town for even a couple of days - or at least, not in the style to which I've grown accustomed.

Photo by patricio davalos on Unsplash

But then wifey had the great idea to organize a staycation. Pretend we're out of town and spend the money on the places around our city that we never normally get to visit. Everybody gets to pick a place to go, and we all make the best of it. Plus, everybody picks a different place for dinner every night, so I don't have to cook. We went to a botanical garden nearby, acres of foliage and flamingos apparently hidden in plain sight, tucked away behind a gift shop up front like some secret wardrobe universe. We went to the zoo and renewed our membership, fed giraffes and parrots and got about as many steps in as we would at Disney World. Then we hit the new science museum, five floors of insects, aquariums, space exploration, and meteorology. They even have a state of the art planetarium with shows on everything from the ocean depths to deep space. At least, that's what they tell me. I fell dead asleep in the second show. In my defense, it'd been a lot of activity, and the planetarium seats have you laying back and staring up at the stars. I'm thinking of getting one for the house to help with my insomnia. 

And that was probably the one thing I didn't anticipate about the staycation - all the activity and fatigue. Not wanting to sit around at home had us out in these edutainment streets even more than when we do the full-on, spare-no-expense theme park trips. I swear, when we travel, we see our hotel more than I saw my house this spring break. 

On top of that, I think I put more miles on the car staying home for spring break than when we road trip. Fun fact about me, I hate driving. So when we go on vacation, I try to pick someplace we can get to by car, or better yet plane, and then not have to get behind the wheel until we go home. We park in that Disney bubble and take buses, trams, monorails, and boats everywhere we want to go. The under-five littles think those are rides, and we take pains to protect their innocence. One of my favorite trips outside of Florida was our Washington DC trip about ten years ago. We're not used to the conveniences of efficient public transportation, so the ability to walk out of our rented house, catch a bus on the corner, and take the Metro to the National Mall, or just about anywhere, had me thinking about moving. Just a little. This staycation, on the other hand, had me stuck in traffic like I was going to work. Just trying to get to the museum downtown had us in the car long enough to actually get to Orlando, except we ended up right back home.

But in the middle of all that activity and traffic and overstimulation, we really had a good time. The kids had us going to some places they had visited on their favorite school field trips, the ones we never get to chaperone because we can't take off from work (and don't want to be responsible for a bunch of other people's kids, if we're being super honest). The grownups got to sleep in their own beds at night, without the kids in the same hotel room. And the community got some of our money, instead of driving it out of town. Not much, but some. 

Listen, if that museum wasn't so hard to get to, they might have gotten a membership out of us, too.

I know there's a hundred parenting and travel websites with lots of tips for creating a great staycation, so they've already covered a lot of ground. Still, if you're interested, let me give you some tips that they won't talk about.

1) Nobody else knows or cares that you're on spring break or winter break or whatever break you're on. They're going to clog up the streets trying to get to work like any other day. Trying to get to the zoo or the gardens or the park right when it opens sounds exciting, but sitting in the car in morning rush hour traffic is the opposite of exciting. According to Thesaurus.com, that's boring, dull, unmoving, unstimulating. Might as well sleep in and hit the road after everybody gets to work, because you're not rope-dropping the museum anyway.

2) On the topic of sleep, don't try to match that theme park energy without the theme park stimulation to go with it. That 14-hour-day, every-ride-in-the-park, hit-the-hotel-room-and-crash strategy doesn't work when you're the one cleaning the room and driving the bus. The end of the week had us exhausted and, I hate to admit it, a little bit snappy. If we had been at Disney, we would have spaced out the more active days with relaxing hotel and pool and shopping days. I don't know what made me think we could go that hard for that long, just because we had the home court advantage. By Friday, Wifey was so tired she changed her pick to going to the movies, and we both missed at least ten minutes of Snow White. And I couldn't even blame it on the chairs.

3) Let everybody choose something, even the littles. You're saving money anyway, so why not go the extra mile and let everybody chase their dream. If the kid wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese then pack some earplugs and hand sanitizer and go. If they want everybody jumping on trampolines and climbing walls at the indoor adventure adventure park or falling on their butts roller skating, then let them have it. Just tape up your knees if you need to.

I don't know if I would do another staycation for spring break again, but summer is coming up. We usually do another family trip after school closes, and, thank God, the finances are starting to get right again, mostly because my budget isn't affected by the stock market, but then again, these tariffs might have something to say about going out of town. Still, summer means eight or nine weeks off from school and work for me and the kids, so maybe instead of putting them in summer camp for one of those weeks, we can hit some more of their favorite spots in the city.

Except this time we're not leaving home until after the work force gets all clocked in.