So, What Did I Miss?

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'How much can possibly happen when I'm on parental leave?' I said five months ago, on January 10, 2025. 'I understand that Donald Trump will be the next president, and yes, he said he'd be a dictator 'on day one,' but our institutions have been 250 years in the making. Surely something that took 250 years to build would not run entirely on the honor system! I will be able to spend a few months keeping a baby alive, and when I get back, I will be able to walk to work without bumping into the president's birthday tank parade. If he tries to put an anti-vaccine crank in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, a monstrous buffoon who thinks that it is acceptable for some children to die from measles, a disease we had eradicated until about eight minutes ago, Congress will surely stop him.
There won't be goons in face coverings yanking graduate students off the street and into unmarked vans after they write op-eds with which Marco Rubio disagrees. If Elon Musk, the world's richest man, expresses the desire to fire every federal employee for no reason, so that cancer research grinds to a halt, and foreign aid grinds to a halt, and the lifesaving medications that we have already stockpiled are instead just wantonly destroyed, someone will say, 'No, thanks! Do not do that!' Or, if this does happen, the team doing it won't include an individual nicknamed Big Balls.' (When I got that specific, I should perhaps have said to myself, Doesn't that sound exactly like something that would happen? But you know what they say about predicting what will happen: much harder since all the NOAA cuts!)
'Surely they won't close down FEMA on the grounds that we won't need it after the hurricane season is over. The National Guard won't be deployed to the streets of California against the wishes of its governor, to stop people from assembling to object to the goons in face coverings loading their neighbors into unmarked vans. Maybe the president will personally take over the Kennedy Center so he can bring back the musical Cats, but if so, that will consume the majority of his time, and he will not also try to ram through Congress a bill that will prevent judges from enforcing their rulings against him, push millions of people off Medicaid, and increase the deficit, just for fun! Also, if I want to work at a place that is excited to publish a wide range of opinions about things that aren't free speech and free markets, that won't involve getting a different job at a different publication owned by a different billionaire!' (Hi!)
Well, there is egg on my face. Which is still very expensive to have!
I have pulled a rare reverse Rip van Winkle. Rip took a brief, well-deserved nap and woke up decades later to discover that his country no longer had a king. I did the opposite of that. Anyway, I am scared to nap now. Which is bad because I very much need to nap. I have a five-month-old.
Five months is no time at all, if you are trying to grow something. As of this writing, my baby is still functionally helpless. You cannot even leave him on a flat surface, something you can safely do with plants or rocks. You have to put him in a special chair, or he will slowly tip over, like an ill-constructed cake.
He can do nothing for himself. He is still getting the hang of rolling over. Instead, he just lies there and yells at you for putting him in that position. Other than that, he smiles all the time, the confused but accommodating smile of someone who has not quite heard your last remark but knows it would kill the conversation if he were to ask you to repeat it. He has no idea what is going on. Lucky him.
Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has ever seen a baby, but it is a small miracle nonetheless. It is a wonder to me that everyone you see on the sidewalk underwent this process—was gently encouraged to roll over, had faces made at them and bubbles blown on their bellies until they laughed, was put in a hat and taken to the park.
I am not putting him in a hat and taking him to the park. I am walking to my new job. They are getting the city ready for the tank parade. Donald Trump is the president, and he has bought himself a tank parade with the money we saved by getting rid of all the people who know how to stop fires in the national parks. A decision I am sure will be worth it! National parks don't last, but a tank parade is something you will always have.
Every night, my son wakes up and cries. I get up and hold him until he stops. While I rock him, I stare into my phone, where they store the horrors. It has been three months since March 15, when our government shipped 238 men to a Gulag in El Salvador without due process. I sit there in the dark with his tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb and think about their mothers. I see now what my mistake was. Five months is no time at all to make something. But to destroy something—a minute is enough.
Article originally published at The Atlantic