When Everything Is On Fire, What Can I Do?
I came back to California four years ago to retire. After over two decades on the East Coast, I wanted peace, sunshine, and a much slower rhythm. I bought a home in Palm Springs, drove across the country for the third time (I trip I highly recommend), unpacked, and exhaled.
Most especially, I was happy to learn I was represented by Dr. Raul Ruiz, a thoughtful and compassionate Democrat who spoke with conviction and seemed to genuinely care about people like me — people like all of us.
Then came redistricting. Suddenly I found myself in California’s 41st district, represented by Ken Calvert — a career MAGA Republican with a long history of corruption, bigotry, and performative outrage. I wasn’t thrilled, but at the time, I thought: Biden is president. The damage can only go so far.
I could not have been more wrong.
Trump is president again, and he’s already doing every hideous thing he said he would. The Supreme Court has just handed him sweeping powers, redefining executive immunity in a way that all but guarantees impunity. The Department of Justice is no longer an independent institution. It answers to him.
And now, his “One Big Beautiful Bill” has passed the House — a Trojan horse of cruelty and corporate giveaways. While posing a serious threat to the lives and health of millions of people, it nonetheless extends tax cuts and other financial benefits to those who need it the least, in the hopes that the benefits will somehow “trickle down” to the rest of us (yes, some folks still believe that shit actually works).
Most terrifyingly, ICE will soon become the largest police force on the planet. Let that sink in — a militarized deportation agency with questionable oversight and a track record of abuse, now armed with expanded authority, expanded funding, and very likely, expanded impunity. The comparisons to pre-war Germany are unavoidable, right down to the concentration camps being stuffed with countless souls who await a fate unbound by such childish notions as due process and the rule of law. Already, agents — many of them masked, some unidentifiable — are reportedly detaining immigrants and even American citizens, spiriting them away with no clear process, no warrants, no paper trail. In some cases, they’ve been transported to detention facilities across the border, often in counties to which they have no connection — and where the prison facilities present their own horrors.
And just days ago, Trump ordered a bombing campaign in Iran, throwing us headlong into yet another Middle East war. Not with congressional approval. Not after measured debate. Just a presidential whim, now legally unchallengeable.
So yes, everything is on fire. And the question is: what do we do?
That’s the thing about existential threats. They paralyze some people. But they also wake others up. And if you’re still reading this, you’re awake.
I work the phones at Democratic Headquarters of the Desert. I serve on the county party’s communications committee. I try to help where I can. But I’m just one person. And the truth is, none of us can stop this alone. But together? We can make it harder for them. We can throw sand in the gears. We can drag the spotlight to the places they’d rather keep dark. And maybe, just maybe, we can slow this down long enough to save what matters.
What can you do?
You can show up. Not someday, not when it’s more convenient, but now. Speak up. Tell the truth even when people don’t want to hear it (especially then!). Call out the normalization of fascism at your dinner table, at your school board, on your social media feed. Use whatever platform you have, even if it’s just a voice at the end of a phone call to a friend.
Join something. Your local Democratic club, a mutual aid network, a protest group, a voter registration effort. Find a lane and get in it. If you don’t think you have the time, make some. The country is running out of it.
Support honest journalism. Read it, share it, quote it, and most especially, defend it. And when lies come slithering through your group chat or your uncle’s Facebook feed, don’t let them slide.
Refuse to disappear. These are the moments history watches. These are the times when it matters that you did more than worry. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be something.
You were not meant to live in a time like this. But here you are. So, the only question left is: what will you do with it?
The fire is real. But so is your power. And if enough of us rise through the smoke, we might still hold the line.
