The Worry.

A Quick Trip Abroad Brings Damned Good Feels + an Ominous Global Concern.

I’m home now.  

I spent a lovely few days in Ireland with our older girls, Lucy (19, right) and Edie (18). 

We drank Guiness (they did) in brown bars, we discussed the appeal of The Irish Boy Archetype and his delicious accent. We bundled up in the cold, rugby team scarves swaddling our necks. I missed the ever-present sun of Las Vegas, to the extent that I wondered if having sun shining on my face daily is it’s own quiet beautiful privilege.

I made a steak, salty, buttery and crusty, at 2am for Edie and her friends, and served it with a rocket salad and smashed potatoes. I haven’t cooked for Edie since she started living in Munich. We both missed that. It felt good. They ate it with their fingers off the cutting board. She still talks about it, as do I. It was fun.

The girls and I found ourselves - and this is the best part - lying in bed, piled on top of each other, just the way we did when we were in Costa Rica (pic below). Lying in the bed, together, tired and buzzy from traveling, boozy breaths, it always makes me so happy. Talking shit, feet laying on legs, some kicking and adjusting to get comfortable. The intimacy and mess of it all. The sister disputes that come up and end in a tussle of sheets and elbows. The candid talk. The BS. The boy talk. The girl talk. Sex talk. The sister banter. The old stories we bring up. The unsoliciated, but kinda solicited, mother-daughter advice.

I love the late night, jet-lag bed talks the best. If I am dying, this will be the happiest way to die. In bed, with my family jostled in with me. Talking shit. Making me laugh until the end.

Our host, Maureen, whose apartment we were renting, made us a heavy pot of beef stew and left it for us with a loaf of soda bread and a bottle of Red, so we could eat when we dragged ourselves off the plane, jetlagged, cramped and smelling like the inside of aircraft. 

She came to sit at her own table and talk to me as if it were mine. I loved the neighborliness, the kindness, the hospitality. She told me about her sons, their lives, her passion for community work now that they are retired. (I am finding that older women are the very heart of community work) She offered to let Edie bunk with them in their spare room as she visits colleges throughout Europe.

Every uber driver talked of the election and their worry about Trump. Every pub sprouted a conversation about American politics, who we would vote for, why it mattered. No one liked him or was enamored by his vulgarity and bigotry. Some talked of Doonbeg, Trump’s golf club in County Clare and stories of promises unkept. The world cares what we do and don’t do. They Worry for us and themselves and for the globe.

It’s real. Trump is an international Worry.

So, what will the next four years look like for our Vegas community?

The Choice Issue isn’t an issue, really. Libertarians, Dems and Repubs in Nevada, all voted to codify Choice into our state constitution. We retained our Dem Senators at the federal level. In lieu of a nice fat Harris child tax credit for families, we made sure to eliminate sales taxes on diapers for parents at the state level. Not the same at all, since that extra tax relief would’ve supported longstanding neurobiological research about healthy brain development in children. We know that if we give young families an extra $3,000 for the first five years of a child’s life the kids do better in school, life, the family is more stable, and the kids have more hours of productivity in the workforce when they become adults.

But that won’t happen now.

Forced deporations will impact Nevada gravely. We have some 144,000+ undocumented immigrants with 70% having lived here for a decade or more. They represent the highest per capita number of undocumented immigrants in the country. And we have 12,000+ DACA recipients. These kids arrived in the US by around age seven (on average) and tend to have lived here for more than 20 years. They are, despite everything, home here in Nevada.

Our tourism and hospitality industries are built on the backs of these folks. Undocumented immigrants in Nevada paid $500 million in taxes in 2022. People without legal status contributed MORE in taxes than the state's top 1% percent of household incomes.

Let that sink in: Illegal immigrants paid more in taxes that the top 1% of rich people in Nevada. They do this without being able to receive any of the social services they have paid for.

And frankly, this is critical because Nevada has no state income tax and we need all the tax base we can get for critical school and social service programs, all of which are insufficent and struggling mightily.

The things we knew were good with the Harris/Walz agenda are gone for now: There will not be a push to help people buy their first homes. No medicare coverage for in-home eldercare so we can keep our elderly at home more easily. No one will be infusing startup cash into small entreprepreneurial start-ups for small, community-based businesses.

Trump has said he will appoint Musk to head a new government efficiency program that will cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. This puts very successful programs at risk, like food programs such as SNAP and TANF, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We know that supplemental nutrition programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, where Trump voters cluster, and so the very people who supported him and got him elected could find they have less support from the government, which will also put pressure on non-profits to pick up the slack and meet the needs of their communities. It goes without saying that this could also be the end of the ACA (Obamacare), leaving a lot of people without access to health insurance.

These programs are often called “entitlements.” An aquaintance, who is a long-time MAGA voter, told me that all “entitlements” are unnecessary, socialist even. Although he didn’t quibble with programs that help people in the upper classes, like mortgage interest deductions, capital gains, estate deductions, no social security taxes for people making over $118,000 and tax deductions off the interest on your yacht, etc.

Entitlements for the poor and lower-middle classes could be on the chopping block.

Will family separation be on the table again? It will. We feel it here, already. The Worry. Want to snap people into line? Threaten their family. We have a long history of using family separation as terrorist act to get people to do what we want and punish them when they don’t conform.

So why did so many Latino folks vote for Trump? This tweet popped up in my feed:

We, public policy folks, need to do better talking to people who aren’t terminally online and die-hard political policy wonks. We have to meet people where they are and speak to them in their own languages, environments and speak directly to their concerns and the Worries they have. The day-in day-out needs people have to simply enjoy their lives and families and work toward their dreams. We have to trust they know what they need. And then make their plans, all our plans. We can do better here and this election proved it.

As Richard Rushfield from The Ankler says today, giving this take a Hollywood spin: We are talking to people with a Marvel Cinematic Universe voice while we were living in a YouTube world.

Some people think Progressives/Dems are the ones who have been duped. That we have been lied to and hypnotized by the left-leaning media. That Trump is going to help grow our country in bold new ways. Could this be true? Look at author and Trump supporter, Walter Kirn’s take:

So, have we been taken in? Is it possible we have been brainwashed by the likes of Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) and Dana Bash (CNN)?

The Irish, Germans, and Brits I spoke to - who have likened all this to Brexit and the ensuing ambling chaos under Boris Johnson - don’t think so. They see it as a global issue. And they have some distance, clarity and lived experience to add here.

I’ll always consider it. But I’m not so sure I’m brainwashed.

As our national election guru, and Nevada Independent superstar, John Ralston says about Nevada being Blue for a decade and then pulling Red this year:

For right now, I am choosing to dig into goodness. Instead of the Worry. The things I can control. These are many.

What I won’t do anymore is fight people on the internet. I am quiting X (again) and Threads and I won’t fight with you on FB. I’ll be reading more paper books and essays in my social media absence. I will be immersed in family and friends, loving and being loved. Long video calls across the world with my children. I’m going to channel Irish Maureen and make people a heavy pot of stew even when they haven’t asked for it. And stay in bed with my kids, tossled in our blankets, telling each other stupid stories and laughing at ourselves. I will keep my conversations in essays here and in real time discussions where I welcome the good faith debate. The nuanced disgreement. Complexity over memes and witty rebuttals that mean nothing and do nothing. I welcome work in my community to make people’s live demonstably better and filled with love and social capital, moving that social cash through our community so people near us can climb up and out of their worst circumstances, when it’s possible.

Remember, we can’t change Trump. But we can shift what we can do in our local communities. All the good politics happen locally anyway - don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Lastly, Trump is a religion for some folks and I am a devoted, unrelenting atheist. I’ll stay cautiously open, as is my way. But I’m not gonna succumb to Worry. That is no way to enter the last third of my life on this earth.

As David, an Aussie, says often about the things we can’t change: It is what it is.

And this is what it is.

But if it comes down to it and shit goes the way I think it could, I won’t hesitate to resist with the full throttle force of my whole being and heart.

Eyes all the way open, while hoping for the best.

Peace to you and your families.