Melissa

“The body knows the looming of disaster or is convinced it knows in a fundamental way that has nothing to do with statistics or facts or conscious awareness or so-called reality. The body carries within it the constant possibility of betrayal, from within or without.”
― Sarah Menkedick, Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America

“In fact the "choices" women face in becoming mothers - how or whether or not to balance career and motherhood; how to negotiate family life; how to afford family life and where; how to find any time for community or self in the midst of all of this - often don't feel like choices at all but like very imperfect compromises in the throes of a system that tells women to be thankful.”
― Sarah Menkedick, Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America

“Schiff begged the Republicans to say “enough.” “If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the Framers were. . . . If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter.”
― Heather Cox Richardson, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

“Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the only reason they have been dispossessed is that enemies have cheated them of power. Such leaders undermine existing power structures, and as they collapse, people previously apathetic about politics turn into activists, not necessarily expecting a better life, but seeing themselves as heroes reclaiming the country. Leaders don’t try to persuade people to support real solutions, but instead reinforce their followers’ fantasy self-image and organize them into a mass movement. Once people internalize their leader’s propaganda, it doesn’t matter when pieces of it are proven to be lies, because it has become central to their identity. As a strongman becomes more and more destructive, followers’ loyalty only increases. Having begun to treat their perceived enemies badly, they need to believe their victims deserve it. Turning against the leader who inspired such behavior would mean admitting they had been wrong and that they, not their enemies, are evil. This, they cannot do.”
― Heather Cox Richardson, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America