I fear becoming a person who regularly gets my teeth whitened. How disturbing it would be to crawl into another skin and slink onto the set of a Sunday political circle-jerk. I’d wear rose lipstick and praise people for their intelligent questions, we’d all praise one another for our mutually intelligent questions, and predict the near-future of a country whose backbone we mutually fail to understand. At home, more praise.
It would make for awful television if we went in a neat row and said we were scared, clutching our mugs (what is in those mugs, actually?) and our navy sheath dresses as we clenched and sweated our way through the morning. I could say things like, “we seem most satisfied when our nation is thrust into chaos,” and, “we’ve never been brave,” and, “we’ve always been, as a country, on the brink of surrealism, and our utopia — this one we like here — is hell for so many, and that’s fine by us.”
If I did this often enough, somebody might announce my birthday in a Politico newsletter. Then I could be defined by how many white, middle-aged men acknowledge my existence in their morning emails, or on their tired commutes, and I could be part of something bigger and far more upsetting. I would be invited back to the Sunday political circle-jerk dozens of times, until my opinions were gilded into vague insights, and we’d all agree to optimism. I would never talk about war, just optics. After my segment, the other white guy with a big watch could sell air-fryers on CBS. When the funeral home came for my body, I’d have collected so many mugs.
