The Witches are Coming

by Lindy West

It seems that a lot of men are confusing being asked not to violate other people’s sexual boundaries with being forbidden to participate in basic human activities such as dancing, dating, chatting, walking around, going to work, and telling jokes.

Every iota of Trump’s success is a con, a dark magic trick, built on illusion and hypnosis and the impenetrable magical thinking of his followers.

Reality TV, as we all know by now, is scripted. This is the most frightening vestige of President Trump’s TV career: in his world, reality doesn’t dictate the script; the script dictates reality. When reality doesn’t favor or flatter him, he simply says what he wants to be true. And in the minds of his fanatics—absolutely blitzed on a decade or three of antimedia, antiacademia, paranoiac propaganda—it becomes true. It’s a kind of magic.

I am sympathetic to people who feel they’re being left behind in this new world. In a lot of ways, we all are.

If the Left’s loathing of George W. Bush energized us to fight for and ultimately elect Barack Obama, what kind of political revolution might Trump engender?

If there is magic in Trump’s ability to conjure reality out of hot air and spittle, there is an equally powerful magic in the opposite: in speaking the truth, unvarnished, about what we see, what we remember, what has been done to us by people who have assumed power and status as a birthright, rules written just for them. People who are nervous or just trying to wait this moment out until everything settles down. There is power in saying, no, we will not settle down. We will not go back. It’s the lifting of a veil, the opposite of a glamour. We have to be the witches they’ve always said we are, and counter their magic with our own.

always keep an eye trained on the deep why of things: Why do I like this? Where is this impulse coming from? Am I telling the truth to myself about myself?

How did such a conglomerate of transparent bigots achieve enough mainstream credibility to win the White House? Well, because they said, over and over, that they weren’t bigots—the “nu-uh” defense. And people believed them or pretended to because it was easier, because the alternative meant admitting some complicity

It’s become a national sport to stereotype millennials*—we’re lazy, we’re entitled, instead of saving for retirement we’re forever getting trampled by bison while trying to take selfies—because, sure, when you’ve set the world on complete fucking fire, why not spend your twilight years roasting your own grandchildren over the smoldering debris of their dreams?

Whatever your sphere is, however big or small, you get to make choices within it, and if you care about healing the wounds of the world I hope you become a real demon bitch about diversity and never let anyone sleep.

This is a difficult time, and it is okay to go to another place once in a while.

There’s a type of person who thinks he’s getting away with something by not believing in anything. But not believing in anything is believing in something. It’s active, not passive. To believe in nothing is to change nothing. It means you’re endorsing the present, and the present is a horror.

that’s what love does to you—it scrambles your compass, so that the idiosyncrasies you hate with fire and fury become so fucking charming you just want to gobble that person up

You don’t have to “hear both sides” perpetually—you can hear them once or twice, make a decision, and move on into the future.

Social media platforms were largely built by men, who clearly did not anticipate the ways they could and would be weaponized against vulnerable users. It is devilishly difficult to retroactively fix a system that trolls have already figured out how to exploit.

#MeToo felt like an appropriately cinematic turn: It’s the third act, and our heroine is angry. She’s finally stepping into her power. The witches are coming. It was beautiful to watch.

but complained, “I get mocked for it!” Yes, I know you do. Welcome. Getting yelled at and made fun of is where many of us live all the time. Speaking up costs us friends, jobs, credibility, and invisible opportunities we’ll never even know enough about to regret.

Finally! I don’t have to carry a purse when I go to the faerie market to trade this daisy for a hummingbird’s kiss!

What I found was exactly the opposite: a group of people not drowning in shock and despair, as I was, but putting one foot in front of the other with grace and good humor, just as they had the day before and would the day after. Welcome, they said. We have already been living in Trump’s America. We call it America.

If we can no longer rely on our political system to protect our rights, all we can do is double down on culture change.

they were foot soldiers in the fall of American democracy, a slide into fascism that black, trans, and feminist activists detected a decade before any of the white male leftists currently making millions off their self-congratulatory skewering of the alt-right were even paying attention). It’s too late to do anything about that last thing, because none of you fucking listened the first thousand times we mentioned it, and now a Twitter troll is president of the United fucking States,

The Northwest is a layered place. May through September: blue water, green trees, white mountains, blue sky. October through April: gray water, gray trees, white mountains, gray sky.

If you’re waiting for a grown-up to come fix it, stop. Be your own grown-up.

give the power to someone who will fight for this world, because—and I think this goes cruelly underacknowledged in the surreal, nihilistic upside down of Trump’s America—this world is beautiful and good and worth saving. Do not despair. Despair is the death of action. Go, act, fight.

The problem with America is that we refuse to look at the problem with America.

So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.”

Maybe that’s the news today. Does it have to be the news tomorrow?

The witches are coming, but not for your life. We’re coming for your lies. We’re coming for your legacy. We’re coming for our future.