{"id":1785,"date":"2026-01-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1785"},"modified":"2026-01-26T12:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T12:37:22","slug":"hoping-is-cool-but-have-you-tried-screaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/hoping-is-cool-but-have-you-tried-screaming\/","title":{"rendered":"HOPING IS COOL BUT HAVE YOU TRIED SCREAMING?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In December 2016, roughly a month after Trump snatched power for the first time, I traveled to London to visit one of my very best friends. While there, almost every UK resident I met asked me a version of the question: How could you let this happen?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I found this question pretty goshdarned insensitive. Surely I was not personally at fault for my nation\u2019s election of the world\u2019s least fashionable nepo baby? In the months leading up to that election, I\u2019d severed connection with my MAGA parents, I\u2019d finally begun to quietly publicize my queerness, I\u2019d reluctantly voted for Hillary\u2019s corporate globalist agenda, and in the aftermath of the terrible outcome, I\u2019d even spent several nights blocking highway traffic to protest Big Donald\u2019s rise to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, I realize how pathetically insignificant most of these things seem now. But the point is, from my perspective, I certainly hadn\u2019t let this happen. I was a good person with good beliefs, gradually preparing to vote with renewed intensity during the next midterm election. America had shown its true colors, yes, but the Big Blue Wave was coming, and I had a plan. First, I\u2019d write an incisive political thriller. Then, my powerful new book would inspire my liberal compatriots to wrest the White House golf clubs from the Tangerine Toddler\u2019s tiny orange hands, and together, united under the flag of literature, we would do everything in our power to make sure a treasonous dictator never again\u2026 well\u2026 you know\u2026 in America\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, here we are. Eight years later, eight years wiser, and fully in the midst of a fascist takeover that tends to make my international friends ask the much more pressing question: why are you STILL letting this happen?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you know what? This time, it is my fault. I\u2019m the only person I can actually control, after all, and what have I really done? I mean, yeah, I did write that aforementioned book grappling with Trumpism and truth decay and America\u2019s most recent descent into madness, but unfortunately, my book wasn\u2019t even published until four months after the MAGA terrorists used a trebuchet of liberal incompetence to fling themselves back into power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better late than never, I suppose, and judging by my various social media inboxes, my writing has helped a lot of very lovely people understand, cope, and contend with the political horror show unfolding across my nation and the world. But while I was sitting and writing and hoping and crying and, yeah, often panicking, Evil was working. It was grinding, day after day, to lie and cheat and murder its way back to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not saying that the forces of Good aren\u2019t hip to the grindset as well. Being chronically under-resourced and over-lawful, the truly good people in this world are always at a disadvantage. As Evil gets rich scorching the Earth, Good gets poor tending the wounded. Or teaching the children. Or I guess, if you\u2019re relatively useless like me, writing the well-meaning literature. We all try to help in our way, but our do-gooder efforts often feel too little and too late and too invisible to keep the monsters from the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps this will always be the fate of the forces of good. Like so many Social-Darwinist, pro-capital jerk-nozzles continually point out, nice folks finish last. The cruelest survive to procreate and the kindest go the way of the Twitter bird. And the wheel turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except no, no, no \u2013 it doesn\u2019t. Because at the end of the day, we good people are the ones who turn the fucking wheel. There are more of us, and less of them, and, well, you\u2019ve heard this one before, so I won\u2019t waste your time screaming POWER TO THE PEOPLE, but please allow me to cite a real example of something that is currently happening in the small, cold, and globally invisible city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In America, in 2026, my government calls its extrajudicial Gestapo ‘ICE’, and right now, ICE is going door-to-door, snatching Americans from their homes, and making them disappear without just cause or due process. This is, obviously, terrifying, but the good people of Minneapolis are fighting back. Many of my friends and family members are out in the streets, risking their lives, waging wintry guerrilla non-compliance in the face of rapidly escalating violence. They\u2019re filming ICE abductions. They\u2019re making human chains. They\u2019re slashing tires, and sounding alarms, and escorting horrified children to school to keep them from being kidnapped off the streets. These are normal Americans, and I assure you that they are not letting this happen. And this time, neither am I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a terrifying thing, fighting for what you believe in, but it\u2019s much less terrifying when millions of your global neighbors are fighting by your side. I think I was supposed to write this essay to sell you my book, but to be honest, that felt pretty self-interested. So instead, I wrote this odd little rant to tell you that I\u2019ve personally decided that writing, for me, isn\u2019t enough. I need to do more. Not on the internet, but in the world. On the streets. Helping my neighbors. Defending the voiceless. Using all the time-tested tools of non-violent resistance at my disposal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A deeply conservative, awfully ethnocentric, and remarkably craven writer named T.S. Eliot once wrote that this, our world, will likely end with a whimper, but since we\u2019re here, I\u2019d like to politely suggest an alternative: Fight. Raise your voice. Grab your neighbors by the hand and remind them they aren\u2019t alone. Because they aren\u2019t, and neither are you. I know it seems like Evil has every weapon, every dollar, and all the time in the world, but they can\u2019t kill us all, and I\u2019d much rather die screaming than continue to let this happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Zee Carlstrom (they\/them) grew up in Illinois.\u00a0They believe in Frederick Douglass\u2019 vision of America as a composite nation, where every human person can come together to live in harmony. Make Sure You Die Screaming<\/a><\/strong><\/em> is their debut novel.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In December 2016, roughly a month after Trump snatched power for the first time, I traveled to London to visit one of my very best friends. While there, almost every UK resident I met asked me a version of the question: How could you let this happen? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[297,289,294,295,29,291,254,299,287,16,298,18,292,14,27,293,296,288,62],"class_list":["post-1785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-contemporary-literature","tag-donald-trump","tag-fascism","tag-ice","tag-lgbtqia-reads","tag-liberal-politics","tag-make-sure-you-die-screaming","tag-non-binary-characters","tag-political-fiction","tag-queer-fiction","tag-queer-literature-2026","tag-reading-recommendations","tag-republicans-vs-democrats","tag-sapphic-reads","tag-tbr-list","tag-the-rise-of-fascism","tag-us","tag-us-politics","tag-verve-books"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1790,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions\/1790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}