A Broken Hallelujah
Grief, Hope, and the Stories That Can Save Us
On the Brink of Democratic Suicide
My grandfather was not sent by a White House to fight fascists, only for a White House to be run by them.
That sentence has been playing in my mind since November 6th, 2024—one week to the day—when the US woke up to its decision to stand on the brink of democratic suicide.
As for me, I feel rage. I feel fear. I feel disappointment—not the kind you feel when a TV show you love is canceled, but the kind that cuts to the bone. Disappointment in our nation and our refusal to learn from history. Disappointment in our species and our pathological ability to both dehumanize and self-destruct as we help con artists laugh their way to the bank.
And underlying it all, I feel exhausted. Soul-tired. Bone-tired. Too drained to process the enormity of what has happened. There's a numbness, yes—but it's the kind that sits on top of everything else, muting the chaos without erasing it.
Welcome to Orphans, Empires, and the Search for a New World
This isn’t a conventional political newsletter, though we’ll talk about politics. It’s not a conventional climate newsletter, though the fate of our planet will be central to our discussions. It’s not even really a newsletter about current events, though we’ll certainly grapple with the crises of our time.
This is a newsletter about stories—the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we’ve lost, and the ones we desperately need to find or create. It’s about understanding how the ancient patterns in our myths and religions might help us navigate what feels like an unprecedented moment in human history. It’s about finding meaning while the old meanings crumble, about imagining new possibilities when the future seems to be closing in around us.
Each week, we’ll explore how timeless narratives—from religious traditions to pop culture, from ancient myths to modern movies—can help us make sense of our current moment. We’ll especially be focused on how the primal archetype of orphans facing empires appears again and again in human storytelling, and what that might tell us about our own time of displacement, resistance, and renewal.
But first, we need to sit with where we are. This first edition isn’t about solutions or silver linings. It’s about acknowledging the depth of what we’re facing, about being honest with our exhaustion, our numbness, our fear, and our grief. Because any new story worth telling has to start with the truth. And right now, the truth is scary. And it fucking hurts.
When Vampires Walk Through the Door
On November 5th, 2024, the US consciously chose to stand at the edge of the abyss. This wasn't 2016 when Trump was a wildcard who only won the Electoral College with a little push from Putin. He probably got lots of help from Putin again, but Americans really should have known better.
This time, Trump was a known political quantity—a man convicted of over 30 felonies, a predator credibly accused of sexual violence by about 30 women, the architect of a violent insurrection, and an incompetent leader responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless COVID deaths. He showed us exactly what he was—a soul-sucking vampire—and still, we invited him in.
Four days before the election, Kamala Harris spoke with poise, joy, and empathy—with the dignity of someone who could lead our nation into the future. Meanwhile, Trump stood on stage, pretending to give fellatio to a microphone. And America said "no" to the Black woman and "yes" to the weirdo cosplaying Adolf Hitler. The fact that Hitler and his army are what Trump aspires to is something that, like most things involving this carbon-based creature, is beyond comprehension.
I suppose the only winners here are violent, America-hating white nationalists, fossil fuel executives ready to burn down the Earth, and microphones with a streak of exhibitionism.
The enormity of it should be overwhelming. But instead of rage or despair, what I mostly feel is a bone-deep disappointment—a kind of sadness so profound it doesn't even feel sharp anymore. It just feels heavy.
Stick that sugar in my veins
And yeah, I’ve been stress-eating. I spent months working full-time on the election, burning the midnight oil to try to prevent exactly this outcome. I had planned to focus on getting healthy once it was all over, but the stress persists—made worse by the fact that the election’s end also means I’m now unemployed. And what am I supposed to tell potential clients or employers? “Yeah—I don’t know if I can care about anything anymore because it all feels pointless at the moment, and I’m feeling very contradictory things, and I kind of want to find a way to move to a different planet. Or slip under the covers—oy to the vei.” Not exactly the world’s biggest selling point for being hired, right?
But it’s hard to “make a sale” when one feels broken. My therapist often encourages me to learn how to sit with feelings of brokenness. But that’s why no one ever invites him to dinner parties. And yet, there’s so much wisdom in sitting with what is broken…
Sitting with Brokenness
Every wisdom tradition has something to say about sitting with brokenness. In my Jewish tradition, we have shiva—seven days where you’re not expected to be anything but broken, where community holds space for your grief without trying to fix it. Christians honor mourning the crucifixion as sacred. Buddhists teach the concept of dukkha—the unavoidable suffering that comes with life and the acceptance of impermanence. And in modern stories, Vision tells Wanda what we all need to hear right now: “What is grief, if not love persevering?”
In the wake of the 2016 defeat, Saturday Night Live opened its first post-election show with something unforgettable. Kate McKinnon, in her Hillary Clinton costume, sat at a piano and sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It was an homage to both Clinton’s defeat and Cohen, who had recently passed. The moment was raw and reflective, capped by McKinnon’s spoken words at the end: “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”
Cohen’s lyrics resonate even more deeply now: “It’s not a cry that you hear at night, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light—it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” That broken hallelujah feels like the perfect metaphor for this moment. It’s a song sung not from triumph, but from the depths of heartbreak, where hope is quieter but no less present.
And yet, even though I know Cohen’s lyrics hold truth, it’s hard to feel it right now. It’s hard to access feelings of heartbreak or hope—or anything—because the exhaustion overrides everything else.
I keep trying to make sense of this exhaustion. To frame it as something more than defeat. After Trump’s 2016 victory, my dear friend Valarie Kaur asked: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?” It’s a beautiful thought. But right now, if I’m honest, I need to sit with that darkness before I can even think about what might be born from it.
Perhaps this numbness, this exhaustion, is a form of love—love so deep, so wounded, that it has temporarily lost its voice.
The Cracks in the Foundation
There is so much to be afraid of and furious over — from Trump’s vicious war on the bodies and freedom of women, queer people, people of color, immigrants, academics, children and families, whistleblowers, the middle class and poor, and in so many different ways, everyone.
We are also mourning the hardware of democracy itself—the guardrails and institutions we thought would protect us. Trump has already corrupted the Supreme Court, weaponized the Department of Justice, and turned government agencies into instruments of personal revenge. And now he's promising to do so much worse.
And then there’s a different grief that keeps me up at night: our planet is burning. It’s the climate refugees fleeing into the arms of xenophobic hate while species disappear. It’s the glaciers melting with increasing speed and the haunting knowledge that this is only a teaser of what’s to come. Our window to prevent the worst of the climate crisis is only about five years, and Trump wants to slam that window closed.
How do you hold grief for both democracy and the Earth at the same time? How do you confront the knowledge that so much of this destruction is intentional? It's almost too much to process. And yet, grappling with this is its own form of resistance and love.
An Invitation
In the weeks and months ahead, I’ll share more about what I’ve learned and what I’m learning—about the power of stories, about the forces we’re up against, and about the fragile, beautiful possibility of a better world. But for now, I just want to say: It’s okay to feel exhausted. It’s okay to feel disappointed. It’s okay to feel numb.
And let’s remember: tyranny works by making the population so tired that they don't have the energy to resist. But if you are, like me, struggling to access that energy, I hope you can stay close to those you love. And hold space for your pain and theirs.
Let’s be gentle and understanding with ourselves as we find ourselves here. In the dark. Eating our feelings. Making gallows humor jokes. Looking for a way forward. My grandfather fought fascists so we wouldn’t have to. But here we are anyway.
And perhaps Christians have the right idea. After all, they don’t call the crucifixion "Bad Friday" for a reason—it’s Good Friday because even in the bleakest moment, transformation is possible.
Maybe this darkness is both the darkness of the tomb and the womb. Maybe there’s a model of our world that is dying while another one is waiting to finally be born. Maybe we can midwife that new world together.
Because in the weeks, months, and years ahead, we’ll need to explore what it means to be orphans like Luke and Rey Skywalker—joining a Rebel Alliance, learning the Force, relying on our ancestors, and taking down an empire. All while planting the seeds for the beautiful world waiting to be born. Even if we may never see it, we will have the honor of planting those seeds.