If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?

What Just Happened Feb 2025: Work, Politics, and What Really Matters

I asked ChatGPT to summarize the events of the past month for me in 200 words, from the perspective of a person rather than a news article.

Here’s what it said:

This month felt like a whirlwind—trade tensions flared as Trump imposed new tariffs, a string of deadly storms devastated the South, and OpenAI pushed AI even further into the future. Every day, the news delivered another shift: Trump signed executive orders reshaping immigration and labor policies, while international diplomacy flickered between progress and collapse. The weight of these events feels personal—how AI reshapes work, how politics shape daily life, how disasters upend communities. It’s exhausting, trying to keep up with what it all means beyond the headlines. One moment, the world feels like it’s unraveling; the next, it’s rushing toward something new, unpredictable, maybe even transformative. I don’t know whether to brace for impact or lean into change, but I know the ground beneath us is shifting. And I can’t shake the feeling that we’re all being carried along with it.

It’s a strange feeling, to have AI seemingly peer inside millions of human minds and summarize what it’s like to be a human in America right now. (Even more bizarre to see it prioritize its own news over other topics…)

My life since January has been its own small whirlwind.

The month kicked off with a celebration of life for my father-in-law, Will Cabell, which was both emotionally fraught and incredibly beautiful.

And then, after months overwhelmed by the logistics of managing the end of a life, this month I turned my attention fully to my new job, and my work suddenly asserted itself as my life’s new center of gravity.

After never having left my son at home to travel for work, I had three overnight work trips in four weeks. My parents showed up in meaningful ways to help care for my son while I was away, and I got to remember what it feels like to “be a professional,” not just a mother.

In the same period of time, my son turned 1,000 days old—a significant milestone in his young life, at least for me. He’ll have to wait another few months to enjoy his third birthday cake, a celebration he probably still won’t remember, but I tattooed the number on my body to ensure it’s a milestone I never forget.

After a three-month pause (mostly driven by the demands of family life), I returned to A Family Spy Story, feeling an empathetic resonance with how I imagine my Grandmother Marjorie may have felt during the whirlwind that surrounded her first months as a spy abroad.

The Euphoria of Employment

For the third time in his life, my son spent two nights away from both of his parents, and Andy and I got to reschedule my canceled birthday weekend in New York.

We spent an evening at Swing 46 dancing to the classics and an afternoon at the Shed enjoying the mystical wonder of the Luna Luna carnival installation. A consolation prize for having missed the third-to-last performance of Sleep No More, we spent our second evening running around the old Citibank building, appreciating the new immersive theater experience, Life and Trust.

I have a lot to say about this immersive theater experience—not all of it good. But the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is how magical it was to spend three straight hours in low light without a smartphone in sight. Guests are required to lock their phones away in pouches or at coat check, which means the individual no longer bears responsibility for choosing whether it is an appropriate time to take a video or send a text message. The venue has helpfully made that choice for you, and everyone benefits.

A new resolution emerges for 2025: spend more time without my phone.

Of course, as ChatGPT helpfully pointed out, the last month has also been rife with geopolitical turmoil.

Donald Trump has signed 108 executive orders in the last 40 days, 36 in his first week in office, and 30 in the month of February.

(Barack Obama, who holds the record for the fewest EOs, signed 35 over eight years).

Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada, then didn’t. And then did.

Jeff Bezos announced on X that the Washington Post Opinion page would no longer address anything other than personal liberty and free markets.

How quickly a paper of record can devolve into a libertarian mouthpiece!

(If only anyone actually cared about what happens behind that particular paywall.)

At the United Nations, the United States twice voted with Russia, North Korea, and Belarus againsts resolutions to condemn Russia’s actions in the war against Ukraine.

(Are we really one of those guys now?)

Rounding out the month, Trump invited President Volodymyr Zelensky to the Oval Office to berate and humiliate him on national TV.

As colleagues, friends, and family wrestle aloud with their concerns about the likely or possible fallout of this new world order, I find myself bouncing between states of alarm and a kind of despair-ladened equanimity.

Alarm sounds like: Holy shit. This is bad. This is really bad. What will happen now?

In these moments, I feel like Piglet during the flood.

Source: https://tenor.com/xK19.gif

But when I step back and take a broader view, I can see this as just one of many major political shifts in the ongoing cycle of change that defines human civilization.

I keep coming back to my favorite question:

Who gets to decide who gets to decide?

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a small yet brave group of landed white men had the determination and audacity to wrest political power from the hands of monarchy.

They decided that their individual wealth was more important than allowing themselves to be taxed by a king.

Over the last 75 years, women, people of color, and other non-hetero-white male groups have worked tirelessly to wrest power away from the landed white man with moderate success.

Now, Donald Trump has announced his determination to take that power back.

When people express alarm that white male supremacy is on the rise, I offer a reminder that America’s political technology is working exactly as designed.

We need new political technology

Donald Trump isn’t a real Republican. He’s a plutocrat who has successfully commandeered the political infrastructure of the Republican Party to enrich himself.

When people wonder where the Democrats have wandered off to at this moment, I like to remind them: Democrats can be assholes, too.

I know this may sound harsh, but it’s true.

This month, I wrote the second installment of this series, which explores my experience contributing to a movement for political change in the bluest county in the country: Kings County, ie Brooklyn.

It seems pretty clear that establishment Democrats have neither the wherewithal nor drive to organize in response to the moment.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/23714335515484364/

We’re caught in a Hamiltonian moment of indecision. We’re accustomed to technocratic government that instructs us how to behave.

(Some people think this is great while other people find it objectionable—a critical point of cultural conflict).

But here’s the downside of technocracy that liberals often overlook: by relying on government to define what’s right and wrong, we’ve lost a shared understanding of our values—making us vulnerable to both individual apathy and government overreach. At the same time, the rise of the attention economy threatens our ability to focus on what really matters: human relationships.

Listening to Jake Auchincloss, the Democrat representing the MA-4 in Congress talk about what’s missing from Democratic politics, I felt the despair-laden equanimity set in. The gerontocracy of Democratic politics is unable (or unwilling?) to get out of the way to let a new, capable generation of leaders take the helm. And the electorate isn’t (yet?) willing to demand that they do so.

So here we are, stuck waiting for someone to save us.

Is it going to be bad for a subset of people? Yes, absolutely. And if we don’t get motivated to get organized, there may be very little we can meaningfully do about that (see: despair). And yet birth and death are simply realities of being alive on Planet Earth. Both are painful. Both inevitable. Some of us will have the good fortune to die of old age. Others will perish at the hands of malice or disease. But we rob ourselves of the opportunity before us in this moment if we place too much energy anticipating what happens in the end.

This month, I read this beautiful essay by

Paul Crenshaw

that broke my heart open with its truth.

And this essay by

Anne Helen Petersen

helped clarify for me that succumbing to demoralization only cedes ground.

As the parent of an almost-three-year-old, I think toddler parenting offers a helpful analogue for the new political reality we’re in. You can’t throw a tantrum at a tantrum and expect it to lead to something good. You have to remain calm when the other party screams. You have to define your boundaries and expectations and make clear the consequences on the line.

And you only win with collective solidarity.

We can no longer count on the government to define right and wrong.

We’ll have to do that for ourselves.

Henry Ford notably said it first:

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”

Or, as I say to myself often: You are as strong as you think.

But it’s also virtually impossible to accomplish anything alone. The thing that makes us feel powerless—and rightly so—is the absence of community. The antidote to reckless government isn’t protest. It’s organizing.

As I rode the train home from DC to Connecticut this month, I watched the sun set behind the clouds over New York with deep appreciation for the fact that this is not an extinction event. Humans have survived worse.

We get to decide how we get through this. We have to find the people who share our beliefs. And figure out what we’re willing to stand for, together.

I know this is easier said than done. Even as I can clearly see what needs to happen, I struggle to figure out how to execute. If you’re in this struggle too, drop a line.

Let me know what how you’re feeling, and what you plan to do next.