I Do Not Obey in Advance

I do not obey in advance.

I did all I could over the past year to avoid our nation winding up here in this sad and sickening place, and since we almost inexplicably now have, I refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee or sell my soul, no matter how many already have or will end up doing so.

I refuse to normalize him.

I did not vote for him, he does not represent me, and I do not believe he is at all deserving of being here—and so I grieve his ascension and resist his ugliness.

I object to him in totality: to the ways he humiliates women and vilifies immigrants and threatens critics and devalues people of color and disregards the law.

I declare my fierce repulsion at his tremendous cruelty, his lack of compassion, his contempt for dissension, his absence of simple decency.

As we face an unprecedented assault on the free press and the access to news and liberty to speak freely, I want it documented that I did not look the other way when women accused him of assault, when he engineered an insurrection, when the reality of his Russian alliances came to light, when he weaponized our highest court—though large portions of the American media and its people chose to look the other way.