“It’s surreal to pop over to Instagram and see all these creators with their Christmas crafts and holiday recipes like there’s not a care in the world,” the Threads post read. “No, Jessica. I do NOT want your instructions for making a gingerbread garland. Do you not understand the shit we’re in, Jessica?”
The replies were, like the original post, equal parts smug and morally superior:
“Jessica, we need instructions on overthrowing oppressive overlords FFS”
“Listen Jessica I’m more worried about my friends being thrown in concentration camps than Christmas crafts atm.”
“People like Jessica are part of the problem.”
“Typical Jessica! Her and her friends think the election isn’t a big deal and Melania is a classy First Lady.”
“I feel like this almost anywhere right now where people are bustling around getting ready for the holidays. Inside I’m screaming, ‘Do you know what’s coming? Do you understand how fucked we are?'”
Of course, there were other replies, too, countering that perhaps we should not preemptively surrender our joy to a constant cycle of impotent rage and news-driven despair. These prompted the original poster to turn off replies.
I’ve read far too many social media conversations like this since the election. Everything from people moaning about others callously promoting their small businesses in such a trying time, to others suggesting that excitement over the Wicked movie is somehow preemptively resulting in violent deportations. The message from that faction is clear: if a single moment of your day passes without horror, you are part of, nay, the cause of, the problem.
As an Xennial, I’ve been on this carousel a time or two before. Obviously, not in these same circumstances—we are truly living in unprecedented times, and social media has never been quite this big before. But I remember the televised hand wringing after 9/11, when late night hosts adopted somber tones for a week before cautiously attempting restrained humor. There were only two emotions allowed for several months: patriotism and sorrow, and woe be unto anyone not showing the proper level of grief. Any personal happiness at all was downright unAmerican.
In 2016, when that man was elected for the first time, left-leaning Americans feared exactly the same thing they do now: mass deportations, the destruction of critical infrastructure due to massively under qualified cabinet picks, a third World War, and the end of democracy as we know it. It’s tempting to reassure ourselves that this is just the same as last time, and we all survived that. It’s not. This time, they have a nine-hundred page document organizing their intentions, and we didn’t all survive the first go-round. Americans are, absolutely, in the very deepest of shit. But, exactly like the first time, social media outrage demands that all of us adopt and welcome unending anxiety as a test of moral purity. If you made a gingerbread garland in November of 2016, you caused all the problems in our country with your naivety and denial. If you make a gingerbread garland in November of 2024, you caused all the problems in our country with your naivety and denial. Everything old is new again.
But as someone who spent November of 2016 in full time despair, I can confidently state: my panic didn’t do a damn thing.
If it had, we wouldn’t be on the cusp of fascism. Half the country wouldn’t have gleefully embraced the Fourth Reich, because its operatives would have been dealt with after the treason of January 6. If 24/7 hopelessness had been an effective tool then, no one would need to demand it now. Turns out, unrelenting fear isn’t the most effective motivator; all it does is cause exhaustion and compassion fatigue.
I don’t believe the person who posted the inciting thread turned off their comments because they were afraid to be disagreed with. On the contrary, I think those people arguing in favor of joy and simple distractions were too easy to agree with. If someone has bought into the lie that the only effective resistance is misery, happiness is a base temptation, a rejection of everything they believe in. It’s difficult to keep wearing a hair shirt if your martyrdom isn’t appreciated.
There’s also a deep, infuriating cowardice beneath all that bluster. Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century advises, “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.” Maybe people are interpreting this sentiment to mean that we simply shouldn’t enthusiastically embrace the incoming fascists, or that we shouldn’t preemptively purge our home libraries of challenged books; that interpretation is the easiest. It’s easier to make a public declaration of suffering and insist others follow one’s lead than it is to navigate a daily life that has to be split between comforting normalcy and terrifying uncertainty. By choosing panic and rejecting joy, one is obeying in advance; demanding others join one in that obedience is aiding fascism.
I don’t want to say that this attitude is unique to white, cis, abled, heterosexual people; there’s plenty of evidence that individuals outside of those groups are capable of exhibiting the same behavior. But it does seem that the closer one is to those demographics, the easier it is to throw up one’s hands in surrender. A response to the Jessica post bemoaned the fact that a friend continued to share memes after the election. Meanwhile, trans shitposting is at an all-time high. Black women have effectively maintained social media discourse about impending authoritarianism while also critiquing the Wicked publicity campaign’s focus on Ariana Grande over Cynthia Erivo. A Latina acquaintance of mine shared a video to Facebook poking fun at the inevitable Trump deportations. The most marginalized groups in the country are the people living their most normal lives and seeking humor and distraction in defiance of their enemy. Meanwhile, those with more privilege are choosing to opt into despair, despite knowing that no matter how bad things may get for them, they will never experience the worst of it. It’s appealing to them to dress up in the costume of oppression by performing sorrow and directing anger toward those of similar privilege who aren’t choosing that path of least resistance.
Snyder also states, “Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.” That’s a terrifying statement, and frankly, many of the more-frightened-than-thou types aren’t willing to make that sacrifice. Their sadness and fear are all they’re willing to offer; it will be those who have more at stake who actually die in resistance of tyranny. The social media rebels will honor them as noble dead, but continue to do nothing but wallow and point fingers at those who aren’t wallowing enough.
Some of the Jessicas in the country absolutely are the problem. They voted for Trump. They did embrace trad wifery. They refuse to discuss the harmful policies they support because they don’t want to be held responsible for them. But for every one of those Jessicas is a Jessica who types frantically in her recipe blog after a particularly contentious school board meeting. A Jessica who films a craft tutorial because she learned her lesson about outrage and fatigue the first time around. Jessicas who have done the research on actual resistance, who acknowledge that joy has always existed in dire times and who refuse to let evil steal it.
To those Jessicas: make your gingerbread. It might not grind the wheels of fascism down, but it’s better than letting those wheels grind you down.