This is the fifth of November and the 36th day of the government shutdown, I believe. Trump is screaming for the Republicans to kill the filibuster in order to put the government back in business and pass all kinds of legislation. “They won’t be able to stop us” he says, but this is terrifying to Republicans, because they won’t be able to stop democrats once things swing the other way. IF things ever swing the other way. We got the first signs that they might with a series of elections that went the democratic way. The Mamdani election in particular pointed to a people more interested in issues than party. As a native New Yorker, I was proud to see the city raise up and try to move towards affordability. Trump, predictably, threatened the man post victory.
Politics, right? That was the entire argument of V for Vendetta. That film is very punk, and I’ve been trying to clearly understand how to write punk characters for a while now. I’m not sure I’ve done a good job of it. As I am passing through the latest novel of mine, I am reading for punk, and wondering if I got it right. Maybe punk is changing. More likely, my understanding of it is changing.
My understanding of a lot of this world is changing and growing as the weeks and days and years slide by. As I grow, I learn and that learning rebuilds my internal writing compass. It makes me a better storyteller to see how the world works and how it doesn’t.