Activity Report: This Again

On being in NYC during the first week Trump was back on office.

I went to New York City the week before last for work, and took the bus. The whole way down I took the photos I always take on a bus, as I’m fascinated by clouds and this particular bus, the Dartmouth Coach, has windows that are enormous, like movie theaters for the sky. I sit in the very last seat before the bathroom for the best view.

As I checked my photos, I noticed at least three flags at half mast as we drove down. Trump was angry that they would be like this when he was inaugurated. He minded it despite it being what Carter is due from this country. I didn’t love Jimmy Carter but I was not above being happy to see the flags and be reminded of how Carter at least knew it is better to be loved than feared.

If you know any Korean people, you may have learned that many of us can never forgive him for his role in the Gwangju Massacre. Gwangju’s legacy has been very present in my mind this last year in part because of Han Kang’s Nobel, awarded for Human Acts, her novel about the massacre. Carter effectively signed off on it as president. He is perhaps our best or most moral president in recent history and he became a better man after he left office, and yet this is still true about him. With American presidents, you are always looking for the one with the lowest kill rate and that is probably him.

This detail haunts me especially. The US felt the student protests were a national security threat to the US and treated it as such.

[Tim Shorrock] added that when a US aircraft carrier was sent to the region, some protesters convinced of US rhetoric on democracy and human rights believed that the US was coming to intervene on their behalf.

Instead, the carrier had been deployed to bolster the US military presence so that South Korean troops at the demilitarised zone with North Korea could be reassigned to put down the uprising.

As Trump was inaugurated, South Korea’s President Yoon was indicted for his role in leading a rebellion against the government, a part of his attempt to declare martial law. The side by side contrasts in the news are striking and after the century we’ve had it was gratifying to see Korea teach America about how democracy works. The protesters made me proud of the long tradition of Korean civil disobedience and protest that led to this moment, something Anton Hur has spoken of on the regular. When you saw ordinary citizens helping their legislators climb the walls to get into the parliamentary building, you saw the Gwangju Uprising’s dead being honored, the living honoring the protesters killed by the last president to declare himself a dictator there by stopping the new one in his tracks.

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The news of the terrible plane crash in Washington, DC brought the news that the FAA chiefs had all been fired, the FAA hiring frozen also. I hadn’t known that. I remembered how during the first Trump administration I feared that I might die because of something genuinely selfish and short sighted like this, something I wouldn’t think to think of because it was so foolish to do. We are all back on this clock with him.

Now the simultaneous proposed cuts to the NIH and USAID are ripping apart university and college budgets, their hospitals and research labs, and I keep trying to think of more but I know, we are only able to process so much, so I will say instead, Trump wants to look at America and the world and see a mirror reflecting him back as he imagines himself, and when he doesn’t, he tries to pound whatever it is that sticks out to him into something flat and shiny. I remember when he had someone from Trump wineries speak at the RNC during that first campaign. “Does he think we’re all going to work for him,” I remember asking. And it seems maybe he did, maybe he still does. At the very least if he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t want it, doesn’t want to honor it or pay for it. It has to smile at him and tell him he’s a great man, a rich man, a powerful man, etc.

Such a sad and desperate way to live a life.

Anyway, here we are.

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The shameful remarks made by Trump about Gaza are of course wildly genocidal and were rejected by countries around the world that he would need to partner with to pull it off. Apparently Netanyahu is still there lobbying, trying to rally support in DC for what this might be. I found this story of a tent school in Gaza, continuing despite it all, moving as an alternative vision of what should be there. What is there.

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The trip down and back was an hour shorter each way due to congestion pricing. It was disorienting but also thrilling. I hope it also can be protected from Trump, who finds it offensive apparently.

The first day I had a lunch with my new editor, Caroline Zancan, and on the second, a lunch with Simon Wu, who was interviewing me, an extension of our conversations this fall. Both brought me presents, which was thrilling. Then I met up for a coffee with my new research assistant, Thomas Wee, to discuss his research for me.

Each time I go back I remember the lives I’ve had there in different ways, the friends still there, and the way I moved north to Vermont for a job in 2016 and acted like it wasn’t a move because I wasn’t sure about it. I was afraid of living amid the city’s disintegration, the gleaming towers and crumbling sidewalks, the way the city government ignores basic infrastructure needs mayor to mayor, as if that was their real job. But I have too many friends there still that I barely get to see because of any number of reasons. I sometimes think about moving back, though I left for reasons I am writing about a little in my new novel: in New York City, it is hard to make a living teaching writing because of the many writers ready to take the badly paying job you leave the instant you can’t take doing it anymore.

I’d made a lonely kind of specialty out of teaching writing outside the city and then coming back to live there before having to leave again to make more money. It was the visiting writer track and it felt like a ridiculous elaboration on the problem I remembered from the 1990s, when I felt like I spent all of my time outside of my apartment making rent for a place I never really got to spend time in. But hopefully you live in New York because you love it, and you love it because it is full of people you love. It was why I was there.

Because I lived in our apartment there in NYC when Trump was president the first time, details returned of what it was like then, what it was like now again, though of course it is worse this time. I think of the scene in the Batman film where the villain kicks a hostage off the roof so Batman has to choose either to chase them and let the hostage fall, or save the hostage and let them escape. During the week I learned also about the town of people in California at a meeting, trying to get an explanation about why the EPA would plan to dump toxic waste from the fires in their town without consultation, only to find out that Trump had decided it would go there. The trans veteran who wrapped themselves in a trans flag and threw themselves to their death. Guantanamo getting new prisoners. The attempt to close USAID, dooming millions of people with HIV around the world, and canceling important research—thanks to all of you who called, who are still calling.

I returned last Sunday feeling like we need a national strike, something that was wielded effectively against Nazis in the past. I want to know more of how other countries fought their fascists, how they rid themselves of them. But I will say however we do it, I am loving all the protests, all the ways I see people standing up for what they value. But we still need to call our senators and tell them no cooperation, no business as usual, as long as Trump and Musk continue to break the law and try to shred the Constitution. Message them even a little less than they message us for donations. Republicans blocked their moves for so long, they should know what to do when we say this. It’s very simple: Tell them to object to unanimous consent. On anything. The Senate needs it to work. Shut it down.

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I have been thinking a lot about the sadistic attempt to isolate trans people politically and then to harm them. Here is a mutual aid effort to provide HRT Harm Reduction toolkits to trans people directly or to the communities that serve them. If you have other links to places that need help or funding to protect trans people and support them please leave them in the comments.

One part of our birdflu problem is the use of chicken shit in American animal feed for cows and pigs. We should probably end that practice?

Microsoft’s own research shows that using AI reduces critical thinking.

A Fan's Notes

has an interview with Steven Duong on the occasion of the publication of his debut book of poems, At The End Of The World There Is A Pond.

Until next time,

Alexander Chee