Birds of a Feather

The right-wing turn of the DNC signals dark days to come.

There’s a lake I paddle when things get too much. It knows me as well as I know it. I know what time to go in the morning to see turtles sunbathe in groups, lazing on driftwood. I know the distance to keep so they do not dive off in fear. I know which treetops bald eagles prefer, and the motions an egret makes before it takes flight, and when migrating pelicans and geese arrive. This is a land made for drifters.

I go in the evening, because that’s when the sun turns my sky-mirror into a red cauldron, and I pretend that it’s not a reflection of a burning world, and that I am not floating on it alone.

There used to be a great blue heron who I called my therapist. He would sit in the same spot, perched on a log under a bent branch that resembled a booth. I would float to him in my kayak, and he would stare me down like he was extracting thoughts straight from my mind.

He was fishing in muddied waters, and I wanted him to catch it all: pull out the hurt and disappointment and grief. Eat my thoughts raw, unencumbered by words. Devour the pain before I could make it palatable.

The heron was never afraid of me. He would never fly away from me, because he had the comfort of knowing he always could.

We sat with each other until the flood. In May, it poured so hard that the woods behind his office turned into a swamp. I drifted inside and saw what he kept back there: dragonflies, dogwood. Under the water, his faithful log had snapped in two.

Last week, I paddled the narrow passage the heron had made his home. My kayak was in a strip of sunlight cutting through the center of the water. On the left, the trees shimmered a bright pale green. On the right, the trees were so dark, they looked nearly black. In reality, all the trees were the same mixed medium shade, their differences a trick of shadows.

I took a photo because I felt like capturing an illusion.

I could have turned on the television and done the same. But if my winged therapist taught me anything, it was when to move on.

*          *          *

I did not watch the Democratic National Convention on television. I watched it in excerpts on Twitter.

That means I watched politicians revel in self-proclaimed joy in Chicago and Palestinian children get their heads blown off in Gaza.

A dead child is the last thing I wanted to see and the last thing I want to write about. But if I don’t, I am afraid of what will happen.

The genocide that Israel is conducting is not only about the elimination of human life, but of Palestinian history. Bombings of schools and mosques, burnings of books and diaries. The sin of omission is particularly grievous now.

People mock the idea of having a conscience. It is “weird,” to use the Democrats’ new favorite word.

It is “weird” to care about other people. It is “weird” to cry for slain children. You are supposed to accept their murder as inevitable, even deserved, and to never retrace the road that led the US to enable it.

But right is right, and wrong is wrong, and sometimes it is as simple as that.

The Palestinian children slaughtered last week were not the first I saw decapitated in 2024. It’s also not the first time this happened as a large crowd of Americans gathered to applaud a national event.

I wrote about a similar nauseating spectacle when the Superbowl aired. The hashtag #SuperbowlMassacre trended because the Israeli military’s murder of Palestinian refugees in Rafah was in such stark contrast to the oblivious joy of Americans glued to the game.

But Israel has murdered so many children since February that I don’t think most people remember the Superbowl Massacre. The corpses have blended into the mass grave that is the Democrats’ most forbidden talking point.

The Democrats like to advertise themselves as a big tent party. When they shelved Biden for Harris, a shocking move seemingly in response to voter demand, it seemed that a party that welcomed everyone could be possible — that anything was possible, including an end to the US-funded genocide. Unlike their representatives, the majority of Americans want, and have always wanted, a ceasefire.

But the “big tent party” has no room for Americans who care about people living in small tents — because the Biden administration funds the bombing of refugees.

A Republican administration would be no better — the GOP is as enthusiastic about war crimes and as sycophantic toward Israel as the Democrats — but that does not change that the Democrats are in power now and bear the responsibility of that power.

What the DNC revealed is a Democratic party that denies Palestinian-Americans the right to speak on stage — but has plenty of room for Republicans and former Trump officials. It is a party that welcomes Democrats who beat a Muslim woman with a Biden sign, call the FBI when Muslims criticize Kamala Harris on the internet, and mock dead Palestinian children.

In my last article, I questioned the comparison of the Harris 2024 campaign to the Obama 2008 campaign. While the initial enthusiasm and fundraising bonanza are similar, the DNC signals that the real comparison lies with the fearful, conformist atmosphere of 2001-2004: the run-up to and early years of the Iraq War.

The Bush years, before the levees broke in 2005, and the coldness of reality and regret poured in. How did we become so cruel? Americans wondered. How did we let this happen?

*          *          *

There is barely a Democratic platform — the current one still references “President Biden’s second term” — but the few changes the Harris campaign made have been in favor of violence. There is no longer condemnation of the death penalty. There is no longer condemnation of torture.

Harris, in her acceptance speech, boasted that under her rule, the United States will have “the most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Not the smartest. Not the bravest. But the most lethal — lethal, a word that has no other meaning than to cause death.

The Democrats are marketing themselves as a party synonymous with mass death. They expect their voters to applaud. They warn that if you’re not at their table, you are on the menu. Conform, in other words, or face the consequences.

Under Biden, Democratic policies already countenanced mass death, whether through his horrific handling of covid (which has now emerged as a DNC superspreader), the backing of genocide, the support of Cop Cities and attacks on anti-war activists, and the refusal to hold the Trump administration accountable for its violent threats and crimes.

As I have noted many times, many of Biden’s policies continue or are indistinguishable from the horrific policies of the GOP, diverging mainly in rhetoric.

In June 2022, I made a prediction.

“There is a new plan for our already broken two-party system,” I said. “The plan is to have two parties: a batshit crazy MAGA party led by Trump that will bulldoze your rights, and a far-right ‘respectable’ party led by Liz Cheney that will also bulldoze your rights. They will call the Cheney party ‘The Democrats.’”

The part I got wrong was the predominance of Cheney, a right-wing extremist who tells lies that Democrats slaughter babies after they are born but was nonetheless hailed as a hero by the Democratic elite in 2022. The rest, though, appears to be bearing out. It is no surprise that Bush-era Republicans greet Harris with enthusiasm.

On the last day of the convention, a rumor circulated that a mystery guest would be appearing. It’s Taylor Swift, people exclaimed. TMZ swore it was Beyonce.

I had surgery scheduled for early the next morning and didn’t stay up to watch. When I woke in an anesthesia-induced fog, I realized I still didn’t know the guest.

It wasn’t Beyonce, my husband told me. It was former CIA chief Leon Panetta extolling the virtues of Ronald Reagan.

I laughed and assumed the hospital had given me very powerful drugs.

But it was true. The people expected Beyonce, and the Democrats gave them Leon Panetta.

Panetta’s speech wasn’t terrible — unlike other Democrats, he decried locking up people in cages — but it was the speech of a man acting like the US was on the brink of a major war. Whether that war is internal or fought on behalf of tyrannical foreign powers remains to be seen.

That the speech exists at all signals an expansive military agenda, and the return of a familiar feeling: the Iraq War feeling, the conformity at all costs feeling.

With the departure of Biden, the national Democratic leadership had an opportunity to capitalize on excitement about the potential of Harris and to build an open-hearted, inclusive party. Their choices since — threats toward their own base wrapped in a veneer of mandated joy; a vague platform that embraces state violence and militarism — are deliberate.

They have left Democratic voters, who deserve so much better, in a terrible position once again.

Their right-wing turn threatens to depress turnout. It endangers the down-ballot Democratic candidates who are a vital bulwark against GOP extremism. But most of all, it endangers the American conscience, already battered by trauma and Trump, by encouraging abandonment of the most vulnerable. It spurs Americans to unite in abuse, when they could instead unite for justice.

None of this needs to happen.

I shouldn’t need to write a column about why the US needs to immediately stop funding a genocide of children. I shouldn’t need to write it a dozen times, for nearly a year.

I wish, more than anything, that I was not writing it again now.

*          *          *

I am glad the pageantry of the DNC is over. The possibility of honest days has returned. We will be punished for our honesty. But we will also be prepared, and better able to prepare others.

I think back to the last day I kayaked, paddling that passage of contrasting shades of green. The illusion of difference, easily shattered by the setting sun or by my own motion. All I had to do to watch the colors reverse was turn the kayak around. All I had to do to see the truth was approach the water’s edge and examine the leaves up close.

I like to kayak because you go slow. You encounter wildlife that is imperceptible from any other angle. An entire ecosystem, invisible from above, vulnerable and generous from below. Birds that befriend you when humanity lets you down.

I like watching the herons. They respect each other while rejecting the flock. They know their own way, and they don’t compromise. When they fly, it is with purpose. Their wings cast shadows on the water, forcing the rest of the world to lift their heads, and watch where they are going.

They are birds of a feather — and they fly alone.

*          *          *

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View from my kayak.

Best friends!

This bird you cannot change.