Hello, Fancy Comma Newsletter readers!
The government has been shut down this whole month, and I have been reading up on all of the many devastating-to-science-more-and-more-every-day actions of the federal government. In short, it feels like we can’t have nice things. It’s kind of like that Taylor Swift song, “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”
So, I was shocked when I was interviewing Earle Ford, an Army vet who resigned from poring over millionaires’ and billionaires’ tax returns at the IRS, and he dropped the following gem:
“We can have nice things.”
Wait…we can?
It reminded me of that other Taylor Swift song, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” [listen in Spotify], that I have all but internalized since seeing the election called for Donald Trump in the wee hours of November 6, 2024.
What a wild ride it has been since then. It almost feels like our nation no longer deserves anything good. Add to that the cancelled grants, the rising costs at the grocery store, the ballooning costs of the various business-related things Fancy Comma uses, and more … and it just feels like everything I hold dear is being dismantled…for no good reason.
It is disheartening to see people in power continue to work against the interests of the American people, and that’s why I rolled out of bed at 8 am last Saturday to go to No Kings Day OKC, which, let me remind you, happened in a red state where all 77 counties voted for the president. That’s so much red that the president wants to move here, as I watched him once state in a rally on the 2024 presidential election campaign trail.
My own senator posted an apparently now-deleted Instagram reel in which he calls protestors at No Kings Day a really mean name I will not publish here amidst a list of cute little emoji-studded insults toward Democrats. I wish I had screenshotted that Instagram post before it was taken down because now it feels like that post never happened…because those mean-spirited words are part of what motivated me to get out of my house and protest. It was just a dumb post, and I commented as much before deleting my comment, fearing it, too, was too rude. I guess I was right, in the end, since I checked twice and I can’t find that post anymore.
Something really bizarre is going on with our lawmakers’ sense of reality. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who feels like the next Senator of New York to replace Chuck Schumer, even if she has not said anything about it, called out what’s going on with our lawmakers and other government officials.
“The mistake that I made, and I made this early on — you know, from all the movies we see growing up about heroes and villains — I thought that fascist takeover attempts were going to be architected by evil geniuses. I was not expecting how unearned, nepotistic, mediocre, and just dumb so many of the people architecting this were going to be. And it works because of brute force […] but it’s not sophisticated and it does not merit my intellectual respect.”
I haven’t heard any lawmakers call this out as boldly as AOC, but scientists are paying attention, of course. Critical thinking is our job, and we are good at it.
At Stand Up for Science OKC, our local news interviewed a scientist who said that what was going on was the first step towards fascism…and whether or not I want to believe that, he was right, in retrospect.
So many lawmakers today make the decisions they do out of the fear of being primaried by the president to serve the people effectively. The end result is a government devoid of actual thought and analysis which is…not really doing its job anymore, because it can’t.
Amidst that backdrop, Ford’s message is so refreshing and full of hope: “we can have nice things.” If he advances past the primaries, he will take on Anna Paulina Luna in FL-13. Catch the interview below.
Political drama aside, it’s been a chill month on the Fancy Comma blog. Check out the blog posts you may have missed:
Yes, You Can Be a Writer and Build a Life You Love in our AI Times (Here Are 5 Ways)
Ranking Literary Works by Nobel-Prize Winner Gabriel García Márquez
I also interviewed the grandson of American novelist John Dos Passos, John Dos Passos Coggin, who is a fired fed formerly working as a contractor with NOAA.
I was also excited to see that The Experimentalist profiled me and Fancy Comma and talked about our efforts in the current times. Read that here.
That’s all for this month! If you liked this newsletter, please share it!
