throbbing light machine

I can't stop thinking about the audio of the crying child in the American detention camp that was released last summer, the 7-minute one; we keep hearing these reports, numbers, and I'm thinking about the intensity of the distress in that child's tiny baby voice ....

Watching the Cohen testimony today. It's been a lot, praying it may be enough to get this avalanche started.

(Sometimes I want them all out, out, OUT, so insistently that it's like an itch or a shudder. Nasty criminal oligarch squatters.)

eta from twitter: 'A GOP lobbyist just told me @realDonaldTrump is in “complete disarray” and that he was “blindsided” by Cohen’s opening statement. Trump feels “betrayed” & is “absolutely furious.” Says Trump even wanted to fly back to US, and also didn’t know Cohen could bring evidence.— Scott Dworkin (@funder) February 27, 2019'

The Special Counsel's office breaks their silence for once in a blue moon, but Buzzfeed is pushing back on the pushback and standing by their story? What's going on here? This really doesn't seem like any way to run a democracy. When is something going to give?

(If I stop fussing for a moment, I can actually see today as one of those give-and-take days where it doesn't feel like winning, but suddenly the conversation has moved three bounds ahead -- Joe Biden got roasted for "blurting" support of gay marriage, but then all of a sudden the administration was backing marriage equality and then there was Obergefell. So. Everyone calling for pre-impeachment investigative hearings ect sounds very reasonable at the moment, and last week maybe we weren't there yet.)

In 2003, it felt like I was screaming into a void: it was obvious, even to me at the time, and I was still in high school, that the Iraq war was bogus profiteering, but the "grown ups" at the NYT and in the world at large were infuriatingly resistant to seeing that reality. There was a hopelessness: nobody was listening.

Now, in 2017, 2 months after the inauguration of the Orange Man, people are starting to listen, and I am strangling on my own rage. I'd thought it would have felt vindicating -- but instead, I don't know how to speak civilly with people who are only now, when it is too late, becoming interested in looking toward the truth.

The absence of HRC from the conversation is a hole, a wound. Vladimir Putin attempted to destroy our republic because he was afraid of her, and wanted to punish her, and apparently enough of us shared those feelings that they were able to take her down.

Dear Secretary Clinton,

this isn't the letter that I thought I'd be writing you today. But I wanted to write you anyway, because your run was historic and important even without a victory at the end, and I want to honor that even as I start to brace for what may be coming.

It meant so much to me, getting to vote for you. I'm 30 years old, and I was a little girl when you were the First Lady - and, along with my mother, you were one of my models for what a woman could be and do, and for how much a woman could do to change the world. And yes, watching you fight against the forces of cultural conservatism back then was one of my first lessons in sexism, as I began to understand exactly how much resistance powerful women could expect to face as they did their work. Those forces won a battle last night, but they won't win the war - the arc of the universe will bend our way, I know it, if we continue to work hard and uphold the faith.

The women who won us our right to vote faced uncounted setbacks, up to and including violent attacks on their persons, and yet they were victorious in the end. The women of the 1980s and 90s, who fought for the right to wear pants in the workplace and to outlaw sexual harassment faced both losses and victories. So shall we do. One of the little girls who saw you running your exemplary, intelligent, organized, high-minded campaign will be inspired - or one of the little girls who saw you working as First Lady in just the same way - and will try again. Maybe the world will be ready for us by then. I'm sorry, terribly sorry, that it wasn't you, because you would have been brilliant. But our day will come.

Your legacy of decades of tireless work on behalf of women and children stands. Everything you gave us - the hope, the solidarity, the brief shining moment of a utopian vision of a better future where "Madame President" would have been a common utterance - stands. I cast two votes for you, in the primary and in the election, while wearing suffragette white, and no one can take that away from me. Madame Secretary, we have already made history.

Thank You. And I don't accept your apology, because I don't believe you did a single thing wrong.