EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

Never could I have imagined that as America was ripped apart at the hands of obscenely wealthy men, the dinner table discussions and phone calls held with some of our closest friends and family would carry on as usual.

I recite scores from soccer games, then hear how slowly folks are recovering from influenza. Family stops by and we gather in the kitchen, chat about upcoming travel plans, school fundraisers, and how the dog is doing.

As the executive arm eagerly devours the legislative and judicial branches, as cabinet members move confidential communications to insecure messaging channels to evade Freedom of Information Act requests, as our enemies become our allies and our allies become estranged, we sit and we smile and carry on.

As the president floats ideas about third terms and the annexation of sovereign nations and semi-autonomous territories, as we ignore due process to detain and deport individuals without evidence, we nod our heads and talk about the weather. We are living in strange times.

The division that has been sown across these past eight years has left us so disconnected, even inside our own families, many of us are unable to speak to the madness. Some of our most sacred relationships have been rendered paper-thin, oscillating back and forth with the slightest breeze, one honest conversation away from dissolving completely. 

As domestic and international safety nets disappear, as prices climb, as access to affordable medical care and Social Security payments lie in limbo, we go on as if that spring thaw and bit of sunshine is the most pressing thing — as if the undoing of American decency and democracy is all quite normal. None of this is normal, but it is strategic.

The Republican Party, rendered impotent by the president and his mega-rich campaign donor and DOGE director, has received its marching orders to defund all manner of public access to information: public schools, libraries, museums, National Forests and Parks, the Department of Education, the Smithsonian, NPR and PBS. They have extended their vice grip to colleges, universities, and nonprofits, who rely on federal funds and grants, threatening to cut those funds should organizations not comply with their attack on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, along with any other words they find frightening. 

The folks who just months ago screamed about cancel culture took zero time enacting an all-out war on language the minute they snatched power. While it was unpatriotic to boycott musicians over their use of racial slurs or entertainment execs over their abuse of female bodies, it is suddenly very patriotic to delete words like “Black,” “climate science,” “disability,” “equality,” “female,” “hate speech,” “inclusion,” “injustice,” “Latinx,” “Native American,” “racism,” “trauma” and “women” from the American lexicon.  

The most unsettling thing about this very public attack on our First Amendment is that the attack on words has rapidly filtered down to our kitchen tables. As much as I never thought our public right to free speech would be threatened, I most certainly never imagined we would lose that right inside our own homes, talking to the people we love. 

But that is what so many of us are facing these days — empty chatter and surface-level civility with the people we thought we knew, who knew us, who raised us. We have had enough conversations in the days leading up to and following this last election to know how far we can push that line. Now, in an attempt to salvage whatever relationship remains, friends and families all across America have either relegated all discussion to trivial topics or have stopped talking altogether.

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This was odd enough these past few years, tiptoeing around mask mandates and side-stepping whatever fresh headline infected a given week. Since inauguration day, though, the level of cognitive dissonance it takes to hold a “normal” conversation is exhausting. From the right’s pedaled propaganda and the left’s elitist blindfold, we have ended up so utterly divided that the winners can now truly take all because in order to form a resistance, you have to be in communication and say out loud what it is you are resisting. 

That should be the easy part:

“We are against taking from the poor to give to the rich.” 

“We are against upending the Constitution and governmental balance of power.” 

“We are against creating trade wars with our closest allies and annexing their sovereign land and territories.”

“We are against denying individuals due process.”

“We are against anything that would suggest all people are not created equal.”

“We are against anything that threatens our right to free speech, freedom of the press or peaceful protest.”

But as I scroll through Facebook stories or pick up the phone to find another watered-down conversation while the nation smolders in the background, I realize resistance might never take shape.

So many of us have been rendered speechless. They have succeeded in their most sinister of goals — they have made us afraid to speak to one another.

I wonder how long before these written words will be taken from me, too.  

— Ashley Wirgau is a resident of Grand Haven.