the Empathy List #171: The Orange Man Peering Over My Shoulder
The Orange Man© wants to fix elections for a millenium, and he said so plainly, on national television, while threatening to exile “communists.” Also he still wears too much self-tanner.
Hello friends, Liz here.
I hate talking about the Orange Man©. He’s boring, crude, and not in the least funny anymore. Unlike the last term, he’s installed leaders who mimic his agenda of stupidity, hatred, and cruelty with efficacy, demonstrating an efficiency no one thought possible. (How could they do THIS MUCH BAD SO DAMN QUICKLY?!)
But I cannot seem to shake the Orange Man© lately, even from my thoughts. I’ve begun to feel haunted. Somehow, he’s found a way to insert himself into every crevice of our society. (Too gross?)
His voice is omnipresent, his visage is forever peering over our shoulders, his sticky fingers seeking to contain and control us. He wants to literally put his face on a bill that would sit in our pockets, which has not felt creepy in the past because the faces we Americans have put onto our money are the images of the dead and memorialized. But OM© is alive. (Yes, still, despite predictions to the contrary.) And it seems he and his White supremacist buddies aren’t going anywhere.
Two weeks ago, I began reading the graphic novel version of 1984. This was both a balm and a mistake. Though I generally read graphic novels in a single sitting—even the dystopias—I couldn’t finish this one. It felt too real. How did Orwell know? The eyes that follow every move—digitally, physically, creatively, so that privacy becomes luxury, not necessity—that is now. We are always being recorded. Even our private communications (for example, Signal texts) have now become evidence that someone could use to convict those whose beliefs do not match the party line.
I wish I were exaggerating.
But over the past few weeks, a Texas court has handed down sentences that shocked me. The Prairieland Detention Center demonstration occurred one year ago (July 4, 2025), a protest that included nonlethal gun fire (a single shot) and less than $5,000 of property damange, and still, seven defendants received sentences that ranged from 30 to 100 years—life sentences.
[I echo the sentiment of Julia Bedell that bringing a gun to a protest changes everything, and I wish the Prairieland defendants had not brought any weapon whatsoever. I believe that guns solve zero problems, even when wielded by leftists, with whom I tend to agree, and I want total gun control in our country, period, end of story.]
While you could call this an outlier of a case—a ruling by a MAGA judge against a militant leftist group, big deal—unfortunately, the timing of the sentencing coincided with a speech our Orange Chief© offered on a mountaintop, the faces of White American leaders etched into stone behind his podium. His entourage had placed the president and his podium behind a screen of bullet-proof glass (practical and poetic!) with Mount Rushmore as his backdrop. The speech hit on many of Trump’s favorite points: America as exceptional, unprecedented winners, without peer in the history of the globe; immigrants as the root of all our problems; and the greatness of himself as the best possible leader who should probably have his face etched in stone alongside the faces behind him.
But one section of the speech differed from the president’s normal cadence of hate and self-aggrandizement: the part where he initiated a new McCarthyism. (As one New York Times columnist put it, “He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.”)
Evidently, the wins of the Democratic Socialists have spooked the president, because he couldn’t stop talking about them. Except he branded them communists. And he threatened his ideological opposites with exile because, as he put it,
“These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”
He continued, “You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”
Listen, it’s not new for presidents to hate any political ideas or parties that threaten capitalism. It’s not even new to threaten to kick out these so-called enemies and because they want Americans to believe they are the anthithesis of democracy. Plenty of presidents (Woodrow Wilson especially…) have literally deported their ideological opponents, especially socialists and/or communists, simply because they found their ideas or power threatening.
However, with the backdrop of rising Democratic socialist influence, the arrests of protestors in Minnesota and Texas, and the mass deportation of immigrants who may or may not be here illegally, the words of the Orange Man© menace.
Especially because he went on to encourage his party colleagues to rig American elections:
We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise. But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the Save America Act, then we will not lose an election for 100 years.
[Many thanks to Heather Delaney Reese for her insightful examination of the president’s Mount Rushmore speech.1 She goes into more depth than I do here.]
Do I need to explain how scary these words and actions are? Threats of election interference, of exile and deportation of ideological enemies, of lifelong convictions based on paltry evidence—that is not democracy.
I thought I understood the threat when I was screaming into the void in 2024. But I did not. I underestimated the president and his team of lackies because I thought my side was smarter, or at least, wiser. We are not.
Lately, in my most heartbroken moments, I begin to see us as only creatures, no more powerful than our most beloved pet and as dumb as the plants that grow up on our degraded soil, and yet, we are even more debased.
Am I depressed? I don’t think so.
It’s just, for the first time, I am beginning to peer into the depths. I now understand that when Christ died, he had to descend into hell before he could rise. Because there is real evil in the world. It resides in our bodies and minds and souls, and it scratches and claws to bring us to the depths, even in life. And Jesus had to deal with this gaping selfishness in me, in you, in them, had to vanquish something—I don’t know what. Satan? Demons? Do those even exist?
I do not throw supernatural terms around lightly, and I do not want to give you the impression that I understand any of it. (I used to be more ghosty than I am currently. I lean more materialist than supernaturalist lately.) Yet Jesus certainly believed in a side of humankind—and whatever else is beyond us—that included forces of evil and harm whose singular aim was destructive. And that evil, according to the Bible, is personal and powerful.
Okay, I’m beginning to creep myself out. (I’m not a horror lover.) But what else do we make of what we’re seeing in the world right now?
A genocide stretched across years in a war between cousins who happen to live across arbitrary boundary lines.
The world’s first trillionaire, whose innovation in artificial intelligence is known for its skill in making revenge porn, and whose brief foray into government resulted in the deaths of millions worldwide due to cutting USAID. [See Ro Khanna’s “Elon Musk Wants Me in Prison. I Want Him Under Oath.”]
Armed militia in the streets, pointing guns (and sometimes shooting them) at their opponents.
Secret camps where my leaders send Brown people who threaten their sense of superiority.
And, meanwhile, the ever-watching Orange Man©, who cannot seem to stay awake during a single press conference, but whose vision still stretches into the private lives of most Americans.
However, I cannot leave us here, friends. Because I do not believe that the powers-that-be will win the day. They just won’t. But they may for a time, and perhaps a long time. That is what troubles me.
So, while I hate the way the Orange Man© has taken over my country—and how he has invaded my interior life, too!!—I find myself more committed than ever to preserving a private life for myself and my loved ones.
[Short Privacy DIY: I’m ditching Google Search for DuckDuckGo. I signed up for a VPN service (through DuckDuckGo) and I subscribe to DeleteMe. I’m getting into the nitty gritty of my Meta settings to keep them from endlessly tracking my online movements. I’m opting out of every ai service I possibly can, including the one on my Samsung tv. (!) I’m adopting analogue hobbies with zero digital trail (like puzzling). I bought walkie talkies with a 30 mile range, in case it’s helpful at a protest and/or I don’t want to bring my phone somewhere. And I now subscribe to a physical paper newpaper.
I’m also talking with my family members—including those who voted differently—about the fear I have, and the way that this administration could affect our family. Because, BY THE WAY, I’ll be publishing my second book in 2028, and it’s about WOMEN PROTESTING IN AMERICA, which means that if it gains ANY traction, the government won’t like it. So, before it releases, I will be making sure my will, power of attorney, and guardianship preferences are legal and clear, so that if anything happens to me, my kids will continue to grow up loved and cared for in my absence. Yes, I’m serious.]
I have felt very small lately. And so, I’ve also begun reflecting more deeply on God’s power. As in, God as the ultimate good power of the universe—the power that spins the Earth in its orbit and yet also knows me, my children, the animals that live on my neighborhood block, the immigrants sitting in detention a few miles down the road at the local Geo facility.
Nebuchadnezzar’s descent into madness comes to mind often. Do you remember the story? From Daniel 4:
“…as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, 30 he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”
31 Even as the words were on his lips, a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. 32 You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.”
33 Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.
34 At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.
I won’t exegete the passage for you because in truth, what matters most to me is that it is true—psychologically, if not historically. Which is to say, when the powerful believe their own hype, they destroy themselves, and I believe that God often lets it/makes it happen. And that is justice. And that, my friends, is the end of power. Which is to say, that is where the story of the Orange Man© ends, too.
Thanks be to God.
Thanks for reading, pals.
Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant
Food for Thought…
It’s worth re-watching Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” on Kanopy (NPR says the film still holds up). Because we need to laugh at the dark, and we need to remember that we’re not alone in the history of the world. We’ve been here before and survived. (The balloon pops—keep watching.)
Fair warning: I’m pretty sure she wrote the essay with the help of ai, and it shows in the cadence. (Feel free to correct me on this, Heather Delaney Reese.)