Your Monthly Momecdote, Issue 26: June, 2026

This blog post was originally published in my June newsletter. Subscribe to receive next month's essay along with book and music recommendations.

I mentioned I’m reading THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is among my husband’s favorite books (also on that list, if you’d like a sense for his taste: A WALK IN THE WOODS by Bill Bryson, CHILDREN OF TIME by Adrian Tchaikovsky, THE IDIOT by Elif Batuman; his favorite films are Good Will Hunting, Meet Joe Black, and Eddie the Eagle; we both love Bull Durham and About Time). One thing about Mr. Blake is that he’s not just an optimist, but such a believer in people and their potential for goodness that it often strikes me, a proper West Coast skeptic, as naïve. Some of it is his Iowa upbringing: he often trusts that things won’t be stolen. False. Right? We all know this. If you don’t put a lock on your gym locker, one of these days someone will steal your (and more importantly, your WIFE’S) shoes. Not that I would know anything about that specific thing.

Recently, we had an argument about something that’s much too silly to get into right now (a sentence that can be generally shorthanded as: marriage) and ultimately, it came down to this very critical difference between us. I’m a nihilist, a cynic. I love the idea of people, but I don’t trust them to act in their own best interests. Recently, a trade review described Arthur Wren of GIFTED & TALENTED as “a people-pleaser who hates people,” which I realized wasn’t actually Arthur. I didn’t put that element into him on purpose, which means my hand must have slipped—what they’re interpreting as Arthur must actually be me. Hmmmm, thought I.

And thus, the contrast: my husband sees the best in people. No, that’s not right, that’s not a strong enough statement. He doesn’t just “see” the best in people, he chooses, actively, to believe they will rise to the occasion; that anyone put before him has the capacity to do well. During our silly argument, he put it to me this way: “I’m a teacher. I have to believe that everyone who sets foot in my classroom is a good person, because otherwise, how could I do what I do?”

I’ve been sitting with this since he said it; since I realized that his optimism may be doing more for him in these times than my cynicism is doing for me. Because sure, I might be right that people are naturally greedy and selfish and easily misled by propaganda, but also, most of what I believe about public policy relies on the belief that all people are deserving of food, water, shelter, healthcare, social mobility, equal access to resources, agency, justice, respect. Public policy like the kind I crave from my politicians is justifiable only by the belief that people are worthy just for being alive. It’s a belief that underwrites THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE as well: We must act not only in defense of all humans, but in defense of future humans, who may be inherently good or may not—irrelevant. Their goodness is not only not at issue, but not the point. We must behave as if they are worthy of good lives, long lives, a livable biosphere.

So perhaps I’m the one with the dissonance—either I believe that people are good and deserve good things, or I’m the problem. It’s me.     

The primary election for California’s next governor is really something, by the way. In fact, it’s been so confusing to me that I recently paid $7 for an LAist quiz to help me decide which candidate’s values actually align with mine. I was expecting to vote for Katie Porter—I love a woman with Data and Facts and a No-Nonsense Attitude; in the previous Democratic primary, I voted for Elizabeth Warren—but I discovered that actually, she and I disagree much more profoundly than I thought. I do not want tax cuts for families; I want increased tax revenue to benefit those families. I think taxes are important, actually, because humans are good and we should take care of each other, even if a cut seems like a more salient political tool. It’s a short-term fix, and what we need is a long-term attitude. We need to act in favor of the future. We need to tax the ultra-rich to produce money for social services; after all, it is billionaires, not immigrants, who are a drain on society. We need someone who is willing to be unpopular in this age of antitrust failures when it comes to an industry of technocrats. We need someone who isn’t already bought by the very industries we’re trying to fight. We need…

Tom Steyer???

Fucking—apparently. This is the answer my quiz produced for me: the most progressive candidate in the race, and the candidate whose views aligned with over 50% with my own (the others being around 30% or lower), is the white male billionaire who made his wealth in the 80s off private prisons and fossil fuels, only to have an apparent come-to-Jesus moment circa 2012. He’s progressive now; even Jane Fonda can confirm that his last decade of political activism reflects it. But I’m struggling with this, can you tell?

It’s been a week of me talking to my husband about it, the fucking dissonance I feel. Because the truth is I do not want to vote for a billionaire. I don’t trust him. But also, I don’t trust any of the other candidates either, and it’s not as if a non-billionaire is technically any less likely to betray the promises they make on the campaign train. It’s also true that there should be no statute of limitations on changing your ways, especially if your policies reflect new convictions—for example, if that orange man decided to wake up tomorrow and be different, would that really be worse? It’s also true that because Steyer is independently wealthy, he isn’t beholden to any oligarchy buddies in the industries that I hope will be regulated as stringently as possible. He even put forth the absolutely brilliant idea of taxing corporate AI use.

Fuck, I kept saying, fuck fuck fuck, everything he’s saying I either agree with or support. Fuck!

“Why is this so upsetting to you?” posed Mr. Blake, innocently. To which I could only shout the obvious: I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!

It’s a hard time to know what to do, who to trust, what it will take to drag to a screeching halt the march on our lives this federal regime has undertaken in the name of oligarchy and profit. All this suffering, all for a man who will die soon and doesn’t even like his inheriting children; a man whose brain is clearly disintegrating as we speak. I also resent that I’m reading a book about a utopian future because it leaves me feeling like everything outside the book is spinning wildly out of control. When I was on a panel with Veronica Roth this spring, someone asked whether they should be worried that teenagers keep reading dystopian novels, and Veronica and I both agreed: Of course not. Dystopian novels allow the reader a sense of safety. They teach the reader how to identify methods of propaganda; they arm the reader, especially the young reader, with the tools to organize their community, to find allies, to fight back. When I engage with a dystopian novel, the power I have as a reader or writer is profound. Dystopia necessarily ends with, if nothing else, revolution. And sure, utopia might provide me with a plan, but what can I do with it if I read from a place of cynicism? What can I believe in, what comfort can I take, if I’m really a doubter at heart?

People keep asking me how I stay optimistic. Obviously, I don’t. But I believe in the unexpected and the statistically random. I believe in the ability of a person to be better than they were before. I worked in prison reform, so I should really fucking believe that, you know? If it’s true for the repeat offender, given the right resources, then (grits teeth) I guess it must be true for the progressive billionaire man, or else I’m a hypocrite in the end. Fuck, I still hate it! But voting is only the first step in a healthy democracy; you vote and then hold accountable the candidate whose job is not to hoard power, but to serve.

I love my son, I love his generation and all the generations that come after, I want him to have the redwoods, I want him to have the superbloom, I want him to have fucking clean water and medical care and a social safety net and the ability to live without microplastics in his lungs and all the wonders that science provides and art and unbiased history and progress if it is truly progress for everyone and I want all of that for everyone alive. I want him to have a home, an education, and if that means that what I get to during my lifetime have looks different—if it means we give up this goddamn internet with all its stupid enshittified apps and maybe also air travel or fucking, I don’t know, whatever—then maybe that’s just what it takes, because alive people are good, and future people are good, and people are good, and even if I cannot love them as a concept, then I will simply have to reorient my decisions and beliefs to reflect a love I sometimes don’t feel. I will believe in the goodness of mankind. I will vote according to my values and not my prejudices or fears. I will act on behalf of others because I am afforded enough time, however limited it may be, to still act.  

So, to paraphrase the entirety of THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE with a post I once saw on Tumblr: The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. But the second-best time is now.