Episode 51: Have you ever felt guilty about bringing kids into this mess?

We’ve been off for two weeks, and what a two weeks they were! With the debate performance and SCOTUS’s immunity ruling, two of the guardrails against Project 2025 (and the useful idiot who will line his pockets escorting it into reality) took a hit. And suddenly it’s easier to feel that much more anxious about the America our now-voting-age children have to figure out.

We’re also learning that it’s possible for two presumably paradoxical things to be true: We can love our kids 3000 and still feel, as

Jill Filipovic

wrote, a little selfish for having them and subjecting them to the daunting struggles that we didn’t anticipate when we became parents.

This conversation is about our anxiety and the way we hope to make it as productive as possible. Anxiety is a bitch, but it can drive great things. In our case, the only plan is to stay active, stay informed, stay within ourselves, and do all we can to make sure anyone eligible to vote—especially people our kids’ age who might not be sure their votes matter—has an abiding motivation and a solid plan to do so.

We’re not all that concerned about who the Democratic nominee will be, because that’s beyond our control. We just need numbers to support the ideology, if not necessarily the person. We also talk about the weird feelings of “breeder’s remorse” (to be continued in the Facebook group), the power of ovaries of steel, and whether kombucha-wurst should be a thing.

Other links:

• John Oliver’s takedown of Project 2025

• From

  Kevin M. Kruse
  : Whatever you do, don’t not vote.

• Les Moonves: TFG is “great for business” …

• … and the considerable trouble he’s been in since.

• The rich will get richer if the 2017 tax cuts are extended

• 30 things President Biden has accomplished that you might have missed