“Write about how what’s happening right now shouldn’t keep us from celebrating the Fourth of July and everything it’s meant to be,” my husband says as he glimpses the blank screen staring back at me. “But I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel that way at all,” I say. I would like to. I would actually love to. I would love nothing more than to cloak myself in red, white and blue this Friday and belt out the Star-Spangled Banner (undeniably off-key) as a chorus of fireworks stream down from the sky. I would love to join the crowds downtown and watch my boys snag Tootsie Rolls and Smarties from the street as waving neighbors walk the morning parade. I would love to look at those neighbors, covered in the colors of the flag, and not wonder who they voted for. I would love to go back to a day when that wasn’t the first thing I thought when I saw the Stars and Stripes waving from someone’s front yard or the back of their Silverado.

“The true measure of a society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Mahatma Gandhi I am spending my day at a non-profit, one that serves children with physical, mental and emotional challenges. I sit tucked away in a back office that could use fresh ceiling tiles, a new door, and a coat of paint. The carpet, unraveling beneath my feet, needed replaced long ago. A decades old sound machine fires a hum from the threshold as an extension cord snakes along the hallway behind it. Passersby are alerted of the trip hazard by a bright orange traffic cone. This is the setting in which children who have undergone trauma are evaluated, at least those who find themselves pigeon-holed by state funds. This is the best we can do for our kids. Upon my arrival, I’d missed the driveway, ending up in the parking lot of my dermatologist instead. This medical mecca, freshly constructed with floor to ceiling windows, modern furniture and tasteful artwork, was the vision I thought I would be walking into this morning. But, to no one’s surprise, physical appearance is far more lucrative than mental health. Who wants to cover the cost of children’s emotional recovery when there are laugh lines and thin lips to be filled?

In the aftermath of the 2016 and 2024 elections, it has been made clear: badly behaved men will continue to be rewarded over exceptional women. Men can grab, harass, degrade, lie, and abuse. Women can’t even smile right. In the public eye, females are either distrusted for their stoicism or mocked for their joy and laughter. They are crucified for not following the unwritten rules that have been set for them, rules that it seems are impossible to master. But as much as America’s disdain for women breaks my heart, the portrait of “manhood” we have just solidified for our boys destroys me even further. The emotional expression, the fullness of humanity that we criticize our women for becomes even more disqualifying when displayed by our men. As a mother who works to raise sweet and strong boys, I had hoped for so much better this time around. When given the opportunity to highlight a family whose husband has sacrificed his career for his wife’s (a picture we rarely see in American culture) we said “no.” When given the opportunity to choose a Vice President who not only checked those “manly” boxes—military service, football coach, gun owner, hunter, flannel aficionado—but who expanded upon those boxes with emotional capacity, devotion to his family, and the ability to teach and nurture, again, we looked away.

“It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” “Guerrilla Radio” Rage Against the Machine White women, nice women, suburban moms and Insta dolled-up wives, college girls and grandmothers - you have been conditioned your whole lives to be quiet and polite and pleasing. All the while, every day, people are stripped of their dignity and humanity because of it, because of you, because of me. People in this country are quite literally dying because of our conditioning, our gentle nature. There is nothing gentle or polite about indifference to suffering. Many of you believe that because the people in the crosshairs don’t look like you, you are safe. Understand that, now, no one is safe. I know you are tired. I know you are empty and broken. I know how it feels to hold everyone together while the ground cracks beneath your feet. Give yourself a minute or a day or the week. Then when the ground stops shaking, sit and listen. Listen to your own breath pace with the ticking of time. It will not wait any longer for you. It has called and called, but you have not answered for fear of making a sound. It is time to shake off the burden of politeness and get loud. Really. Fucking. Loud. It is time to make people uncomfortable, even if that person is you. Trust me. That discomfort quickly becomes freedom, and you will like it.

As I sit down to write this November column, it is 24 hours until election day. Last month, I spent my time crafting an article that the Tribune refused to publish as it related “too directly to national politics,” a crime I have most certainly committed time and again over these past five years as a columnist for this newspaper. And while I understand why the Tribune might enforce such a policy to help limit contention, I object to any form of censorship whether it pertains to my words or anyone else’s. Given the crossroads we are facing in this moment and all that we stand to lose, I think one of the most notable losses we could suffer is the extermination of our freedom to disagree. I ask the Tribune to reconsider their decision on my October column and any other pieces by columnists who ventured into this forbidden territory, as national politics is sewn directly into our everyday lives. There is no escaping it. My previously unpublished column centered on how sexism continues to impact women in our homes, our workplaces, and on the national political stage in this current election. Without open dialogue surrounding the double standard that remains between the sexes, we can never hope to create an equitable community for ourselves and our children – a goal that far surpasses any single election, no matter how divisive this one may be. Moreover, by limiting our space for public disagreement, what else do we stand to lose as we head into voting day and beyond?

“Imagine the media treatment of Kamala Harris if she had five children by three different men.” Stop and actually imagine it. Imagine how far Harris would have made it in her very public career. District attorney of a top 20 U.S. city? Attorney General? U.S. Senator? Vice President? Not a chance. I was confronted with this quote at the start of Harris’ campaign all those long weeks ago, and not only has it stayed with me, it has grown. Imagine the treatment of Harris if she had 34 felony convictions or if she had filed bankruptcy multiple times. Imagine if she had paid off and slandered multiple people whom she had sexually assaulted. Imagine if she had inspired an attack on our nation’s capital, then stood by to watch the destruction. Imagine if she had worked to deny and sow doubt in America’s free and fair election process or refused to participate in our country’s long-standing tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.

In the week leading up to this year’s Fourth of July observance, we were reminded why the American patriarchy must come to an end. We were shown beyond all doubt that neither of the aged men struggling to reach us across a generational chasm is a viable option to lead this nation (though I would argue that should we be left in November with these garbage choices, there is a clear lesser of two evils). In addition to the 90 minutes of cold hard proof that the beloved patriarchy has destroyed not one but both of America’s major political parties, we were met this past week with the most damning Supreme Court decision in recent history, one that not only puts the lives of women on the line, but everyone, old white men included. It has signaled the fall of democracy itself. Yet still, the cheers reverberate from those failing to realize that in granting immunity to their guy, any other guy who beats and bullies his way into the highest office (because the patriarchy will never elect a gal) will wield the power of a dictator. Bringing me to my Independence Day thesis—I am sick to death of rich old white men, their infantile egos, and the patriarchy that protects them. I am sick of them sucking up all of the oxygen in every room they enter. I am sick of them putting their pride and their power above everything else, even when those things are living, breathing, screaming, dying human beings.

“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Last week, I finally sat down to watch The Handmaid’s Tale based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. While the television series was released seven years ago, I have not been able to bring myself to sit before it, neither in print nor on film, until now. This particular work, this tale of subjugation and violence against women, I could not open for fear it would feel too real. I was not wrong. I have sat with too many women who have been violated in these ways, women who were reduced to bodies, stripped bare of feeling or choice. These women, these friends, were not unlike Atwood’s protagonist, Offred. In those unspeakable moments, they were diluted to just their physical form, Handmaids all of them, all of us. I have experienced this violation myself. I have been reduced to a body more times than I can recall. I do not wish to recall these times but only to warn that such dystopia is not so far away in some imagined work of fiction. It is right here. It always has been here, breathing just under the surface, leaking out in millions of ways upon millions of women. We have all been Offred in some form, though so many still confuse their oppressors with saviors, as does Atwood’s problematic character, Aunt Lydia. “There is more than one kind of freedom,” said Aunt Lydia. “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.”