The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.

Oh hello,

Surprised to hear from me? Yeah, me too. It’s definitely be while. You see…what happened was…well, that’s actually what this post is about.

Let me start off by saying that I am a very patient person. It’s probably the thing I like most about myself. I can stand in a line, sit in a venue before an event, hang out in a transportation center and just…vibe. I don’t get annoyed, I don’t need to be entertained, and I don’t fidget. I think I’m this way through a combination of genetics, growing up on a farm, and a childhood spent in and out of hospital waiting rooms and testing.

(There was this one thing I had to do annually where they’d pump me full of radioactive dye and then I had to lay perfectly still for half hour periods over the course of a few hours on a table over some sort of radiation detecting imaging device and we’d watch the dye collect in my 1 and a third kidneys. And this was the early 80s so all I had was - hand to God - the “hang in there baby” kitten poster on the ceiling to look at. This started when I was six. And this was my favorite of all the tests because it sucked the least.)

I guess the one time I’m not patient is when I know the outcome, or at least suspect the outcome, especially if outcome is going to be less than ideal. I’m a big believer in ripping off the band-aid, doing the worst thing on the to-do list first, and just generally getting the bad stuff over with so I can stop worrying about it and if there’s some healing that needs to happen, it can start.

My problem now is not a sudden loss of patience nor am I eager to fast forward to the bad things that I think are going to happen. I don’t know the words for what I’m feeling. The closest I’ve come to feeling like this before was when my mother was diagnosed with a cancer that (at the time) had a 9% five-year survival rate. I knew that something bad was going to happen, I wanted to postpone it for as long as possible, but the not knowing the whens or hows of it was almost paralyzing.

(She died a few weeks after diagnosis so that was that.)

Earlier this week I was scrolling BlueSky and saw this piece’s title in a post. I think it must be a nascent meme because it was just those words and picture. I actually can’t remember what the picture was, but it was something silly like Gritty. In spite of that, I had an almost visceral reaction to the words and was like “oh, that person has been here too.”

I immediately googled it because I assumed it was a line from some piece of SciFi or Fantasy that I was not familiar with.

(I actually don’t like those genres. And I think I assumed this because everyone on BlueSky keeps referencing “Butlerian Jihad” which I thought was a philosophical line of thought - possibly connected to Judith Butler - and it turns out it’s from Dune. DUNE. Anyway, fuck everyone who says that on BlueSky.)

After a quick google DuckDuckGo, it turns out it’s not from a fantasy novel. It was part of a collection of works written by a Marxist who was imprisoned by Mussolini and he was writing about what was happening in Europe in the 1930s.

My internal monologue when I realized that:

So yeah, I think I know why it resonated.

Although my inertia is not just about current events; I also have similar feelings about my professional sphere and the fun thing about working adjacent to the legal profession is that you get to wonder “are our legal institutions crumbling because of the rise of fascism or has fascism been allowed to revive because of lack of push back by crumbling institutions?”

I’m at the Pizza Hut. I’m at the Taco Bell. I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

Let’s talk about the professional stuff first so those of you that like to pretend you can separate work / life / politics - or, worse yet, think things aren’t really that bad - can motor after the professional part and continue to live in your fantasy land.

That wasn’t entirely a criticism. I’m actually low-key jealous that you can do that.

For the entirety of my career, the legal world has been in crisis. Some look at it as the Access to Justice crisis, with the great majority of people who could use legal assistance of some sort going without. Some concentrate on practice- world inefficiencies and talk about things like “the end of the billable hour”. There’s also clogged court systems, an education system designed in the 19th century, licensure and professional competency certifications not at all grounded in reality or the needs of practice. And so on and so on.

It’s been a slow burn. Most of those problems I listed were known problems before I even decided to go to law school. But suddenly….

Deus ex machina.

Or maybe it’s

Deus as machina.

Yeah, I’m talking about all the stuff happening with AI.

All of the problems I list with the legal world are problems that people have willingly chosen to not solve. They are not at all insurmountable. There are dozens of viable solutions. The problem is that the people who can actually effectuate change have just chosen to…not engage with any of them. At least not in any meaningful way.

<a Large Language Model is slowly lowered to the stage from above>

What happens when a potential solution is too big and loud and well funded to politely ignore?

I guess we’re all about to find out.

And I have to admit, I’m not entirely optimistic about how it all is gonna shake out.

This isn’t about whether or not “the AI works” and please note that I called this a ”potential solution.” For what it’s worth, I’m not an AI hater nor am I convinced that it’s the right solution for all problems. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be fully capable of doing everything that we would need it to do. No one really does and anyone that says they do is full of shit.

This is what is paralyzing me. Whether or not it works is almost beside the point. It’s here, it will not be ignored, and the reaction to it from everyone and everything that’s stood in the way of making things better in the past is the real test.

Because on top of everything else wrong with what they’ve been doing (or not, as the case may be), the past refusal to actively engage in seeking solutions means that most of the legal gatekeepers do not have the skills, muscle memory, or experience to adequately decide how to handle this new entrant.

It’s like learning to drive in Bugatti Chiron Super Sport.

The cherry on this anxiety sundae is…AI and its related industries are not without some…baggage. There’s the environmental issues, the myriad ethical issues, the fact that the industry is so big it’s creating its own gravitational pull and, oh yeah, then there’s the fact that most of the people creating and funding this technology have LOST THEIR GODDAMN MINDS.

Do I want it to succeed? Is that really the best thing for the planet and humanity? Do I want to know what would happen and fill the power vacuum should it fail?

Which is actually a pretty good segue to…

<people not wanting to read my opinion of current events exit, pursued by a bear>

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO THE UNITED STATES?

I knew it would be bad. I was prepared for really really bad. But I am still continually shocked at how bad - and yet, how incredibly stupid - it all is.

It took me a while to figure out if 2025 was actually worse than 2017 or was I just now more present for it.

Remember my dead mom? Yeah, so she was diagnosed in January 2017 and died a few weeks later in late February. I was already in a bad state prior to her diagnosis and my psychiatrist, god bless him, took his little prescription pad and made it rain. So I was pretty numbed out and honestly don’t remember a lot of that period of time.

The good news is that after years of treatment, I am in a much better place and not requiring chemical assistance to get through basic daily activities. The bad news is that I am now forced to RAWDOG REALITY.

This is not a great reality to rawdog.

Since January 20, it’s been one goddamn thing after another. And because it’s been so terrible and so widespread and happening so fast - one might even call it a Blitzkrieg - it’s been hard to figure out how to react or act.

I’ve always hated the attitude that I’ve seen so many (mainly) women take of “oh I will buy that dress/take that trip/do that other thing when I lose weight/get married/some other superficial goal.” Fuck that. Take the trip, cut your hair, stop waiting for some magic event to make it the perfect time. Life is short.

But now, with each new tear in the constitution or fabric of daily life, I find myself doing a version of that. I keep waiting to see “oh, is this the thing that will cause people to finally wake up and get going on the whole stopping bad things from happening thing and I can go back to my doing my normal life?”

Is today the economy tanks? That shelves are empty and people can’t afford basic necessities?

Is today the day they announce that there’s not going to be any flu or Covid vaccines this fall?

Is today the day a federal judge tries to have a DOJ attorney locked up on contempt and we go full blown constitutional crisis?

Is today the day the people I know who work for or depend on funding from the federal government get DOGE’d? (A lot have already.)

Is today the mass casualty airline accident?

Is today when FEMA doesn’t show up to a massive disaster and we see how the safety net has been dismantled?

Is today the day that less marginalized citizens start to get disappeared to a foreign gulag and it clicks for people that no one is safe if everyone is not safe?

Is today the day the guy with the nuclear football has to decide between fragging his commander or dropping nukes on Ottawa?

And which one of these is going to be..the one. The one where people finally decide “enough.”

And I just feel…stuck.

I feel like I can’t make plans or start most things because I’m waiting for whatever is going to happen to happen. Like, “I should really reply to that email but maybe I should wait to see if this…gets…better?…worse?…different?…before starting.” People put meetings on my calendar more than 2 weeks in advance and I’m like “Bold move, Cotton, let’s see if we’re still a functional society then.” I wanted to go to Europe this year and now I don’t like being more than half a tank of gas away from home in case I need to bug out and get back to safety.

It’s not like I live my life in terror or a catatonic state. I’m doing my job. I have hobbies. I live, laugh, and love. But it’s always in the background. I game out worst case scenarios and do what I can to prepare. I think I’ve done all I can do on that front so there’s not much else to do but wait.

But for what?

While I desperately wish that Trump had never been elected and know that each day he’s in office there’s only going to be more damage (some that may never be repaired), I just can’t see a real nice and easy way out of it.

Say the Dems sweep midterms and they Impeach. And he’s actually removed from office by senate. January 6 is going to look like a VBS picnic. And it’s not that those that would rebel violently couldn’t be eventually brought to submission, it’s that ARMED ATTEMPTED TAKE OVERS OF GOVERNMENT ACTIONS ARE BAD AND NON-REPAIRABLE INJURIES TO NATIONAL PSYCHE.

Military coup? Never works out well.

Dies peacefully in his sleep in office? That doesn’t get rid of the Project 2025 people scattered throughout government. Or rebuild the damage that’s been done.

It’s not that an end is not possible. And the future iteration of all this can be so much better than what we started with. It’s just…not going to be an easy process to remake everything that’s been broken and lay the foundation for a better future. And I simultaneously dread and look forward to the time when we make those choices.

So, anyway, that’s why I haven’t posted recently.

Hang in there, baby.

Sarah

p.s. Because many of you are discovering your civil disobedient side and because the government is even less of your friend than ever and because for SOME GODDAMN REASON, the youngsters are convincing themselves it’s PRAXIS to talk to the cops, let me share what is perhaps the best and most useful piece of social media content ever created by a legal professional: