The beautiful world is coming
Chris La Tray on how US fascism is nothing new, and what it takes to build the America of our imagination
As I write this, two democratic leaders in Minnesota have been assassinated. Things are happening faster than I can comment on. I love you. Stay safe.
As you may know, I started a podcast. I did it because at the time I was creatively blocked and I couldn’t keep coming to Substack and expecting myself to come up with something intelligent to say about the metacrises or American fascism or dead women being hooked up to life support to incubate fetuses.
I couldn’t type alone, and so I talked with people I needed to hear more from, whom I had questions for. And the first person I had a question for was Chris La Tray.
If you don’t know about Chris, he’s a writer here on Substack (he writes An Irritable Métis), a human I genuinely respect and love, someone I trade occasional voice notes with, the poet laureate of Montana, one of the most glorious storytellers you’ll ever meet, an author of three books, and a genuinely kind person who I know lives his life in a type of integrity most do not.
Chris is Métis and Ojibwe and enrolled in the Little Shell Tribe, a tribe of landless Indians. They are landless because they refused to comply with the United States government—an authoritarian and fascist government to Indigenous peoples five hundred years before Project 2025. Chris’s ancestors, and specifically Little Shell the Second, dissented, and they paid. In his words: “I come from a long line of people saying Fuck you to the federal government and I’m proud to be part of that.”
Like I said, the whole thing started because I had some questions, and the question I had for Chris came after I read an article by a smart person about how there were now concentration camps in the United States—as if it were the first time such a thing had happened. My question for him was something about what it feels like to be the survivor of a genocide no one talks about or admits to and that you are still paying the price of, or what the experience of living under an authoritarian government that nearly everyone until recently insisted was a democracy, and whether he had any advice to share for those of us who are new to it?
I had questions for myself, too, like why did I wait until we arrived here to ask Chris these things? Or, why did I spend so much time trying to understand Roman history, and none trying to understand my own?
So that’s what we talked about.
I’m writing this on Friday. It’s about 75 degrees outside right now. The air is terrible because of the Canadian fires, which I didn’t know about because everything is happening everywhere simultaneously, and the lines are jammed. It’s gorgeous, and the garden is popping. I’ve been working on it for six years now. I’ve planted over five hundred different perennials, and they are filling in perfectly. I started gardening in March 2020, and I started by raking leaves, and it went from there. This is a big deal to me because I am not talented at other material arts/studio arts, or sticking with things.
My cat, who has breathing issues, is sawing logs behind me, and I have misophonia, so her snores fall somewhere between torture and the cutest thing ever. I was going to go to a yoga nidra class tonight but I’ve been on the phone all day and now I’m overwrought, so I’m going to finish reading What’s Wrong With Men? instead, which is more soothing to me than progressive muscle relaxation. Tomorrow I will protest in Kingston, likely alone, which is fine. My sister instructed her brown children on how to deal with ICE; they live in El Monte, and ICE is roaming their neighborhoods and grabbing people from their homes. I started HRT and I’m excited about what kind of relief I might get from it because I swear to you all, perimenopause for me means I could probably skin a rabbit with my psychic anger.
Chris said that his people have been around for 15,000 years, and what’s 500 years of colonialism?
Erica reminded me:
With all my love, from the middle of the dissolving, with equal amounts of heartbreak and hope.
Holly
Giveaway
UPDATE: THESE HAVE BEEN CLAIMED!!
As part of the ethos of co-regulation (new pod), and as a way to leverage my influence + large subscriber list, I’m diverting funds from my income here to buy gift subscriptions to the paid offerings of writers and creators I love—on and off Substack.
That means using my cash to support their work, promote their platforms, and give you access to some of my favorite resources.
This is only available to paid subscribers (and a reminder that if you cannot afford a paid subscription, we will comp you - email contact@hollywhitaker.com and ask for it).
THIS WEEK: CHRIS LA TRAY!
I'm giving away TWO annual subscriptions to CHRIS LA TRAY'S newsletter (AN IRRITABLE MÉTIS) which is one of my top five resources.
HOW TO APPLY/ENTER: First come. Reply to this email and change the subject line to "Chris La Tray" (paid members only); I ONLY RESPOND IF YOU WIN.15 Things Right Now
All the books I’m loving RN; a great father’s day gift idea; a new song on repeat; all the latest drug news; what if this is all about moving from left-brain dominance to right?; a book I wrote a foreword for and how to write a book; more.
“Traveling to the US? Here’s What You Should Know.”
WTF by Gracie and Rachel. Okay so yes, I’m biased because Gracie is one of my friends and I get to see how insanely talented she is behind the scenes but also, I’m just a massive fan of Gracie and Rachel—check out their new perfectly timed for this moment single and also if you’re in Europe they’re currently opening for Ani Di Franco. (Gracie is who did the original music for co-regulation.)
📚I’ve read a lot of books recently. Standouts include: Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert; What Is Wrong With Men? by Jessa Crispin; Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco; Dusk, which is a play someone I can no longer recall recommended which was such a delight to read (even tho it’s about sexual assault?); Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treur; True and False Magic by Phil Stutz and our girl Elise Loehnen.
It’s Father’s Day, and what better gift than a newsletter? I suggest buying every man in your life a gift subscription to Abortion, Every Day
Related: Why tf don’t men read feminist literature, or about women at all? It’s something I think about constantly—and probably what hurts the most: that I have to keep explaining men to men, because they refuse to learn about their impact, or about themselves, in relation to women. It’s gross at this point because girls and women are fucking dying in this country and half the population cannot be bothered to investigate. If this is you or someone you love, I curated a list of books on bookshop.org called The Books I Wish Men Read.
“If we learn to resonate, we have power. Politics may be downstream of culture - as Gramsci and later Bannon observed. But solidarity is downstream of rapport.” Rushkoff on fascism as the atmosphere we’re all breathing rather than the thing we need to defeat, and how it’s connected to flattening (like how the internet flattens everything into sortable data), which makes me think of a short book I just read that was incredible (The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning), and how we’re moving from an abstract/materialist dominated world to a more balanced, relational, right-brained one.
I wrote the new foreword for the tenth anniversary edition of Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change, which is the gold standard manual for friends and families of folks going through addiction. This is the book I turn to when I need to lend support to a loved one, and it is also something I use in my recovery. Written by Carrie Wilkens and Jeffery Foote from the Center for Motivation and Change, who have been at the forefront of developing harm reduction and holistic methods of recovery for individuals and families alike, it’s a staple.
She’s brilliant
💊🍺🍸🌲🍄💉💸🧑🏻💻🛍️📱 Newsom wants to ban Hemp in CA and Texas just did (RIP seltzer); MDMA for narcissism; Anorexia in middle age; cheap alcohol = more death; how common is addiction among musicians; {but people are still in prison for weed, you say}; it’s looking like weed is gonna stay schedule 1; “Is there a least bad alcohol?”;
Chrissy Teigen and I talked about the fact that she started drinking again on her podcast last year (it just aired), and she announced her struggles with alcohol to the world on Insta, and all the hate articles ensued; everyone knew it all along, she was a fraud, what a mess, what an exception. Except: according to this study, 95% of people relapse. I just find it so interesting that Dax Shepherd admits his relapse and ascends to a type of sainthood, and Chrissy gets called a lying Jezzie.
If I were to buy my dad one or two of the books you recommended for men which one would it be? He's 72 more open than most his peers but... He still grew up in a different gen with deep misogony justified by god, gender roles that worked for him and genuinely doesn't even get weaponized incompetence despite being a brilliant man and deeply adoring my mom. Thoughts?
I’m going to listen to this now. I was brought up to believe that a good and benevolent democratic structure run by good people is possible, at least locally. Generations of family members in civil service, education, etc. Another world is possible, IF, level of optimism. I know now it was b.s. and a function of our privilege. A utopian bubble of earnest scientists and environmentalists and imaginative activism. But all just functioning under the patriarchal fuckery, as it were. Still, get up, chop wood, carry water. We simply must, have hope. We must resist. We must, envision. I haven’t lost my hope for better things, and I’m still so proud of all my people going back in time. Today all the freaky people that make the beauty of this world were out en force. Being in the streets yesterday, there was a buzzy co-regulation of energy. A particular salve of sweet honey in the rock, no other way to put it. And still, it’s a shit show out there. Where do we go from here? Your message this evening hit different. I’m listening… and I’m going to get my bloodwork done. And congrats on the friggin garden, dude. That’s community and family and love and straight up soul food. A kinship network, full of potential and eventualities, constantly being co-created, constantly evolving. Good on you and then some☯️