I’ve been struggling to write about politics since Trump’s election win. Partly, this is just because my health hasn’t been so great this winter, but it’s also because anything I might have to say feels somehow inadequate to the moment at hand.

I’ve been wanting to write something exploring why I feel so stuck in this way, because I have a hunch that it might be relevant to others who also feel paralyzed and helpless in the face of this unfolding horror. But even that has been proving difficult.

Now doesn’t particularly feel like the moment to break my silence, given my distinct lack of expertise on foreign affairs. But yesterday, I opened Ursula K Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching at random and received this verse, which seemed so undeniably relevant to last week’s extraordinary showdown in the Oval Office that I thought it was worth sharing.

Chapter 79. Keeping the contract.

After a great enmity is settled,
some enmity always remains.
How to make peace?
Wise souls keep their part of the contract
and don’t make demands on others.
People whose power is real fulfill their obligations.
People whose power is hollow insist on their claims.

The Way of heaven plays no favourites.
It stays with the good.

I’ll leave you to decide whose is the “hollow power” in this analogy. Suffice to say, I don’t think Lao Tzu would have been particularly impressed by Trump and Vance’s performance, or that he would have predicted things would end well for them.

Of course, that does not mean they cannot still cause a lot of damage in the meantime. I suppose that precisely how much damage depends on how the world chooses to respond to this pair of bullies and their paper tigers.