There is an essay by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott titled “Fear of Breakdown” in which he posits that when a patient grows constantly wary of psychological disintegration and responds using whatever defense mechanism they may choose, they are in fact afraid of a breakdown that has already happened. I find this to be the case in the material world as well, especially with regard to the lawless destruction Trump wreaks upon the land, the economy, the social order. Many of my readers have expressed anger that I have simply accepted the reality of what already is: that the East Wing has been wantonly torn down and even with the best preservationists on the job, the action cannot be undone. While this is indeed shocking and by all accounts woeful, history, one must be reminded, is a dialectical process. From the rubble of destruction, something else must form and while the detritus of the past may be brought into a new orbit, the forward march of time ensures that what is happening now has never, ever happened before. I would advise my critics to live in the now that…
—Kate Wagner, Chicago
