By Monday, Brett Kavanaugh will be installed as the eighth justice of the Supreme Court, completing the rightward shift of the federal government Republicans have been working toward since the Reagan years.

Barring the Democrats failing to take back one of the houses of Congress this November, 45 and his cronies (there is no such thing as a never-45 Republican; they are now all his thralls) will quickly revert America back to a 19^th century legal framework—and enforce it with all the advanced technology of the 21^st century. Imagine civil rights, labor rights, environmental rights, all under siege and with the ability to share protesting information diminished due to the destruction of net neutrality.

When I woke up on November 9^th, 2016, I predicted this course of action would take place. I called the piece “A Generation of Night.” I ended the piece bleakly, despairing the nation I would one day have to raise children from. My future daughter would grow up in a nation where her body did not belong to her, being seen only as an incubator versus what Roe v. Wade and the 14th Amendment says she is—a political being with agency over what she allows to grow inside her body. My future son would grow up in a nation where, for all his striving, he can be shot down by police, and have police get away with it—and have the police be given cover by the highest levers of power.

But that despair was two years ago. I’ve done all I can to prepare myself and my family for the inevitable setting of the sun. Before I go do the activities I have developed to sustain hope, I wanted to share a few insights with y’all:

• My grandmother remains the most political astute person I know. She fled the racism of South Carolina to make a life in Brooklyn. She has voted Democratic her entire life, and prayed for Democratic victories in church; she knew any other alternative was odious. She called 45’s victory and always tells me to keep my head up. Listen to black women.

• And the best way to listen to black women is to find the prominent voices on #blacktwitter and take them seriously. And by taking them seriously, I mean giving them credit and signal boosting them.
• Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites best explains the crisis of the political moment we are in—for broad sections of American society, there is forgiveness for mistakes; for others, only accountability. He argues we cannot be a nation of both. While this has always been untrue for black people, Hayes’ work should be understood as how the rapidly advancing mechanisms of authoritarianism will make this true for vast amounts of white people as well.
• Read Adam Server, Jamelle Bouie, and Sarah Kendzior. Server and Bouie write weekly for the Atlantic and Slate. Kendzior’s book needs to be required reading; she’s one of the few reporters that acknowledges you cannot ignore race when explaining how we got here.
• I’ve got on my queue to re-read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns to reacquaint myself with how my ancestors survived their period of night.
• Write and journal and diary. We just watched a political party try to gaslight the nation into disbelieving the credible sexual assault allegations of a survivor. Said party also lied to burnish the supposed integrity of a liar. The only way to keep your passion intact—to work through this period of political wretchedness, where lies are elevated to federal power—is to maintain the habit of plainly stating the truth. Even if only to yourself.

45 is hoping to run out the clock. He will probably seek to die in office. With the charges being brought against him increasing in frequency and severity, he can only protect himself and his family by doing everything in his control to remain the most powerful man in the world. As he drags American into its fourth period of night—slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and whatever political reality his actions pave the way for during the remainder of my generation—we need to remind ourselves that this is charted territory. We know what’s going to happen next, and reminding ourselves is probably the best way of getting ourselves and our children through it.