a bit of a raw one for you today.
whenever I check right-wing twitter or news, it feels like an alternate reality. police brutality doesn’t exist; but if it does exist, it’s always justified. covid isn’t real; but if it is real, 150,000 deaths is nbd. systemic racism is a myth, but also every non-white culture is morally and intellectually inferior.
meanwhile, in my personal feeds every day: brand new footage of police beating the shit out of innocent people; fundraisers for people trying to avoid homelessness; teachers begging not to re-open schools because they don’t want to die; karen going apeshit at the grocery store when asked to wear a mask.
we, as a country, can’t even agree that putting on a mask is the right move. it’s the simplest possible action, a mild interference into our daily lives backed by mountains of evidence – and this, too, is just another battleground. what hope does this leave for the deep, systemic change that’s needed? how can we possibly reckon with our country’s foundational wrongdoing?
in early June, after the protests had been going a few weeks, a coworker asked me “when this would all be over” and i laughed. i told them it was probably going to get worse. at the time, i was just thinking about the material conditions ahead: institutional gridlock, unemployment, evictions, degradation of core infrastructure. that was before the feds attacked Portland, and it wasn’t even on my radar that paramilitary troops would be agitating for riots in multiple cities.
it feels so so hyperbolic to write this out, but it’s hard to see how we avoid a civil war. because that’s what happens if we can’t agree on the most basic tenets of humanity, right? that’s what happens when they send wannabe soldiers to quell demands for justice, right? what’s the alternative? what part of the last 20 years in american history suggests that we’re going to successfully navigate towards a peaceful resolution in this disagreement over our way of life?
people keep saying they can’t wait for 2020 to be over, and all i’m thinking is: what the flying fuck are you looking forward to in 2021?