I’ve been in a little bit of a bubble this week. Painkillers and naps and the luxury of time for a recovery. But it’s impossible to stay in that bubble – painkillers and naps aren’t up to the overwhelming crush of pain, exhaustion, and weight that our current society is giving nonstop.
I think we’re all feeling it. I hope we are – there is nothing of good coming out of any of our systems. Or if there is, it is so small that it’s not registering. Our government is consumed with showmanship and racism and conserving (and expanding) their power. There are people so caught up in the lie of power that they’re justifying murder, or acknowledging murder but policing the response to a truly staggering, ongoing attack on humanity. Our honest journalists are downed out by sensationalist assholes, and all of our media is owned by what, six different people?
Power protects power. People in power hoard their power. The smartest thing they ever did was convince us that we can only have power if someone else has less. We can only get ahead if someone else is crushed – and better, those people deserve to be crushed, because they’re less. If they worked harder, if they were more civil, if they were better, they too could get ahead. Meanwhile, those people in power take more and more and more and more.
Billionaires have gotten dramatically richer while the economy sank, and we fought each other.
Public officials get richer while in office, make a lifetime career of it, cater to their fellow rich people instead of doing their jobs. Make their jobs about catering to fellow rich people and make us thank them for it, because we too could be rich one day. Public servants who get into the work to make a difference are drowned out by those drunk on the non-accountability of doing whatever the fuck they want.
We fight each other about what team we’re on (masks! No masks! Republican racist! Lefty libtard!), when those teams are covers – they’re led by rich people who don’t give a fuck about us except for what we can make/provide/do for them. Dividing us is a system of control – it plays on a very human instinct to pack-bond, but twisted. The more we fight each other, the less we can get done.
We’ve been Keyser Soze’d into seeing each other as the enemy. Our system is the enemy. Our system is led by people who want to protect only themselves. They are fearful, and vengeful, and weaker than they know.
Some of the most incredible, wonderful, loving, passionate, creative, brilliant people I know are operating in crushing pain, and I feel what part of it I can, and I know the rest is bottomless, and I am tired.
I am tired of our systems. I am tired of our fighting each other. We are powerful. We are powerful in ways we are not allowed to imagine, and we fight amongst ourselves instead of addressing that. We are capable of so much more. We can preference humans over institutions. We can mourn institutions that do not serve us, and honor those that do, and build something new.
I have written letters. I have made phone calls. I have been woken up at 2 am by non-uniformed police men who mocked my fear and made no effort at identifying themselves and invaded my hotel room and told themselves they did perfectly right. I am alive. I am exhausted. I am done.
I will keep writing letters, and making phone calls, and donating money. I will work every day to stop being a part of the problem and instead be a part of tearing down the bullshit. I will listen to those I love and hear their pain and hear from them what I can and should do with and about it – with them, not for them.
I’m tired of operating in fear.
I’m ready to burn it down.
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