Justice and Advocacy · Personal reflections

Everything (Sucks)

How do I sit still while the planet is dying?
The bees are dead
The big boss is up in his tower
My face is red
Yelling, but there’s soundproof glass around him
He’s counting all the mountains of money around him
How would you feel if you got cheated out of
Growing up?
You’re born into a dying world,
Its time is up
This isn’t just some overdone fantasy problem
Quit counting all the mountains of money around you
       -Veela

Each time I sit down to write for the blog, I am overwhelmed by decision paralysis. There is simply so much happening at once, and my outlook on the state of the planet as a whole is quite bleak. I am not convinced, personally, that humanity has much time left before we bring about our own extinction as a species. This is one of the reasons I am not having biological children – they wouldn’t have a whole life span to live, and they would have a miserable collapse to endure until it’s all over.

2020 has been a series of events that were predictable, and in fact had been projected possibilities for decades. I saw this explained well in this thread on twitter. We’re finally witnessing the fallout, and it’s all downhill from here, I find myself expecting. I am simply too small to keep up with all the details of the news cycle, yet the magic of social media algorithms gives me the sense that if I just keep scrolling, I’ll eventually be informed. The pandemic has made the United States a world leader in a horrendous way, and a good number of us think that means we’re winning a game. Our political situation is such a mess, I don’t feel entirely safe to say what I really think about it. And now, as of two days ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead – the latest in a series of very predictable events.

Personally, I never idolized Ginsburg. Her existence demonstrates how far we have to go, I think, more than how far we’ve come as a nation. The fact that she was only the second woman to join the Supreme Court of the United States shows how much my country lacks progression. Her stances strictly furthered the cause of white supremacy and capitalism, because US Democrats and Republicans agree on these things. White women primarily benefited from her being in power. At best she did the minimum, but she didn’t by any means support the movement for abolition.

And I suppose if I’m going to make this short and get to my point about everything, and the overwhelm of trying to discuss everything in my writing…it’s that very few people realize how drastic our actions would have to be to make things better.

I am not interested in green deals or other small compromises to put imaginary deadlines and minor reductions on exponential environmental devastation. I am not interested in solutions that leave prisons and detention centers standing and cops employed. I am not interested in merely taxing the rich or raising the minimum wage, as this still fails to reverse the flow of philanthropy from poor to rich in our economy. I don’t want “Medicaid for all” because I’m on Medicaid and it’s awful – I want a robust healthcare system that stops demanding professionals work themselves into husks of exhausted despair fighting to do what little insurance allows. I don’t want small measures. They are not enough.

Even if, starting today, we started implementing the most extreme measures to curb climate change and US imperialism and the inequality crisis, I do not believe it is within our power to stop them. This may seem like a jaded perspective. I am interested in evidence to the contrary, but for now, my search for solutions is more like offering comfort to a dying patient than any hope of a cure.

Well, do you know where we’re heading for?
You think it’s illusion or an intrusion
Maybe the outcome can’t be helped
Cause doing our part just doesn’t quell
Tous les besoins industriels
If it’s too late for us,
Is it right to make more of us?

Link to quoted song: “Time’s Up” by Veela

[French line translation: “all industrial needs”]

P. S. My partner and I are trying to move into a more accessible and affordable place, and we don’t have the stability to do it on our own. More details here: https://artemisstardust.com/2020/08/31/accessible-housing-for-disabled-couple-fund/