Content Warning: This article discusses police brutality, internet censorship, and near-term human extinction.

Not sure where to begin after a day like yesterday. The onslaught of news was overwhelming. Later in the day, it became apparent to me at last that our internet is being censored. The omissions were eerie. For a little while, the only tweets coming through about the situation in Kentucky misspelled Breonna Taylor’s name – nothing with the right keywords was favored by the algorithms. Thousands of accounts had their followers and people they followed disappear. I kept seeing tweet after tweet asking, “is something wrong/off about twitter today?” Nobody asked about Facebook because “getting zucced” is a regular thing already.

It has been this way for some time. American exceptionalism is so deeply engrained in me that even though I have unlearned a lot of it, realizing that our internet is censored shocked me. Not here, I thought, before correcting myself: why not here? When has our genocidal, imperialist, racist country ever been above controlling the information its citizens have access to?

I should not be surprised, but I am. Social media has been the cold water to slowly heat to boiling with me in it. The options have simplified over time, leaving us cycling between a mere handful of sites to gain information. Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – the algorithms are designed to suppress uprisings and prevent communication between revolutionaries, spread misinformation to the gullible, and to bury relevant information.

Don’t believe me? Just try Googling the number of COVID-19 deaths. Rather than offering a direct answer, Google has built a page to subvert and confuse the facts, so at first glance you’ll only see the daily changes in a chart, based on your location. One must toggle several menus to get an accurate answer for the country and world. That’s not to mention all the so-called “reputable” sources who charge for content, excluding the poor from being more informed.

So the media reports about two officers injured last night. People have been protesting for months and I haven’t seen a single news media outlet list off the many injuries inflicted by the police. The news claims protesters are being violent. The algorithms have been sufficiently tightened to suppress information and anyone who thinks it couldn’t happen here still believes that the United States is what it claims to be on some level. But it’s not.

We are not a land of freedom, justice, equality, or human rights. We never have been. Our violence and brutality exists for profit, for the taste of immense power.

Also don’t come at me with the bullshit that people who hate this country should just leave. I’ve been TRYING to get out of this country for over five years now, not that it would necessarily help anyone. I’ve never in that time had the spare funds to get a passport, much less the resources to cover the transportation, much less even a cheap car, not to mention the host of other details required in the process of getting out. To leave, to move, to travel – all of this is a privilege afforded to few in my country. Most of us are trapped, trying to get by in a system that demands both our labor and our wages for existing (including putting this expectation on people who can’t even work), and keeps murdering minorities to maintain a reign of terror. Our continuous wars for profit extend this terror – of white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, destruction – to the world.

I think of how much work there is to be done for the cause of justice. How long must we wait, I wonder? Because as humans, we are running out of time to get our shit together.

The time between now and our extinction as a species is growing shorter with each day we continue to pollute and destroy. My research has led me to believe we have less than 100 years left. I believe this because all the models I can find for climate change reversal/slowing are based on significant reductions in pollution and destruction that we are not making whatsoever. You have to read all the way to the end to find the sections of these studies that say “and here’s what will happen if we continue on our current trajectory,” and those timelines are getting shorter with each new study. Each year the fire seasons will get worse, each year more animals and insects and other life forms with go extinct, and each year the sea levels will rise. When we say Gen Z is the last generation to live out a lifetime, that may be optimistic.

I do not have hope of reversing climate change. We are past that point. The most we can do, realistically, is minimize the inevitable suffering and halt our destruction and violence. We have the resources to feed, shelter, clothe, and otherwise care for everyone on the planet. The least we can do is make ourselves comfortable and care for each other. Our looming fate can motivate us to go out peacefully together.

I cannot say I see it happening, though. I don’t blame us, the ordinary people, for what is outside of our control. We can only protest the powerful, in whatever ways we can. The powerful are funneling the resources out of our mouths and into their pockets, and also using murder and maiming as motivation to conform.

We’re begging them not to kill innocent people in their own homes for the color of their skin.

That’s not a lot to ask for.

But our system can’t even offer a presidential candidate that doesn’t support the police state. It can’t offer impeachment of a corrupt president. It has no interest in keeping power in check, so it doesn’t. I’m realizing it never did.

I am not hopeful today. I only see the vast difference between the possible and the real, and my expectations lower with each development, especially with climate change looming.

This doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s worth it to fight for what’s right. I just think those of us who are trying to see things as clearly as possible need to realize we don’t have a lot of time left as a species, so we need to realize we’re racing against our own fate. We can’t stop our own destruction, just slow it down and demand justice for all of humanity until then. It shouldn’t be too much to ask.

If you’re struggling to hope right now, you are not alone. If you’re not, why?