Click each blinkie to visit the site where I found it!
November 13, 2024
I am profoundly saddened, and left profoundly empty, by the events of this last week. I don't want to even type the traitors' names, or use any of the countless toothless euphemisms that liberal aunts on Facebook love, lest they taint this space with the curse of their existence. When I was a child, the United States was a world leader in science and progress; we prided ourselves on having the brightest thinkers, the most ingenious inventors, the freest artists and the best education. We were a noble nation, and other countries looked to us to follow our example. I remember going to Washington, D.C. when I was little, early in George W. Bush's administration. Even as a little kid - or maybe because of being so young - I could feel how big and important the city was, that the smartest grown-ups in the country were here, somewhere, making the country happen. It's easy to look back now, in Anno Mater Lachrymosum 2024, and chide a child for naivete; to look back with all my present knowledge of fascism and greed and greenhouse gases and oil cartels and slave labor and lack of privacy and and and and -- and say it was naive or dumb to believe that America was any of the things I thought it was.
It's too easy.
I don't believe in lying to children. That doesn't mean I think parents should sit their kids down and give them a history of US war crimes; I want the inverse: I want a world where we strive to actually embody the ideals we used to claim America stood for. The fact that Black parents actually do have to sit their children down, or that parents of any race have to sit their daughters down, and warn them of the dangers they will face in this country for the high crime of their skin color or their body type, is so indescribably awful I can't put it into words. I don't want to have kids, but I know that if I ever did, I'd want a daughter. But now? I can't think of a more cruel, selfish thing to do than to birth a child into this world; a world with no privacy, no protection, rare slivers of kindness amid a sea of selfish cruelty. I wonder often about whether our society is too far gone, circling too close to the drain to recover our collective sanity and right this ship. I want to be hopeful and think that Gen Alpha can take the baton if we start doing the heavy lifting of fixing the nearly infinite issues with our current societies, but, to be perfectly fucking frank, I've lost that hope. Instead of optimism, curiosity, tolerance, kindness, I see a generation totally subsumed by the sensory overload flash-bang Willy Wonka boat tunnel Content Consumption Algorithm Nightmare. Our culture has failed these children.
I know this is a fucking incoherent rant about everything and nothing; I'm shouting into the void because there's no one to shout at. I'm so angry and sad all the time and I genuinely don't think there's anything that can fix it within my lifetime. Call me nihilistic, but I think we're fucked. The happiest thought I can muster these days is that, long after our selfish, cruel society is gone, there will still be rabbits and maple trees and rivers and nature to finally enjoy the peace and quiet once again.