We live in exhausting times. When we decide to be a global citizen, we do so know with conscious awareness the news awaiting us will weigh upon us with gravity. The positive moments in life today, generally, are ones we create ourselves. This firehose approach is intentional; we are not given time to deal with one tragedy before we are confronted with the next. As a seasoned combat veteran, I have been in this operation tempo before. However, I’ve been fighting all my life, I feel. I’ve been fighting for my identity and validation; I’ve been fighting for human rights and dignity; for health care and education; for updated infrastructure; for net-neutrality; for secularism and the rule of law; for environmental protection; for consumer advocacy, and to leave behind society and a planet better than the one I was given. It is a lesson ingrained in me by my father through the Boy Scouts, to leave behind something better than when you found it. While I see all the signs of outrage fatigue in our post-fact world, I find myself trudging along.
The stakes are too high to sit on the sidelines and claim I’ve done enough. We are not in a situation of people who have the same desired goal but differing ideas on how best to achieve it. We are watching a hostile takeover happening before our very eyes and we’re watching as the bad faith actors are doing their best to remove any avenue of resistance to their forceful and deeply unpopular acquisition. Whether it is the perversion of the judiciary branch, the dismantling of the postal service, the abandonment of the legislative duties, the unchecked lies, the unprecedented corruption to the tune of record deficits, or the aggressive apathy (if not glee) towards the deaths of our own, the line has been drawn.
On one side of the line is authoritarianism. The authoritarians want to be a part of the in-group when their leader calls all the shots. This purity-test lifestyle may be appealing, but many of them have already discovered what happens when they run afoul of the purity-test they once held dear. The newly exiled learned the hard way because they, themselves, grew or the purity-test became even more insular and narrowly defined. Many of us are familiar with the writing, “First they came for…” which is this exact behavior in action. Let’s not also forget all the rules those on the top of the order get to ignore because they are on top of the order, “Rules for thee, not for me.” This idea is a large part of the problem we are in today, and our attempts to hold people accountable have been met with such wanton dismissal as to help the cult of personality flourish. Facts no longer matter to a segment of the populace, often those of whom have very little diversity of ideas and exposure to more than what they enjoy being fed.
On the other side is everyone else, an otherwise undefined majority of the population that may have little relation to each other. Here, on this side, we have different things that may take precedence, usually, civil rights, access to childcare, jobs, or a host of other problems that have only been exacerbated in the last few years. However, now we have been united by this looming threat of having what was left of the system destroyed by a capitalist class hungry to buy up the wreckage they created for pennies on the dollar and turn us into wage-slave serfs begging for scraps.
Our pre-existing conditions, be it student loan debt or the illusion formerly known as The American Dream, haven’t gone away. We will have to continue fighting those in a world facing looming climate catastrophes and a weakened American global standing due to GOP policies. America has shown it cannot be trusted, despite the will of the majority of its populace. In fact, the actions flying in the face of the majority of its people time and time again only serve to show how easy it was for half of the Senate, the Attorney General, the Vice President, and the President to bring the system crashing down, backed by a media outlet airing near 24/7 positive spin of things in previous times would have been the end of an administration.
People are angry, hopeless, and cynical of there ever being a positive outcome. Memes are being shared of splitting the country apart and joining Canada out of sheer disgust or a desperate cry for help. Instead of fighting the administration, friends have to fight each other regarding the morality of COVID deaths (and permanent injury), and police brutality. Families have been split apart, and relationships damaged, perhaps beyond repair, because of a plan decades in the making. Education has been defunded repeatedly for the duration of my lifetime, and in its place has been a push towards religion and other people demanding loyalty. The authoritarian drive, while removing critical thought skills, has been a dark undercurrent of the American psyche for ages. People, with no sense of irony or self-awareness, will criticize China’s government or older systems abroad but defend what is happening here at home.
Will there be hope on the horizon? I think the answer to that is directly proportional to the fairness of the process. A free, fair, transparent process, I believe, will yield a good outcome for this particular instance. They know this and are sabotaging the process already. The to-do list is already so long, and we will be cleaning up this mess for the rest of my life. Historians will be unpacking these four years for decades. It is daunting, but all it takes for evil to win is good men to do nothing. While only dead men know peace, all I can do is my part and hope death comes swiftly. Like all weary warriors, all we want to do is stop fighting, but the battles never seem to cease. I hope that one day whatever small ripples I had in the timeline contributed to the bending of the long arc towards justice.