Watching Villages Burn<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, I was the Editor for the newspaper, discussing Bush v. Gore and trying to ensure maximum voter participation. \u00a0\u00a0I could not have guessed how against the will of the popular vote, court-ordered cessations of recounts in a state with direct family ties to the would-be winner.\u00a0 The election was gifted to an administration who could continue the GOP time-honored tradition of burning down villages.\u00a0 I was angry, but I didn’t understand the gravity of what was about to be set in motion; few of us did.<\/p>\n
The anger had not yet subsided when 9\/11 happened.\u00a0 I remember how 9\/11 was presented didn’t feel right; the images, the narrative, and mostly what the Bush administration did in response left a deep unsettled feeling in me.\u00a0\u00a0 Shortly after, I was a part of the intelligence services hoping to learn a greater truth.\u00a0 Whether I like it or not, I’ve learned vastly more than I ever bargained for, and there is no returning to a state of ignorance.\u00a0 I was helpless as in the wake of 9\/11, the USA’s ugly authoritarian side was given fresh life to rise and become even more ruthless and exploitative. \u00a0\u00a0As mass surveillance was given the green light and other rights continued to be stripped, I was off to war.<\/p>\n
War is hell, a sentiment shared by countless individuals spanning the length and breadth of the human experience for hundreds of thousands of years.\u00a0 In the chaos of all the moving parts and the speed of the operational tempo, my base persona shone.\u00a0 I demonstrated myself to be relentlessly compassionate and deeply troubled,\u00a0 likely the only things still accurate today.\u00a0 I understood we invaded the wrong country.\u00a0 I was angered by those in my uniform who killed out of racism and revenge.\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted to help those who acted in a manner virtually identical to how we would if we were invaded. \u00a0The value of people because they are people was reinforced down to the core of my being.<\/p>\n
Those trying to carve out a small pocket of solace and stability in a swiftly de-stabilized homeland were given ogre’s choices, ultimatums, from bad-faith actors on different fronts.\u00a0 While we were no saints, making widows and orphans in another man’s kingdom,\u00a0 extremist forces on their side would also kill them for working with us.\u00a0 I saw that in real-time, in person.\u00a0 I experienced people who proclaimed themselves authority figures use fear to manipulate people and do their best to destroy whoever did not comply.\u00a0 They would label whoever did not conform and then eradicate all those with said label.\u00a0 I watched with a growing despair, a confused helplessness as burned wreckage and human remains were left as messages to those who dared to defy.\u00a0 The Defense Contractors were the only winners in the war, and eventually, I came “home.”<\/p>\n
I’ve spent many years trying to get past despair, confusion, and helplessness.\u00a0 I am far less confused, but only because I have a greater understanding of how deep the rabbit hole goes on fear being used to manipulate people into compliance here in the USA.\u00a0 One needs not look far,\u00a0 a cursory look at how Christianity, White Supremacy, or any resistance to Late Stage Capitalism has been wielded and fear is in the DNA of the USA.\u00a0\u00a0 One or multiples of those three had caused villages to have been burned here since at least 1619 when slaves arrived at the Virginia colony, but likely even earlier when white men devalued indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n
Now, a new digital landscape arises in Social Media.\u00a0 This instantaneous gratification satisfies the American appetite and gives a hungry and radicalized audience everything they need to gorge themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of just individual isolated voices or outlets, like Limbaugh or Fox News, \u00a0the firehose is endless.\u00a0 Overnight, people were inundated with techniques they’ve never seen before, and it worked. \u00a0\u00a0You no longer need strictly nuanced approaches like Reagan’s War on Drugs, which was a dog-whistled way to go after minorities, while at the same time doing nothing about the AIDS crisis.\u00a0\u00a0 If the prisons fill with ‘them,’\u00a0 the justification is always going to be, “they shouldn’t have done anything illegal.”\u00a0 I imagine these same people would turn over German Jews and Jesus, that is following the law.\u00a0 Villages were burning, but it was ok; it was ‘their’ villages.<\/p>\n
I watch with the same despair and helplessness as there are still some dog-whistled approaches, voices screaming about the dangers of suburbs dying and different types of housing ‘invading.’\u00a0 Those don’t need to be as prevalent anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 As the Senate has abdicated its responsibilities to govern, it is poisoning the judiciary branch with malicious intent,\u00a0 and we have a malignant narcissist in the Oval Office who views a pandemic approximately seventy 9\/11s in casualties as ‘acceptable.’ \u00a0\u00a0The Late Stage Capitalists are cheering as they hoover up wealth at the expense of us all with no moral compass other than the one that points to themselves. People who view themselves authority figures are killing people in the streets with wanton abandon.\u00a0 Citizens in the streets with a clear desire for peace shout their consent to be governed via authoritarianism is not being given.\u00a0 I watch villages burn here,\u00a0 and the parallels between here and there hurt.<\/p>\n
My life has been a constant struggle to put out the fires.\u00a0\u00a0 I am one person in a world of people who profit from the fires and who view equality as oppression.\u00a0\u00a0 I am not alone; I am a part of a long lineage of honorable women and men who have wanted little more than to be valued as people because they are people, and the opportunity to contribute to the chorus of the world with their unique voice.\u00a0 It is difficult right now when everywhere you turn, there are the forces of religious, racial (social), and economic oppression and their defenders, and they’ve allied, mainly, in one political party.<\/p>\n
I used to think this period was just a dark stain on our history, instead of understanding it’s an accumulation of decades of effort from people rotting us from the inside.\u00a0\u00a0 When I returned from living abroad, the culture shock that hit me was tangible.\u00a0 The America I returned to wasn’t the one I left.\u00a0 In truth,\u00a0 the America I departed was just a naive romanticization from a youthful idealist whose innocence hadn’t yet been entirely destroyed.\u00a0 I was not a social child, but even as a kid, I had little patience for immaturity. \u00a0\u00a0As a teenager, I was frustrated by a church that had no answers for applying critical thought to mythology.\u00a0\u00a0 I was learning how difficult it was to reason your way out of a position when one did not reason themselves into that position.\u00a0 I have this struggle now with the theocrats, the racists, the authoritarians, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 We are often at an impasse wherein their views of a white Christian utopia does not exist, but if I’ve learned anything lately is reality is a village that has to match their agenda, or it gets burned.\u00a0 I’ve had enough of watching villages burn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watching Villages Burn Twenty years ago, I was the Editor for the newspaper, discussing Bush v. Gore and trying to ensure maximum voter participation. \u00a0\u00a0I could not have guessed how against the will of the popular vote, court-ordered cessations of recounts in a state with direct family ties to the would-be winner.\u00a0 The election was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[291],"class_list":["post-27840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-considered-thoughts","tag-291"],"yoast_head":"\n