An epidemic of missing spines and festering empty anger
Experiencing this current American moment in a community currently teetering on the edge of the awareness of the fascist idiocracy in a State actively housing a concentration camp I spend every moment in dread and nausea and simmering anger. If nothing else, regardless of how hollow, let this post echo as a stupid rant ringing out from the American Midwest to the world watching on aghast.
I am continuously disappointed at the people around me begging for kindness and empathy to the convenient audience of their carefully selected coworkers and the safe familiarity of their carefully selected friend groups yet refusing to do even the barest minimum of sacfificing their comfort and convenience by spending their money and their presence with the same intention. I cannot respect this facsimile of virtue. This moment in the very least requires an understanding of the cost of modern comfort and the true privilege of the grift of the American dream as we pretend to live it. Those that choose to not stop spending money on corporations that enthusiastically fellate our duly elected dementia-addled fascist pedophile and not spend a few hours protesting in the same cold that Minnesota also spends its national agony in are simply not as opposed to cruelty as they profess to be.
Let me preface this next statement by saying I grew up in a remote farm town. Less than a thousand people, 2 hours from any notable population center. I grew up in a farm family. They are very kind. I love them very much.
From my perspective, I understand the flavor of this fascism. I remember the taste in the people who gleefully flew the Confederate flag in a State that was a member of The Union in order to prove something to no one. In the people that would follow the black kids home at night and drive back and forth past their houses. That would tell the foster kids to kill themselves. That sought solace from the depth and breadth of the world in a kind of casual reflexive cruelty. That demand we all share the stain of the fear of their entitled ignorance and shame.
As others have said elsewhere, better than I can, regardless of how we imagine the world around us and regardless of the life we try to make for ourselves this is too a true aspect of American life.
