World domination is generally considered to be a villainous endgame

In the fourth grade, I was sent to the principal’s office for using free time to create a construction paper collage that was critical of then-president George Bush. Nobody could explain to me why that was a punishable offense. I was sent to the office countless times throughout elementary school for refusing to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance with the rest of the class. I wasn’t some revered brave hero, I was ostracized and punished for it, over and over. Nobody put me up to it. Nobody praised me for it. It didn’t stop me from doing what I thought was right, and it didn’t make me participate in what I thought was not. I infuriated a lot of adults. I was uncontrollable. They could suspend and reprimand and threaten me all they wanted and I still wouldn’t conform to be something easy for them. Grown men have had to be deescalated by professionals for their overreactions to my indifference to what their perceived status was. Being the biggest asshole does not mean I have to do what you say. You didn’t earn it because you are big or mean. You didn’t earn it because you’re a successful white professional. You didn’t earn it because payed for a degree that signals that you are somehow smarter or more capable than anyone else. You payed for that piece of paper. It was always clear to me that status that could be bought and sold was fraudulent. I was given the diagnosis “Oppositional Defiance Disorder” by my therapist. My peers learned to look down on me too. For disrupting their sense of order, maybe. Or maybe just because that’s how they were taught to see me by the adults tasked with teaching them how-to-be. People have been trying to threaten me into submission literally my entire life. I know it makes life harder. I’m just not willing to be a submissive accomplice to immoral behavior. I’m not going to grow out of it. Baby was born that way.

I think the thing that wears me down the most about getting older, is having to see the same patterns of violence over and over that I naively believed were obviously wrong to everyone. I somehow believed that if people saw all of the violence and oppression, they would at least say “Wow, that’s awful. We should do things differently” and try, even if they didn’t know how. Struggle isn’t bad, in fact struggle within optimal margins should be the goal. Struggle is part of existing. Doing things that are just a little bit difficult is how you grow and feel proud of yourself. I don’t understand this odd American fantasy of spending 40% of your waking life doing menial tasks to support industries that are destroying our planet while quietly putting enough money away for 50 years so that you can do what you want with your life for the last ??-many years, if you’re lucky enough to live that long & somehow maintain your health and relationships long enough to even know what relaxation and peace feels like by then. If that EVER made sense, it certainly does not in 2024. More and more I’m seeing that as people inevitably discover the darker truths, they are unphased by it, let themselves get so overwhelmed that they keep their heads down and silently let it happen, or worse, endorse it because it’s made them and their family wealthy enough to not have to care, and actively perpetuate it. They will pretend they always knew about it and they never cared because they were smart enough to prioritize making money (usually with a substantial handout from their family) to fortify their illusion of security and deprioritize the health of their community. People don’t get rich without taking advantage of others. It just doesn’t happen. Being rich is not a moral life goal. People really act this foolishly, and it continues to boggle my mind.

I think this unignorable ongoing abject genocide in Gaza is an inflection point. Obviously it is. It’s the worst thing we’ve ever done as a collective humanity at this scale. The actual bombing and shooting and starving of Palestinians, the sycophantic financial and bureaucratic support of the IDF who are doing the bombing and shooting and starving, the capture and torture of aid workers, the blockade of propagandized Israelis preventing aid trucks from reaching the suffering people, the xenophobia and dehumanization of an entire culture, the calculated destruction of critical infrastructure and erasure of cultural treasures, the people who know what’s happening and think it’s just, the people who know what’s happening and feign ignorance, the people who know what’s happening and shrug. It’s really vile. We have done things like this before, but not with technology capable of this level of destruction, and not with technology that allowed us to see and communicate about it like we are now. We didn’t have the tools. Now we do. Now you know.

I know it’s exhausting. I’m fucking tired too. I’ve been tired my whole life because of the same stupid violence. It’s dark out. Really really dark. Don’t let it destroy you, but don’t ignore it. And don’t you ever treat the people who are doing something about it like they’re stupid. Like it’s not going to work. Like they should shut up and give up. Like they’re playing the game wrong. Like you’re better than them because you have it all figured out. Nobody has this shit figured out. That line of thinking is cowardly and ignorant at best, and intentionally suppressive at worst. Refusal to build and participate in the kind of world you want to live in is offensive to me. Wanting to live in a world that looks like this is offensive to me too. Yeah, it’s beautiful, existence is a miracle, and if you care about the long-term health of the planet and the people and animals and plants amongst it, of not only yourself and your family, but the children who will grow into this world and steward it into the future, it’s not fine to just wait around to see how things play out. It’s been almost a month since Aaron Bushnell live-streamed himself literally setting himself on fire in protest. The time to be passive and obedient has run out.

For how angry and disappointed I am in humanity, I am also proud, really in awe of how many people are showing up to say out loud that this is not ok. We are seeing the largest anti-war movement..perhaps ever? The European Parliament has called for a “permanent, immediate, and unconditional ceasefire” in Gaza. A majority of of Americans want to see an end to weapons shipments to Israel. The ICJ has officially ruled that the allegations of genocide against Israel are “plausible” and has ordered Israel to stop killing Palestinians and allow aid to enter the region. US Soldiers are burning their uniforms in protest. The needle is moving. Don’t let the propaganda fool you into thinking this is normal and fine and there’s totally nothing you can do about it anyway even if it wasn’t. It’s not the people-at-large who are making these heinous decisions, pushing against the boundaries of nuclear war. It’s the very small cadre of people we’ve ceded our power to, throwing the weight of the largest military in the world around menacingly, taking bets that no one in their right mind would stand up to them with all of those guns trained around the globe. These are the people who claim to speak for us. We have to stop just letting them. They’re greedy dragons, liars, and sociopaths who are holding the entire world hostage. The two countries that stepped in and took the biggest losses to stop the out-of-control fascists in Germany and Japan during WWII were the Soviet Union and China. They lost almost 50 million soldiers collectively. America then protected and rehabilitated many of those disenfranchised fascists. Now the modern-day evolutions of those countries are #1 & #2 on America's shitlist. These people all have nukes now. This is a stupidly dangerous situation. World domination is generally considered to be a villainous endgame.

If there was ever a time to get up and say something, it’s now. There are so many people showing up to protest this fucked up house of mirrors torture ride. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland just quietly stepped down after fully fumbling the coup in Ukraine. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink is asking members of congress daily if they support ending weapons shipments to Israel. Even Bernie Sanders is crawling back out of the imperial woodwork again. The pressure is building and it is working. If you find yourself justifying working for an immoral institution because “the money is good,” consider what that means, and what you’re giving up to justify doing something that you know is harmful to humanity. If you are overwhelmed by debt, consider how many people are right there with you, and then consider that the entire institution of debt is designed to trap you into indentured servitude. It’s the same tactic the US uses on colonized countries, turned internally onto its people. There are entire countries standing up to that right now. Don’t let it control you. If you are checking out from the world, your friends, yourself, consider that ignoring problems never solves them. It allows them to get worse. Some distraction is important, but long-term dissociation is fatal. Take care of yourself. Drink enough water. Get enough sleep. Get your substance use under the poisoning-yourself-frequently level. Go outside. Laugh. Work up a sweat once in a while. Do all, or at least some of the things you need to do to be personally effective and joyful and at peace and give yourself the leniency to not do it perfectly. I bought a book from Amazon last week. Not everything is black and white, or happens all at once. Just take it one thing at a time. Keep trying. It’s not over yet.