Don't Turn Away

1955. A family tests an underground fallout shelter. I guess we've lived through other crisises.

“Trump says killers of protesters will ‘pay a big price’ and urges Iranians to ‘take over your institutions’”
The Guardian

Apparently, the killers of Iranian protesters in Iran will have to “pay a big price”, but killers of American protesters by American authorities get a free pass? I get it. The US has reached Idiocracy.

Reading the news from the US, from the shooting death of Renee Good by ICE Agent Jonathan Ross, to family separations, to people being grabbed at their refugee hearings, to assaults on people and democracy, the FBI raiding a reporter's home, media companies firing detractors of the administration, declarations that the US must "own" Greenland, references to Canada as the 51st state, a narcissist adding his name to memorials to other presidents, cutting funding to not-for-profits, destroying foreign aid that endangers lives, using the Department of Justice as a cudgel of private vengeance, forcing law firms to bend the knee or be banned — all of it — just makes me absolutely livid. I'm only referring to political news from the US, but there are so many other upsetting news stories it becomes overwhelming (the environment, foreign wars, the economy). I had forgotten there's even a name for it: polycrisis. Polycrisis was coined to put a name to what seems like an onslaught of terrible things. What is difficult to see is how interconnected so many of these things are.

From the Guardian:
"Our globalized world is built on interconnecting systems, and when one gets rattled, the others do too – a heating climate, for instance, increases the risk of pandemics, pandemics undermine economies, shaky economies fuel political upheaval."

Which is what makes it so overwhelming. I can feel my blood pressure rising and heart pounding. It’s infuriating. So I’ve just avoided it. I basically went from turning the other cheek to turning my face away in disgust.

Should I? How can I engage? How can I fight bigotry, intolerance, and autocracy with just my inner rage? It feels healthier to not read the news at all. Yet it almost feels immoral to simply ignore it. It’s a quandary and a conundrum. I feel anger and fecklessness. I feel fearful but cocksure of my moral superiority. Let me be clear, there has never been a time in my life when I have been so right. Let history show that the only way to react to the current American regime is with disgust, fury and also, bewilderment.

Of course, I remember where I was and what I was doing when we heard about the École Polytechnique shooting, and I was wrong when I thought it was an act of insanity, not misogyny. I remember when the Berlin Wall fell, and we thought everything was going to be alright. I remember Tiananmen Square and being wrong when thinking this was the end of communism. I am thinking this current wave of Iranian protests are the same as ones in the past, and it won't lead to any change. I hope I'm wrong. But I, along with millions of others, am not wrong in seeing the absolute repugnancy of the current American state right now. We're witnessing history. It's shocking that we're seeing the "world's oldest democracy” (debatable in terms of universal suffrage) become the world's newest autocracy.

Consuming so much terrible, terrible news constantly is like being in the presence of a Horcrux from Harry Potter. Being near a cursed object brings a darkness that rubs off on you. I wish I was as sure about what to do as I am about what I'm seeing, but in the future, I'll have to live with it. Therein lies the answer. Believing in a brighter future, a time when the world will stabilize, a time when green energy may reduce the harms of climate change, social justice and international norms might return, and a reliable economy can provide some security. Tomorrow begins at midnight, but I wish it were today.