2020-07-29 // world on fire
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The world is on fire and I feel like I don't know what my part in it is.
I am privileged. I'm a programmer, well-paid, and have a family to take
care of. So I program, and we are provided for by the system that needs
things programmed.
I feel like I play the role of both prisoner and imposter. Prisoner, in
that the system keeps me on a leash with just enough slack to continue
to play my part-- and imposter, in that I want to see the system work in
a more egalitarian way but am doing nothing to change it. Things are not
okay right now, and not only with COVID. My country is pushing towards
fascism with a boot on the throat of the poor and the black, and I don't
like it.
There's nothing NEW about the police state here-- it's been going on for
the entire history of this country. But I thought things were pushing
towards something better and they're just not. The authoritarians are
doubling down, and OVERTLY. No semblance of hushed tones, just hatred.
And yet, the systemic leash-- the cushy privilege I remain ever-tethered
to, tugs me back to passivity. No. To be fair, that sentence needs a
subject: *I* choose to remain tethered.
I'm scared, and I recognize my privilege that I wasn't scared before.
For every fear I have, I have not been persecuted for my very existence.
I have not feared for my life by virtue of my identity. I have not been
pulled over for merely EXISTING: driving while black. I have not been
terrified of being murdered for being gender-nonconforming. I have known
the mere taste of fear. I have been pulled over and felt my heart rate
soar, even though the crime was so small that I could pay it by mail.
That doesn't compare to the sheer terror that the police state forces
upon brown-skinned people every day. The terror that becomes a part of
you by its very nature of existence.
