Last post of January

    It's the end of January. If there's one thing I learned from the dumpster fire that was 2020, it's that you shouldn't claim a given year is going to be good or bad until at least the second month. Not that I thought 2020 was going to be a good year (although I certainly felt we were overdue for a good one), but I certainly didn't think it was going to be worse than 2016 was. 

    My overall view of 2023, as of this point, is that it's either going to be the year it all comes crashing down, or it'll be a year of anxious dread as we wait for everything to come crashing down. I have no faith that anyone with the power to stop this will, because if they wanted to stop this, they would have done so ages ago. Let me be clear, those in power know what we want, know why we're angry, and know what they could do to fix it. They just won't do it, because they're so hollow and empty that the only thing that brings them joy anymore is to watch other people suffer.  

     Something has to give. It's not just that life isn't fair, it's that it's now so unfair that the only way you could possibly win is to cheat. They know this, we know this, but they pretend that you aren't supposed to know that life is inherently stacked against you. They pretend that those at the bottom are supposed to believe in honesty and decency, because the less we know about how much the decks stacked against us, the easier we are to exploit. This has lead to a system where the rich know the systems rigged, and brag about it openly with each other, the poor know little to nothing about this, and the middle class takes it as common knowledge and scold the poor for "not paying attention". Why else would my mother get angry at college students who don't major in the right things? College majors who, I might add, often come from backgrounds where there the first people in their families to even get to go to college. 

     I don't even think it's possible to "win", because is having so much more than you could ever use a victory? If you've ever played a game with cheats enabled, you know that at a certain point the game becomes a lot less fun. I don't think those in charge deserve any sympathy for the way that they've handled things, but when you think about how little meaning their lives have, their actions almost become understandable. 

    Part of me wants to give credit to the government, to those trying to hold the system together, but I honestly think the more moral choice would be to admit that this system not only isn't worth saving, but can't be saved at all. We've reached a point where the ones with power, actual power, not the power that was symbolically handed to them in an election, have decided it would be more interesting to watch us suffer than to help us. They deserve so much worse than just having their power stripped from them, but common decency prevents any of us from admitting this.