I write these posts a day in advance, and I think I needed a day to just process everything. You know, I'm sure, that I didn't vote this time, and if you want to smite me, I welcome it. Even living in a liberal state where Harris won by a wide margin, it still feels like it's my fault. Maybe it is, I don't know.
I don't have any positive or upbeat messages. I'm not that kind of person. I'm also not going to sit here listing every organization you should join/build to try and undo the damage. I was never that kind of leftist. What I am going to offer is an observation or two.
First, I'm going to admit that most of what I'm feeling right now is relief. I've been feeling so disillusioned for so long that in a way this result feels like validation for all of the anger and sadness I've felt. I know, it would be better if I was feeling numb or sad, something to indicate I felt anything towards the people who have just lost everything.
Secondly, I'm going to fight in whatever way that I can. We all are. I know that everyone reading this and most of the people who aren't reading this are going to fight like hell for the world they're about to lose. We're going to fight for ourselves, for each other, for the little bird called hope who seems so helpless without us. That's good, and important. But we will lose steam at some points. We aren't fighting some made up ideology, we're fighting people who believe things for their own reasons. They're garbage reasons, but who among us doesn't have something we believe in for completely made up reasons?
Thirdly, our world's going to change. We're going to lose things that are important to us and most of the fighting will be to try and get them back. We probably won't get them back. Not in the form that we had them in. Trust will be broken, people will be hurt, we'll find ourselves wondering if any of this was real. There won't be some grand moment of victory when we stand, golden and glowing, on a world we love and remember. All there will be are moments of sadness when we realize something we know is gone, probably forever.
Finally, let me tell you a story. In 2022, when I was first starting to blog, I was falling victim to a delusion of my own choosing. There was a famous music producer who was selling NFTs at the time. Not wanting to support him but not wanting to let go of music I genuinely loved, I rebelled. I got angry. I did everything except anything that should have had an effect. And yet, eventually, his NFT store went offline. It ended. And I will forever wonder if I, somehow, had an impact.
There are a million ways to read that, but my personal takeaway is that sometimes we'll win, and when we do we might feel just as bad as if we'd lost. I know that I did. I won, but nothing was the same. I still didn't trust him, I couldn't listen to his music guilt free, and I was now stuck in a vicious belief of simultaneously being convinced everything was about me and that he didn't care. I doubt it'll be that bad, but I do know for a fact that what impact, if any, we leave will be questionable.
Millions of people are now waking up wondering if they had any impact on the election. Did their vote matter? Last time, millions of people felt the same way, and they refused to accept it. Now they've won, and look where that got us. This is what victory looks like. It looks like broken wastelands of ash and dust, skies blocked out by smoke, people wandering around wondering what the hell to do next. When this is over, most of us will wonder if we should have fought at all. I can't give you an answer. All I can say is that if you don't fight, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering why you didn't.
Let me conclude with this observation; reality should be able to withstand you having a negative opinion about it, even if your right. That most of the people fighting for Kamala Harris couldn't bring up her negative points was a bad sign. Our reality can't withstand negativity anymore, it's being stretched too many different directions. That can work to our advantage now. So go forth and complain, fight like hell for your friends, neighbors, and that cute little restaurant you don't want to lose. Be as selfish as you can, and when this is over picture a world built on the things that you believe in. Because from now on we live in a world that's only real so long as we believe it exists.
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