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I'll be the villain
3 years ago
General
The former comrades of former US Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher testified that they witnessed him murder a 17-year-old enemy combatant being treated by a medic within his unit. Gallagher was also accused by his fellow snipers of shooting an unarmed old man and school girl, for fun. He was acquitted.
On May 24, 2022, Nineteen children and two adults were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County. In the time since this occurred, the US Supreme Court made it all but impossible to enforce gun laws in any individual state, and the county of Uvalde voted overwhelmingly for politicians who champion unrestricted access to deadly firearms.
Teenager Kyle Rittenhouse transported an assault rifle, illegal, across state lines in order to confront racial justice protesters, ultimately murdering two of them. He was acquitted and is now a modern folk hero of America's major right-wing party.
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all rely on the Colorado river, which is drying up at the same time that a sharing agreement is set to expire in the next few years, all but ensuring a water war between the states likely to end in an entire region of the US being virtually uninhabitable, a story that is being reported on primarily by committed environmental journalists but ignored everywhere else prior to the disaster striking in full.
On November 19, 2022, a mass shooter killed 5 people and injured 19 others in the LGBTQ club known as Club Q, following a blitz of violent rhetoric aimed at LGBTQ people all over the country. When interviewed, the suspect's father expressed only relief that his son was not gay.
In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States, whose conservative majority represents an overwhelming minority of the country's population, voted to overturn a woman's guaranteed right to bodily autonomy. In that same opinion, the conservative justices expressed interest in using this as a pretext to also overturn the right to same-sex marriage, and same-sex relationships in general. There is also a greater push by conservative politicians and activists to ban the right to contraception in the wake of the ruling.
In the time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the biggest companies in the US have gotten extraordinarily richer, at the same time that it's all but assumed that Social Security will end in the lifetime of people currently exiting college, who will, by and large, not be expected to be able to buy a home, a looming housing crisis on top of the ongoing one both of which being, largely, ignored.
On January 6th, 2021, supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol in an effort to violently overthrow the government and prevent the certification of his election loss. In the time which followed, the event has been used as a pretext for conservative politicians to further roll back voting rights and normalize the rhetoric of fraudulent elections in an attempt to justify the subversion of the democratic process. As of today, nobody involved in the actual orchestration of this attempted coup has been held accountable.
The American republic is not only fundamentally broken but actively falling. For many people in the world, they try desperately to ignore everything I've just listed here, opting instead for what some describe as 'positive vibes' and optimism. For some of us, due to how our brains are wired, we are literally incapable of ignoring these things, and think about them a lot, and have thought about them for a long time. It makes us pessimistic. It makes us cynical. It makes us 'negative.' We say things and make points, often with incredibly pointed and callous words, in an attempt to match the cynicism displayed to us by a failing society, itself. This is often frowned upon by those seeking instead to look on the 'positive side,' those choosing instead to focus on the regions of the country that are not yet threatened with being uninhabitable, focusing on those whose rights might be stripped eventually but, for now, are intact.
We're 'edgy' or haughty or divisive or abrasive. We're angry.
It's true. I'm very angry.
And that makes me part of the problem. Because without me, and without people similar to me, it'd be a lot easier not to think about how much raw ugliness we tolerate every single day as a society.
It makes us bad. It makes me bad. As far as some are concerned, it makes me the same as all the bad people I just described. And I refuse to accept that narrative. I refuse to accept that those who endorse everything I just described above, tacitly or directly, are exactly as valid in their opinions and their beliefs as those who hate it. If I do nothing else, I will never let that be okay, even in a society which overwhelmingly wants it to be true. But I do accept, that it'll make me the villain more often than not. I accept that the perception of me, as somebody who delivers a barrage of ugly truths, not particularly hidden but admittedly unpleasant, will be associated with those same ugly truths.
And I'll do it. I'll just have to accept it. Because, in light of the evidence, I don't know how else to be.
On May 24, 2022, Nineteen children and two adults were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County. In the time since this occurred, the US Supreme Court made it all but impossible to enforce gun laws in any individual state, and the county of Uvalde voted overwhelmingly for politicians who champion unrestricted access to deadly firearms.
Teenager Kyle Rittenhouse transported an assault rifle, illegal, across state lines in order to confront racial justice protesters, ultimately murdering two of them. He was acquitted and is now a modern folk hero of America's major right-wing party.
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all rely on the Colorado river, which is drying up at the same time that a sharing agreement is set to expire in the next few years, all but ensuring a water war between the states likely to end in an entire region of the US being virtually uninhabitable, a story that is being reported on primarily by committed environmental journalists but ignored everywhere else prior to the disaster striking in full.
On November 19, 2022, a mass shooter killed 5 people and injured 19 others in the LGBTQ club known as Club Q, following a blitz of violent rhetoric aimed at LGBTQ people all over the country. When interviewed, the suspect's father expressed only relief that his son was not gay.
In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States, whose conservative majority represents an overwhelming minority of the country's population, voted to overturn a woman's guaranteed right to bodily autonomy. In that same opinion, the conservative justices expressed interest in using this as a pretext to also overturn the right to same-sex marriage, and same-sex relationships in general. There is also a greater push by conservative politicians and activists to ban the right to contraception in the wake of the ruling.
In the time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the biggest companies in the US have gotten extraordinarily richer, at the same time that it's all but assumed that Social Security will end in the lifetime of people currently exiting college, who will, by and large, not be expected to be able to buy a home, a looming housing crisis on top of the ongoing one both of which being, largely, ignored.
On January 6th, 2021, supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol in an effort to violently overthrow the government and prevent the certification of his election loss. In the time which followed, the event has been used as a pretext for conservative politicians to further roll back voting rights and normalize the rhetoric of fraudulent elections in an attempt to justify the subversion of the democratic process. As of today, nobody involved in the actual orchestration of this attempted coup has been held accountable.
The American republic is not only fundamentally broken but actively falling. For many people in the world, they try desperately to ignore everything I've just listed here, opting instead for what some describe as 'positive vibes' and optimism. For some of us, due to how our brains are wired, we are literally incapable of ignoring these things, and think about them a lot, and have thought about them for a long time. It makes us pessimistic. It makes us cynical. It makes us 'negative.' We say things and make points, often with incredibly pointed and callous words, in an attempt to match the cynicism displayed to us by a failing society, itself. This is often frowned upon by those seeking instead to look on the 'positive side,' those choosing instead to focus on the regions of the country that are not yet threatened with being uninhabitable, focusing on those whose rights might be stripped eventually but, for now, are intact.
We're 'edgy' or haughty or divisive or abrasive. We're angry.
It's true. I'm very angry.
And that makes me part of the problem. Because without me, and without people similar to me, it'd be a lot easier not to think about how much raw ugliness we tolerate every single day as a society.
It makes us bad. It makes me bad. As far as some are concerned, it makes me the same as all the bad people I just described. And I refuse to accept that narrative. I refuse to accept that those who endorse everything I just described above, tacitly or directly, are exactly as valid in their opinions and their beliefs as those who hate it. If I do nothing else, I will never let that be okay, even in a society which overwhelmingly wants it to be true. But I do accept, that it'll make me the villain more often than not. I accept that the perception of me, as somebody who delivers a barrage of ugly truths, not particularly hidden but admittedly unpleasant, will be associated with those same ugly truths.
And I'll do it. I'll just have to accept it. Because, in light of the evidence, I don't know how else to be.
America has always been an example to other countries, good or bad, by simply being omnipresent in its size, worldwide involvement, and not in the least its export of media. Unfortunately that also holds for the louder right-wing sentiments of these days. I believe that at one time we here could have been an example in many ways. For example, we were the first to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. But we are small. And I think we are seeing the influences here, with the right wings voice gowing stronger. Or it's not even influence, and just a world wide thing, and I just happen to see enough of America to think it might be influence.
And I wish I could be angry like that. And I get angry when I meet someone in person spouting right-wing nonsense. But beyond that, I'm just too tired...