zen and the art of utter institutional failure

Here’s one quick thing I’ll say that’s tangentially related to the broader topic at hand to clarify in case there was any confusion whatsoever before we get going with this thing: I’m not going to debate with a single person about the morality or justification for abortion. I have a hard-line stance that anyone who needs or wants an abortion should be able to easily get one for free, no questions asked. If you don’t agree with that, I don’t care. If you have something to say to me about that, don’t. Once again, if you possess an opinion that would serve to undermine the right to bodily autonomy for people who have uteruses, then I do not care about your opinion and, furthermore, I do not care about you. In fact, I would venture to say that very few, if anyone cares about you. You are a roadblock to progress and your opinion is drenched in the blood of the thousands of vulnerable people with unwanted pregnancies that you have assisted in condemning to death and despair. Unkindly, go read a book and leave me the fuck out of your backwards attemp to subvert the eyes of your life’s audience from the facets of your person that cause you insecurity by attempting to strip away the humanity of others. Full send.

Now back our regularly scheduled musings.

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Hell, I can’t believe that I’m saying this (and those of you who are close to me might also reel a bit from the shock), but I was actually somewhat wrong last time. Just a few days ago, Biden signed the first gun safety legislation since the 90’s into law which, albeit didn’t do everything that we could have wanted to do to protect our children from gun violence, was a really refreshing step in the right (read as left) direction for us. I was nearly bamboozled into having some of my faith in the legislative process restored.

How silly of me.

I’m sure that I don’t need to remind anyone about the state of the union at the moment. I know that we collectively feel the foundation of whatever faith we had in our institutions crumbling beneath our feet and nobody is unjustified in feeling hopeless. If you made the trek through my last post about a month ago, you would know that I’m not only prone to such hopelessness myself, but also that I’m on the borderline of being an advocate for hopelessness as a means of survival. Not to be a broken record, but I feel even more justified in my routine post-massive-societal-loss defeatism than I did a month ago.

They finally fucking did it. On Friday, June 24th, 2022, five vile, soulless husks decided that they were doing their best to represent the interests and wellbeing of three hundred twenty nine million people by effectively denying the right to uterus-possessing-persons to have autonomy over their own bodies that is supported by some sixty odd percent of our country’s population. Three of said ravenous, rapacious, misogynist dipshits were appointed to their undemocratic lifetime appointments by reality TV star and conman, Donald J Trump, during his four year stint as America’s daddy. 

Cue hand-wringing from virtue-signal-happy democrats who are just dying to say “I told you so” for not voting for Hillary Clinton. As if the party that’s had the popular support of the majority of the country for eighty years hasn’t at some point surely had the power to codify Roe into law, but actively chosen not to in a play to continue dangling the lives and well being of human beings that they claim to support and care about in front of our faces to convince us to throw our votes away on them election after election. But if we’re being honest, this issue that will never personally affect any of our top-level elected officials was always just smoke and mirrors to distract the broader American populace from the endless spending on oil and bloodshed that lines said top-level politicians’ pockets (also known as one of the sole remaining pillars of the United States of America with bipartisan support from all members of the legislative and executive branch).

If I may ask, how long can we sleep at night while continuously blaming “Republican obstructionism” and Trump for the failures of the Democratic Party as the only viable voting option to the left of David Duke? If the entirety of the Democratic Party’s legacy can be undone in four years by one of dumbest human beings that has ever emerged into the public spotlight, then that speaks tragic volumes of energy and momentum that’s been wasted on our collective efforts to keep them in power for as long as they’ve had this infuriating stranglehold on us.  I reiterate that the Democratic Party has held popular support in this country for eighty fucking years and yet, they allow themselves to get steamrolled by Republican efforts to gerrymander and con their way into positions of power because they need the proverbial boogeyman (look up where that term came from by the way) to hold our votes ransom so we don’t do something “foolish” like vote for the Green Party or some other entity that doesn’t support their imperialist fiscal interests. If Democrats actually cared to mobilize voters, they could do so easily by showing any sort of tepid support for progressive policies that would empower the working class in even the slightest. But instead they threaten you with violence and the stripping away of your basic humanity so that Nancy Pelosi can fire off a banger email telling you that you need to donate money to her re-election campaign for an area of the country where a democrat will never lose the house seat.

Are you not tired of this shit yet? I mean, how many times are we going to just let them drag our noses through the mud before we at least *entertain* the notion that there needs to be some sort of viable alternative to just voting for democrats over and over again while they continuously disappoint us at every conceivable opportunity?

I’m posing some mighty tall questions and criticisms for someone who doesn’t really have any answers, huh? Like I haven’t voted in every single election that I’ve been of age to vote for in my life and sighed while I tapped the box next to a (D). Who am I kidding? I voted for my late friend, Mimi Soltysik for president in 2016 after myself and a couple of friends of mine went around the state of Texas and gathered signatures to see to it that votes for our friend, the Socialist Party candidate for president, would be counted. Did he win? Obviously not, but it felt nice to try and exercise an alternative. Many would say that we were few of many that split the vote and made way for Trump to be president, but I’ve written dissertations about why that couldn’t be further from the truth and I’m not inclined to delve into that again at this juncture (though I’m sure that I may be inclined to do so come election season 2024). That said, my protest vote, in hindsight, didn’t accomplish much because it wasn’t a part of a broader organizational effort to push forward an agenda. The Socialist Party too realized this in 2020 and instead of putting forth their own candidate, co-signed the much more popular and successful Green Party’s candidate. I’ve long felt as though the Green’s would be a really good place to start if we want to start investing in a party that actually has more than corporate interests in the driver’s seat on this road-trip/descent into the capitalist hellscape that we’re all on together. It may sound far fetched, but let’s be honest: doesn’t reforming the democratic party sound even more of a fantasy?

That said, I’m screaming into the void more than I’m actually here to offer solutions because, if I’m being honest with you, dear audience, I’m in no way qualified to offer solutions here. It’s hard times. Give your friends with uteruses a hug. Or give them the money that you were considering donating to democrats. Maybe both. I don’t know. You should probably still vote, but maybe approach with more skepticism than you have previously and with more intention to broaden your activism beyond the voting booth. It feels like a little too late to settle for “a good start”, but what else have we got?