#39 - Hi hello this is just a rant

I’m so tired.

Despite going to bed early, and waking up at 6, going for walks, journaling, you know, doing all of the things that I do to make myself feel better and stay sane, things aren’t going well at the moment.

And there is no individual solution to the problems.

But also ‘the problems’ are like lichrally global scale and so so so fixable and stupid and it’s so hard to not feel like I’m actually losing my mind when we (referring to the government and like society at large too with that we) yet again make a decision that actually benefits one person (man) who already has so much capital wealth that they couldn’t possibly spend it in one lifetime, and despite seeming to thirst for infamy and being remembered they don’t want to be remembered for like solving the hunger crisis, global warming, houselessness…no no, they want to moderate a social media website and go to space. (In rockets that are so on the nose it’s hard to even make a joke about it. It’s just so blatant and obvious, like Freud’s boner in sweatpants would have been at the sight of them.)

And it’s stupid to accumulate wealth on a dying planet!!! Like, we’re all hearing the fiddle music, right?

And when those† men aren’t ruining the planet, we have other men ruining the social constructs of the country we live in because they need to subjugate women in order to feel masculine because men not feeling manly will actually literally be the death of not only a bunch of women this year (mostly at the hands of their intimate partners, because even the men who claim to love still want to kill us), but also the acceleration in global warming may have something to do with the fact that dudes see caring about the environment as effeminate. Because we failed to define any positive attributes of masculinity, so it really just became, don’t be a woman because women are stupid/bad/only good for sex and sandwiches (and WOW can you tell the men on Tinder grew up during the height of “make me a sandwich” being the ultimate comeback during the cerebral cortex developmental years) and now being a man is just not being a woman. I guess they are allowed to like cars and guns? But also guns are being marketed to them as something that helps them reclaim their manhood and masc up, which we know for a fact because the parents of the children who were murdered at their elementary school in Sandy Hook sued the gun manufacturers who made the weapons used to take the lives of their kids and the companies had to disclose their advertising parameters in a court order. (Ready to scream? Let’s do it together. AAAGHHH!!!)

And while that sucks for men, I truly need them to free themselves from the constructs of the patriarchy and realize that they’re losing a game that we’re all being forced to play, but they lose out on like…genuine intimate human connection and the joyful vulnerability that comes understanding and expressing emotions (all emotions, not just anger, the only emotion we don’t read as an emotion because it is the only thing we’re totally cool with allowing men to unfetteredly express!). So like, I know that I suffer under the patriarchal structure and misogyny but at least I get to like the color green without feeling like I have to punch a wall to compensate for something. And they need to do it for themselves because the rest of us are now too busy not trying to lose our bodily autonomy. Again.

Two men with documented histories of sexual harassment are part of the decision to overturn my right to privacy which in (most) states guarantees me access to abortion. It just feels egregious.

And I will go to the protests, and Chuckie Schum’s hearing from me today about his absolute inability to lead the fucking Senate (buy Sinema a vineyard and pay her more than whoever is paying her right now to be their puppet and get rid of the filibuster I swear to god it cannot be that hard to figure out what makes this woman tick, whoever has her in their pocket figured it out real quick, and hang Joe Manchin by his ankles over the edge of Roosevelt bridge until he agrees on the filibuster reform I truly do not care what you have to do but we got you 50 seats so fucking USE THEM!). But I’m tired! Because I’m working a full-time job and there’s still this whole pandemic thing happening so every single decision I make feels incredibly weighted and I have to dig nine layers deep to get any actual information about how “safe” something actually is and I feel like I’m losing my mind over how few masks I now see on the Subway and it happened so quickly but to be honest, no, I don’t want to eat inside yet!! And I think that makes me feel like I’m overreacting to things but it just feels like when we all stopped getting food out during that initial lockdown NYC went “oh shit Seamless is like 90% of the GDP of this city apparently” and they’ve just been lying to us ever since in order to make sure that businesses don’t close. No no, can’t give money to the tenants, we should give it to the landlords, and then impose absolutely no restrictions on arbitrary rent inflation!! Regulations? Never heard of her! Make sure these fuckers are back at work, but make sure not to pay them too much, so they can work more than one job and die young of stress-related health issues!

The Governor of New York got her position because her corrupt boss couldn’t stop groping women (or killing senior citizens due to negligence and then lying about it while writing a book about what a great governor he was) and has used the office to personally enrich her husband with money she stole from the Seneca and Mohawk Nation’s casinos. So, that’s extra fun. Just a cool extra shitty layer of once again exploiting the Native American population for the financial benefit of like 6 white dudes. Seriously, explain to me why the state government is aiding a private corporation in building a new building where they will play a game that has been proven to be dangerous to the players (and their families who often suffer abuse and have been killed due to the effects of CTE!!!) and which will offer no public interest or community support. She also appointed her running partner for the upcoming election and then he was arrested for bribery he committed while running to be Comptroller of NYC. She also hates New York City, which is really annoying, because so many of us live here, and we had a terrorist attack happen on the largest public transportation system in the country (and like top 5 or so in the world) and…nothing seems to be happening as far as like a cohesive plan for safety? A response? Nope, just Cop Mayor coming to say some extra dumb shit about police being effective. As fuckin’ if. People saved each other that day. It was the other riders, the people on the train, who aided the wounded and drove the trains and broke protocol for safety reasons, and the NYPD didn’t even catch the guy!! And AND they’re about to spend even more money on overtime than they did last year, and they have an ELEVEN BILLION DOLLAR BUDGET which, as many people have pointed out, is more than the entire Ukrainian military’s. To which I ask, exactly who is the NYPD preparing to go to war with?

Oh, is it New Yorkers? Yiiikes.

It’s feeling more and more these days like this country is just a bunch of arms dealers in a trenchcoat. We don’t even have like decent infrastructure or education anymore! We used to have shiny things to distract us from the glaring unjustness of the budget acquisition by the military, but we’ve all been at home quickly destroying our couches and wondering if we’re going to die due to governmental negligence (and weirdly, Jenny McCarthy going on Oprah that one time) and I’m just doooone.

Progress isn’t linear, and I know the backlash is only so strong because we moved, so quickly, in the socially progressive direction. I know that “social change is just waiting for the old people to die” is incredibly ageist and unhelpful. And from what I’ve seen I think the people who are most pissed about Roe are the people who were there fighting for it when it got passed the first time. They already fought this fight, and they don’t want to have to fight it again. We shouldn’t have to!!! People should have full access to reproductive healthcare. All people. And abortion is not a dirty word and I just love everyone who’s ever gotten one for whatever reasons they sought to have one. You can get an abortion for any reason! Literally any! At any time! That’s YOUR body! It’s MY body!! Get the government out of my fucking business!!! I pay taxes that they give to weapons and war and I pay so much in taxes proportionally and like…truly the fact that they tax unemployment is a big notch in my villain origin story. Meanwhile, Billionaire Fuckboys and their companies pay no taxes because lobbyists secured them personal loopholes. And then also forced us all to use TurboTax instead of just telling us what we owe, which they already know!! And if we get it wrong we’re in trouble. So that’s super fun. Love clicking that box that says to the best of my knowledge, as if they write any official government business document in the appropriate reading level. Like, I have a college degree. The average American reads at a 7th grade reading level. It’s legit discriminatory that government forms and websites are not written in easy-to-understand plain English.

(It’s almost like we hate a certain group of people…and want to prevent them from having access to things that would aid them in succeeding…)

Everyone in the government just wants to personally enrich themselves and also gets addicted to power, so they don’t want to fix the systems because they benefit from them and I know this is petty but I just don’t think you should have government healthcare if you do not vote for/support Medicare in your home state. I think senators and reps should get paid the minimum wage of their state. Go ahead, try to get an apartment in DC!

Also like, they all hate fundraising and talk about how most of the job is simply raising money to run again and it’s like, hey babes? You could pass laws around spending and contributions to campaigns and level your own fucking playing fields you’re actually like weirdly in charge of your own destinies here but they won’t do it because then they’d have to be elected on merit rather than name recognition and they all seem to feel weirdly entitled to a public service position that most of them do very very little with overall.

I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m anxious and trying not to show it a lot because it feels fruitless and unhelpful and it makes me so sad because like, what does money mean when the world’s no longer here? Everything is getting worse in quality, nothing is made to last, and then consumers get yelled at for being wasteful and it’s like…I truly am trying my best? And this is so pedantic but it’s across the board that quality is declining. Moleskin notebooks can’t handle most ink without bleedthrough anymore. Doc Martens soles can’t be replaced because they wanted to make even more money and make you buy a new pair every time. I have to get new Switch controllers every 8 months. You can huck an N64 down a flight of stairs because Nintendo used to manufacture their toys to actually withstand the intensity of play that children bring to anything. It’s made to break, it’s redundant. Adobe makes you pay monthly for a program that they do not drastically update and improve month-to-month, they just realized that subscriptions make more money than one-time downloads. My PS4 won’t take discs anymore after an update because they’re trying to force me to buy a PS5. I can’t use the games that I physically have in my hand with the machine that is designed to run them, because they’re trapping me into paying monthly pass rates for their online services. I almost bought an AC unit that came with a subscription service to send me replacement filters every three months, and the filter charge was in super tiny print and I barely caught it before purchasing. I know how these “tech” companies operate, and I was right, the google searches for how to cancel the subscription were full of complaints about how stupid and hard the company made the process.

There’s no protection for consumers, and everything is advertising so we’re not people, we are just consumer data points churned through algorithms so that I can be shown the world’s ugliest purple shoe rack for three months straight. And it worries me that people are referring to other living people as NPC’s and it worries me that I don’t have the energy for a lot of actual human compassion because while I can understand that people are trapped in a cult that has slowly brainwashed them, I cannot understand the loss of their moral center, despite knowing that they’ve probably never had the opportunity to develop that moral center because they were exposed to specific sets of “morality” and never taught critical thinking in schools because we have eroded the public education system on purpose because one party can only stay in power through voter suppression and whipping up an undereducated very vitriolic base that they have provided with easy solutions for their outpouring of anger over the lack of resources and care that have never been provided for them.

But I also cried in front of my republican boss when he parroted a talking point about the corruptness of the State Department in 2019 so, my sensitivity is a little higher than the average person perhaps.

(Diplomacy is so important, war is so stupid.)

Okay well, I’m really tired now, and I want to rest because I know, I do know, that we’re going to come together and they’re not going to take our rights away because class consciousness is here, it’s happening, we’re creating unions again, we’re understanding the power of collective action by ordinary citizens, we can and we will and we must. Stacey Abrams got the entire state of Georgia to overcome the stratified efforts of voter suppression and we have the Senate and she’s going to win her Gubernatorial race and even though I had to stop getting texts asking for more donations to her campaign, her efforts to action mean so much to me and I think that hope is hard but she gives me a lot of it. Because she’s a real person, who’s been through some real shit, and she wants to make life easier for the rest of us.

So, idk, it’s rainy today and I’m curling up on the couch under blankets and hopefully napping. Because going on Twitter is just making my brain feel like its turning to jelly and I don’t need any more hot takes. Or lukewarm takes. And yet, I am here, providing my take. Because I am expressive in hopes of commiseration and unable to shut the fuck up for even a minute apparently.

Okay sending this before I overthink things g’byeee!