It’s been so long since I’ve written anything I was informed my Word subscription ended 6 months ago. Google Docs it is. I haven’t looked at my blog in almost two years. It’s stayed dormant since the COVID-19 pandemic began aside from a few sprinkles of free-writes and National Novel Writing Month. Something inside of me convinces me to keep paying the monthly hosting fees and occasionally, the site receives a spike of visitors.

My reasons for writing today manifested out of concern, fear, and uncertainty. I’ve been witnessing event after event that has led me to believe that if circumstances and public opinion don’t change quickly, we’re rushing toward an incredibly poor standard of living. It gets hotter each year and natural disasters seem to become more and more frequent looking back 20 years. There are an increasing number of random attacks in Los Angeles whether that’s the murder of a nurse, a woman stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors, or even witnessing my own friend’s unprovoked brutal attack in January 2022, or hearing of a friend’s murder in 2020. These are public health issues that have largely been neglected by the leadership in this city though they are not unique to LA. Of course I want to point out those people, who make the claim that “crime is way up”, you’re not wrong, but it’s still a fraction of what it was in the 1990s. When people are neglected and displaced and feelings of agitation and aggression run rampant, their livelihoods unmet and when workers are robbed of their wages by corporate greed, graduates’ income is garnished by crippling debt, crime is going to go up. When individuals do not have housing or adequate healthcare, crime is going to shoot up. We’re starting to see the ugly failures of society that have been brewing for decades.

These random attacks remind me a lot of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”. In her novel, which takes place in the 2020s, drug-users called Pyros take pleasure in lighting things on fire and watching people or buildings burn. It’s not hard to see why they turned to this drug. Society in the novel is harsh and cruel. Like the unhoused in our society, some have faced such great abuse by others and neglect by the state, they have nothing left to do but watch the world burn. Throughout the book, Lauren’s brothers, neighbors, and friends are kidnapped for prostitution, murdered, and disappeared. I don’t think we’re at this point yet, but if the people don’t take a large enough stand [riots work, too] and the government won’t take necessary quick action, the violence will continue to grow. I try to be hopeful. Maybe the next generation will do better. 

We’ve survived what’s hopefully the worst of the pandemic, but I don’t feel a sense of hope most days. COVID-19 brought out the worst in people. It brought out needless conspiracies, bigotry, violence, and outright lies to the mainstream. On a larger scale, COVID-19 outlined the incompetence of government to handle this scale of a pandemic and the failures of public health leadership, not to mention the idiocy of the average American. I spent far too much time doom-scrolling Facebook and Twitter and arguing with people who were unwilling to be vaccinated against the deadly virus. I remember the milestones of 100,000 deaths, 500,000 deaths, and now over a million deaths in the United States. I harmed myself in the process of trying to convince others of whom I cared about to protect themselves with wearing masks and taking vaccines. I doubt I convinced anyone to take these protections. Eventually, I succumbed to burnout and stopped spending time on Facebook.

My mother died in May of this year after succumbing to brain cancer. I had hoped that her last two years on Earth would have given her the freedom to travel and to live life to the fullest. Instead, despite being fairly mobile after the initial brain surgery, she was stuck at home throughout the pandemic. Family members were not able to visit because of the severity of the pandemic. This story is not unique and if we had worked together and followed good public health guidelines, countless deaths could have been prevented.. I try and give these people the benefit of the doubt that it’s society’s fault for them being so idiotic and plain stupid, but It’s hard for me to forgive these people who fought back against mask mandates and vaccines. I actively avoid them if I can. If I know someone who’s against vaccines or not vaccinated, I will do my best to shun and ignore them. The idea that we have these reactionaries that we’re trying to help reject the assistance and guidance they greatly need is horrifying. I hope to forgive them one day, but not today.  

I often spend time worrying about authoritarianism and the decline of the dying democracy this country has. In Vladimir Lenin’s “State and Revolution”, he writes, “In capitalist society, under the conditions most favorable to its development, we have more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always bound by the narrow framework of capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains just about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for the slave-owners. The modern wage slaves, owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, are so much crushed by want and poverty that ‘democracy is nothing to them’, ‘politics is nothing to them’; that, in the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participating in social and political life.

Why does this statement from Lenin sound so relevant today? What does it mean? It sums up Lenin’s point of view that democracy will eventually fail in a system where votes can be bought and are given to the citizens that hold greater power than their poorer counterparts. We have a “democracy” where billionaires can buy up votes through advertising and manipulation on social media sites. We have a voting system that allows candidates to outspend their political opponents by high ratios. Whatever current form of democracy we have is not sustainable and will undoubtedly lead to an authoritarian government controlled by the wealthy land-owners and debt-slavers. 

Workers are not given time off to vote. Parents do not educate their school age children on civics and the importance of participating in society. Teachers are vastly underpaid and overworked and the education of civic virtues boils down to a couple of semester long classes throughout grade school. Districts are heavily gerrymandered and further rigged each decade. This “democracy” indeed favors a minority like we see with the new Supreme Court nominations and their holy war on abortion. Most of Americans support the right to terminate pregnancy yet do not have fair representation in states’ that have outlawed or restricted this process. There’s a lot more to say about the illegitimacy of the Supreme Court picks here, but that’s another post. 

What was I talking about again? I feel better than when I started writing. Maybe I’ll do this more often. Ahh, Freedom. The idea that you can buy seventy different kinds of cereal. This is a very poor concept of exercising freedom and it gives you the illusion that you’re free to choose products as a consumer. But, freedom is rooted in self-determination, that is, having the choices over how one controls their life. I do not feel free. I must work or I will be homeless. I must work or I won’t be entitled to healthcare. I must work, so that I have the privilege of writing. Unless you’re one of those folks that can buy elections, you must work, and work is not consensual [Insert Blink-182 Quote here]. Those guys don’t have to work. 

I do not feel free to live my life the way I intend. I’d like to travel so much more, but I’m limited by the amount of vacation despite contributing to a working society (not to mention a two-plus year pandemic). It seems impossible to take a few weeks off compared to my friends across the pond. Of course, I’m grateful I don’t live in a war-torn country. If Congress is going to send billions of dollars overseas and invest trillions in a failed war, providing their constituents with some basic healthcare and debt forgiveness would be a good start. Things aren’t great here. Most people are a paycheck away from eviction. Still, Europeans and most of the world have to deal with the threat of war next door while we watch from abroad. 

We get to witness the American Dream fade rapidly. I used to love the dystopian idea of roaming around in a Mad Max style world, looting and plundering avoiding nuclear fallout, but when this is inevitably where the world is headed, it seems as though we’ve made an unforgivable mistake. I’d like to fast-forward to when life is better, but I’ll continue to participate in the civic good and try to believe that a better world is inevitable. Like Lauren preached in “Parable of the Sower”, I too, would like to hold the belief that we belong amongst the stars. 

Thanks for reading. I’m trying my best to rebound from burnout and hope to write more soon.