raging gracefully #2: the beginning of the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end again
the beginning of the middle of the end of the beginning first blood part ii
i want to write about my issues surrounding anger. not that i fly off the handle, get in fights, or am uncontrollable, no no, the exact opposite. i need to learn how to release this anger.
my patience and kindness are a choice in the face of everything i’ve dealt with and everything we all have so i wanted to document my journey into learning how to accept my frustration with the world around me, advocate for myself and others, the prisms through which i’ve navigated it, and how i’m not allowing it to marinate within me and transform me into a resentment jambalaya or perhaps an irritation gumbo. enjoy 🌱
the last one was about lessons from the pitch ⚽️
i’m certain you already know what this one’s about…
“there couldn’t possibly be a later stage of capitalism” — me every morning
“kornacki can blow out my backi” shirts ain’t hit the timeline yet, i’m disappointed
perhaps maybe perhance believing in single-issue voting is why you’re single, babes?
not to be a bitch, but do y’all ever think there might be a better way?
“i refuse to vote for the lesser of two– ooh a thirrrrd evil you say? don’t mind i do”
moo deng, deliver us from evil omg
“what’s this country coming to?” i don’t know, it’s fucking senses?
a whole lot of deep-state thoughts from shallow thinkers i fear
“if you’re gonna dickride this crazy, at least say yee haw! have a blast!”
“we didn’t, joe”
the “i throated” sticker is crazy
surprised i ain’t see an astrology girlie on msnbc, would have loved it actually
“misogynoir” or “misogy-not her?” por que no los dos?
the chappelle “where’s ja?” of 2024 is “what does ______ mean about the state of comedy? (specifically my comedy)”
lived long enough to see girlboss feminism become girlbomb feminism, can’t make this up
if i put my store in moral conviction and i perceive you to be morally bankrupt, why is it a surprise if i find your opinion worthless?
don’t get it twisted. i’m furious but no more furious than normal. i’m grieving, but when am i not these days? i grieve for people not institutions. i’m not performing my politics for wingdings online anymore, but trying to act on my beliefs — if you know, you know and if you don’t, you may not know me, and that’s fine. i’ve learned that i’m not an angry person i’m just a person who’s been angry for a long time and i know i’m not alone in this.
i’m kinda unbound by the political cycles in america – it may come as a shock but, like many first and second gen kids, refugees, and migrants, my clock ain’t set by american circlejerking. my survival might be, seems like that’s going around a little bit.
what’s got me tight?
no drama-la kamala, the status quo savior, getting glazed by notorious bastard dick cheney and wife to notorious bastard liz cheney in a bipartisan effort to, what, start a bomb dot com club with republicans of yesteryear? disappointing and poor form, but unsurprising, please be serious.
i don’t give a fuck about jillbert stein (that’s her real name, don’t look it up) who suited up late in the 4th, 3 seconds on the clock like “iso jilly, iso jilly!”
trump cosplaying as a mcdonald’s employee? a spirit halloween sanitation worker? the same dickhead who simply stood in front of a church with a bible for a photo op and evangelicals fell to their knees? tale as old as time — don’t tell me this caucoonery and buffoonery is surprising anyone anymore. laugh if you want, hate the player, hate the game, but it worked. he got the popular vote and the racist institution vote.
it’s past time for americans to accept that a racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, failed businessman/successful rapist built by daddy’s money and NBC programming with more cases than deal or no deal and 34 felonies who hates and/or loves everything someone tells him to because he’s paid to with absolutely no personal accountability who continues to get away with the most dastardly things on a nearly 80-year diet of chicken nuggets, well done but poor quality steaks, and spite might not be the president the people themselves deserve but couldn’t be a more excellent mascot for America — the brand, the company, the reality.
america is a business first — even if it says you’re “like family” on monday, you could be cut off come tuesday.
not just the american people but almost everyone in the world is in an abusive relationship with america, forced back into dating their pattern – there are no other fish in the sea so we’re forced to have the dirtbag du jour (had to get the white feminist SEO with that analogy rq, allow me).
in 8 years, echo chambers became echo fortresses, with walls built from block buttons, algorithmic interferences, and headphones tuning out reality with delusion and distractions. while we can blame the culture war, who is the culture? how do we play a part in it? we can blame the people in power – who put them there, how do we focus on getting them out? is voting the only thing we really believe in? really?
i don’t wanna shame regular degular americans for believing in electoral politics. it’s genuinely all americans are taught and even then, the vast majority have no idea what other options are out there. the american education system was built off of a propagandized isolationist model – the only time you learned about other countries outside of the ones america has smoke with was roman, greek, mesopotamian, etc and children literally had to pledge allegiance to the flag, no questions asked. real “just trust me, bro” vibes. prop. a. gan. da. in order to get everyone up to speed, we have to invest in education but where will we ever find the money…
who do i gotta blame? 59% of white men? 52% (nice) of white women? 20% of black men? 7% of black women? 54% of latinos and 37% of latinas? 45% of all other races? girl, i guess. the cries of “men hate women,” “misogynoir,” and blaming latinos, arabs, your cousin terry all seems familiar and, frankly, lazy, hack, been done, limiting, and played out but i’ll give it a crack…now i gotta do math, shit.
the media? sure, great target. their favorite dancing money-making maniac monkey is back in power, an unprecedented move which i’m sure people in powerful media positions are salivating just thinking about adding a 25th hour to the day, 8th day to the week to get more coverage. on the narrative side, how the fuck do we have so much content about revolution, fascism (creeping or overt), post-apocalyptic america, and still people identify with and vote down the empire line? what are we doing wrong? do we gotta make subtext into text because i don’t even know if they’re teaching subtext in schools anymore? what’s even allowed? ahhhhhh—
blame the institutions? governmental, academic, non-profits – all of them are to blame for real. fake support systems, fake policy, political theatre, laughable discourse, fake free speech, bad faith actors abound, and how are you a non-profit with all this billionaire funding that’s never said a word about gaza, congo, sudan ahhhhh – someone is profiting methinks, narratively or financially, probably both.
blame the single-issue voter? yeah sure. but don’t make that single issue we’re hating on the very people we’re assisting in bombing into oblivion creating way more than one issue for them. the nerve of you fake ass advocates, you absolute walnuts. climate is not a single issue. inflation is not a single issue. palestine is not a single issue. housing is not a single issue. egregious defense spending is not a single issue. immigration is not a single issue.
the more you break issues up on some divide-and-conquer shit, the more it feels like we’re using the master’s tools to dismantle the master's house only our shit is fisher-price tools and their shit is drones and cutting off abortion access.
i’m incensed but it’s manifesting not in apathy but deep disappointment. the american social experiment continues to fail in our faces – decaying institutions continue to remain standing because we’re not building any coalitions that aren’t rooted in hierarchy, clout, individualized power grabs, greedy rascally radical rabbits snatching up the first carrot with no real code of conduct, becoming a taxidermied puppet in the process, no longer living to their community or their new puppetmasters. stuffed, full, satiated. [read identity capitalists by nancy leong and run the checklist by some of your faves see if they apply.]
the american right has always been consistent, like it or not — god, guns, no gays, men rule, girls drool, and be unashamedly xenophobic and racist — a playbook that hasn’t changed in decades. it ain’t broke, it’s designed this way.
the left this election season was like 2012 linsanity — 10 days of joy followed by the realization that kamala could only go to her right and wouldn’t go left. the left is inconsistent because they constantly fuck up at full speed without genuinely planning to include and center the most vulnerable in our communities even if they have a pink pussy hat or a photo op to paint “black lives matter” on the street. the left had all the power to push for a ceasefire, set up an arms embargo, codify roe v. wade, cut all student loans — they didn’t do it.
today’s left contains the center — while in most candies, the center is the best, not the case as it pertains to american politics. the center is The Right Lite™ – low-calorie fascism and no backbone in sight. just be contrarian, eat hot chip, and lie until re-election season. the left isn’t unified because the establishment doesn’t care to listen to valid concerns if they affect the bag. too corrupt, too derelict, too scapegoaty.
revolution? don’t make me laugh. we are not going to do a liberal january 6th with dimes square creative directors, comedians who can read, thinkpiecers, and influenceless influencers – we are bound and gagged by the performance of scheduled social outrage, protesting only when the cops let us but c’mon bffr…are you really about that? are you really like that? is it aesthetic enough or does it not please the algorithm? i stg the only time the online leftists get to have conflict is by deploying pithy one-liners across the internet with no compunction for the positionality or context of their target — conflict-avoidant, fighting indirect emotional and psychological proxy wars, terrified if that conflict comes to their door. sound familiar?
how are we so fucking divided today in the age of connectivity? our parents’ and grandparents’ generations created international solidarity and resource sharing, creating a web of information that linked global struggle up until the internet age…then what? how did we have the Rainbow Coalition back then and today’s rainbow coalition the Ls and the Gs don’t fuck with the Ts and the Bs and As are like “we exist!!!” while the white Qs are telling the black Qs how to Q at a beyoncé concert?
you mean i have three different social medias that only serve me ads and “verified” content but i don’t know when someone i cared about died because it didn’t drive clicks? i can’t connect with my community because the protest flyers had a word that didn’t pass the meta vibe check? is this freedom?
what is liberation?
no really, what is it?
is it collective? is it individual? is it rising together? is it rising alone, then getting enough power to bring some people with you? is it tangible? is it built? is it bought? is it sold? is it above us? is it six feet below us? is it a goal? is it a concept? is it a word? is it a practice? is it internal? is it external?
what is it to you? what is it to your neighbor? do you know what it means to you? do they know what it means to you? what is it to your “enemy?” what is it to your “opp?” what is it to a “freedom fighter?” what is it to a “radical?” what is it to your “friend?” what is it to your “family?” what does it feel like? what does it taste like? what does it look, like, smell like – this can go on forever.
point being, it’s become everything and nothing all at once. it’s gone down the same road as words such as community, self-care, any level of therapy speak, woke, etc – they have been stripped of all meaning because they have no root in a collective definition anymore.
why? any myriad of reasons stretching from the stripping of context away from these words, a lack of action surrounding their definitions, people who appropriate the words and slather them with disdain, some -isms, ironic detachment, etc. but most importantly, because we have a core problem – this diluted, unspecific “liberation” is futile if we genuinely don’t know what it is and where it’s going.
every four years, right here in the heart of the american empire, we throw two different parties (and sometimes a third party) to hand off a gun to the next wielder. “point down, know who your friends are (the ones who pay you) and your enemies, too (the ones who want you to pay).” whether your side wins or loses, the other side always feels like the gun is pointed at them for four years and to many outside these borders, the gun is always pointed at them. “vote! it’s about your freedom!” but does anyone feel free?
the black man who climbed the corporate ladder, showing his molars when he laughs on the links?
the black woman who finally got to be in the boardroom, to get the seat at the table?
the radical activist who is invited to speak at all the think-tanks?
the female comedian selected to be “one of the guys?”
the brown comedian chosen to be “one of the whites?”
the straight-passing queer?
the cis-passing trans person?
the person living paycheck to paycheck out of their car getting a title bump (yay) with no extra pay while their boss bought a house?
the freelancer, constantly looking for housing and healthcare?
are any of them free? are they safe? are they liberated? the higher you go, the harder you fall so, not to get islamic rq, is it any surprise that idols fail us almost every time?
time. time to have a family, time to buy a house, time to fall in love, time, to get a promotion, time for a career change, time for this check to come in, time to rise and grind, time to get this bread, time, time, time. it’s hard to be intentional when all your time belongs to some unseen entities, marionetting your limited hours on this planet. an invisible warden, telling us exactly how much time we in the yard or we gotta go back to gen pop. some people strive to be these wardens – baffling because they also claim to be abolitionists. hm.
i have anxiety and depression. ten, fifteen years ago that meant something, but today that means i gotta get on the block and flip a pack – “fuck you mean “anxious?” we all anxious, nigga. strap up.” today, we’re all anxious, all depressed, all autistic, all need 2 adderall to send half an email, on a cocktail of drugs to make us at the bare minimum functional and the maximum, efficient (and for whom? i’ll say less). if we’re all anxious, depressed, moving with mood disorders, scared we can’t have access to housing or healthcare, why does that further individualize us? shouldn’t that draw us together to ask “why are all of us bugged the fuck out rn? to speak for myself, depression locks me in the unchangeable past. anxiety keeps me out of an unknowable future. the present is all i can control. the only way out – intentional action.
there’s a pendulum that’s swung between intention and interpretation for years and it’s firmly on the side of interpretation these days – people live in constant fear of being misinterpreted as they explore social paradigms that, truthfully, are new to them. “we don’t care what you meant to say, this is how we heard it” has become the parlance of the internet while simultaneously championing “trying new things” and “leaving your comfort zone,” “reading authors outside of your purview,” etc. puritanism masquerading as politic.
we’ve become shame merchants, propagating shame down to the next person, but i suppose that’s what happens when moral and intellectual superiority can be conflated with becoming talking heads, leaders of “movements,” creating an intellectual hierarchy with themselves at the top, etc. the educationally disenfranchised get shamed publicly, disposed of, then we move on – sounds like jail to me idc…
life, to me, is a series of choices, firmly-held convictions with momentary answers that either fortify us or ask us to question what we believe, causing adaptation or maladaptation. this is a constant practice and a lot of us been out the gym on that – relying on partners, influencers, neolobbyists, podcasters, (sigh) celebrities, etc to tell us what to believe. this has caused an intellectual atrophy that’s leading to moral and social apathy. we’ve ceded so much power to the interpreters and forgot that we can make our own translations by moving towards personal liberation and collective liberation simultaneously, speaking to those who will help shepherd vulnerability rather than make us a target of ire. we’ve lost faith in the people and left the powerful on their pedestals while wanting our own space on those same pedestals.
to me, liberation is a love practice and we’re living in the most loveless of times. simple, clean. probably a solid viral tweet, maybe a t-shirt. but the truth of it is we have to be intentional with what we love and have a moral conviction about us that is informed by community, whatever form that looks like. we have to be brave enough to fumble our way toward the world we want to live in and make empire, corrupt “two-party” systems, fascist and illegitimate nation-states, neocolonialism, etc impossible to uphold (read your mariam kaba)
it’s not going to happen by performing our politics online every four years
it’s not going to happen by reading all the radical theory in the universe and providing no real action
gil scott heron been told us it’s not going to be televised – why do you think it will be podcasted?
it’s not going to happen by looking outward before looking within
it’s not going to happen by kowtowing to conservative shit-stirrers or running back plans of failed elections past
it’s not going to happen if we don’t know our neighbors
it’s not going to happen if we spend all our time looking up and not enough looking laterally
it’s not going to happen by questioning why a fascist is in power without knowing the machinations behind that word
it’s not going to happen if people can’t step back from jerking themselves off online for a second to see that someone else has a valid perspective based on lived experience, not a class they took sophomore year
it’s not going to happen if we keep letting the establishment squelch socially progressive movements to hold on to power they never wield correctly for the people but only for themselves
it’s not going to happen if the working class just keeps working and the dems hold on to their dreams of a capitalist, diverse, neoliberal utopia
it’s not going to happen if we silence all rightfully critical voices and center the powerful as the real victims
it’s not going to happen while the conversation is led by people in the heart of empire with no grounded empathy for the victims of it that live outside of it
it’s not going to happen by carpooling in the political vehicle of our choosing, a honda odyssey full of people we don’t know or care to understand, just convert to our pipe dream
it’s not going to happen if we suffer in our romances and romanticize our suffering while romanticizing revolution not realizing it
it’s not going to happen if we wait by the phone for a hero to save us
so, what is liberation?
liberation, to me, is possible. but only if we’re honest about what’s making it feel impossible and make the definition together, outside of what we’ve been programmed to believe. and that’s going to require doing our part in our hyperlocally first. i can’t tell everyone what revolutionary or community-oriented practices they should engage in – it becomes unidirectional and community should be always reciprocal, communicative, collective, and direct action-driven. very easy to come on here quoting the fanon and the freire to cook people. not easy to meet people where they are and walk hand in hand to where we both want to be, through fire and flame if we must.
the ingredients are there, let’s start cooking – and if you’re historically made fun of for your cooking, maybe this is your time to bring the plates and napkins, all part of the process. it’s not gonna be clean all the time, it’s gonna require getting our hands dirty, but the clock starts now and it doesn’t end in four years. it feels small but it only gets bigger the more people we add to it.
so what are you going to do? sit for three and a half years? or build something new?
don’t tell me here, show yourself — build collective power, go chat to your family, your people, your community, and then let’s try and return to the conversation with action. time to lock tf in. it’s up to you to decide what that looks like.
until then, wherever you are in the world, hold each other close 🌱🌱🌱
