November Roundup
It’s been a long, long month. The seasons are (finally) changing, holiday shopping has begun, and Drake crashing out over being humiliated by Kendrick Lamar is the funniest thing to happen in the western world.
And I don’t even follow rap beef like that. I just think it’s hilarious.
If I were Black person from the Canadian suburbs pretending to be part of Black American culture who used an A.I. likeness of a beloved deceased Black rapper in one of my songs to make myself seem harder than I actually am, I would think twice about running my mouth against a Pulitzer Prize winner who was actually, you know, part of the culture and grew through the struggle. Just comparing the backgrounds of the two rappers really exposes the organic grass fed cornball nature of Aubrey Drake Graham.
But enough about that. As great and unrivaled as the schadenfreude is, it really is more of a morphine shot against the festering wound that is the rise of fascism in this country. Simply put, I cannot do another four years of this. I cannot keep having my rights held hostage in every goddamn single election cycle while Democrats wring their hands and hinge their entire campaign on “well, at least we’re not that other guy!”
And when they inevitably lose, I cannot keep dealing with white leftists blaming the marginalized groups that have always, always been harmed by both Republicans and Democrats alike. Genocide is a bar in hell and if you somehow do the macarena and limbo below that, then we are cooked as a nation.
The rise of anti-intellectualism, tradwife and alt-right bro content, the absolute refusal of people to consider a modicum of effort to enact change as a pathway to a better life–the apathy! Oh, the apathy! I am shaking the bars of my enclosure! I’m going to start throwing bricks!
“You’re being an alarmist.” Do you say the same to your smoke detector when smoke fills your apartment? Do you cede yourself to effortless sleep when sitting in your running car with the garage door closed? Sixty years from now, people will study this time and go “how did we ever let it get that bad?” We will have documentaries dedicated to how sad and traumatized we are by the actions of a handful of billionaires we let run this country into the ground.
It has only been three weeks and MacMillan Publisher has already bent the fucking knee to conservatives by creating an imprint just for them. And earlier this year (or was it last year?) Scholastic was giving schools the option to opt out of “woke” books just because they were about people of color existing. It only takes a few sparks to light a fire. Why are we waiting for it to burn down a room before taking action?
I’m not saying we need to bring back the guillotine–I’m saying we need to have a fucking backbone.
Since the election cycle began, there were a lot of people talking about Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, mostly to show how our world is lining up with that dystopian setting. There are many similarities, from the erosion of a democratic nation down to a single politician with a promising slogan: Make America Great Again. The slogan was thought of several decades before we found ourselves here, and is one of the main reasons why people praise Butler (and rightly so) for her prophetic novel.
But the discussion often ends there.
Which is a shame because I think we have a lot to learn from the main character, Lauren Olamina. Despite the political nightmare the book is staged in, Lauren lives in a small, walled community run by her father, a preacher. This little community grows its own food, has its own security system, and is mostly self-sufficient as long as corrupt police officers do not require bribes to do their damn jobs. But Lauren sees a metaphorical crack in the wall. She knows the safety of this community cannot last long. So what does she do? Simply ask that there be a backup plan. A disaster procedure. A goddamn go-bag in case the walls came down and fire rained from above.
Lauren just wants to be ready in case shit hits the fan. She creates a religion, called Earthseed and builds the basic tenets–namely that “God is Change” and that you can “shape God through conscious effort.” Very simple, and makes sense. Your reality is a construct that you have the ability to revise, correct, adjust. You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.
Unfortunately, Lauren is called an alarmist by many people in her community, including her father. It’s almost superstitious, the way they fear change. As if just by acknowledging the superficiality of their safety, they are inviting danger. They don’t want a back-up plan. Their current plan is fine as is.
But imagine if we did that to every part of our life. If we never applied to more than one college, if we only prepped one meal, if we didn’t find alternative forms of transportation? How quickly would things fall apart?
People–humanity as a whole–are adaptable. We can change. We can shift our way of life to accommodate problems and struggles. I’m autistic and I know that great change dysregulates me–but I also know what grounds me, so I make sure to keep those things close. Imagine if I didn’t do that and made my meltdowns everybody else’s problem?
Right now, I’ve fully given up on the idea of government–Democrats or otherwise–fixing the fascism problem. I’m not falling for any of their “solutions” which start and end with a vote and a $15 donation to a cause they were never really committed to. Lauren packed her go bag, I’m packing mine. That isn’t to say that I’m just abandoning the cause entirely–but rather, I’m shifting my attention (and money) away from government and toward community building.
I think we all should do it, and commit to learning one basic necessity for survival. It isn’t all weaponry and Mad Max-style living. It’s gardening, carpentry, engineering, sewing, etc. If you have a tight group of friends, each of you should pick one thing and commit to it–that’s how you build community.
And for fuck’s sake, stop stock-piling weapons if you’re not going to pick up a basic First Aid/CPR class.