I’m distressed by events outside my control. Maybe you too.
“I guess we will see how it plays out,” said my former coworker, the one who is “done being hunted by the left, the mentality [sic] ill, and the deranged,” the one who wants to grind the woke left “into the dust.”
“…sorry for your side man,” he says, unsettlingly. It doesn’t read like an apology, doesn’t feel like empathy.
And anyway I’m not at all sorry for my *side*. I’m sorry that we have been radicalized against ourselves.
I’m sorry about a looming American future where “freedom and justice for all” is but an empty slogan. Where we quit investing in the civic necessity of an informed citizenry. Where political power is out of balance, all three branches captured by totalitarian fundamentalists. Where nobody dares visit to learn, work, escape injustice, innovate, or build. Where science and expertise are the enemy. Where we enforce rigid assent over freedom of expression. Where we stand by approvingly while our highly favored ally commits genocide before the eyes of the world, brandishing weapons we bought for them. Where the structures that have protected the stability of our economy since 1929 are systematically dismantled. Where disease and chronic illness escape our control. Where we are committed to the accelerated destruction of our only habitat in subservience to the powerful men who will never be sated, even after the last available molecule of coal has forever darkened our skies. Where, as Mark Joseph Stern recently put it, the only reason any of us is still alive is because no one has yet decided to shoot us.
I’m sorry that so many American myths I grew up believing in have *always* been an empty mirage to millions of my brothers and sisters. I’m sorry that I didn’t realize this until recently, and I’m sorry that the progress we seemed to be making has been so gleefully and violently undone. I’m sorry that joyless and brutish times seem to be ahead for us, that it didn’t have to be this way.
I’m sorry about the intentional and escalating hardships targeting poor folks, neurodivergent folks, Black and Brown folks, LGBTQIA+ folks, disabled folks, and women–essentially anyone who isn’t a wealthy, white, christian, straight (or closeted I guess) cis man. And I’m sorry that my former coworker is such a sore winner over it.
I guess when I’m done fuming and moping, I’ll get back to working to destroy patriarchal white supremacy. Maybe you too. What was his phrase? Grind it into the dust.
Maybe we’re not lost yet. May we take heart. May we stand together, all of us, in solidarity, for freedom and justice for all. E pluribus unum, our national motto. Out of many, one. May it be so.
Will Irace
