World on fire, minus the metaphor.
A cybertruck might have exploded at the start of the year but that was just a primer.
We have literally and unceremoniously transitioned from the rocket-shipped global uproar of discontent (to put it lightly) for the exploitative profit-ravenous state of the American healthcare system after the public one shot killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson at the end of last year (courtesy of Luigi Mangione) to a NEW year thrust into prominence by an unprecedented natural disaster to decorate the lead up to Donald Trump’s inauguration in only a few days time.
While swaths of people, from personal and political backgrounds far and wide and income brackets high and low, rallied around the catharsis afforded by a well-documented, brash display of vigilante justice, the world continued to bleed…and then set aflame in Los Angeles County California’s most catastrophic Wildfire in history. Hundreds of residents' homes were eviscerated, personal belongings turned to ash and their neighborhood amenities vanished, including a span of schools and small businesses. My heart hurts with the knowledge of the relentless pain burdening families struck with such disaster and adding more fuel to their dejection, unforeseeably massive amounts of debt, which many will incur on behalf of such callous insurance companies with heartless profit motives and no end in sight to achieve them.
One thing is for certain, community wins out as a solution without fail. The network of relief efforts, resources, accommodations and emotional support has been an inspiring, heartwarming sight and one that, like the broad based solidarity around Luigi, inspires hope for a substantial movement of class consciousness devoid of identitarian, partisan distraction.
< Now for a ceasefire in Gaza! … too much to ask???? >
WAIT. A day long break from writing this piece and a ceasefire deal has been reached… BY DONALD TRUMP… something the Biden Administration profusely stated was an impossible goal as they stood surrounding well over 50 percent approval ratings for a ceasefire within their constituency. Now I am not naive enough to believe this was some act of revelation or good will. Strategy, leverage and Elon are the only things I’m certain he had in mind when orchestrating this move. But almost needless to say given Israel’s endless and untiring pursuit of violence against Palestinians, 73 people died in Gaza following the announcement of the deal.
With every tinge of hope, comes a moment like this. Another piece of burdening news that those of us benefiting most significantly from the imperial core are privileged enough to grit our teeth at on our daily commute to a cafe before therapy, myself included.
But so many will, and have, succumb to an aggressively encroaching jadedness that renders us mindlessly frozen and unable to engage with the vast amounts of direct courses of action–small? Yes. But every step away from stagnacy in our personal lives –an easy state to embody in our various spheres of safety and comfort– is one toward a routine of constructing community, understanding the needs of those that surround us, using the devices at our fingertips to discover these mechanisms of support and ultimately projecting our efforts on broader scales of influence. Strength in numbers and whatnot.
In these especially steep moments of fascist tilt, I always fall back upon the source of prolific thought.
James Baldwin. A short piece today, but I’ll wrap on this note.
“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”