2017: ANNUS HORRIBILIS
Well kids, we lived through another one. Barely.
I need not mention the whole 45’s head spinning meteor of bullshit blasting from the White House Nursery and Diet Coke Hose. A plethora of outrage to savor like a rancid piece of jerky. As if starving, we here at F&P pick up the rotten meat and chew over the latest tantrum from the red menace day after day after, wait what just happened? Oh yeah, day after day after bloody day.
Yet, each day dawns anew. After a bracing cup of coffee, we eagerly pull up the old news feed in the humblest of hopes that 45’s Samsung Battery exploded in the bubble bath and went all kinds of Game of Thrones Wildfire on the joint.
Not really, but dreams do encourage, no?
In 2017 we got out the knitting needles and took to the streets. All the BroSteins suddenly got their negligent asses woke and were all like, “Huh? My sitting out the election or voting for the spoiler actually hurt ME? My precious snowflake feelings and yucky student loans and black and white thinking and deifying an NRA ass-kissing senator because, well, I just didn’t like HER, had, real world consequences?” Yes Virginia, there ain’t no student loan Santa Claus doling out free health care. And there never will be. Pick up a calculator or better yet a credible history book and get real.
Intersectionality seems to have caused quite the pile up as well. We’ve seen Protest Divas sending urgent Facebook messages for Vanilla Lattes, eagerly delivered by the privilege-ashamed to the latest hotspot of occupation. Interloping Icon hopefuls-in-the-making on the backs of those murdered by the police. Rightful rage co-opted by self-promoters weakening the authenticity of the movement at everyone’s peril.
But don’t worry, Big Pharma spokeswoman and mistress of petulance Susan Sarandon will be there to pick up the pieces. Right? She'll get that whole militarized police force in line. Bernie will turn out not to be a mythical hero and can actually shut down the bad guy insurance companies and make college free for you and me. Right?
WRONG.
The situation is dire and will be for generations.
The table has been set for decades of schadenfreude and vitriol because we can’t seem to crawl out of our certainty that we are right and everyone else is in some way, The Other. For us here at F&P one of the saddest things that affirms our horror at the devolving of our civil society is an item that we YouTube’d in 2017: Trump supporters at the 2016 RNC interviewed by a Samantha Bee correspondent of color who talked with attendees that eagerly beseeched, with a glint of hopeful pleading in their eyes, to get a small hint of what the heck do I say anyway as far as race goes so I don’t offend? Sam’s correspondent couldn’t stray from the comedy bit, so with suspect empathy she encouraged the unsuspecting Trumpites into resorting to the placeholder text of All Lives Matter. And you know what? They do matter, the movement has never disputed that. However, until the prison industrial complex and systemic racism somehow evaporates, Black Lives are far more imperiled.
It all seems wrong in one way or another so we are oft tempted to ask, why bother? We would suggest that we can all start by allowing that not everyone’s ignorance is willful. Until we get a little empathy for members of groups that we not only disagree with, but patently despise, we will be mired in the black mold of a neglected Diet Coke.
In the meantime we’re making jerky out of this turkey.
