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The turbocollapse of a public square run by a single rich egomaniac is why capitalism is indeed the greatest system ever built

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Transcripts from 2067

**July 29, 2077. Outskirts of the Former Washington Metropolitan Area.**

The following interview is of one Samantha Donaghey. Pronouns: she/her. At 85, Donaghey is one of last known living survivors of the Recollection. The full interview can be found at the Institute, what is below are highlights.

Interviewer: It's so lovely to finally meet you Ms. Donaghey. SD: Oh please, Mrs. Donaghey will do. At least to honor my late husband.

Interviewer: My apologies. You're quite lively for someone of your age, I am surprised. SD: Oh please, with modern medicine and sensibilities you can live practically forever. I am just living the life of a 50 year old.

Interviewer: Absolutely, Mrs. Donaghey. I must apologize for not making it sooner, it's almost impossible to make it to Washington these days. Not many people would dare to visit, let alone live here. SD: Oh don't worry about the time, here in the DMV we have all the time in the world. As you said, not many people want to visit our nation's capital. Such a shame, really. It's still holds so much of our history together.

Interviewer: Let us start there then, why do you still live near DC? The Recollection was more than 40 years ago, but it's still such a point of trauma for so many. Does it not bother you in any way? Seeing the site of the carnage and the horror? SD: Yes, indeed. The Recollection was such a tragic event. So many good people lost their lives, so many of my own friends. But where would I go? I simply can't abandon this place, it simply matters so much to me and my own spiritual health.

Interviewer: It seems home matters a lot to you. SD: Doesn't it matter to everyone? It's the only place where you are able to reminisce about better days without anyone judging you.

Interviewer: What do you remember about the better days? SD: I still remember the hustle and bustle of DC. I remember walking around Georgetown, and enjoying the summer breeze. Things seemed so much more complicated then, and maybe I wish I had realized it wasn't as it seemed. Growing older becomes an exercise of regret quite often, especially when there is nothing to look forward to.

Interviewer: What were some of your favorite memories from before the Recollection? SD: One of my favorite memories was when I was still a 20-something in college. I had just gotten out of my class on marketing and was making my way back to the dorm. My to-be husband John was waiting at the park for me with a bouquet of roses. I had forgotten it was our anniversary. He didn't mind. We walked around the park for hours, and he took me to get some barbecue at my favorite place.

Interviewer: That is a beautiful memory. You must miss your husband dearly. SD: Absolutely. I loved him so much.

Interviewer: Can we go back to something you had said before? SD: Of course.

Interviewer: You had said earlier that there were "complicated" feelings. How would you describe the "complicated" feelings at the time? SD: It felt like every day the world was going to end. We were obsessed with sitting with our cellphones and just hating each other. It was hard, and it felt like no one was going to back down. It genuinely felt like we were going to kill each other. I guess we did.

Interviewer: What do you think were the reasons behind this polarization? SD: I genuinely cannot remember, but I remember feeling angry so often. The anger was… ethereal. Like, like lightning between clouds. It was bright and it was loud but forgettable after its over.

Interviewer: What a beautiful way to put it. SD: Thank you. I've had a lot of time to think about it after all that's said and done.

Interviewer: Where were you during the Recollection? SD: I was here… in DC. I was working at an office over on J Street. Filing some reports for some bigshot company or whatever, it was… so long ago. You can't forget the carnage though, that's burned into your mind. There was enough smoke to blind you. It was something out of a horror film, hearing gunfire and explosions and this wave of death wash over everyone around you. I can't forget the smell either. The smell of excrement… almost as bad as the regret.

Interviewer: It sounds like you were caught in the violence quite badly. SD: I hunkered down in a restaurant… near Lafayette Square. We could see the White House being taken over from there, but all we worried about was going to happen to us. The attackers were vicious and killing people left and right. I was so worried for myself, and for my friends with me. They weren't from around here so I was worried that we would all lose our necks if we were found.

Interviewer: And were they found? Here there is a large pause in the transcript Mrs. Donaghey, were they found? SD: Yes, they were found. I don't think I can talk about what had happened to them. It dredges up painful memories.

Interviewer: My apologies. We can talk about something else, or we can take a break. SD: No no, not at all. This is something I must lay to rest myself. I'm simply too old to take this to the beyond.

Interviewer: You have brought up regret quite a lot in this interview, what about regret has been giving you trouble? SD: Inaction can lead to a lot of regret. I wish I had done something to stop everything, or even die trying. I wish I had done more to protect my friends. The Recollection took all of them away from us, for… something perfect? Was it even worth it? It did nothing, it saved nothing. It was supposedly beautiful but it just hurts. You can spend years atoning for that inaction, praying at Church, doing what you can to help people in the here and now. It helps some days but not others. You just have to live with it, I guess.

Interviewer: That sounds heartbreaking, but that feels like forever ago. 40 years. It's a long time. Most people alive right now must have moved on. SD: I can't forget. My mind will not let me forget. Forgiveness is even further away. I feel like everything I ever did after what had happened was animating me. Make amends for what I do, being careful to not find myself in such positions again. If I start forgetting, or start forgiving, I do not know if I can have the courage to do the right thing again.

Interviewer: It sounds like you think your guilt makes you a better person. SD: That's the point of guilt, right? It's supposed to steer you into doing the right thing. To not be the person you were before the end. It's like winter rain. It pitters and it patters and its tears never stop.

Interviewer: Then why stay here? It seems like after everything that has happened, you might want to move away. Start over, even. Most people wouldn't even consider coming back after the Recollection and the damage it leveled. SD: I don't know to be honest with you. Something compels me to stay here, to hope that something right. I will sometimes go into the city to enjoy better days. I'd go to the Mall and remember what the museums look like. The monuments there are gone but I guess my imagination worked just fine to remember them. Then my knees gave up. Then I couldn't leave this house to begin with.

Interviewer: May I ask what your condition is, Mrs. Donaghey? SD: Parkinsons. I get my medication delivered to me, alongside everything else. It started getting really bad about ten or fifteen years ago. My joints wouldn't take it as they used to, and soon everything began to shut down. I didn't want to leave before due to guilt, and now that choice has left me.

Interviewer: Is there anyone around to help you? Family? SD: My family doesn't really talk to me, especially after my late husband James passed away. I have two children, a boy and a girl. They must have grandkids of their own by now. I wouldn't know, I haven't talked to them in a very long time. Looking back, they must have been planning it for a long time. They were more distant as they grew up, and they took off the moment they took of their suits for the funeral. I miss them dearly.

Interviewer: Why do you feel like they wanted to be distant? SD: They felt like I wasn't a good mother. I was hiding things from them, they said. I was too controlling. Is that not what parents do though? They try to create ideals for their children, the ones we didn't get?

Interviewer: Regret is a continual theme in this interview. Do you have anything you are proud of? Anything you are glad to have done? SD: Indeed. There's a soup kitchen here that I founded. The local community that I have built for myself. It's a bunch of old timers from everywhere, just reminding each other that we are here just as much as everyone else. It tides of over the worries of everything. It's a strange feeling, worry. It's there, and then it isn't. We tend to forget to worry, rather than deal with it. I've learnt to live past worry. Old age can do that.

Interviewer: Is there any advice you would like to give to the people who will read this interview? SD: Kindness goes a long way. I am from a different time, and your problems will be so much more complicated than mine when I was your age. To do the right thing must come from the soul. It can't be dictated to you. It can't come from a place of self-righteousness. To recognize kindness is to recognize yourself. It's creating a transparency between you and the person who needs your kindness. It must come from realizing that there is very little dividing you and the person next you.

Interviewer: Thank you so much of your time, Mrs. Donaghey. SD: Oh it's no worry, do you want to stay for lunch? It's the least I can do since you've listened to me ramble for so long. Interviewer: I really should not. SD: It is genuinely not a problem. I make too much anyway. I'm having Casserole. Interviewer: Thank you so much, I might stay.

A long pause in conversation. The Interviewer and Donaghey begin to talk again after 9 minutes and 05 seconds. The Interviewer seems to have left the recording on.

Interviewer: Mrs. Donaghey- SD: Please, call me Samantha.

Interviewer: Samantha. Why did you lie to me? SD: Excuse me?

Interviewer: This interview. You've lied to me at every single turn. SD: Young man, these are serious accusations.

Interviewer: Not without merit. What's your husband's name? SD: Jack, obviously. Jack Donaghey. Interviewer: You called him John and then James throughout this interview. Also that is a character from an old sitcom. 30 Rock, if I remember right. SD: How do you remember that? Interviewer: I like old shows.

Interviewer: Where did you work? SD: A firm at J-Street. I did not lie about that. Interviewer: Another lie. Washington DC doesn't have a J-Street. Never did.

Interviewer: You lied to me on where you were at Lafayette. Tell me the truth. Tell me who you are. SD: You clearly know who I am. You need to leave. Interviewer: Not without answers. SD: You will get none from me. Interviewer: I will remind you that if I am right about who you are then I am obliged to call the House Committee of Recollection Memory.

Interviewer: I will take your silence as realizing there is nothing you can do to to make me leave. Tell me the truth. SD: My name is Jane Williams.

You can hear the turning of pages, assumed there is a file.

Interviewer: Jane Williams, born to Josh Williams and Sandy Williams née Polanski. Birthdate: November 14th, 1982. From Zinc, Arkansas. Small town, less than 100 people. Graduated High School in 2000. Joined the US Military following the September 11th attacks. Tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. After duty, getting involved in far-right organizations in your local area. Most well known for orchestrating Massacre of Lafayette Square during the Recollection in Washington DC. Missing since the event. Presumed dead in 2032. JW: I know what I did. What do you want? You want to know why I did it?

Interviewer: I want to know why at your tender age, Ms. Williams, did you lie to me? JW: I'm old, not senile. I have been avoiding people like you for a very long time. How did you know it was me? Interviewer: I didn't. You messed up.

Interviewer: If it makes you feel any better, I am a journalist. I do not have any connection to the government. But after this I will have to report your presence to the Committee. JW: There is nothing you can do to me at this point. I am old and frail. Interviewer: They've charged older than you for heinous crimes, too. But that is not why I am here. I am here to get the truth. Your husband was a lie. Your kids were a lie. Your work was a lie. Everything has been a lie. Is there anything you've told me that is the truth?

JW: The regret. The regret was real.

Interviewer: Tell me more. JW: After what happened at Lafayette, I couldn't stand what I had become. I felt the hate for so long, and after what I did… I couldn't live with it anymore. I couldn't live with the hate. I disappeared. The carnage and the confusion was cover enough to make a break for it. After it settled down, I began to atone. The soup kitchen, that was real. The small support community? That was real. I needed to get away from it. That regret made me a better person. That part was all true.

Interviewer: If you felt so much regret, why did you not turn yourself in? JW: And let the circus of what happened happen to me? No. It would not have given anyone any kind of atonement. It was political peacocking. You wouldn't have known how evil the people in power were at the time. Even if I hate what I did, there was no part of me that would let the monsters in power profit from it.

Interviewer: So you won't go, even now? JW: It's too late now. As you said, it's been 40 years. What's the point now? Even then, you're going to go to the Committee. It's not like I have a choice.

Interviewer: You've had 40 years to make that choice. To give the victims' families some relief. JW: I did my best. I became a better person.

Interviewer: Who decided that? JW: What do you mean?

Interviewer: Who decided that starting a soup kitchen and being regretful would be your punishment? JW: I don't… I don't understand what you mean.

Interviewer: I must remind you that you were the one who chose this punishment for your own crimes. You decided that this is the repentance you need to give. That's why it is hollow. That's why you regret. You never gave a voice to the only people who matter in this situation. The victims. The families of the people you ruined. They never got that peace. They never got to have a voice in this.

JW: They would have never gotten that peace. Interviewer: That was never your choice to make. And now you will never have the choice to turn yourself in with dignity.

Interviewer: You'll find that peace you want once all of this is over. JW: What?

Interviewer: You've been carrying a lot of guilt for 40 years. It wears on you. It will lift once you've served whatever they give. JW: No one will ever let me have that peace once it is out. Once the ladies I talk to find out who I am, or anyone who sees my face on the street. They will never let me have it.

Interviewer: Maybe, but you'll know that the right thing happened. The bad guys got caught. It just so happens you were the bad guy. After 40 years, the solace can be that all is now right with the world. At least, this part is right.

JW: You can never tell me that you know what I am going through. Interviewer: No, I will never know what it's like to butcher hundreds of people. Maybe there were, but they all got to serve their dues to society. They got to me move on with the peace that their debts were paid. You though, you still owe.

A knock on the door can be heard in the distance

JW: Who is it? We are from the House Committee of Recollection Memory. Is Samantha Donaghey here? Interviewer: Come on in. She's here. This is where I depart, Ms. Williams. Thank you for this interview. Before I go, is there anything you would like to say to the audience at home?

Interviewer: I will take your silence as a no.

Transcript End

Before the House Committee could ascertain who this Interviewer is, they left before saying anything else. The apprehension of Jane Williams was far more important. Days later an analog voice recorder was sent in the mail to the Institute. It both serves as a confession in the Williams trial and as a document of historical value. It has been forwarded to the desk of the President of the United States to declassify this transcript along with other files on the Recollection.

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Letting Go

I haven't been writing for a while, and it's not because I struggle to find things to say. Instead, I have struggled to focus my thoughts on particular matters. Between my last post and today, a lot has happened. Friends and comrades have lost tremendous amounts of autonomy and freedom. Roe v. Wade, which allowed abortions to be legal in the United States, was overturned. Houses of Indian Muslims are being bulldozed deliberately by a Hindutva regime, similar to the ancient village of Masafer Yatta. Old struggles and new are compiling as nationalism rears its ugly head toward our communities.

We who are relatively removed from the struggles of the vulnerable, the underserviced, and the exploited by global capitalism have a moral duty to let go of the harmful notions that help generate these catastrophes. These notions are evident to anyone in the same camp as me. Internationalism is essential to all our liberations, but this is a different kind of plea. I want to say that almost all forms of nationalism have failed us, even the kinds that we should morally celebrate.

Left-wing nationalism is an alluring concept and many successful renditions have carved out places in history. It attempts to rally against more evident oppression, one demarcated by lines such as race or ethnicity. The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in Algeria famously fought against French colonialism for decades. The African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa was instrumental in dismantling Apartheid in 1991. The Indian National Congress in India became one of the biggest decolonization movements in world history. There are countless examples against the struggle of Colonial and Racial Capitalism that must be remembered and celebrated.

As leaders, in one way or another, they have all failed us.

As Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani academic who worked with the FLN till Algerian independence broken-heartedly said: Algeria began badly.¹ Once the organization began to rule it took a distinctly militaristic approach, rife with clientelism. It culminated in an inconsiderate system that took advantage of its most vulnerable and exploited. It culminates in the Hirak movement, a series of protests against the current system. To this day more than 260 protestors are detained without cause by the Algerian government.

The ANC after Nelson Mandela became a hive of corruption and embezzlement. Rushing their most progressive ideas in the Truth and Reconciliation, the distinct geography and political core of Apartheid was never really dismantled which was Capitalism. Instead, post-Mandela leaders charted a systemic system of corruption to coddle its internal elite over South Africa. The ruling party has become endemic and synonymous to the struggles of the workers of the world.

The Indian National Congress, originally led by the likes of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, has become a husk and a joke in Indian politics. After continuous leadership that seems to only belong to one family, it has created a party led by coddled and ineffectual elites. Congress's failure to capture a secular imagination of India cannot be disconnected from the rise of Hindutva fascism in the country today. The bulldozers, the pogroms, and the violence are central to the fact that India's original liberators became its own version of a cosmopolitan elite.

We cannot learn the lesson that we must discard indigenous communities altogether. More often than not the dominant culture comes at the cost of the most marginalized communities. What I am saying is that we have to discard this idea that the right kind of nationalism can save us. There is no superior culture we can harken back to, and the line between a violent settler regime and a multinational corporation has blurred in the 21st century.

The 21st century has shown that our ruling classes have become the sole universalizing force, in the age of globalization and interconnectivity. We must do better than reimagine these pasts where people who fought for liberation kinda-sorta won. We need to start moving toward a real internationalism, where we don't look at struggles in their cultural or social boundaries but at the cause and effect of their oppressors.

Land Back movements must start organizing not just at "where" the land is being occupied but at "who" else is being occupied by the same forces. Anti-War Protestors need to plant the roots they have always known, and not only stop all war from happening but begin targeting the machines that let war start at all. Women and Queer people need to move beyond "listening and learning" and begin doing something with the knowledge they have learned, lest we start looking like fucking Nancy Pelosi in 2020.

Organize, organize, organize. Organize internationally. Organize beyond just what you've been told is your nation and your country. Learn some humility when people know about the stuff you don't. A decentralized internationalism must not only be necessary but inevitable against the rising tide of fascist tendencies.

¹ Ahmad, Eqbal. The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad. Columbia University Press, 2006.

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Yes, Genders Were Colonized Too

Happy Pride Month, you raging doomers. 'Tis the season to remember our roots and be baffled to our wit's end. In that order. It's the time of year to remember and celebrate heroes like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Black and Trans women who began our long march to our collective liberation. It's also the season to be absolutely gobsmacked by actually evil companies and corporations to come out of the woodwork to Rainbow flag behind their Twitter Profiles.

This year, actual cartoon villains the Pinkertons proudly state how they focus on recruiting more queer talent than ever before. For my friends who might not know, the Pinkertons are a "risk management" company around since the Pre-Civil War Era. Known for their notoriously violent union-busting campaigns, the Pinkertons have been part of the backbone of breaking workers' movements to organize against oppression. And yes, queer-bashing is in their arsenal. Just ask Sean McBride, who was shot by a Pinkerton guard after having slurs yelled at him in 1996. The meme of "more 👏  queer 👏 class traitors" rings truer than ever before.

Speaking of class traitors, the police force being part of Pride has been a topic of controversy as well. More and more police officers have started to take part in Pride to express their sexual identities, and while on the surface that might seem fine the truth is that cops have been at the nexus of why Pride exists to begin: to fight their brutal tactics against queer people. The Stonewall Riots began when the NYPD targetted the Stonewall Inn, and it began when bricks were thrown at those cops. Teen Vogue has an excellent article explaining why cops can't be at Pride, but one quote summarizes it quite well:

Police cannot peacock as allies for one day a year and not expect to be held accountable for their actions the rest of the time

Pride, at its foundation, is an anti-capitalist and anti-racist idea. It celebrates Black and Trans women at its heart and it kicks out monsters like the NYPD and the Pinkertons. That can and should not ever be forgotten. That foundation should actually be built into something further, which Pride is more than capable of doing. It needs to go anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist too.

To explain how Pride isn't already anti-colonial and anti-imperialist, we need to realize that our imagination of gender has been constructed by Colonial and Imperial interests. The advent of colonialism has erased and transmuted gender in multiple societies, and many ideas and identities have been lost or are now cut off from their long and proud histories.

I want to point to two separate events where colonialism and the presence of a "modernization" project. The first is the erasure of a fluid construction of gender and sexuality in the pre-colonial Middle East, and the second is a severance of a gender/sexuality from its spiritual and historical roots in North America/Turtle Island. In doing so I want to point out that not only is the creation of a gender binary a colonial invention that has harmed cultures, but also that as we continue to speak to truth to power we have to come out of this idea of queerness that is inexplicably tied to colonialism and Imperialism.

Gender-sexuality construction in pre-colonial Arabia is a hotly contested topic, where many scholars feel that either the concept of homosexuality did not exist at all or did not necessarily carry the same question of identity. "Sexual deviance" which was still frowned upon in many areas, was not an illness but a regular feeling that is experienced.¹ That did not stop Arab poets like Abu Nawas from writing bangers like:

I die of love for him, perfect in every way, Lost in the strains of wafting music. My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body And I do not wonder at his beauty.

This was different after the advent of colonization, which brought European ideas such as the gender binary to the current fold. The term for "sexual" in Arabic, jinsiyyah, only began carrying this connotation in the twentieth century. Besides biology, jinsiyyah carried a term similar to the idea of nationality.² Even the terms homosexual and heterosexuality, mithliyyah and ghayriyyah, are direct translations.

I am not saying that the West exported Homosexuality to the Arab World, despite what many conservatives and Islamists might say. What I am saying is that the concept of sexuality as identity is one that has traveled. This concept has traveled and continued to travel, and a lot of ideas that had no connotations with jinsiyyah now do. Arab men regularly hold hands, which has become an easy joke for Westerners to laugh at. The fundamental social chemistry of sexuality was different.

The second case has this dynamic too but in reverse. This time the English language does not have the linguistic capacity to understand the Two-Spirit community on Turtle Island. Being Two-Spirit is far more parochial depending on your upbringing or the people that you belong to and how they treated a distinct new gender within their social sphere. Due to a distinct lack of understanding, French colonists would call these people the pejorative, offensive, and misunderstood term "berdache", meaning passing female. This offense does not stem from a misunderstanding of right-hearted anthropologists but a genuine attempt at erasure.

In Canada, you'll see that many people write the LGBTQIA2S+ community to show this umbrella of "not queer" that currently exists. Many in the 2S community disagree with this notion, simply on the idea that they have historically been denied in Queer spaces since a lot of queer people have benefited from their oppression. The same TERFs who deny Trans people their spaces are unsurprisingly also denying 2S identities (for my Trans and 2S friends who do not have Shinigami Eyes, there's no worry to read such bigotry), advertently defending and supporting colonial and imperial regimes such as the Canadian Government.

For note: Many cultures continue to have the idea of a "third" gender, such as the Mukhannathun in Arabia, the Khwaja Sira in South Asia, and Femminielli in traditional Neopolitan culture. This is a worldwide phenomenon.

As Pride continues to have some misplaced identity crisis on what it should be, I encourage you all to speak truth to power. That also means looking inward to yourself and seeing how the universalization of gender norms and identities has been a major problem in the colonized world, and how this colonial and imperial project continues to this day. You have to be open and available to listen to indigenous voices who know what they're experiencing more than you do, and you might need to take a step back and let us take the reigns of our destiny for once.

Decolonization as a term is simply not just vibes, it's a material and actual want and control over our own destinies. This Pride, if you're gonna do something, anything, it's to listen. Listen as you wish someone had listened to you.

¹ Massad, Joseph A. In Desiring Arabs. University of Chicago Press, 2008, 31.

² Ibid., 171.

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Underprepared

I was once hiking along a mountain when I came across two men in their underwear. Far above the snow line and surrounded by nothing but rocks, fog, and loneliness the two men roared to the angels above and squirrels below in the trees. As I got closer, their yelling had coherence. They were arguing.

“Up!”

“Down!”

“Up, you spineless coward!”

“Down, you stupid idiot!”

They made more sense before I heard them.

Part of me wanted to say something, as it isn’t every day that you see two men wearing nothing on the roof of the world. Still, it’s not my place to butt in on their very serious argument. Curiosity did not get the better of me, I just wanted to keep warm and go forward. It’s obvious that those two needed many kinds of help, but there was simply nothing I could do. How do you even help someone in that scenario? Do they need directions? This is my first time on a mountain, and there really is only going up, or down. They absolutely have that part on lock.

I walk past them as they continue to yell obscenities at each other. A new kind of chill walks down my spine, the kind that you only feel when people stare at you when you’re not looking. I tense up and pick up my pace. I have made the decision to not care, and I am sticking by it. I will not stop in my tracks. I need to simply climb this mountain and I will never think about these two ever again. Maybe I’ll see them when I come down, there’s always a chance for that. Then I will have nothing to do but go down. I have accomplished my task; I will have more than enough time to help. Please don’t call on me.

One of them pipes up. “See, THAT person over there is going up!”

“That’s a stupid argument, they obviously have the proper gear!”

“You lack proper imagination.”

“We are in our tighty-whiteys! We have left nothing to the imagination!”

“Now that’s just crude.”

“Hey, you there! Can you come help us with our argument?”

It is so incredibly rude to use other people for your own personal gain in an argument, and then to ask them for more help? Simply abusive. I am completely within my rights to keep walking and not listen. It shouldn’t matter that they are in their underwear on a mountain, it was uncalled for. I hesitate for a second and pretend I didn’t hear them. There’s no wind and it's dead quiet, so it’ll be risky. I just hope and pray that they won’t call on me a second.

“There’s no wind, we know you can hear me. It’s incredibly rude to not respond, you know.” The other calls out.

He got me, there’s simply nothing I can do.

I turn around and mimic a smile. There is nothing happy about this situation, so I must confront this Janus and see which one tells the truth and which one can only lie. They spread apart for a couple of feet to let me into the triangle, and I get a good look at them. The one on the left was the younger one, and the one yelling to go down. With a slender frame, red hair, and freezing his teeth off, you can see the anger in his eyes about the whole situation. Pale as moonlight but red from the cold, he did all he could to look composed. Dignity was sparse in this situation after all. The other one on the right was a lot older, as his thinning grey hair and crow’s feet suggested. Shorter and portlier than the younger one, he seemed to give off the impression that he felt he was in charge. He seemed to care a lot less about the situation than the one on the left.

I walk up to them and greet myself in the most dignified manner I could. I reach out to shake their hand, but they just glared at me. From their faces, they must have felt insulted by the proposition of shaking hands with someone who wore a whole glove, while they were in their situation. I put my hand down and sigh, whatever the situation it was more desperate than I imagine.

“How can I help, gentlemen? You seem to be in awful bind.” I say.

The one on the right pipe up. “Well, as you can see, we’ve been left out in the cold a bit.” “Oh I wonder how that happened.” The one of the left sneers.

“Oh now, there’s no reason to act like this. It’s not like I intentionally did it. I was just doing everything I could for our own self-interest that is all.”

“Did what?” I ask. They both glare at me again.

“Absolutely out of the question, it’s not for you to know.” The one on the left says. I am taken aback. Secrets? In a time like this?

“Anyways, we were hoping if you can help us settle this debate. My friend insists that we go back down and lose all this glory of climbing this mountain. It’s completely out of the question and we must keep going up to reach our goal, no matter the cost.” The older man says.

“What I am actually saying is that our conditions cannot warrant us to keep going. We have to go back down to safety. We are literally in our underwear freezing.”

“Do you have to keep bringing it up? It’s very annoying.”

“We are literally going to die.”

“What a cynical way of looking at things.”

I interject once again. “How did you two even lose your clothes?”

“Why are you so eager to ask? Can’t you see that we are suffering?” The older man scolds.

“Yeah! Why make us relive our pain?” The other one barks.

The nerve of these people.

“Well, okay. I apologize. What can I do to help?”

I think with that question I made two mistakes. Firstly, I apologized. It’s obvious that I had said nothing wrong and that I am here out of selflessness. If they didn’t want their predicaments prodded, they shouldn’t have picked on me. I am well within my rights to ask how this thing happened. The second is offering help, as these two have given me no reason to care about their situation. Nonetheless, they are in a desperate situation, and I feel obliged to help. For some reason. They really do not seem deserving of it right now.

They look at each other in bewilderment. It’s like they’ve already told me what they wanted and I wasn’t listening. They seem to regret asking me more than I am being asked. They shake their head and the younger one replies in a dry tone.

“We need you to help us figure out what to do. We are at an impasse on whether to go up or down.”

I respond by saying ��Well, then you have to go down. You guys are not in any condition to keep going.” The older man huffs and puffs. “Are you calling us weak? We can absolutely reach the top of the mountain, even before you!”

“I apologize, that wasn’t my intention. If you feel like you can do it, then why not do it as quickly as possible and then go back down?”

The younger one is the one mad now. “We are in our underwear! We have to go back down. This is stupid and suicidal.”

“You’re right. You need to go back down now.” I reply.

The older man looks even more perplexed. “What use are you if you’re going to flip flop between us?”

I wasn’t going to let my anger get the better of me. These two are obviously in a lot of trouble and I need to be calm. The calm breeze is picking up and you can tell these guys’ time to decide is winding down. I scramble to figure out some ideas, but it seems that there is an issue with every single one of them.

“Wait, why don’t you guys split up? One climbs the mountain and the other guy”

The younger one pipes up. “We can’t. If we do then he will never let it down that he climbed the mountain, and I didn’t. Second, it is socially unacceptable if only one person is in their underwear. Two is absolutely fine.”

The older one bellows out that he also has the keys. I do not see the keys anywhere and I wonder if I would ever want to. In more disbelief than before, I stand there trying to figure out what is going on. At that moment I begin to wonder if it was possible for me to give some clothes.

"You can always give us some of the clothes you're wearing." The young man points out.

I chuff. "Absolutely not! Then I'd freeze to death, too."

The old man argues "Too? It'll only be you that freezes. Both of us will be warm, so it's two people saved and one who has died. That's much better than the previous two people dying to one saved."

The young man agrees. "Indubitably. I see the three of us put it to a vote."

I am at a loss for words. Are they going to vote me out of my clothes? Am I even allowed to vote? How does it come to a vote when they couldn't come to an agreement earlier? Did he actually say indubitably?

I muster the courage to remember that I actually have nothing to do with this. I turn around and leave. There is no way that I am about to sacrifice myself for some cause that I will have all to lose and nothing to gain. I hear yelling in the back.

"What!? You're just gonna leave us here? After all, we have done so much for you! All the company we've given. We'll freeze here!" The old man shouts.

The younger one squeaks, "You're going to leave me here with him! I swear I was gonna vote alongside you! Come back!"

I keep walking. It does not matter whether they live or die if they don't want to do anything. Go down or up the mountain, what matters is that they do something! And then the gall to strip me of my own clothes so that they can live longer. What would they do then? They would have stood there and kept arguing, wouldn't they? The thought alone was enough to infuriate me. How rude of them.

The storm was beginning to pick up. The snow began to treat me to a free session of acupuncture, and the air was thinning. I needed to find the summit or would have to walk down, passing those two again. The mere idea of seeing them again gave me the strength to keep going. What they were planning to do to me is insidious, and I could not find a reason to ever go back.

The storm is at its peak. I can barely see in front of my face. I'll be honest, my pride was beginning to subside with every step. Did I have the courage to look at those two again? I did leave them behind in this hell. I am now alone too, maybe it was wise to stick with them. Maybe I should go ba-

Oh, thank goodness! I see a cave. Shelter! Thank goodness, I don't have to finish that wretched thought. I waddle my way through the snow and into some decent cover. The cave is dank but it's livable till the storm subsides. I sit down and rummage through my remaining rations and water. It will be enough to take me back down the mountain, I will simply have to be better prepared and luckier next time to get to the summit. I enjoy the howling and the blanket of white from the comfort of this cave and wait till the storm is over.

Hours pass and the blizzard has subsided. I pack up and begin to head down. The weather is sublime in comparison to a few hours ago, and the sun beams down on a brand new day. I trek my way back down, happy to be alive and have the clothes on my back. I think back to those two men, and then stop thinking about them because the consequences of leaving them meant behind is awful. I simply hope they went back down and that the old man came to his senses.

I thought too soon. From the snow shot up two arms, from different bodies. Blue, brittle, and broken, I realize that it's the two men in underwear. They never stopped arguing. The hands were clasped together in some kind of romance. But as I go in for further inspection there is something in their hands. It's the key, the heart of the problem. Without it, neither could move nor go home. I pry it open from their hands and put it in my pocket. It seems I got involved after all, even if it was too late.

On the way down, I feel nothing but guilt. The two men are dead, and their indecisiveness killed him. I, at one point, had the power to make them do something. I could have told them what to do. I could have voted, but it was clear that they were going to vote my clothes off. I spend the rest of the way down daydreaming of ways to save them, even though it was clear that they did not want to.

I make it to the base of the mountain, and I find my way to the parking lot. Tired, sweaty, and heartbroken, I reach into my pocket and find the key. I stare at it and realize that their car is somewhere nearby. I click the door lock and hear nothing. I know from the key that the car is an old one, and must have seen better days if no one was taking care of it.

I find the car, it's the only one in the lot that matches the key. I slowly walk up to the car. I find the driver's seat. I put the key in the ignition. I turn the key. Nothing happens. The car is busted. The key is pointless.

[breakdownx8]

You’re Not Seeing Things, Your Friends Might Be More Racist

When Reddit’s favorite billionaire, resident clown, and future guillotine warmer Elon Musk posted a photo of how the “woke left” was more leftist than ever before it was met with the usual tomfoolery by people with blue checks and NFT projects that he was right. They felt like they have been wronged by progressives and found themselves to be more conservative… or something like that. As Ben Shapiro, that great ‘provocative’ debating gladiator, has famously said: facts do not care about your feelings.

This is patently and ridiculously false. The truth is that people on the right have been moving even further right than they have ever in decades, according to the Pew Research Center. This kind of thinking of politics, that there is a left-wing or a right-wing is usually highly problematic. For our topic today though, it does the job well enough to discuss the idea of Backslide.

Backslide is the idea that democracies around the world are falling “back” into some kind of authoritarianism. While Political Scientists have different definitions of what that means, I want to talk about its social effects. For that, we can follow how Umberto Eco defines “Ur-Fascism”, part of an essay that lists symptoms one can use to diagnose a society on its way to fascism. As he says — while societies can have some and not all, even one of these characteristics can be a cause for alarm.

Since the 1990s, the number of countries that were embracing Liberal Democracies was growing till about 2010.¹ That is when many countries around the world began to backslide against these Liberal values. The V-Dem Project, a social science dataset that gathers information on democracies, points to countries such as Turkey, Russia, and Venezuela in Backslide but this phenomenon is more than present in Western Europe and North America. In fact, this is a worldwide phenomenon.

The fact is that most of the world has seen some form of ultranationalism and fascism either returning or coming anew. The United States witnessed a mob of angry Trump supporters attacking its legislative body to support their candidate. India has had a large uptick in organized violence against its Muslim minority in 2020. Brazil has waged legal war on its indigenous populations to control the Amazon and its logging rights. These were all until very recently countries that were considered champions of democracy. The phenomenon of Backsliding is global and coming for us all.

Fascism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism are not systems that separate the private individual from the public, it seeks to control bodies in every which way. Either it is through legal means such as overturning women’s reproductive rights in the United States or by having the police stop and frisk you more because of your ethnicity in the United Kingdom. It has an aim for purity of society and it demands that you assimilate into it.

This kind of politics affects social lives as well. Your friends who keep hearing candidates become popular through vile ideas subconsciously do start taking those ideas seriously. People who have been suffering from economic collapse and hardships will want answers and it seems the only answers they’re getting are from lunatics. You are not losing it, your friends are becoming more racist. You’re not more sensitive due to “woke culture” or whatever that means. They seem sensible because in their heads they feel like the left has moved more left when in honesty the right is screaming for pogroms again and they have a need to feel like they’re being normal and centrist.

The culture wars of the past twenty years or so have been engineered so that we can turn on each other for the smallest things. From the War on Christmas to pearl-clutching about Trans people using the bathroom, to Western culture making divorce rates go up and the boogieman drug dealer. It affects our psyches and we begin to lose friends and family to these previously unthinkable claims. We will forever just be sitting here wondering which vulnerable community to destroy unless we begin to unite and start fighting back.

We all have a moral duty to help our fellow human beings, and I come back to my statement: organize, organize, organize. If people are turning to hate because it at least tries to explain their situation, it means that the current socioeconomic regime has failed us. If minorities of all stripes are suffering — both from being under these regimes and the consequent hate of others — we must abolish such regimes entirely. Look into what your local community is doing to help the most vulnerable. Be kinder to your neighbors. Canvass for someone trying to make a change. Start doing something.

¹ Anna Lührmann & Staffan I. Lindberg (2019) A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it?, Democratization, 26:7, 1095–1113, DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029

[breakdownx8]

You Stand on Sacred Ground

I do not know how to tell you this, but you stand on sacred ground. Not just to me, but to you too. Your ancestors and mine spent hundreds of years dying and killing one another to bless the ground on which you stand. Holy, reverent, and having market value. The blood and water that seeped and mixed with the dirt makes this site holier and increases its added value when I put it on Zillow.

My apartment building used to be part of a village. It served as a graveyard for students of a great mystic that lives at a nearby shrine. In the 1960s when the Military Junta needed to make a new capital they bought this land from the mystic and kept it for land development till the population needed it. Truly it did, and all of those beloved students had their graves bulldozed over. Now, this building is known for its wild parties and massage parlors run by abusive staff managers. Premier rent too, I hear that the mystic makes so much money off of our collective rent that his sons’ allowance is enough to hold a bi-monthly Eyes Wide Shut orgy. Holy ground.

You are probably very uncomfortable with the ground you sit on, especially when you know its history. That discomfort is not an achievement, don’t applaud yourself. If you can feel the tension between you and all of the dead bodies buried beneath you, you have done the absolute bare minimum. That’s more than most but you and I both know we can do better.

The issue of what land means is at the heart of our current dilemmas with capitalism and colonialism. While the tensions in settler-colonial societies like the United States and Canada make it more visible land is at the heart of societies suffering under neo-colonialism right now. Canadian companies own majority shares in two of three of Africa’s biggest gold mines and have completely failed to provide any kind of decent work environment for its local labor. The profits will all be hauled to Canada, and will also line the pockets of local elites who support this exploitation. The benefits to all do not matter when it benefits me alone.

International organizations like the International Monetary Fund, whose purpose is to provide loans for countries in dire need, will also dictate austerity measures to ensure they get their money back. These will include anything from slashing pensions to privatizing education and healthcare. It is a measure to guarantee inequality and poverty in a country. Backed by Western Governments, it is in essence a tool to assure that the land we live on is never meant to be ours. This holy ground that we have the pleasure of calling ours but never having to have what it is worth.

Land, and how we abuse it, becomes the decaying heart of the climate crisis too. As 2.3 billion people are about to face water stress around the world, and 160 million children will face severe droughts, we are only now realizing that we are running out of water and it is only going to get worse. So much of this has been due to overproduction and the complete abuse of the soil to produce cash crops, and none of it is reaching tables that need it the most. Teff, a sustenance crop from Ethiopia, became a trendy superfood overnight in bourgeois stores. As Ethiopia suffered from a food shortage, teff continued to find itself in Western superstores as a fad food when children who need it are dying. Farmers began trading their sustenance for cash to afford the same thing they are selling, creating a vicious cycle.

You dear reader sitting on Occupied Turtle Island, are actively benefiting from oppression that you are only feeling uncomfortable about. No amount of land acknowledgment statements and rooftop gardens are going to change it, not on their own. If this land is holy ground the soil has eroded into cliffs. The earth has become so soft and crumbly that it will both collapse underneath us and make us sick.

Now is the time to organize, organize, and then organize. This sacred ground that we need to live on is dying. To many of you, this is not new information but maybe you haven’t made the connections between these three seemingly different issues. Any and all ideas of systemic change must not start from changing your social condition but your material conditions. When you can actively live a life free from the worry of starvation and homelessness you can start living the life that you were always promised.

Make friends with unsavory activist types, put a shovel in your hand, join rallies, and stop bulldozers. Start doing something. As I continue writing my disconnected thoughts, I will continue to recount this desperate plea to start doing things. As we delve into topics that seemingly only I care about, I will continue to beg you all to start organizing for the things that only you care about.