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I'm not OK. You're not OK. We're not OK.

In a world that prefers quiet compliance and shame, it’s difficult to always maintain a compatible facade. It’s exhausting to keep track of which new atrocities we’re supposed to accept and defend. We’re trained to pause and think before we openly empathize with those less fortunate, and consider their gender identity, immigration status, income, history of state-imposed demerits, or some other officially disqualifying factor before determining their worth.

I don’t tell people I’m fine anymore when they ask. I stopped managing to perpetuate that lie about a year ago, and now that the existential imminence of climate change has progressed even further, and with COVID-19 still infecting new victims daily, it doesn’t make sense for any of us to be saying we’re OK or that we’re fine. It is not and we are not.

Greta Thunberg is right when she talks about the urgency of our situation. As inhabitants of this burning planet we should be doing everything that is necessary to put out the flames, but instead most people repeat the refrain that the problem is too overwhelming, and our masters don’t like it when we push for radical change. It doesn’t matter how you characterize the truth or what names you call it. Bully the truth all you want. It doesn’t cease to be true because you’re angry with it.

Everyone should have access to high-quality healthcare. Everyone should be allowed to subsist. We need to provide everyone enough to get by. When people die and we could have prevented it we are culpable.

Just because the older generations who are destroying us repeatedly say that young people are lazy and privileged doesn’t make it true. Where are the union jobs they had access to? Where are the affordable home loans and rent prices? Where is the access to affordable college? How are we supposed to access those things when they don’t exist and they are the ones keeping them from us?

Simply being honest about our economic situation is considered antagonistic. The impoverishment of the vast majority of the world is the lesser antagonism? That’s some Twilight Zone-level gaslighting.

I really hope capitalism is temporary. The notion that business can’t be run democratically is ridiculous.

Crime is a direct result of poverty. The “criminals” are the ones who have all their needs met and still behave in horrifying ways for petty reasons. That is not the majority of people facing prosecution. Most are just trying to survive.

I’ll cool off by tomorrow. Maybe. Sorry to bother you. Thank you for your time.

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