#please i beg of you. if you think i spent time on sites like 4chan or reddit or whatever during the really Bad political times

[bonestructureandcontempt]

This is an immensely, deeply personal post about personal issues and experience spurred on by current events. I mention this as a preface in the hopes that if you read this, you will understand this isn’t a post that warrants reblogging or spreading in any way and I’m not even gonna tag it. Obviously, tumblr’s search algorithm being what it is, you may encounter this post and not even know who I am or follow me and while I can’t stop you from reading my blog, please just know I am writing this for my own peace of mind and not for notes. I’m going to put a cut below this paragraph but I don’t know if that will matter on tumblr mobile. I’m sorry if you’re bombarded with a wall of text you didn’t ask for.

We’ve barely had time to process how incredibly ill-advised it was that Elizabeth Warren actually took a DNA test to prove Native American ancestry to spite Donald Trump and inadvertently opened up a can of worms that exposed her personal racism and cultural appropriation AND how much indigenous people are still shit on in this country. Then the news broke about HHS and Title IX and the erasure of gender identity by the administration seeking to edge trans people out of society. THEN the migrant caravan news broke and with that came the usual conspiracy theories from the Right that this was a ploy by the Democrats to sway the midterm elections despite the fact that at the rate those refugees are moving, they wouldn’t reach the southern border of the US until well after the election. Or you know, falling back on the classic antisemitic trope that it was being funded by George Soros for the purpose of invading America for white genocide. And THEN the MAGAbomber shit happened. And the day after they caught him was when the shooting in Pittsburgh happened. And now here we are. I know there’s other incidents, I haven’t even mentioned the Brazilian election or Jamal Khashoggi or the murders of Gregory Bush and Vickie Jones in Kentucky. Point is you know as well as I do that we’re living in hellfire fanned joyfully by racists, antisemites, misogynists, homophobes, and transphobes on parade. Every bigotry since the dawn of whiteness is here, it’s in our face.

Meanwhile, I just spent part of my past weekend holding a friend while they cried and hyperventilated because of everything the fascists are doing to roll back trans rights, trying and failing not to weep openly myself because what the fuck am I supposed to say? That’ll it get better? That milquetoast Democrats nobody actually likes or is inspired by MIGHT sweep the Midterms and end the Trump administration? Or that one of those same Democrats MAY win in 2020 but the Republicans’s campaign of obstruction they waged in Obama’s tenure will just start all over again and inspire more right-wing hatred and oh, by the way, Brett Kavanaugh is still on the Supreme Court regardless? What? What do you say to the people you love when they’re scared that their very humanity will be made forfeit in Fascist America? I didn’t even have words this past Saturday for my sister or her parents who treat me like one of their own and opened my eyes to how wonderful Judaism could be and inspire me to convert and who I fear for every fucking day someone will do them like that monster who shot up Tree of Life and I won’t be able to do a fucking thing about it. All I could tell her was that I loved her and that I hoped she was having fun wherever she was. And y’know, post on the internet like I always do, seeing all the ghoulish displays of Right-wing antisemitism I’ve come to understand only too well come to the surface. If there’s any solace to be gained from this, it’s from watching Gab get deplatformed and watch its dipshit founder Andrew Torba beg his beloved leader Donald Trump for help but be ignored.

America has always had glaring bigotry problems but today it is governed by fascists, gleeful, triumphant fascists. That is the truth, but do our journalists say it? No. They dance around it still and use cutesy euphemisms when the President and his goons and sycophants lie to us. They even go on and on about how the administration is waging a war on journalism but they won’t even fight back in a meaningful way and just say the fascists are fascists! Worse still, organizations like the New York Times or NPR will run profile after profile on right-wing figures, allowing them to broadcast their views without any debate or repudiation, thus normalizing them in the public conscience.

I've long liked to keep my ear to the ground when it comes to the Right and observe their patterns and learn their tactics so I can know when they make pushes for the mainstream. It's how I knew what "alt-right" was before Hillary Clinton talked about it. It's how I've been aware what Gab was and what kind of people used it before the shooting over the weekend. It’s how I’ve recognized that the old tastemakers of the conservative movement from the Clinton and Bush years, guys like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are all biting Alex Jones’ style now and peddling conspiracy theories about Democrats because that shit fucking SELLS. I’m not a journalist, not a detective, I didn’t go to school for any of that. I’m just a millennial raised on the internet like many of my peers. I was also raised as a conservative Catholic and spent much of my adolescence with talk radio and Fox News in the background. I think that’s what started me down this path. It helped that I also was familiar with sites like 4chan and sorta came rehabilitated from channer culture when I first joined Tumblr back in 2011.

In the past three years or so, I have watched the kind of language and ideas that used to only be used by fringe kooks, away from "normie" eyes in forums and threads you would never go to, end up on the evening news. And now even folks left of center use that language. “Fake News.” “Snowflake.” “Triggered.” Plays on “Make America Great Again.” Sure they mostly do it ironically and I’m not gonna yell at anybody for it, especially when I’m guilty of it too, but I also know it means that American culture leans just a bit more right in the Trump era, no matter how hard neoliberal capitalism tries to make us think otherwise with woke branding. This is so stupid and I could easily get made fun of for this, but I feel like an undercover cop who's been under too long and is never gonna be the same because of what I've seen and how woefully unequipped our institutions were and are to combat it. This knowledge is a curse and has only made me miserable because it will never end and I can never stop. At the risk of my own sanity, I can’t stop. I can’t remain ignorant of what these jackals want to do. What they WILL do. I can’t just “self care” myself away from this. 

And I’m angry. I’m angry all the time. I barely feel like myself anymore, I struggle to revert back to a “self” that existed before now. I struggle to enjoy things I love, even in the presence of the people I love. As much as I fear for the safety of my family, the one that matters, I also fear they won’t recognize me anymore before long. I don’t want my anger to be all there is. 

Maybe I’m just depressed and it’ll pass. 

Hey, if you read all the way through this little message in a bottle:

Here’s a good tweet  by Rabbi Dunya Ruttenberg.

Here’s a link to the GoFundMe for the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting.