#Thankfully I got 3 covid vaccines in my system to keep me alive | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

selphplusplus · 3 years

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Forgotten

This time last year still sick form COvID

I can remember the fever dreams vividly.

We were microorganisms, defending our puddle from invaders. It was very dynastic-conquest-esque.

As we fought survival wars, there as a class of shaman that could manipulate genetic matter and cause our people to evolve, a mix between Ender’s Game and Spore, the evolution and civilization emulation.

I was very baby leftist at the time and had no theoretical understanding of what an epidemic could do to a society. I still thought Bernie could change things, that we could just vote all this away. We had yet to see how utterly abandoned America was going to leave the poor.

But the dream did trigger a curiosity. I was frustrated often in that dream, my people were at war with an Other we didn’t understand. I was like a leader of a batallion, not one of the higher ups that had us fighting. And being there felt very much like real life. It reminded me of high school football. As cliche as that sounds, the close bonds I formed with teammates battling it out against a far superior team. Only it wasn’t touchdowns we were giving up. It was our lives. Watching someone you’ve grew up with die right beside you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Hell, you don’t even know why you’re fighting.

Even though it was “just a dream” it wasn’t unusual to wake up with tears, or utterly dejected.

Why were we fighting anyway. Later this would become a metaphor for class war. But last March I didn’t understand those dynamics.

It lasted 3 days. Recurrent I wasn’t even keeping track of time and I slept most of those 72 hours only waking up to use the bathroom and get some fluids. The dream world was the only thing my subconscious kept returning to. And it was a weird but profound experience. I’d never dreamt consecutively of the same thing like that, and never so lucid and impactful that I could remember it when I woke up.

So I was stuck on the question of protecting society from a biological threat. How apropos that it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months later I reread the Communist Manifesto. It hit different that time.

Having just come out of 7 year disconnect from society proper, living as a lumpenprole (though I didn’t have that concept yet), having just got out of my first real stint of jail time that was thankfully cut short with a COViD inspired plea deal (do 1/3 of your time, plead guilty, no fees, no probation, just go—and seeing the judge just a day before that agreed release, it was an easy “here’s my signature, I’m not guilty of these trumped up bullshit charges, I was having a drug induced psychosis and needed a hospital not a jail cell, but OK I’d rather be not in jail...Fine, I’ll plea out.”) bit I digress—

In the coming months I went from liberal “left”

progressive by American standards to guillotine Bezos, but unironically, today, unapologetic communist. A tankie, and a badge I wear proudly. When I say COVID-19 radicalized me, I mean literally. It was the combination of the futility of individualism that was instilled by the successive failures of my Avatar in the dreamworld to save my people. For a fantasy land, the emotions of rage and sadness and loss left a lasting imprint.

And then i got to see it play out in real time. To my actual people, the poor and marginalized in the US. The forgotten—or intentionally ignored—the most vulnerable told to fuck right off.

Told to go die for to keep making the bosses rich.

Told what they already felt about themselves, that their lives didn’t matter.

And we heard that loud and clear. The George Floyd cold blooded murder by a sociopathic pig (daily “Fuck the police” mantra by the way). That was a catalyst. That they tried to excuse it by painting the man as a fentanyl abuser, as an addict and a criminal, enraged us even more.

How the fuck do you think we survive in a system that demonizes us, shuns us because we fell into the spiral of addiction!?

Of course we fucking do crime. No one will hire us. Medical help only exists for a select few who win the lottery of the bare bones funding for social work.

And not just that, but you gotta get an addict in for help immediately. When they ask for it, they’re at that rock bottom place, probably suicidal, and the intake process is “wait three weeks” and by then, if they’re still alive they probably don’t wanna do to rehab. And that’s the reality of the cycle. (Unless you have money of course and you can pay your way in same day. But let’s keep acting like class doesn’t exist.)

Then it’s to the revolving door of the recovery industry, enriching the parasites that have found a way to profit off of misery. They deserve a special place in hell in Dante’s fourth circle: greed. Ain’t late stage capitalism grand?

So a black man who happens to be caught in this terrible maelstrom of tragedy and somehow deserves a cop standing on his neck, wailing in agony in his final moments, because he may have been a drug addict!?

Fuck you.

Fuck you entirely.

If this what you think, that an addict’s life is some how lesser or less than, I hope you kids die of an overdose; I hope someone trying to get their fix snatches your purse, steals your car, robs your house. I want you to understand the real gravity of the situation. We’re not abstractions. And we deserve a dignified life and a society that gives us a chance.

But instead, when things weren’t so dire, and you could just forget about us, and we could scrape out a meager existence funding out habit to escape a society that’s already written us off, we just thought as long as we stayed invisible your opinion about us was indifference.

When we saw a pig murder a man, on repeat. Replayed over and over on national fucking media outlets and social media—

When the state sanctioned a killing and we saw people debating a man’s life as he begged for mercy—

After he had done noting wrong, it’s quite audacious that you’re upset about a few burned buildings.

We heard you loud and fucking clear. You don’t see us as forgotten. You see us as unwanted.

And here we are a year later. $1800 dollar puttiance. (Be happy with what you have, peasants) yet we saw other countries, even capitalist countries, shut down, lockdown, pay people’s salary, protect their workers.

Vaccines that favor the rich. (Yet a the socialist nations developed their own, even exported them with no strings attached because that’s the right thing to do.) and here’s American companies like Pfizer, trying to manipulate South America for USA imperialist conquest. promising vaccines for trade, just a no-fault contract “so we’re [Pfizer] is indemnified if we fuck you over, oh and a military base. Or your people can just for from COVID, no pressure.”

Business owners bailed out. And the poor having to go literally risk their lives to make some money rich fuck with a yacht richer. Nah. The answer to my dream-prompted questions, it turns out we’re already answered by a German philosopher and the thoughts and societies built by his predecessors. Socialism has given us a real life

example on how to take care of my people. And that together, with revolutionary love. That’s why we do this.

“When it’s our time, we will not apologize for the terror.” You wrought this on yourself.

#addi

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