I am depressed at a fundamental level. I’ve been depressed–even suicidally so–before in my life, but those moments were always internal. It was about my interactions with the world, my value in the world, my relationships. What I am feeling now is not all about me. I am watching at least two of my kids fail in slow motion. One seems to be charmed in life and will likely pull through. The other, an angsty privileged teen, appears to be on a very short road to doom. When I can lift my head away from that horror, it is only to see a home government teetering on the edge of fascism. The oval office meeting yesterday in which the President and Vice President berated a world leader as if they were not only better than him, but as if he needed to bend the knee was disgusting. To make matters worse, even the news is treating the matter with patronizing, downplayed headlines like, “Trump and Vance Rebuke Zelenksy.” Is that what was happening? Or was this a scene from the Apprentice? Was this an angry dad telling his kid he needed to say thank you and stop being disrespectful? Or simply a scene from WWE when Vince McMahon had his infamous Kiss My Ass Club? We know where Trump finds his material. He’s a pretty simple guy…
If this wasn’t enough, my financial issues are crippling me, my writing is not reaching people, and my health is absolute shit. So, things are pretty bleak in the land of Talis. Or, it’s just another Saturday in the good ‘ol US of A. At least we get good distractions–media, sports, games, etc… I’m a cynic now. I am also debating not being an American Citizen. It sucks to feel this way. It sucks to feel like this lifelong fight towards some version of equality was all just smoke and mirrors. Even my college is removing all of what they refer to as DEI, which is to say any awareness or understanding towards anything that is different from white and heterosexual. Well, at least I’m hetero… See, cynic.
Things are the worst I’ve seen them in my lifetime, and I am the same guy who stood and watched my friends be arrested on the steps of Iowa State University for being black. I am the same guy who was asked to stand in a line up as a kid because I was ‘close enough to the description’ of who the cops were looking for and they needed people to ‘just stand there.’ The people making these laws and have not been on the other side of those laws. They don’t know what it actually feels like to be oppressed or to be the ‘other’ or to fear for your life because the people in power are being given the right to kill you. No, the people making these laws are afraid that they will someday become like me and they are doing anything they can to prevent that from happening.