hottest summer ever

Been in the nineties lately. Over a hundred in Siberia. Every June has been the hottest June on record, lately, this year probably being no exception. July and August will be worse. Turns out SARS-COV 2 is not seasonal, and does not mind the heat. Anyone gambling on that is about to lose bigly. Cases are surging.. 

but I don't know what that means. 

Surges, waves, and spikes don't seem to be as steep as I'd expected, just dragging on and on.

Still not going anywhere or doing anything, myself. Aside from expanding my gardening habits to include dragon's toe peppers, arugula, scallions, and soon tomatoes. I'm getting better at organizing my grow space and plant sizes. This gives me a few more minutes of stuff to do per day. I can't decide if I should be trying to do more, or if I should stick to just waiting this out. I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately.

I'm feeling aimless. I haven't even been thinking about much. I haven't been posting or blogging about current events or anything else. Maybe the heat isn't helping. Maybe I'm just waiting for the next catastrophe to demand my attention. Or maybe it's just one thing after another, most of it still ongoing, and still exhausting.

The ideal was to be at peace with life's eternal piling on of suffering and impermanence, but I want to make better use of this life than that. I keep forgetting this new normal is not normal. That's why I made the last entry, "timelines" as a reminder. I was doing so much better, before 2020 happened. I can't decide if I have to adapt to this new miserable dystopia, or if I should just hold on.. Things will get better again, right?

Probably not before they get worse. The pandemic surge is looking like it might be pretty serious, may be a real second wave incoming as we head into summer. Incidentally, heat waves contribute to all sorts of insanity and this country is already a smoldering powder keg. I can't tell anymore if I'm wisely sheltering in place or just paralyzed by anxiety.

timelines

I've been having trouble remembering everything that's gone wrong lately. I have to think about it for a minute.

About eight months ago, I injured my knee. Small meniscus tear that took about six months to heal. It was depressing, I was struggling with school, failing Calculus II, and as the months went by, the injury was making it generally more difficult to cope with everything.

I had an interaction around that time, and it turned out to be a bad idea. Lasted a month or two, don't want to elaborate, but it really messed with my head. Stressful, painful, confusing. I remember thinking that it made for an especially brutal one-two combo. I remember hoping there wasn't a third strike coming.. 

Then I got the news about my Dad. He's in Hawaii with my sister now. I'm not sure I'll ever see him again. It shouldn't be one more thing to add to a list, but it is what it is. I'm coping, like I'm coping with everything else. Not very well.

Bernie's loss was devastating. I stand by everything I posted at the time. Electoral politics is fucked. My hope that anything will improve politically is fucked. This wasn't an election. This isn't a democracy, representative or otherwise. Five years invested in watching them rig it for the oligarchy again.

Then I had to stop going to visit my father, because we were hit by this global pandemic. I had to stop doing everything. Months later, they're reopening in Vermont, minus anything I'd actually want to do, but immediately we've had a few outbreaks. They're hoping it's not a trend.. but of course it is.

Nationwide rioting still ongoing. I love that they're fighting, but it's brutal to watch, and I feel helpless to do anything. I also feel hopeless about their chances of getting anywhere. Which means being anxious about any number of awful outcomes. My predictions on Minneapolis dismantling their police department? One way or another, they'll accomplish absolutely nothing.

This feels like a lot to me. It's no wonder my sanity is stretched thin, if not in absolute tatters. Not that this is the end of it. Hurricane season looming now. Won't hit me here in Vermont, but they're expecting it to be the worst ever, for some variety of reasons including climate change.

I'm pretty sure about the economic depression, too. We can't just keep bailing out wall st with trillions of dollars, without consequence. Given all this chaos, our leaders will be worse than ever at handling it. Not sure how much time we have before that hits, but dealing with natural disasters isn't going to help. Neither will the mounting civil unrest. No question, it will be getting worse.

There's a terrifying amount of awful shit happening in the world at the same time, but my personal life hasn't been going so well, either. It's so bad, it's surreal. What if I could just disconnect. Be objective. This is the world, exploding. It's not going to go very well, but it is interesting to watch unfold. What if I had a life to live, and I weren't sitting at home all day doing nothing. That might help too.

hyperbole

I've never thrown around words like fascism, nazis, or genocide before. I was always the one to argue that the world isn't ending. Society isn't collapsing. No one but the Nazis were Nazis. This begs the question, has the world changed, or have I?

This is not the sort of question where I can say both, and move on. No, the world has changed such that things are incredibly bad, or it hasn't. If it has, then of course it's both, because that's freaking me the fuck out. If it hasn't changed, and it's just me.. that's something else entirely. This is why I go through this over and over. It's an important distinction.

So, I'm thinking if it's just hyperbole, why would I do this? Why the impulse to exaggerate? An example came to mind, one I've never used, but seemed to work well. Like insisting that mass incarceration is genocide. 

Clearly, mass incarceration is not genocide, right? I can imagine why I might go that way though. Mass incarceration is an atrocity, and I don't think people appreciate how wrong it is. Some might ask how the Germans let it happen.. but look around us. Given modern technology, we have far less excuse than they did.

It's pretty damn bad in any case, and maybe I want to make the case more strongly. Maybe if I exaggerate that will break through the callousness - but wait. Why do I feel mass incarceration is that bad? What if it's the intuition that's really telling me something here. What if I'm not exaggerating.

Is anyone going to dispute that prison destroys lives? We lock up tens of millions of people, more than anywhere else in the world. A lot of it is ethnically motivated. Almost all of it is class motivated. It has destroyed entire communities around the country. 

Holy shit. It is essentially genocide. A difference more of kind than degree. 

Am I wrong?

This isn't even getting into the thousands of Americans killed by the state per year, the people starved by our sanctions, or bombed in the middle east. We've got tens of thousands of immigrants being raped and tortured in cages. We get hit with a pandemic, and just let hundreds of thousands of people die in an effort to protect the economy. We've got an unaccountable police force brutally suppressing the right to protest. They've killed at least fifteen protesters so far, but that barely makes the news.

How can I blame Trump, when the free press is complicit? How can I blame Trump, when Democrats won't even speak on these issues, let alone try to actually do anything? Not to mention Republicans of course. All of this has been going on well before Trump. All of this will continue when he's gone. We're fucking monsters.

Am I wrong?

We've just gotten better at keeping it out of public view. Abusing and killing people in ways that can be passed off as justified, unintentional, a million different isolated incidents, bad apples, and ill considered policy.

first they came for the socialists

Always bothered me when people act like Trump is bringing fascism. Not because it couldn't happen here - for one thing, it is already happening here. For another, Trump has almost nothing to do with it. He's the result of our system and our voters, including all the ways votes were manipulated and the way power is structured. The problem is not that Trump is POTUS, but that we live in a country that elected someone like him - and will do so again, if not someone worse. Not as a matter of democratic will, but broader systemic consequence.

Maybe Biden wins this next round - a feat that would practically require the four horsemen of the apocalypse to accomplish - but holy shit, that's about what's happening, right before the goddamn election. Still, if he wins, Biden doesn't change anything for the better. He won't do anything about the police, but he will throw us into a deep austerity, in response to the economic depression that's coming. It will be bipartisan, thanks to him. Yay, I'm sure that will appease the consequent civil unrest.

It will be brutal. A Republican wins in 2024, no problem. This country has gotten worse since 2016. The Republican nominee will be even worse. I'm guessing whoever Biden picks for VP loses anyhow. Predictions aside and point being, voting isn't going to cut it. It doesn't matter who wins. I honestly think we need something more drastic to happen, or yeah, we're heading for full blown genocidal fascism. 

I'm not specifically talking about the riots. These protests are off the charts. I have no idea how serious it's going to get, how long it will go, or how bad the police response will be. Even if it does get crushed or naturally subside, the wave is just going to be even greater next time. I'm just not terribly optimistic about its chances of success, no matter how it goes. I love that people are fighting, but I'm honestly terrified for them. More so that they would just be the beginning.

Thinking about moving to Scandinavia or something. Not the most interesting selection of countries, but in such interesting times, I'm not sure more interesting is such a good idea. Canada isn't at all far enough. Latin America's way too warm with climate change bearing down on us. Africa even more so. Asia's just too unfamiliar. I don't even know if anywhere in Asia would be a good idea politically or in terms of climate, but it doesn't seem like the time to be taking any chances.

I am feeling more capable at life than I used to be. I still have a ways to go, but in a pinch, maybe I could pull it together. I don't think I could say that two years ago. For a while now, I've been feeling with growing urgency, the need to attain some independence. I've been understanding why with growing clarity. I'm afraid losing my social security will be the least of my worries.

I wish Trump were the problem, but no one in congress seems to care all that much. Not Democrats, not Republicans, dare I say not even Bernie. Not really. Sure, to varying degrees, they're mortified - like it's one isolated incident after another. Maybe they're not seeing it all, insulated inside their sociopolitical bubbles. They seem to be in denial about what's happening right in front of them. 

Me, I've been seeing way too much. I'm a fucking mess.

Our cops have always been like this. They were more militarized under our last Democratic president, but fundamentally, they've been like this since their inception. They keep growing, they're not going to change, and it's not about Trump. Our leaders are oblivious at best, as they do whatever the police unions want. The country doesn't have the will to do what needs to be done to stop our jackbooted thugs, even as they're massacring us. This doesn't get better if we ride it out, but I'm afraid we can't win.

It never occurred to me before today, that the issues I have with authority might have something do with actual Nazis, but it's suddenly feeling awfully relevant. Honestly, we should be thinking about running for the hills. Preferably colder higher ground.