rage is right
Updated: 1 day ago
Some mornings, the unbearable crush of fascism threatens to drown me before I can get out of bed. In the US we’ve endured more than 600 days of rising transphobia, misogyny, racism, ecological destruction, murder, war and genocide, all of it sponsored by government agencies and ordered by the spineless short-sighted money-cucks in power. It's nothing new, but it's also never been like this before. There are more than 800 days in this cesspool ahead of us. Our Nuremberg Trials may come — just like comments in the ICE-watch subreddits call for, posted in all-caps and collecting righteous orange upvotes as the concentration camps continue to overflow — or they may not, but right now, we remain treading shit.
Today, my legs are tired. Ankles wrapped in concrete, thighs quaking, hips screaming. I don’t know if it’s the endo inflaming every cell in my body, the militarized oppression overwhelming my psyche, or a rotten combination of both. It’s likely that last one. Whatever the cause, today I’m allowing myself to stop treading and float.
The toxic ooze of White Christian Nationalism, nectar to modern fascists, has been filling the cups and cryptowallets of our politicians, preachers and popular personalities for decades. Most recently codified in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, this regressive concoction has been served at church brunches and backroom lobbying deals since the nation’s founding. Nowadays, the sludge is generously poured out for the masses by billionaire pedophiles, megalomaniac cyberfucks, sexist scumbags, religious egoists and racist trolls — more often than not, all of these descriptors applying to a singular person. The vast majority of our elected officials, the biggest popularity-contest winners of the land, are too thirsty to recognize their function in a people-eating machine that will eventually consume them for fuel, too, and they continue to drink the darkness, condemning us all.
Because fascists are cowards, their initial attacks focus on the country’s most vulnerable populations: tsunamis of puritanical slime first crashing over the queer community, people of color, women, refugees, literal babies, immigrants and anyone trapped in the cycle of poverty.
Yesterday, it was another horrific shooting by ICE agents, this time victimizing an asylum seeker in Austin as he completed food deliveries. After shooting Wilber Perez and then lying to his wife about his location and condition, authorities completed their kidnapping and made him sleep on the floor in an ICE camp without any pain medication, a federal bullet still lodged in his back. Before that, it was the murder of a Black transgender woman named Sophie in Baltimore, another heartbreaking drop in a rising tide of anti-trans violence. Nearly 2,000 anti-trans bills have been introduced at state and national levels in the past two years, and far too many of them have been passed, emboldening the bigots.
Each day births a new hell: First-hand reports of ceaseless cruelty and sexual violence in crowded concentration camps across the US. A frenetic corporate rush to install surveillance systems and construct water-hungry data centers while the EPA is gutted and national parks bulldozed. An alarming uptick in lynchings of Black people throughout the country and a reluctance by federal authorities to recognize the murders for what they so obviously are. Women in the US forced to carry unwanted and dangerous pregnancies, sentenced to die in excruciating pain while surrounded by medical professionals who could help, but don't. Israel’s infinite genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. An incomprehensible humanitarian crisis in Sudan. US bombs targeting elementary schools and children's hospitals in Iran with vicious precision, video evidence of the bloody devastation piped onto our social feeds in between makeup tutorials, mukbangs, podcast clips, pop-punk singers screaming Free Palestine, and influencer gossip.
As Caedrel has been known to say, the meta is fascism. Our daily lives are flooded with a million urgent nightmares, each one demanding immediate attention, solutions, sharing, funding. So many times I’ve sat down to write this, or something like this, and my fingers freeze, weighed down by days and weeks and months of accumulated atrocities. A numbing wave crashes into my prefrontal cortex and sloshes back against the top of my skull, a cacophony of terrors screaming to be recognized, and I find that I have no words. But I am filled with rage.
I'm treading the sea of bullshit: Battling a painful chronic illness, monitoring the Sturmabteilung cosplayers stalking the streets, pouring as much energy as possible into work, printing out anti-ICE signs for my neighbors, keeping up with friends and family, fighting fear, loving my partner, donating to mutual aids and fundraisers for victims of fascist violence, finding time to read or write or watch Real Housewives, witnessing another bombing campaign that I somehow helped launch but can't stop, going to the doctor again — I’m exhausted, I’m heartbroken, I’m fading. It’s all too much. My legs are so heavy. My knees and ankles are disconnecting. I’m sinking.
Rage keeps me afloat.
Bright, hot and crisp; cleansing like a fire. Unbidden, rage provides a rush of adrenaline and clarity, it fills tired veins with urgency, and it is the heartbeat of resistance. Fury is the only proper response to systemic injustice, and anger is natural when the boots of oppression start stomping. Wrath sharpens vigilance into action. Rage is right. Use it as a raft, keep it nearby, climb on top of it when necessary and then turn it into a diving board. Keep treading and we'll only get stronger, harder for the fascists to drown.
Rest. And then rage.
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