Hey Beefriends! It's time for another edition of, Phe rambles about random shit. (kazoo sounds)
I've been seeing a lot of anxiety in society manifesting in, imo, misdirected ways. Anxiety is understandable; the world is going to shit and those with any kind of "power" in the traditional sense of being able to manipulate large institutions seem to be more than content to let everyone die if it adds a digit to their account balance. In fact, many of them aren't just happily content to "let" everyone die, they'll give the order. It's kinda hard to sit by and not have anxiety about the state of the world, unless you just close your eyes to it, cover your ears and yell "LALALALALALA" as loud as you can.
Humanity is facing some really large-scale problems. Environmental catastrophe. Corrupt governments. Late stage capitalism. Crumbling empire. Economic inequality. State violence. A fucking plague. It's a bit much to wrap your head around.
2021 fire season hasn't even started yet
But what do you see a lot of people focusing on? Is there unified solidarity among ordinary people? Are we banding together to overcome these challenges en masse? Are we yeeting billionaires off a cliff and using their wealth to house and feed people who are dying? Are we reclaiming the land from massive farming corporations and remediating the soil and growing food for people from heirloom seeds, boycotting Monsanto? Are armies the world over laying down their arms, realizing that their "enemy" isn't the other poor bloke you're firing at but rather the powerful who told you to fire in the first place? No.
I'm not saying there aren't movements - of course there are. Water protectors are still fighting the good fight, protests happen everywhere against oppression and injustice, people try and do right in their little corner of the world, tree sitters tree sit and political prisoners rot in prison for trying to stand up for what's right. I'm not at all trying to minimize the very large sacrifices many people have made.
But massive, unified, solidarity movements? We don't have that. And any time we start to get close, do you notice it gets shut down one way or another?
The mass media will unabashedly demonize any protest(s) that gain traction, or ignore them altogether, denying a wider voice to those fighting and preventing people elsewhere from giving support. Sometimes they just stop talking about it, implying that it's over and talking about new, shiny distractions until everyone forgets. And not just within US borders, since I'm speaking from a US perspective; international protests, too. What ever happened to the yellow vests? To the Chile protests that started after a bus fare hike? To the Hong Kong protests? Did you see any kind of resolution talked about in the news? I didn't. It just kind of disappeared from the news feed, didn't it? What did we talk about after that? I don't even remember. The outrage cycle spins so quickly, major happenings that would have stopped society in its tracks twenty years ago now are news for, at most, weeks? Usually not even that?
Compassion fatigue and outrage fatigue are real. You can't care the maximum about every issue, all the time. You burn out. So let's try and not waste our precious mental and energetic resources on the things that are more distraction than real.
Brands on social media:
They do not care about you, your cause, your people, or justice. They are not people with personalities. Wendy's is not a spicy lady who likes to roast other companies online - that's some PR employee(s) who are paid to be comedians because it makes people have positive feelings toward the brand. Burger King is not depressed. Companies slapping a rainbow on their usual merch are not suddenly queer icons throwing a brick at the Stonewall riots. Pepsi learned the hard way that having a pretty celebrity hand an actor playing a cop a Pepsi at an imaginary vague protest did not make social justice-minded folks start drinking Pepsi as if they were the Sugar Water Of The People. Brands will do whatever they think they have to do to sell you more shit. It is a lie. And if it doesn't work, they will pretend to apologize, hat in hand, to get you to forgive them and keep shopping.
Politics:
Kids I promise you, both Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi are corporate toolbags working for the same bosses, who are not you and me. The media likes to portray them as dueling opponents, fighting their corner valiantly! ...but that's a load of horse shit. They are both rich, career politicians whose real paychecks aren't their congressional salaries. The speeches and the tearing up of speeches are a show, a farce, an act, the same as any con man and ad executive. As long as USAians drape themselves in Team Red and Team Blue like it was a football game, our politics will continue to be exactly that - a game. Bread and circuses.
For those who don't know, here in Denver at the airport we have this statue affectionately called Bluecifer by the locals, because, well, he looks like an evil demon horse and the sculpture fell on the sculptor and killed him while he was working on it. Every time I heard some centrist dem say "vote blue no matter who," I thought of this horse, so I made a meme. Yes, his eyes really do glow red, that isn't Photoshop.
Greenwashing:
There is nothing wrong with trying to make the least harmful choice when consuming what products you do need in your life. But beware of greenwashing. Greenwashing is when brands use catch phrases to make their product seem more environmentally friendly when it isn't. The word "natural," for instance, as far as product claims go, has no legal meaning so they can throw it around as they please. "Biodegradable" or "compostable" packaging is often only so if you put it in a municipal or otherwise industrial compost system, and will not break down in your compost in the back yard. That "plant based" cleaner might be using palm oil, resulting in deforestation; that bamboo disposable might be full of glue and carted halfway around the world on massive, polluting cargo ships only to be tossed in a landfill where it will release methane. If a product says it's "recyclable" or has a number inside the chasing arrows triangle, that doesn't mean it actually will be recycled when you put it in the recycle bin. Etc. You have to consider a lot of things when you shop if you're trying to be ethical, and it's hard enough when you have good information to go on knowing what the best choice is. But claims without any backing or real meaning are probably just there to make people think it's the best choice so they'll open their wallets.
Gaslighting Younger Generations:
The kids are alright. The world is fucked. When my parents were younger than me, my dad earned more in actual, non-adjusted dollars at a job right out of high school than I have ever earned and they were able to buy a house for less money than he earned in a year. A car cost what one or two month's rent is nowadays, and y'all know the groceries and gas were cheaper. He would take three hour lunches where he and his work friends got absolutely drunk and not get in trouble. He's got a small pension from that job in addition to social security. Meanwhile, I have never earned the much-talked about $15 an hour despite going to college, houses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if not over a million, cars cost a year's salary, groceries are off the chart, I don't even know what gas costs because I can't afford a car, and I've got student loans. I've been fired from a job for my bus missing my transfer one too many times while being told by my boss as he fired me that I was the best cashier they had. Nobody gets a pension anymore. Many don't even get healthcare.
None of this is to say that all Boomers (or older) are wealthy and well off, that they personally fucked up the system, or anything like that. But the societal shaming of Millennials for being "entitled" for living with your parents, not owning your own home/getting married/having kids, being poor and in debt, has got to stop. You are blaming people for being exploited as if being born into an unjust system was somehow laziness on their part. And no, saying "OK, Boomer" isn't ageism. Ageism is a thing, but it's when a job won't hire you because you're too close to retirement or they know you're qualified enough to demand a decent salary so they'd rather hire a noob who can be paid less. Not your kid rolling their eyes at you like every kid has done to their parents since the dawn of humans (don't pretend you didn't do it too - I'm looking at you, "don't trust anyone over 30"). And while we're here, Millennials aren't teenagers. That's Gen Z now. Older Millennials are 40 years old. Were you treated like a perpetual child at the age of 40? Nah. When my parents turned 40 it was all "over the hill" jokes. They were seen as old. Millennials are still getting dismissed as children, because they aren't able to achieve the societal markers of adulthood that defined their parents' lives but are largely economic and out of reach now. Millennials have worse health than their parents, in large part due to these economic pressures. And if you're wondering - I'm a Xennial (that distinct mini-generation that straddles Gen X and Millennial); I'm 42. The simple fact is that the "rules" that governed Silent/Boomer success in life no longer apply; we were all told to go to college to succeed and instead just got in debt.
These are just a few of the issues that we tend to get ourselves worked up about and spend a lot of energy on. I'm not passing judgment here - I used to be a big political junkie, for instance. But they ultimately are spinning us in circles, and preventing us from sticking together to actually achieve change. People are dying while we quibble about the words some politician said that probably don't mean anything at all or some new "Millennials are killing x industry!" article comes out.
Fight for each other. Fight for your kids. Fight for your neighbors. Don't waste your energy tilting at windmills. There are so many windmills. And they don't give you cancer. ;)
