Picture it: It was 2019 and I was finally in a job I liked and felt as though I was starting to finally build and live the life I’d always wanted. For my birthday that year I decided to start crossing things off my bucket list. First among them was a seahorse preserve in Hawaii, on the Big Island. I did a lot on that trip and learned so much about myself and the native people of Hawaii. It is because of that trip, and my love and respect for that island and its people, that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to return. Just 6 weeks later I was flying off to Seattle for a weekend, to visit a friend, and to just enjoy Seattle in general. I sat in cafes and ate in cute bistros, relishing in new and interesting settings, visiting old ones too. I felt so liberated and mature and as though I had control of my own destiny. I thoroughly enjoyed my little excursions, and had planned to do so many more, but just two months later everything in the world changed.
The world as we knew it in 2019 is gone. I think we must all take a moment to reflect on that. There is no going back and living in the past will not help any of us survive the harsh future at our doorstep. The world we live in now is similar to the dystopian nightmare scenarios long written about in fiction for the last hundred or so years. To better understand where we are now, we should be looking to the post pandemic era of the 1900’s and the eugenics and anti semitism that followed. We are in exactly the same place it feels like. Having better science and technology did us no favors it seems in fighting another airborne virus that continues to kill millions. Public health crises such as these lay bare all of the inequities of the world. While many middle and upper class folks were simply told to work from home, the rest lost their jobs entirely, or were forced to continue to work with little to no protections or support under the guise of “essential workers”.
What we are seeing now is the backlash of folks who were never truly impacted by the virus in that they didn’t lose their own health (or refuse to admit it) or loved ones, maintained their careers or livelihoods, and now any visual reminder of what they saw as a huge inconvenience (staying home for a few months) sends them into an apoplectic rage. They scream, “The pandemic’s over!” and, “You don’t need a mask!” and seem all together overly focused on what other people are doing to protect themselves and their loved ones as some sort of affront to their insistence that “It’s over!” Many conscientious maskers have been violently attacked, some permanently injured. We have billionaires making treasonous choices whilst benefiting from our tax breaks and insisting they are for “100% free speech” while simultaneously spreading anti semitism and transphobia globally. There is a very us versus them mentality at play here, and it is entirely intentional. If they realized that we all share the air we breathe and that very air is contaminated with a level 3 airborne pathogen, they would have to consider the life and livelihoods of their fellow humans. They refuse to expand their minds to include the wants or needs of others, even insisting upon harming others to maintain their delusions.
In the USA, during the pandemic that began in March of 2020, we now have less rights and less of a democracy in general. We have less healthcare, pay more for it, and are more likely to get sick and die attempting to seek that healthcare. Wages, for those who can find jobs, have been stagnant since the 70’s while housing and rents have gone up 160%+ in just the last 20 years. More money is in less hands and people are being pushed into impossible situations in order to survive. The media has chosen a dangerous path since 2015ish and it has only gotten worse since, all bought and paid for by those same few that control so much money and power over all of us. Yet these same people in powerful positions will tell us, the common folk, that “the pandemic is over, vax and relax, go back to living your lives, and everything is a-okay!” We can no longer see these people as leaders; they have led us closer to our own extinction. They are not living in the same reality that we are. Behind closed doors, most are being very careful and protecting themselves and their loved ones very strictly from the virus, while remaining quiet about it yet insisting it isn’t an issue…for the rest of us.
We have seen our climate change drastically before our own eyes these last twenty or so years, there really is no denying it. The messaging always being that we must do more to help our planet, knowing full well that it isn’t possible for individuals to fix what corporations and their profiteering have done and continue to do unabated. Many of the so-called fixes they sold us on were actually worse than what they replaced. We now ingest on average a credit card’s worth of microplastics each week. Knowing this doesn’t help or change anything, but I can’t shake that factoid from my mind. Or how the paper straws that were supposed to be better for the environment, are actually full of PFAS that are fucking us up everyday. We have had the hottest summer in recorded history and it isn’t going to magically improve just because some very loud and wrong guys insist it will. It could very well be the coolest summer we will experience henceforth.
Your local news in the USA is telling you daily how crime is up! (Shocker: Crime is not up, but police keep that message going in partnership with local news outlets so that they keep getting insider info from police. And the police are able to keep raising their budgets because we are primed to believe crime is always up.There’s a John Oliver episode about this, look it up.) Shoplifting is at a pinnacle! Nothing and nowhere is safe! And if that isn’t enough to scare you, there’s always the homeless that they can show you clips of to keep you silent and sedated in fear that it could happen to you if you step out of line. Here in the SF Bay Area, we have always had a large houseless population, it has simply become more visible during the pandemic as so many more have lost their housing and jobs because of it. They did a study recently in San Jose where they interviewed as many people living on the street as they could. You would be surprised by what they found. More than half of our local houseless population have full time jobs, many have more than one job. More than half were over the age of 50 and had housing and a job within the last six months. Many were forced onto the street due to healthcare costs/debts. Shelters are not safe for most and often a haven for abuse/abusers. Whoever you thought the houseless were, it is all of us, because it could be any of us at any time. More than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with less than $1,000 in savings. Just one setback or financial hit could ruin anyone.
In my last post I mentioned briefly some change in my own feelings about folks dining in restaurants, even as a former restaurant owner myself. This change was brought on by the pandemic and how minimizers/deniers insist on being served in restaurants while millions are still dying from the virus. The ones booking holiday vacations on cruises the moment they opened up that industry again. The ones complaining about their vacations being ruined by the wildfires in Hawaii as natives are begging for help. The way they feel entitled to do as they please no matter the harm and cost to others, it is reprehensible to say the least. It is the way in which these folks have had violent outbursts on planes, attacking service workers all over, and just generally being the absolute worst people to be around ever. These despicable humans have made me see the light! Oh, no, not the that light. It has made me see clearly the class divides and the lies we are sold to keep those in power upholding the status quo. Nothing new, but once you see how everything is connected to white supremecist capitalism, there’s no unseeing it. It is ALL CONNECTED!
A couple of months ago I came across this article (try this link if you hit a paywall) and it very truly blew my mind in the best way. I highly recommend you read it and let it sink in, too. While my own travels have been very intentional and brief, comparatively speaking, it is a marker of class and race issues globally that I had not yet connected on my own. Not that the pandemic wasn’t enough of a reason for me to not want to travel, but now I see how harmful it actually is and always was.
Travel itself is a status symbol, not that this is new at all. There was a time where it seemed more accessible, but I might chalk that up to my own previous naïveté. I constantly see dating profiles (that I swipe left on, thank you!) that say shit like, “130 countries down, 48 to go!” or whatever and I find it repulsive. I don’t begrudge those who seek out meaningful and life enriching experiences that may lead to travel. It is the passport stamp collectors, and those who insist on going somewhere for the sake of it, while learning nothing from the cultures they use and invade that I take issue with. Them and business travelers. We learned during the first year of the pandemic that most if not all business travel is absolutely unnecessary. It is an incredible waste of resources that are growing more scarce by the second.
I see now that the entitled will insist upon being served on the finest porcelain china as the planet burns before our eyes. There are those who feel more connection to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy elite than they do the average worker striking for fair wages or a houseless person living on the street. The truth is very much the opposite! None of us will ever be wealthy, but many will find themselves stuck in poverty or worse. How we treat others is the legacy we leave behind as individuals, I think.
I solidly believe that human connection is the purpose of life. Capitalism is designed to break those connections, wear us all down, and keep us too tired, desperate, and distracted to think for ourselves, let alone fight back against our oppressors. It is all by design! They never have the money for universal healthcare and universal basic income, yet that defense budget goes up every fucking year! They can find ways to make tax cuts for their rich pals to get richer, but fuck the rest of us who actually pay our taxes.
Before you “go out” for some fine dining or entertainment, ask yourself who and how many you are willing to kill in order to keep doing those things. I know it sounds dramatic, but it is the reality of our world right now. If you are sitting maskless in a restaurant of any kind, you are willingly and willfully risking not only your own health and livelihood, but that of every worker in that restaurant. That concert or comedy show you attend is put on by a swath of workers risking it all so that you can “go out”. There is no absolving yourself of this, you are doing it by your own volition. Every time you insist upon this shit, every time you are around other humans without a mask covering your nose and mouth holes, you are compromising lives!
I have heard every argument and I know none are genuinely intended. No, the people of Hawaii do not need your tourist dollars, they need their clean drinking water back! Fuck the airlines, all of them. There are a lot of ways to do a lot of things safely, but how some insist upon the most harm in the name of the most inane things because they insist on being stuck in a past that has left them behind is unforgivable! It doesn’t have to be this way either, but again, a very small few threw us all under the bus and left us to die. Yes, even you!
No one is immune to covid, I don’t care how many vaccines and boosters you’ve had. There is no hybrid or herd immunity. Stop swallowing the media’s lies and think critically for once. Wear a fucking mask, yes always when around other humans. If we all did this, we wouldn’t have to do it forever. Those of us who have been careful all along need to get more vocal about it, too! If we all take more safety measures, less people will die, period. Because I don’t know who I am passing on the street, and I would not want to be the cause of their loss of a loved one or loss of their own health or livelihood. Most of us don’t even get paid sick days, so it isn’t a fair play to say, “to each their own”. We are all connected and breathe the same damn air! These masks will be needed for more fires and the toxins released into our atmosphere. It is inevitable. Our air and water are our most sought after resources, and it is already getting scary.
I want us all to live long and fulfilling lives. No one is guaranteed health or longevity, but we can do things in our day to day lives that make it more possible. Wear a good mask, an N95 or a KN95 are best for disposables. There are reusable options like the Flo Mask. I like my Gata mask for work, it’s affordable, comfortable, and comes in fun colors. Please don’t cave to peer pressure, your life is literally on the line for this one, ya know? It is that serious. We are still very much in a global pandemic, it is very bad right now actually and only getting worse by the day. Because now we have less protections and even those in power working to make wearing masks illegal (I don’t think they can, it is a medical protection afterall, but they do like to try). You won’t really hear me talk much about vaccines because that is a personal choice and it does not prevent infection or transmission, only death and the most severe outcomes. The vaccines may reduce your chances of getting Long Covid, but even that is no promise. Even outside you should mask because being outside only reduces your risk by around 19% last I heard and that is only if you’re not in a crowded area. Sitting across from someone eating, drinking, and talking or laughing is actually a very high risk activity. I will write another post soon about my own mitigation strategies and products I use if others may find it useful.
Please protect yourself and each other. We are all we got.
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I’m here for realness and sincerity, honesty and vulnerability, I’m here for the good and juicy bits of life that shine for me when I know I’m heading in the right direction.
Rad Fatty Love to ALL,
<3
S
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