Day 35 of 1456

Day 35 of 1456 in trump's America.

I want to talk to you this week about something.

I promise I'm not usually like this all the time. I know you might think I am, if you looked at all my previous posts here. But I promise I'm not usually this manifesto-y. I'd hate for anyone to be worried about me after all this screaming depressive dreck. I just have a tendency to shoot off the cuff emotionally in all these. They're not really touched up much before I publish them, and if I'm being honest this is all mostly for me to purge my head out once a week. I look forward to it every time in the days leading up to it, and when they're done I do genuinely feel a lot better. I just wanted this little bit of a disclaimer, since next week we're coming up on the 6^th week straight of regular posts, which is when I promised I'd be sharing these a lot more publicly. Plus, I have a tendency to listen to Goddamn Epic Classical Music while I do it, which engenders a bit of Massivity in my writing, which I wouldn't blame anyone if they thought it was all a bit much.

And there's obviously a lot to talk about in regards to The Real World this week – every week obviously, this is the New World after all – electoral colleges, Russian & CIA conspiracies, wondering whether we'll have a functioning government at all, much less one that sucks rich banker's dicks on a 24 hour straight daily cycle. But those are just the realities. You can get a field report of bald bare-ass statistics anywhere you look, anytime you want, from far better writers than me. All I can do is say stuff, for me, that I haven't read or seen or heard anywhere else. I won't deny this is a selfish project.

I wanted to talk today about courage, and how I think I grasp and approach the idea. And whether it's weird or strange.

I think sometimes that courage is such a beautiful stupid thing. I use "stupid" not in the pejorative, insulting sense. I mean it's literally devoid of intellect sometimes, because it has to be. I don't think anyone would argue that occasionally you have to purge forward with courage without thinking of the consequences. Sometimes you have to run into the mess without being aware of your shame, the consequences, and What People Will Think Of You. If you're one of those people like me that "Thinking" always leads inexorably to "Doubt", then you might have to learn to stop thinking sometimes if you think you'll start doubting whether or not to do the right thing.

It's things like that which make me think of military boot camp. They grind your thought muscles down to nothing and leave you with reflex, then steer that reflex in the direction they want it, then give you the chance to rebuild your intellect if you feel like it. But your baseline has changed. It's all going to spring from a new undercurrent that you weren't running with before.

And that's one of the things I mentioned in an earlier post: if the learning when you were younger – mold-able – didn't include lessons on defending the weak, sympathizing with minorities, and basically fucking up the steel toed boot that wants to crush your face everyday forever, how are you going to learn how to do that? How to recognize it? What methods do you approach that with?

If you're like me, you probably have no goddamn idea. I didn't get de-escalation training. I have no idea how to correctly protect the innocent. I haven't even had basic military training. That description up there was just my best guess of the process. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not going to lie about that.

But I know what I want to do. I know what my first protocol is. If I see something, I say something. If I see something, I do something. These are obviously just words. I'm not going to pretend I am courageous. But I know if something starts happening in front of me, I don't think I can think about it. I'll have to go with reflex. And that's not much, I know. Unless you compare it to the alternative, which is nothing. I know my brain well enough to know it can't be trusted. If I give it an inch, it'll take a mile, and then it might be too late. Or I'll think someone else will do something. Or I'll think there might be another side to this. Or a thousand other tricks I know my brain can play on me to stop me from Doing The Right Thing.

So I wonder sometimes if "courage" is an actual thing by itself, and not secretly just an absence of a different thing? Is it "courage", or just "ignoring selfish self-interest"? Ignoring the part that tells you that someone else's problems are not your problems. Is courage anything different than just Sympathy You Act On? I really can't say. I'm not that smart.

Then there's the next kind of courage. The first was just "What to do if it's in front of you". This one is more specifically "Where to go to do something". There's travel involved in this one. Not far. Just across the street. But it's most definitely somewhere you've never been before. You can be sure of that. I can't go so far as to say that "pushing your boundary" means the same as "picking a fight", but I'd be dishonest if I didn't mention that's a possibility of these types of actions. And obviously not a physical altercation. I'm not condoning that. But I'd be dishonest if I didn't mention that's a possibility of these types of actions, too. Change is inherently chaotic. You don't know where it's going to go. You just know if it's happening. And the current situation is not something we can stay with. Either we have to go out and meet it, or it's coming to us. There's really no third option right now. I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want anyone to be hurt. But we have to accept the very definite possibility that someone might be coming to hurt us and our friends. The vice-president elect has said that he wants to electrocute gay people. That's a fact. It'd be irresponsible to not keep things like that in our mind.

Let me say now on no uncertain terms that those facts do not allow us a first strike protocol. I have no interest lowering my soul to their violent level. But the only thing I've been talking about this whole time is how badly The Election blew my eyes to the back of my head. It's the literal definition of horrifying to me. My country did this to itself. This is not outside powers. I honestly think this country is the best thing human beings have ever come up with in some odd seven hundred thousand years as a species, and I just watched it contort and snap its own spine in half in order to shit down its own throat, and all these words have just been me trying to put that in to a shape for me to handle in order to walk forward again and try to do something about it. It was like watching the sun go out.

So I can't do anything like I did before. No one can. Not anyone who wants to fix things, anyway. The old games and tricks didn't work. Clearly. The petitions and the marches, the signs and the chants, it all got us here. Look at where we are. Look around you. Very carefully. Look at the sounds and the people making them. Look at the buildings and the roads. Look at the people and the shirts and stores and windows and everything. Look at everything you love, and everyone you love, and everyone that loves you back, and realize that the people who are in charge hate most of them. And they have resources. And they have money. They have lots of stuff. But they don't have numbers. They never do. And that's the thing we always forget. We have sheer unadulterated numerous overwhelming ability at our hands. We always have. And I still think people have a lot more in common than they think they do.

I don't know if we're going to be okay. And I don't know if we're all doomed. I do know we don't have a lot of help. I do know that – so far – the species has been through worse. But I also know that this time it can get worse than it's ever been. I can't lie to you there, either.

But I've been surprised before. Obviously. There's just so much power beating in these fucking hairless monkeys. You'll never know where they'll turn up. Not all, but most of their problems are their own fault. That's true. But they also came up with all of their own solutions every time. We've never been saved, that's for sure. But somebody got around to Trying To Fix It eventually. Earthquakes or elections, it was always humans that dug other humans out.