An Outburst

In which an irate witch preaches hellfire and damnation… (well, sort of…)

I’ve been obliquely addressing the debacle in Eastern Europe, talking about all its varied causes without talking about the thing itself. This is partly because I don’t want to watch yet more innocent people die for the economic agendas of a few psychopathic idiots. (And no, Putin is not the only idiot… quite a few don’t speak Russian at all…) I just can’t absorb any more hurt for the sake of what I consider to be rank greed. I want to turn away. I’m so tired of all this and so saddened that I can’t sleep. So I am not watching the particulars of towns bombed and besieged, of lives destroyed, of white men telling us all why we must yet again kill each other so that they can be rich. I am not paying attention to this instance; I’m looking at why and how this instance arrived.

Another reason that I decided to focus on The Background this week rather than watching the firing guns is because few others are asking why or how. Of course, the mainstream media can’t or they will lose their insider privileges and key sources. They’d also lose advertising revenue. And they probably have no incentive to incur any of these losses to uncover ideas and root causes that they spend quite a lot of print space and air time keeping covered up. 

One might think that there ought to be in-depth analysis coming from alternative sources on the left, but so far there has been little. I think many writers and investigators are just overwhelmed — like I am. In social media outlets, I have noticed many people expressing an intense sense of stunned déjà vu. Didn’t we just do this? Do we really have to go through all this bullshit violence yet again? Can’t we have five minutes without you people destroying Every Last Thing?

Of course, this is coupled with sheer exhaustion. We’ve been in a state of maximal alert for years now. The human body truly can not cope with this much adrenaline. We likely all have the cirrhotic livers of advance alcoholism by this point. COVID. Fierce storms of all kinds. Unending fire everywhere. Hate crimes and terrorism that includes attacking even the Capitol. Antler Boy and other stupid losers who strut into public places and start killing — children, as often as not — because they think they deserve even more of a hand-out from the whole world than they already have been given in the gender and skin-tone lottery. Police brutality on a scale that is in close competition with the Gestapo for top-ranking sadists. Economic implosion — with evictions, the continuing evisceration of jobs that can support a life, supply line crashes, shortages of all kinds, prices rising as a result of that and because those who control the flows know that they can gouge away, free from any reprisals or regulations. The betrayal of hopes in our elected leadership — yet again — and in any sort of progress toward dealing with any of these disasters — yet again. And the rising awareness that this is never going to get better. Any of it. 

And then these assholes waltz into the Ukraine and start dropping bombs, while whining out some farcical nonsense, claiming that they’re upset about fascists. (Who, for the record, look a lot like Antler Boy…)

It’s enough to make a pacifist want to drop a hydrogen bomb the whole bloody lot of them.

Except that would only kill more innocents…

The assholes assuredly have bunkers… 

Five minutes?…

So you know what I want? I want everyone who is virtue signaling with their blue and yellow ensigns to do something real about all this for once. Turn off your screens. Unplug everything. Do not go shopping. Do not even send money to relief efforts unless you personally can verify that the money will reach someone in need of relief. Better yet, don’t send money at all. Send boots, coats, blankets, tinned soup, soap, teddy bears. Stop making yourself feel better by vilifying the too-easy target in Moscow and look at the whole mess, noticing in particular how there are tendrils feeding this pustule that are connected to everything on this planet.

Once you can see the branching problems, start to address the root causes — which include all of us. If you’ve put gasoline in a car tank in the last 30-40 years, then you are a cause of this violence. If you’ve bought any plastic, but especially if you have supported the waste stream of packaging, then you are a cause of this violence. If you’ve bought clothing or food that is soaked in petrochemicals and shipping fuel, then you are a cause of this violence. If you still don’t know how your actions feed into systemic racism, sexism, economic inequity, and extreme power imbalance, then you are a cause of this violence. 

Sit down and do nothing until you understand this viscerally. (If you need it, I have book recommendations…) Then, if you still want to wave the Ukrainian flag, fine… but I rather doubt that will be the case. Because once you see all this, once you feel yourself embedded in it, once you know that you are are being used to pull the triggers on children, then I really doubt you will be able to remain at the roots. You will be clawing your way out of this mire as quickly as you can.

And the first step you can take to escape is to get out of your house, get out of your office, get out of your virtual worlds, and go plant something, make something, repair something, cook something. Do something productive and life supporting without spending money or fuel. Or just stop and notice your real world. See it. Hear it. Feel it. Get to know it. Then share that whole experience with your neighbors. Better yet, go lend a hand in their lives. But get out of your damned heads and do something real in your own life! 

And then do it all again tomorrow… and again the next day… and again… make this a strike for life…

We can’t fix the Ukraine directly. (Well, maybe if someone were to slip some yew into a certain pustules’s tchai?… ok, maybe not… there will always be more pustules as long as this mess exists…) But anyway, waving a virtual Ukrainian flag effects exactly nothing. However, we can fix the whole systemic mess that caused the Ukraine — and that will cause more Ukraines until it is forcibly stopped. We can fix it by dropping out of it and letting it — finally! — die.

And now… I’m gonna go make soup.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2022

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Wednesday Discourse

This is the part where you can respond. The rules of engagement: No rudeness. Absolutely nothing foul. Also nothing personal. If you want to talk direct to me, there is the contact page linked on every post. Send me email. I will always respond.

You can also take these ideas “home with you” and mull them over. Journalize about them. Meditate. Talk with your family and friends — and co-workers! These are questions that we all need to answer for ourselves, so that we have something bright and solid to hang on to as we slide into the murk.

Might as well get started.