Too angry to write

I’m trying to figure out how to write a blog post for work, that’s somewhat political. The very idea is terrifying! I’ve always thought business owners should keep their mouths shut when it comes to personal political views and their business, but more and more I realize I feel that way because I don’t want to find out that some place I like(d) spending money is actually run by garbage humans who bow and cater to far-right conservatism and right-wing governmental overreach (Target, I’m looking at you). So I want to write a post that says, as kindly as I can, that if you’re a fascist, I don’t want your money. And I say that actually kind of really needing some money. But not that badly. I’ll go out into the woods and eat bark before I’ll buy bread with a fascist dollar.

Like probably most of the people reading this, I’m scared and angry all the time now. And confused! I mean, really – tell me how the same people who attacked police officers on January 6th with intent to do great bodily harm are the same people who are saying it’s unlawful to even record ICE agents as they’re murdering people in broad daylight. Tell me in tiny words so I understand. Because I don’t understand how they don’t understand the abyss between what they’re telling me is happening daily and what I am seeing with my very own eyeballs. Whoa, tie-in to my recent posts on narcissism because holy shit I feel like gaslighting is just about the national pastime these days. Forget mom, baseball, and apple pie… it’s guns, baseball bats, and balaclavas.

(Side note, I don’t even want to tell you how old I was before I got babushka/balaclava/baklava/blancmange/Blackavar the Rabbit all sorted out in my head as five completely different things.)

ANYWAY. I have a lot of anger I have to get out of my system before I can write that work post, because right now I feel most of it would just be “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE A;DJF;ADJFSD;AJK” but where I want the post to come from is more a place of “these are the kinds of innocent and marginalized people I support and the kinds of issues that are important to me and hey, you do you, but I have a lot of queer friends and a lot of brown friends and they’re kind of on fire right now so I’m speaking up and if you don’t like hearing me please keep your monies.”

Why? Why do I even want to do that? When I’m a non-gun-owning widow living in a city that’s so red it should just be labeled “white”? When my address is easily found on every package I mail out from HaldeCraft? When I live in a state where a couple of months ago there was a sheriff saying it was ok with him if people at a No Kings protest were run over if they were blocking cars? When I’m very public about how doofy and non-aggressive my dogs are? Why would I want to even write anything marginally political in this day and age??? Some knee-jerk-reactive basement-dwelling incel motherfucker could come to my house and shoot me in the face. Why would I want to speak up?

Because I can’t not.

Because I grew up on 60s and 70s protest music. Because I grew up reading books about dystopian governments and/or post-nuclear war survival. Because I grew up on 70s and 80s punk rock music. Because I grew up thinking some people had darker skin or some people loved people who looked like them just the same way some people had blue eyes or some people had freckles. It was just who they were. Because I don’t believe people should be shot in the street or have fire hoses turned on them or have their houses set on fire while they’re asleep. Because those things are wrong. I’m not even particularly religious and I can tell you without a moment’s pondering that someone covering their face and beating the shit out of a 17-year-old kid they abducted from his job is in the wrong and there is a special place in hell for that dickless wonder. What in the everloving FUCK is wrong with someone who would do that (quick reminder there ain’t no song called “Fuck the Fire Department”)? The people hiding their faces and shooting people in cars are the same people who seventy years ago would have been bombing churches with little Black girls in them. And fuuuuuuuuuuuck those people.

So this is my a;djf;aedjkfasdkjfl post, getting my frothing-at-the-mouth out so that I can go over to my work blog later and say kind and supportive things and not just wind up screaming FUCK ICE at the top of my lungs. I want that post to be as calm as I can get…. although, really, fuck ICE (I hope that what I read about Minnesotans throwing pee-filled water balloons is true. It’s probably not, but I’m just going to sit here and think that it is. Don’t burst my bubble).

Did Guy Montag want to be a hero? Did Logan? Did Katness Everdeen? Did Randy Bragg, Malachai Henry, and Dan Gunn want to be heroes? Did Offred? Did Hazel-rah? No. But they all set out to do the right thing, and heroism found them because of that. That they are all fictional characters doesn’t matter – what they did and what they can teach you to do is what matters.

Now I need to go finish painting some ceramics, and channel my inner Woodie Guthrie, my inner Phil Ochs, my inner Joan Baez and Rage Against the Machine and Bob Marley and Nina Simone and Gil Scot-Heron and N.W.A. and The Clash and Sinéad O’Connor and and and … and gather my words to write something that isn’t just me internally screaming. I also need to finish writing a chapter for Patreon and all this bottled rage isn’t helping much with the sweet urban fantasy I’ve got going over there right now.