I’m Sorry, But If You Don’t Do Anything Then You’re To Blame

How the hell did you let this happen America? What were you thinking? That it would bring back small-town America? That we could miraculously reverse to the Reagan 80’s? That all our problems would magically go “poof” by voting in a fascist strongman who swore that “only he could fix our problems”?

Is this how you thought we could do it? By reverting to racism? By supporting the man who’s proposing to persecute over a billion people for their religion? By voting for the candidate who deliberately denies science?
It makes me angry, it makes me furious. But most of all, it makes me sad.

I have a hypothetical for all those who shared Trump’s disbelief in climate change: when a doctor tells you that you have near-terminal cancer, the first thing you do is gather your money and try to get the best treatment possible, for you know that your time is limited. Well guess what? The Earth has the most serious cancer conceivable, and we just hired a phony quack as our doctor.

People who voted for Trump believed that they were fighting against corporate corruption. Guess what? You failed. We failed — we all did it to ourselves. You know why? Take a good look at Trump’s cabinet picks.

They. Are. All. Corporate. Hacks:

Rex Tillerson (CEO of ExxonMobil) could be our Secretary of State. Steve Mnuchin (second-in-command of Goldman Sachs, who profited personally off the 2008 economic implosion) could be our Treasury Secretary. The list goes on, but they are all united in the fact that they are not just owned by the special interests; they ARE special interests.

People voted for Trump because they believed that he represented “the Christian vote.” I can’t even express how mind-blowingly ridiculous this is. I can’t say what Jesus would say exactly about the current state of society, but only because I don’t have the right to declare what a dead guy has to say.

But I can say this: is Trump’s America the kind of society Jesus spoke of in his preaching? Where the leader is a rich misogynist bloated by his oversized ego? Where people are singled out because of their religion?
Jesus was an incorrigible radical in his times: he lived amongst prostitutes and beggars, preaching to all the poor and wretched and damned of the Earth. Because he knew — unlike Americans in 2017 — that in God’s eyes all people are equally deserving of love: regardless of religion, regardless of how “low” they are in society.

Many people have loved to say that Trump has suddenly moderated himself. He has not. Ten minutes of researching his policies on PolitiFact or Politico — not listening to soundbites of his speeches on Snapchat or Fox News — will reveal this. But most people are too mesmerized by the sensationalized set-pieces surrounding his cabinet (i.e. “he’s got Elon Musk in his cabinet!” or “he’s toned down on Obamacare!”) to even look up information like this in the first place.

Because the majority of people don’t realize that what you see in the media is borderline propaganda, specifically tailored to manufacture consent, to make ourselves feel comfy with a mere illusion of full democracy.

In reality, it has long since been hijacked by a cabal of billionaires who have rigged it to be their personal profit machine. If you haven’t realized, the corporate media — namely Fox News, CNN — is owned by the 1%; as such, all news will be censored and tailored to avoid any criticism of the 1%, and all parameters of intellectual debate will be cut down to what the 1% wants it to be.

But we Americans, provided we don’t change, won’t do anything.

We’re too swamped within our own narcissism, posting pictures on Facebook and Instagram, hyper-obsessing over “Brangelina” and other voyeuristic celebrity gossip, soaked up in whatever’s new on Buzzfeed or the latest trendy video on YouTube, to worry about other people. We are too soaked up in ourselves, drunk with self-centered cynicism, to even bother standing up to what’s wrong.

There is a story, related by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the oppression of the Soviet Gulags in the late 1940’s. A former front-line soldier turned prisoner, who happens to be very strong, disarms and kills his captors as he is being transported between camps. He implores his fellow prisoners to rise up and help free everybody; this is their one chance to become free men again.

But they are too indifferent to do anything. They aren’t guilty; why should they risk their skin to help him? Despairing, the lone rebel takes the rifle and ammo of the two dead guards and escapes into the woods, where he kills several pursuers but ultimately has to commit suicide.
Solzhenitsyn, a former inmate himself, says that if even half of the prisoners had done what this lone rebel did, the system of the Gulags would have instantly crumbled. But alas, people only cared for themselves, and the oppression lasted for over a decade longer.

I will try as hard as I can to be that lone rebel. But this is a big country. So long as we worry only about ourselves, all the lone rebels out there will be crushed by the powerful, and we as a society will ultimately have to pay the price. So long as we say, “it’s not my problem, politics isn’t a big deal,”

America will continue on the downhill slope of corruption currently being guided by Trump.

We’re so busy looking into the mirror that we’ve failed to recognize that the whole world is on fire.

I’m going to try to be the lone rebel; I’ve picked up the rifle, metaphorically speaking, because I know our time is limited. I’ve thrown my life, my reputation on the line. Now is your chance to act. Now is your time to determine the fate of this country.

What will you do?
What will you do?
What will you do?