I'm having a really hard time.
I always do my best to speak the truth in a loud and unmitigated voice because the sociopaths who rule us have built an empire on the fact that they are bold and assertive while the healthy are meek and mild, but I'm also very sensitive, and this job gets to me sometimes.
My social media notifications are lit up nonstop full of tags and tweets and mentions of people talking about me, calling me a racist, saying I'm a Nazi, saying I'm paid by the alt-right. I don't mind the attacks from the centrists anymore; they generally just accuse me of being a paid agent for whichever government I happen to be disputing western propaganda about on any given day. But as a lifelong bleeding heart lefty, the baseless accusations of racism and Nazism still cut like a knife.
People are combing through everything I've ever written, any and all public information about me, in order to find something incriminating. And they're knowingly ignoring countless things I've written which directly contradict their narratives about me to do it; stuff where I condemn police violence against African Americans, defend Black Lives Matter, defend Colin Kaepernick, advocate for slavery reparations, object to Australia's brutal treatment of refugees and the Aboriginal people, condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia, copious feminist and socialist writings, they ignore all that in the hopes of snatching one odd-looking thing out of context to screen shot and share around.
I'm not a celebrity. I'm not some MSNBC millionaire who built a lucrative career before ever having to even participate in social media with an occasional tweet here and there. To have my entire life combed over by masses of scrutinizing eyes can feel viscerally uncomfortable. And it takes a toll.
So I'm not bringing my A-game today. My longtime readers know that sometimes when things are overwhelming I stick with my goal of writing honestly every day, and just write from where I'm at. Right now, where I'm at is sprawled out on the bed with a nervous system that feels like it's been put through a cement mixer with a swarm of hungry army ants.
I can so understand why more people don't do this. Speak the truth as you see it in an unmitigated way with no regard for groupthink and eventually you'll say something that pisses people off, and they'll still be screeching about it nine months later. I am a good healer and I will be fine, but there are a lot of people who would never willingly wade into these waters.
This is why the people who rise to the top are the ones who are unbothered by such attacks. The ones who can't feel. The sociopaths. That's what we're creating for ourselves with this frenetic feeding-frenzy groupthink dynamic.
It's apparent that some people are out to wipe me off the face of the planet. They all have stated different reasons for doing so, many that conflict with each other. I see them fighting and blocking each other all the time too. I have a little saying "wedgers gonna wedge." Some people only know how to wedge people to get what they want; that's literally the only tool in their box. It's "my way or the highway," and they've never been able to create enthusiasm with other people about a shared project. They are pure competitors. They aren't collaborators, they only know how to bully and cajole, guilt and wedge people into going along with their agenda. They have never inspired or enthused anyone. They wouldn't know where to start.
In that way, it's unsurprising that they hate everything that I am. I am the opposite of the thing they are. I was literally lifted out of the Facebook groups into the spotlight by people's enthusiasm for the way I spoke our collective truth. Day after day, I am just saying what many of us see and hear and think. I consider myself a mere megaphone. People share my pieces because they appreciate the way I encapsulate our distress, our hopes, how I put a strong case forward for our suspicions and how I frame our wisdom.
I was and am just a Facebook mom; I'm the literal stereotype of "Wine time!" suburbia. I'm not classy or hip, I'm as PB&J as they come, and it's not cool. I'm not cool. But guess what? There are a lot of us. A lot of worried moms and dads, heartbroken grandparents, and uneasy millennials who won't ever score a slot on MSNBC either. There's a lot of us and we deserve to be heard. We have something to say. Let us fucking say it. We might not say it in the exact right university-correct, college campus lingo, we might not have read all the boring books of old men who died a long time before the internet, you might find our interest in some things too gauche for your taste, too kitschy, too cheap-seats, too suburban. Fine. Read someone else. There's plenty that cater to the elitist left-wing tastes.
Just hear this: workers' revolutions needs to enthuse workers. That means the working class. No revolution ever happened over cocktails in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Your knee-jerk disgust for the working class and the way my "cheap-seats" populism appeals to it is a severe impediment to galvanizing the 99 percent.
Someone needs to be willing to speak to real people where they actually are. You won't. I will. If it were up to me I'd just be drawing and writing poems and selling books, but since none of you elitist wankers are willing to stand here and do what needs to be done, I will.
So have your little elitist socialist revolution, that's fine, have it over drinks off campus and haw-haw-haw over a plate of paleo treats and a serving of self-righteousness, get off on punching soft targets like me and getting high on the sound of your own voice, but you don't have the right to shut us down. You. Don't. Have. That. Right. You might kill me off but there will be another right behind me, and another and another and another. We will be heard. Our voices will be heard. You can't gatekeep the revolution to a chosen few. Our biological urge to survive demands that we take this to the people. I don't care if that makes the control-freaks uncomfortable. Deal with it.
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