Fatalist

Look at the egoist, writing about his woes while the world burns. If he stays up until 3 watching the police assault people on Twitter will it absolve him of his sins? If he stays up until his eyes are heavy, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, will that be sufficient support? Someone must witness the atrocities or it is all for naught. And if he oversleeps from exhaustion and loses his job mid-pandemic, then surely no one could claim he does not care about the plight of his fellow countrymen.

But no one cares. Facebook shares aren’t sufficient activism and he’s beyond serotonin bursts from “likes'“ (though, notifications in the midst of an internet squabble fill him with perfect combination of dread and giddiness that keeps him absolutely glued to an unhealthy extent, but I digress) yet it still makes him feel hopeless when an article about the impending police state mere miles away can’t garner a single reaction. And the limited amount of in-person interactions mostly with family just reinforce…whatever it may be, it can’t be a class divide, but something of the sort.

And to write? Against the hopelessness. It’s not more difficult than it previously was. It’s mostly laziness. But he is not smart enough to tackle what must be tackled. And the facts are the facts. And if we as a people cannot even agree on them then what hope is there? So he writes in feelings and half-formed thoughts, but he hasn’t tasted the teargas. And it truly is just pessimism, pure and simple, and perhaps he cried wolf one too many times - though is it truly crying wolf if one warns about a real wolf too early?

While the country waits for the nationalists to arrive at their doorstep and haul them away, the painful truth is how many will remain comfortable, even after they’ve realized it is too late. Every World War II movie made Nazi Germany look like a living hell and here we are, just going about our days. Some of us doing our best to counter atrocities, but most of us - including him - doing a minimal amount and many doing nothing at all. Waiting for the right time to rebel. Waiting for things to get bad. But they won’t. Or they will when it is far far far far too late. When there’s no one left to witness what happens when one waits for fascism to announce itself by name.