The Heartless Nature Of For-profit Health Care In The Wealthiest Country In The World.

Do you get it now? Without due process, everyone is at risk. How are you going to prove your citizenship otherwise?

I know how bleak things seem.

I am not going to lie to you. There is no gurantee you, or me or any of us make it, and taste a better life.

Happiness. Sincerity. Tranquility. Peace. Love. Rest and leisure. Celebration. Cooperation, building something beautiful and meaningful together. A better, more just, more natural life.

None of it is guranteed.

We are balancing on a razor's edge as we ascend closer and closer to our crucible, to our defining moment as a sapient species on the cusp of a new age. Things can go horribly wrong. We have seen sickly dread, clawing woe and untenable rage in our hearts that reverberates through our times. Biblical times, apocalyptic times. Reality may be even worse than the cries of mothers, the silent blood, the vivid imaginations of dystopia.

But, I want you to understand that this is just one possibility.

There is a better world. It may be veiled, we have stumbled through fog and tunnels for so long that we don't believe there is a light anymore. But it is there, and it is not as excruciatingly impossible to hold together as it seems. Tunnels end. Just as we may be staring down the barrel of a gun, we are just as likely simply experiencing a dark, long night before our dawn we so shamefully crave.

Do not be ashamed. You are not weak, you are not naive, you are not stupid. You are a unique shade in a most wonderful swatch of color. We have all been polluted by a system, a feedback loop, a fetishization of fear that has grown its own legs and operates beyond the control of any single person. We are our worst selves right now, it is remarkable we are functioning at all despite everything thrown at us.

It is not doomed to be in vain. The odds on paper do not look great--it is easy to rationalize defeat. Have faith. Have some secret hope tucked away, even when it repulses your sensibilities. History is littered with the impossible being done by those who scoffed at barriers set by naysayers--having the gall to try despite seemingly imminent defeat is what wins the day far, certainly far more often than throwing in the towel before halftime.

Maybe it WILL be in vain. Maybe something miraculous will happen, something unexpected, something that couldn't have happened if we all resigned too soon. Do not be so arrogant as to assume you know the future, you can't possibly, there are variables you cannot possibly forsee at play here.

I know how bleak things seem. I am asking you to try anyways.

every now and again i think "surely it can't be that weird for a child to sort things, it has to be something every child does"

and then i remember that my mother finally had an allistic child after two autistic kids in a row and was baffled and annoyed to find out she couldn't just keep him occupied by sticking a box of unsorted buttons in front of him and let him sort them

like my mother thought, exactly like i do sometimes, that surely every child must just sit there and sort whatever is in front of them but no, actually, most of my non autistic peers didn't do this and thought i was a fucking weirdo for doing it

anyway i still struggle to believe that most people don't find deep enjoyment in sitting there and arbitrarily sorting shit. what do they even do if they need to do data entry? do they just suffer? weirdos.

Samuel Delany.

I don't give a shit as long as those in need benefit

Tinsel, circa 1970

Mickey Crisp

"All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher...Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness, and I've become an abuser of their once lifesaving powers. I relied on them wrongly to isolate myself, seal my alienation, cut me off from life, control others, and contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment'll be in tears."

- Bruce Springsteen