America Today

 Yesterday the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, and it's all over the news. And Twitter. 

Facebook seems pretty weird right now, though. The people upset over it are definitely aware and posting, and yet the ones who you'd think are happy are... not saying anything.

Well, I didn't want to post about that anyway. My thoughts and feelings are complicated.

Or rather, I have had friends who have had abortions, and trusted me enough to tell me about the decision... and it was clearly a tough choice. They were in a difficult place, and I'm not sure what I would have done if I were in their shoes...

But what I DO know is that the absolutely last thing I'd have ever told those women is that they were murderers or baby killers. Perhaps that's really what pushed me towards being pro-choice? I may not choose one myself, but I sure as hell don't want to tell any other woman what she should do.

Especially not on something as life-changing as having a  baby. 

Especially not in a society that punishes and penalizes women so much, especially if they are a single mother.

Especially not when men can be abusive and controlling, and yes some of them will deliberately try to get a woman pregnant (for some jacked up reason that I don't really understand, tbh. One of the women who had an abortion had found out her husband at the time (iirc) was sabotaging her birth control pills.)

But this post isn't about being pro-choice. It's more about the dissonance between what I see online and what I see when I go out and about.

I am aware that, as a news junkie who is almost always online, my awareness of current events doesn't match the average American.

That's not a judgement on them... if I had to raise children on top of my full time job, I don't think I'd have near as much time for all that. There'd be work, getting the kids to and from school, making dinner, making sure they do their homework... 

Despite constant clips showing how uninformed the general public is, I trusted that with the wisdom of crowds and a few news junkies keeping their friends and families informed, it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

But 'the wisdom of crowds' only works when everyone interacts in good faith. When someone is motivated to manipulate the results, they can interfere with the process and skew it badly. (Sometimes people get so busy trying to play 5D chess that they overcomplicate things, too. I've had some ideas on the lines of the Simple Gifts song, but I don't think I'll get to that today.)

So anyways. If you are a news junkie, it seems like we're headed straight for doomsday.

The Supreme Court is going to turn the United States into Gilead, Trump or DeSantis will win in 2024 and it'll be a repeat of the rise of Hitler, but in the US this time. We aren't doing enough to stop climate change, and life will be wiped out on earth in twenty years. White christian nationalists are going to keep escalating the violence, and we'll wind up in a civil war. Putin will use nukes, China will attack Taiwan, something or other will happen and we'll all be embroiled in World War III... a devastating nuclear war that leaves the world in ruins. The rich will hoard all the wealth, turning the lower classes into the equivalent of slaves or serfs (the name will probably be different, but people will be unable to ever save up enough money not just for financial security, freedom, and independence but to do anything that will help better themselves.) After all, wealthy want people to be forced to accept crappy jobs at low wages with little to no benefits. Oh, and they're buying up all the houses and will force people to pay high rents... adding to financial instability. People will be stuck working crappy jobs that barely pay for room and board, watching all the wealth the company earns go to people who already have more than enough. And climate change will hit, but those wealthy 1%ers will go off to their little safe houses in places like New Zealand, while people who were never paid enough to save up for anything will get wiped out... financially if not literally... by the natural disasters headed our way.

Everywhere you look, it's fears like this that underlie everything. (I'm sure there are also fears I haven't listed here, mostly because I think it's obvious nonsense. Like the great replacement theory.)

If you go online, you see this everywhere. 

And yet...

And yet I want to my Little's high school graduation, where American families of all shapes and sizes came together to celebrate their kids.

And before covid, I took her to some of her high school football games... a time when many local American communities come together. 

Again, all shapes and sizes.

The news is full of fools acting ugly in public places, because it's NOT news when millions of Americans go to the grocery store and nothing happens.

I am cautious about taking this further, because it starts sounded eerily similar to Nixon's 'silent majority'...

Except that I don't think this 'silent majority' supports the things implied by Nixon.

I also don't want to read too much into it, because it doesn't matter if they don't vote. Midterms, especially, are hard to get any but the most dedicated partisans to pay attention to.

Plus, unfortunately, some are silent because they don't publicly want to admit to what they really think.

The silence regarding Trump's involvement in the Jan 6th attack on the capitol worries me for that reason. 

But... for the most part, all around the country, Americans come together in local high schools and local shopping centers, and do so peacefully. 

There might be a bit of eye-rolling, a bit of venting on social media about something they saw that bothered them (people not wearing masks, people wearing masks, people wearing 'Let's Go Brandon' shirts, people wearing rainbows, etc), and life goes on.

This, of course, is what accelerationists and the people trying to stoke tensions are bothered by. 

This humdrum, ordinary, getting on with your day routine gets in the way of... a lot of things. 

Both good and bad. After all, the people not out there protesting mask mandates are also not out there protesting the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Nor do they seem to understand the dangers threatening our democracy.

They're not out there paying attention and taking greedy fools to task, any more than they're standing up to the Proud Boys are calling for cops to weed out the white supremacists among them. They're not yelling 'Eat the Rich', and they're also not supporting the trucker's convoy. 

They just keep on getting on with life.

They provide inertia, and stability, and trying to get them energized and pointed in one direction is a herculean task. 

It's hard to tell what will truly stir them up, and to what degree.

And I'm not sure how much any decision made at the national level matters, here.

This has gotten long enough that I think I'll stop it here, and continue in the next post.