9/16/24

In 2009, my Dad brought home from the library 6 VHS copies of the Star Wars movies, eager to expose his children to the films he had cared so much for at around the same age. At 7 years old, the excitement I felt seeing laser swords swipe through stormtroopers, and fuzzy brown creatures joyously celebrate the fall of the Empire. It was an immediate connection between me and these movies that, had my father not chosen to show my sister and me at such a young and formative age, most likely would not have had as much of an impact on my years to come had I seen them later in life. However, as the faithful Star Wars fan he was, he chose to show us the prequel trilogy after we had concluded Return of the Jedi, just as he wanted us to share in his appreciation for arguably one of the most influential franchises to date, he also wanted us to share in the experience of knowing who Darth Vader was before we saw his upbringing in the closes years of the Jedi Order. Phantom Menace came and went, and although the dread and fear of seeing who I had assumed was going to be the titular Jedi master of the prequels be killed off before the conclusion of the third act, the previous loss of Obi-Wan, and Yoda had prepared me for such saddening losses. It wasn't until the final shot of Attack of the Clones, in which the Sith Lord stood on Geonosis, watching the army that I knew was to become the Storm Troopers Luke, Leia, and Han had fought so valiantly against, that a new and peculiar feeling crept into the back of my mind as I realized the bad guys had won. And it was only going to get worse by the end of the next film, connecting the characters I had learned to love to the Jedi-barren world of the original three movies. Despite this new and tough learning lesson, I knew the Jedi would win in the end, and evil would be ridden from the galaxy once and for all. And I carried such confidence with me for the next seven years, assuring that, no matter what, everyone would band together to keep on the good side of right and wrong, and that just like in Star Wars, and Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean, no matter how bad things got, good guys always won. 

In 2016, I sat in a Downtown bar that was broadcasting the presidential election, with tension higher than I had ever noticed it being before, as Pennsylvania hung in the balance of the final decision. By the time a decision had yet to be called, my grandparents folded under the growing bags under my eyes and drove me home. My family had always been more politically involved than it felt my friends and their parents seemed to be, but I couldn't help but feel bored, if not completely uninterested, in following along with an election that seemed as though there was a very obvious right answer, and a very obvious bad guy trying to persuade some against it. I had already seen the better of two evils win twice in my lifetime and couldn't fathom why anyone would question who would win in an election that felt like a sure deal. I had grown up a substantial amount since my original realization that the good guys don't always win, but I was still only 14, naive to a majority of the world beyond what I had physically seen before me. Without a phone to be allowed my conception of good and bad, and politics being too taboo to be discussed outside of the comfort of one's home, my mind was set on the only idea I had been exposed to. By the time I woke up the following morning, my father somberly knocked on my door and told me the bad news before even wishing me a good morning. 

 In 2020, I followed the pipeline the majority of my conscious years had led me down. Growing up in a conservative, if not traditional, environment, it felt like it was up to me and those with a shared mindset to make our existence known. We needed more opinions, and more vocalization of what the minority felt should be more broadly accepted, so I, like many others in the months in which little else was being focused on, became consumed by the political state we found ourselves seemingly surrounded by. More than ever before, it was a battle of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white opposing opinions for which there was only one right answer, and all others were to be dismissed. For what it's worth, despite the radicalization mine and many others' minds were facing at the time, I stayed pretty consistent with what I had already believed in. It just so happened that those who agreed had a large following of those who only agreed because everyone else was. But as the voices of those who felt they needed to be heard grew louder and angrier with the now very apparent ignorance to them, so did the voices of those who vehemently disagreed about the necessity for them to be heard at all. Polarity became more polarized, but increasingly blurred as supposed "good" and "bad" sides became more passionate in their fight to prove that the "opposing" side were the ones in the wrong. I began to lose steam, not in my fight to vocalize the concerns of myself and those who needed to be heard, but for the existence of a right and wrong at all. In my eyes, the issues I cared for were not political, nor something that required a fight at all, but rather objective truths for someone who wanted people to be people, and just wanted basic human rights to not be a call to action at all. 

In 2022, as I sat at my desk, reading popular articles and necessary media to fuel whatever tangent I would later decide to write about within the first few months of my blog existence, I got a notification from TikTok about the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Despite the admitted idiocy of our elected officials, we had at least put up a good enough fight to get a man whose only real claim to fame is being a "successful businessman" with multiple bankruptcies out of the White House. Politicians have never been our friends. Above anything else, that much has always been kept in the back of my mind. Simply put, one person cannot make everyone happy, and within a country that endured the disparity that the year 2020 caused, it was more than impossible that neither red, nor blue, would be capable of appealing to such a broad audience successfully. But this overture, an unnecessary, uncalled-for, evil act of disloyalty to approximately 51% of the country's population, many of which have zero alignment with the policies and religions that are eerily and rapidly growing a tighter grip around the country's throat, was a loss I could not and still not fathom. The bad guys had won, objectively and outright, with no plausible or excusable cause outside of religious principles that had no right have any ability to be enforced legally anywhere. The issues that 2020 caused reached much further than an economic crash and low employment rates, but a rapid growth of political and ideological conservancy that riots, protests, legislations, and movements had spent years attempting to undo; a backward step from any societal or human rights progress this country has made over the last few centuries. 

In 2024, we all seem to have lost. In high school, Ben Shapiro seemed radical. Today his 'facts over feelings' rhetoric seems somewhat mild in comparison to the statements made by officials elected and not on national television and broadcasted media with zero shame or remorse. Heroin chic is in, representation is enforced "wokeness", women are punched in the face in broad daylight and ejaculated on during their noon shift at Dollar General, and I have been compared to Jewish men that aided in the Nazi effort because I express disbelief in bombing humanitarian aid and medical tents as being beneficial to anybody's cause. Men with gums larger than their teeth admit that they would hypothetically force their 10-year-old daughter to give birth to a rapist's child rather than have access to abortions on videos with millions of views with comments saying he won the debate to be found. Presidential debates get more publicity on claims of animal consumption from transgender immigrants and argue over who loves a state committing genocide more than their opposing candidate. And real human beings are spending $6 and moving in with their parents straight out of college because a one-bedroom apartment is $1,500.00 in most cities while the 1% argue over whether or not access to healthcare is communism or not because they do not want to share the $1 billion worth of blood money in their pockets.

In the last few months, I have felt angrier than I have ever consistently felt. For a while, I thought the answer was social media, constantly pumping my timeline full of people with the same opinion arguing over who is more right, a random video of a heterosexual relationship portrayed as a queer one, and then a video of a woman mourning the death of her child. But social media has always been that way, simply presenting what the world around us is consuming, what we are all thinking about, and what is getting the most traction. The issue isn't that Twitter got bought by Elon Musk, or that the things you used to get bullied for liking are popular trends now. The issue is simply the world around us. Within the last few years, the only common ground anybody has is the amount of hatred we spew. Hatred at ourselves, hatred at each other, hatred for the world we live in, but none of it feels productive. I want to be able to blame the feelings I'm having on having access to the entire world, something no generation has been able to have in the past, and that things haven't actually gotten worse, they're just simply more in front of us than they ever have been before. And while I don't think thinking that is incorrect, I also think things have just gotten harder. I don't think the solution is to revert back to the mindset that politics don't leave the house, nor that befriending those with opposing views as your own will always work out in the end, but I do think we, and especially I, need to find a way to cope with these things. Information is always a good thing, and being in the know is never something I want to shut myself out from, but I do want more people to just press the "not interested" button on a post they don't like, rather than stitching and quoting and commenting about how wrong everyone else is. We have grown since 2020 when all we could do was share posts on stories and spread information to the best of our abilities, now I feel like all we can do is help when we can, and where we can. Make progress in the city around us, rather than the whole world. 

The "bad guys" didn't win, we just unfortunately have found ourselves in a time in history where their voices seem a lot louder than ours; the normal voices who just want things to be okay. The world is not actually falling apart, it just very much feels that way because the people in power have made it seem okay to act as evil as they all do. But just like we got to a point where evil people were crying for President Chomp to save them, and throwing hissy fits over black mermaids, and firing politicians pushing homophobic agendas for messily explaining why there are pictures of them in drag, as long as we ignore them and make it know what the normal, human, kind things to do and care about is, it will bounce back. They're the ones who stormed the capital, they're the ones with statistically lower IQs, and as long as we continue to act with grace, and kindness, and humanity, they're the ones who will continue to be laughed at by the entire rest of the world.