Do We Stand for Anything?

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 22, 2018 |

This country shrugs its shoulders when Russia meddles in our elections. When a journalist is murdered overseas, we cite the number of jobs we might lose if we take a stand for the freedom of the press. Republicans spent eight years trying to dismantle Obamacare and preexisting conditions, and even as Mitch McConnell is saying that the GOP will take another whack at it if they have the numbers after the midterms, the GOP claims to be standing up for healthcare. States like Kansas, Florida, and Georgia are actively suppressing minority votes, purging voters rolls or closing down all the polling stations in a Kansas city that is 60 percent Hispanic and moving the one polling location outside the city, a mile from the closest bus route. The President is making up riots in California. He’s cozying up to dictators. He ignores, bullies, or mocks sexual assault survivors. He’s using the courts to take away a woman’s right to choose. He’s using his office to enrich himself and his family. He calls those who stand up to him angry mobs. He tried to dismantle the NFL because Black men with a voice dared to use it. He takes children away from their parents. He ignores scientific reporting that suggests that time is running out on our opportunity to save the planet. This Administration is trying to define transgender people out of existence. The President of the United States makes up shit every single day designed to incense people. He is cruel for the sake of cruelty.

It’s become impossible to keep up with the list of daily injustices, and that seems to be the point. Overwhelm the media. Overwhelm the populace. Turn us all into Jessica Chastain spitting out wine corks and asking ourselves, “Does it even matter?” because if we tell ourselves that it doesn’t for long enough, we will start to believe it. And if it doesn’t matter, why should we bother? The privileged among us can just hide, can’t we? We’ll be fine! They’re not coming after us. We can just take our tiny tax cuts, hide out in our liberal enclaves, and drink our lattes and fawn over the pictures in our Instagram feed. It’d be so easy just to give up, wouldn’t it? To roll our eyes at all the daily horrors and hide behind the latest episode of This Is Us while the President of the United States literally tries to define human beings out of existence. When an old white man yells racist insults at a black woman on a plane, we can stare into our magazines and pretend it’s not happening because it’s not happening to us.