2020-07-29 // world on fire ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The world is on fire and I feel like I don't know what my part in it is. I am privileged. I'm a programmer, well-paid, and have a family to take care of. So I program, and we are provided for by the system that needs things programmed. I feel like I play the role of both prisoner and imposter. Prisoner, in that the system keeps me on a leash with just enough slack to continue to play my part-- and imposter, in that I want to see the system work in a more egalitarian way but am doing nothing to change it. Things are not okay right now, and not only with COVID. My country is pushing towards fascism with a boot on the throat of the poor and the black, and I don't like it. There's nothing NEW about the police state here-- it's been going on for the entire history of this country. But I thought things were pushing towards something better and they're just not. The authoritarians are doubling down, and OVERTLY. No semblance of hushed tones, just hatred. And yet, the systemic leash-- the cushy privilege I remain ever-tethered to, tugs me back to passivity. No. To be fair, that sentence needs a subject: *I* choose to remain tethered. I'm scared, and I recognize my privilege that I wasn't scared before. For every fear I have, I have not been persecuted for my very existence. I have not feared for my life by virtue of my identity. I have not been pulled over for merely EXISTING: driving while black. I have not been terrified of being murdered for being gender-nonconforming. I have known the mere taste of fear. I have been pulled over and felt my heart rate soar, even though the crime was so small that I could pay it by mail. That doesn't compare to the sheer terror that the police state forces upon brown-skinned people every day. The terror that becomes a part of you by its very nature of existence. I want us to do better than this. kvothe.