Category: PSA

Stop Being Awful

Two chicks resting in a person's hands.
Image: Duygu Güngör on Unsplash

Oh, my word. There has been such ugliness these past few days. First, I’m going to put this out there about how people are reacting to Joe Biden’s cancer. I think it says everything that needs to be said with respect to how a lot of MAGA people are calling the diagnosis “karma.”

Indeed. It seems empathy and compassion are completely shot in the U.S.

Look at what Congress and the Senate are doing. The current budget bill would pretty much destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. These odious Republicans are not going to be happy until the poor have nothing left to lose. It’s very short-sighted of them. See: France, 1789. Tell ya what, though. Most people aren’t going to care about which party someone belongs to when it comes to putting heads on pikes. At that point, all politicians are going to look the same because deep down, most of them are. Cory Booker, I’m looking at you. (Booker voted to approve Ivanka Trump’s felonious father-in-law as ambassador to France.) You’re not much better, Bernie Sanders, what with your comments on “identity politics.” Thanks for reminding us all that you are, at heart, an obliviously privileged cis-het white male.

And then my heart just broke today when I read of the 14,000 chicks abandoned in a hot USPS truck for three days without food and water so that nearly 4,000 of them died. Who in heaven’s name made it legal to ship chicks through the mail?

If you’d like to help with a donation, foster, or adoption, the name of the shelter that is caring for them is First State Animal Shelter and SPCA. You can make a donation through their website.

Yep. People need to stop being awful.

Use Your Words, Use Your Feet

Went to the protest yesterday in D.C. There was one in every state capital. My friends thought the turnout was okay. I thought it was anemic, myself.

Maybe the Make America Healthy Again Commission will stir people action. Here’s something that I am wagering will put a lot of people, especially parents, on alert.

“Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.”

Okay, so that’s the reason. Forget all the other crap surrounding it. They want to build a war machine with other people’s kids, because it damn sure isn’t going to be Barron Trump out there in the frontlines.

And here’s where they come for the mental health and obesity meds, section 5, item iii:

“…assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs”

Wormhead RFK, Jr. has already put forth the preposterous notion of creating “camps” where people can go to “work off” their substance and alcohol use disorder. Yeah, no. I will lay money he’s on Suboxone and lying through his teeth about his own treatment, but beyond that, while the very notion of any kind of “camp” coming out of this regime (and let’s call it what it is, a regime, not an adiministration) is terrifying, doing that for substance and alcohol use disorder is absolutely absurd from a medical point of view.

Folks, I’m going to say this bluntly: If you’re complacent, you’re complicit. Sitting back and letting other people do the hard work of trying to preserve some semblance of democracy in this country isn’t going to fly. Nag your elected officials. Bombard the White House with correspondence. Post on your socials. SHOW UP.

Your next chance to take action is the Nationwide Economic Blackout on Friday, February 28. No Amazon, WalMart, or BestBuy. In fact, I wouldn’t buy anything that day unless it was from a small, independent business, preferably Black- or woman-owned.

Your next chance to stand up and say something is Stand Up for Science, which will likely be on Friday, March 7. Take the day off and show up.

Nah, I’m not couching this like “do what you can.” I’m couching this like “do what you should.” Most of us have not had to see a draft. Most of us have not engaged in combat. Most of us have sacrificed absolutely NOTHING to preserve our own rights and freedoms. So there’s no excuse not to get off your ass and do something simple like write to your elected officials and walk around for a few hours at a protest. That is minimal effort.

They’re coming for you. They’re coming for your kids and grandkids to use them as pawns in expansionist wars.

DO SOMETHING.

Letter to White Women

TO MY FELLOW WHITE WOMEN:

I see parallels between 4B (the movement in which women are swearing off dating, sex, and marriage with men, as well as childbearing) and Black women walking away from us. Just as all women reserve the right to not trust men because of their history of harm toward us, so do Black women reserve the right to not trust us. Just as you want men to stop the “not all of us” nonsense, don’t do it to Black women.

You may have voted for Harris. You may be a fierce advocate. You may have written letters and made phone calls and canvassed. You may check your internalized bias and do perspective-taking every day. You may have acknowledged your privilege and strive to use it to tear down what’s wrong and replace it with what’s right.

But no one knows that by looking at you, and part of the work is understanding this. Empathy demands that if we feel compelled to respond to Black women’s social media and other discussion about how they are withdrawing from White women, our response would be “I can’t blame you.”

P.S. Blue bracelets aren’t going to cut it. It’s like when a man says “I’m a nice guy.” I don’t know about you, but my response to that is “Talk is cheap.” Another part of the work is not wanting or expecting recognition for doing it. The work is doing what’s right ONLY because it’s right.