Today’s been a real shit show [I originally wrote this on the day the US Supreme Court dismantled Roe v Wade, but it’s felt true pretty much every day since then]. In the past few weeks of judicial bullshit, the Supreme Court Injustices have wrecked more shit on rights for citizens of the US than any other time in my life as a socially-conscious adult Human. If I hadn’t spent time a few weeks ago looking up ways to write about being incandescently furious, wounded, and positively apoplectic, I would be at a loss for words! Instead, I’ve got all these wonderful ways to talk about the grave injustices, loss of rights, and anti-democratic hanky-panky being pulled by the pro-fascism side of my country’s government. Still, even armed as I am with words aplenty, I can’t help but feel none of them are adequate to the task of describing how I feel in this moment.

In order to cross this bridge of inexpressable emotion, I’m gonna borrow the words of other people. Like this artist, Faith Erin Hicks, who pointed out the seeming inherent futility of any creative endeavor in moments like this (though her expression focused primarily on comics, I feel it as well as I try to write blog posts right now). Her art is pretty great in general, so I recommend following her if you’re in need of some escapism. My favorite disability in gaming advocate, Steven Spohn, set aside his normally polite tone and, with some censoring to prevent Twitter from hiding his messages, makes it abundantly clear how difficult and frustrating it is to be an empathetic person right now. One of my favorite online coffee providers shared a quick and far-from-exhaustive set of messages about how to protest in a safe manner in the modern era. Sure, there is much more to good information security when attending a protest that might get “spicy,” but most people just need an introduction as the events of day-to-day life change from humdrum to radicalizing as the far-right zealots wade further and further into removing as many human rights as possible.

Sure, it would have been good if people got this angry every time some shit-for-brains starts talking about bathroom safety bullshit or teenaged trans athletes wanting to participate in high school sports, but I’ll take what I can get. Better to become a radical before you’re the only ones left, even if you’re a few steps behind nipping this horrible bigotry in the bud. It’s not like any of this is happening in isolation. It’s all a part of consolidating power, forcing people to hide from the public eye, and controlling everyone who isn’t a rich white person. Anyone who thinks it is about anything else is fooling themselves. It’s not like the right-wing reactionary Republicans are going to allow anyone who isn’t a part of that club actually stay a member of it. They’ll kick out their “allies” who aren’t rich white men as soon as they’re done locking everyone else up (as they’ve proven through their exclusion of the “Log Cabin Republican” group).

I have a lot more anger built up as I’m writing this, but I’ve largely run out of coherent words to put down. I’ve written and deleted a few paragraphs of text that are just angry rambling and while I think there is sometimes value in committing to the rage you’re feeling, I don’t think any of that adds to what I’ve already said. So instead I’ll end by asserting that trans rights are human rights, black lives matter, abolish the police, respectability politics is bullshit and a losing game since “respectability” is defined by those who already have power, and LGBTQIA+ people should not be forced to live in the closet.

Normally, I’d adjust all my posts so I can post a reaction-centric post like this right after whatever event unfolded, but I’m going to have a busy weekend now and I don’t expect any of this to be less important a week from now, when I’ve figured out how I’m going to respond to all of this bullshit in the long-term. Maybe things next week will look as different from today as today looked from Monday, but I doubt it will be in a positive manner if they do. The past few weeks have dispelled any illusions of things just spontaneously getting better due to the systems and people who are currently in power. They’d rather just wring their hands and solicit donations because it is unfortunately true that they’re better than the alternative. Though it’s not like they’ve actually stopped any of this shit from happening, just made it more difficult for the far-right to make it happen. Fucking moderates.