Content Warning for discussions of the latest news from the supreme court, modern existential despair, gun violence, and a hefty dose of pessimism mixed with anxiety.

I wish I wasn’t ending another week with a dour, frustrated post, but Fridays are usually when I’m the most exhausted and when things are finally hitting the “this is the last straw” point. I mean, I didn’t have a great week, but it wasn’t terrible. I even started today in a decent mood. That mood quickly faltered in the face of the latest news from the Supreme Court, since there’s apparently nothing they love more than absolutely destroying Human Rights during the month of June (happy end-of-pride month to us all). It’s boggling, at times, the lengths that people will go to in order to justify their shitty opinions and the hate they feel in their hearts for their fellow humans. I can’t stand it. I can, unfortunately, believe it. I grew up with someone who was a high-functioning sociopath (I’ll admit I’ve never been privy to any of his mental health diagnoses, but having grown up as his primary victim, I feel pretty qualified to comment), so I’m incredibly familiar with how easy it is for some people to see the existence of others as nothing more than a tangent of their own lives at best and entirely immaterial at worst. It is the epitome of the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude that so many incredibly vocal people seem to adopt in response to people wanting to make the world better for themselves and the people around them. So yes, I believe it, but I still hate it.

I’ve found myself struggling with what to do about all this. I’m already donating what money I can afford to charities working on addressing these problems. I vote. I have uncomfortable discussions with people who say they’re open to having their minds changed. I write to and call my elected officials. I do my best to participate in protests when I have the spoons required (and can afford to take time away form work). I do my best to stay active and engaged, despite how exhausted I am all the times. None of it seems to be having an effect on the world around me. Nothing seems to be changing. Sure, it might be too early to tell for some things (like the election of a democratic judge to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, ending the conservative majority), but most of the stuff happening in the world is the results of decades of effort and the slow destruction of democracy as those at the top warp the system so they can stay in power. There’s no quick fixes to that and I frequently find myself despairing that anything will every change for the better.

I saw someone share a tweet that said the writer had been talking to their parents about how, at this point, no one under forty expects anything good to ever happen again. Everything that happens is either neutral or horrible. I mean, sure, it feels good that the rail workers unions eventually got their sick days, but is that really a GOOD thing or is it just an improvement to a horrible situation that feels “good” because things have been bad for so long? It’s not like they have a great PTO policy now. So many other first-world countries have much better policies for every worker in their society and we’re supposed to think that attaining the bare-minimum is a good thing? Sure, all victories should be celebrated, even if they’re small, but something being better than before doesn’t make it good. There’s a whole, MASSIVE range of terrible results between the worst possible outcome and a net-neutral outcome. A negative outcome is still a negative outcome, even if it is better than what you expected to get.

It’s difficult to live in this mental space, of continuing to press forward and do what I can to help bring about change while also keeping in mind that there’s still a lot of work to do. It is exhausting, on top of also being rather destructive to my morale. I don’t think I could manage to keep going, though, if I wasn’t honest with myself about the progress society is making (or unmaking, as the case may be). I’d wind up burying my head in the sand, going into denial, or ignoring the news until it arrived on my doorstep. A style of life I am morally opposed to living. Yes, taking breaks is important, but so is staying informed and aware so you can be active when it matters. It’s just exhausting that it only ever seems to be one step forward followed by a dozen human rights violations rocketing us backward. I’d really love to see that changed. Either by changes in legislation or by the total replacement of this government. It’s had a good run. Clearly it’s not working very well and maybe we should try turning it off and back on again.

We’re rapidly getting to the point where total societal collapse isn’t going to be much worse than daily life for minorities and oppressed people. I mean, given how many rights are being stripped away from everyone but straight, white, cis men and how the Supreme Court is apparently concerned that denying guns to people with domestic abuse restraining orders against them might be a violation of the second ammendment, I’m genuinely concerned it is going to become legal to just shoot people in the street. We’re already letting people do that to protesters and letting the cops know they won’t face any legal issues if they stand by and let people be murdered, so how much longer until we just abandon any pretense of living in a civil society and disintegrate into an ahistorical “might makes right” post-society ruin?

I hope it never gets that bad. I genuinely hope it never falls apart quite that drastically. It just feels more and more like we’re going to hit that point as people dismantle any pretense the US has had of being a functional democracy and equal society.