Chaos Reigns

On some days, it feels like the world might be ending here in the US. Every single day something even more messed up than the day before seems to happen/have happened. Raising questions in regards to the future of democracy. Where is human decency? So many people in this country seem to have gotten completely, utterly lost, and I don't mean to say that in a condescending way, I just honestly think it's deeply sad. You can have different opinions, but -- human decency! Accepting everybody's equal value and rights and acknowledging systematic issues or something as basic as not being a complete fucking asshole? It is mind boggling. So much hatred there must be, so much hurt. There is such a need for healing.

I was thinking about that the other day - say Nasty Orange Monster loses the election (whether or not he'll pull some crazy stunt before than is another story), and Biden becomes the next president. What will happen to all the fanatic followers of the Trump movement, the conspiracy theorists, the people who found community within that group, people who have been overlooked for a long time and in desperation have come together in a way that enables complete madness and hatred? They won't go anywhere! They'll still be out there, in our very large country. What will happen when all of that hateful behavior has been enabled (the power of people in groups....) but the people in charge no longer represent that? Can they "snap out of it"? CAN THERE BE HEALING? (my hope is yes but it will be challenging). Or will there be a civil war? Honestly I'm not sure.

I've been thinking a lot about those people lately. The problem isn't just "Trump is a crazy motherfucker who used the weaknesses of "his" people in order to try to give himself authoritarian power" -- even though that certainly is true as well. These are people who also want to feel love, a sense of belonging, feeling respected and cared for. The political system here just doesn't support that.

I just really hope there will be some sort of redemption for these people. I am a sucker for redemption arcs after all.

There's obviously also the other problem of our current times on the internet, where we only see the people who have the same opinions as we do when we're on social media, and news are called out as "fake" left and right. We're not even discussing the same reality anymore (WHAT IS REALITY? LOOK OUTSIDE! And yet this country is so goddamn LARGE that not even that does the trick). And it's so unfortunate when, just like in Sweden or Europe in general, it is possible to feed that sense of dissatisfaction to the degree where political parties representing values that plainly just lack human decency are able to rise to power.

I don't know what picture to post that would represent these feelings. Here's a picture of some trees I saw the other day when I was hiking.