The World Feels More Dystopian Every Day
World-Weary is our title for a reason
Have you ever had a Conservative family member shove statistics at you about how Conservatives tend to be happier and less depressed than Progressives?
I have. I actually laughed in their face, because it really isn’t the ‘got’cha’ that they thought it was.
They thought they were showing me that I was miserable because of my politics.
Instead, they showed me how easy and blissful it is to not care about anything.
They showed me their lack of compassion on a scientific paper.
That’s the bitch of having a well-developed sense of empathy; we get hurt everytime somebody else is shown to be struggling. We feel sad all the time because we know how badly other people have it. We feel anxious and depressed because we pay attention to the direction the world is headed.
To a Conservative who only cares about their immediate situation, life is only bad when they are personally wrestling with something. Or when Fox News tells them to be mad about it.
Otherwise, life is just dandy! It’s easy to be happy when you don’t pay attention to human suffering at all.
Ignorance is bliss, apparently.
I’m World-Weary because I can’t look away. I know you can’t, either. It makes life scarier, and harder, because we see the dystopia as it builds around us. It was always there, honestly, but now it’s front and center.
People are starving. Governments are no longer caring about image, throwing restraint away and even committing genocide and invading other nations just because they can, diplomacy and decency be damned.
The most prosperous and wealthy country with one of the most advanced militaries in the world is being run by a man who is not fit for his office, hardly even present in his own mind most days, and clearly suffering from some sort of personality disorder that renders him unable to care for anything but himself.
He has abdicated his responsibility to take care of his people. He’s squeezing money out of them and leaving them for dead. He’s the ugly side of unregulated capitalism personified.
He’s cutting protections and regulations, throwing the switch to cut the brakes on Climate Change, no longer offering help to other countries and greedily swallowing up everything he can.
The whole world is suffering because of one man’s ego. He just keeps licking other people’s plates clean while they go hungry at the table.
And then you have the wars. Russia and Ukraine. South Sudan in civil war. Israel bombing Lebanon and Iran alongside the U.S., and Gaza reduced to rubble and chaos as innocent people try to dig the remains of their children from under the rocks that used to be their homes.
Famine. Climate chaos. Disease outbreaks — the threat of more pandemics, which is terrifying, and which we know after Covid-19 will not be taken as seriously as they should be.
And my country has finally fallen into a technical recession as a result of Trump’s trade war bullshit, which has once again ignited his avarice and triggered more talk of making us the ‘51st State.’
Even the U.S. ambassador to Canada is advocating for it, the piece of shit. Frankly he has no place here. He should be thrown out.
I’m fortunate. I have a roof over my head. I have a full-time job, even if it isn’t a high paying one. I have a spouse and family who love me, and I have access to healthcare and food and water.
But, since I have compassion for others, I can’t sleep. I look at Cuba, at Venezuela and at my own nation and I feel fear. How long before Trump does to us what he’s done to others? What he keeps threatening to do to Greenland?
If he tried, the U.S. would combust in an instant. There would be revolt, war, NATO would fracture, our friends would turn up to take our side. America would take us over for a while, but they couldn’t hold us.
Their own people would tear their country apart. I take comfort in that.
Still, that doesn’t mean he won’t try. He’s not well.
Our world right now is a dystopian hellscape. We have good days and bad days. But the trend is heading in a very bad direction, and we’d be fools not to pay attention. We would be callous not to care, even if it didn’t threaten us directly.
We’re World-Weary because the world is freakin’ exhausting.
Solidarity wins.