Raw Rage

I am angry!

Unfortunately, available emoticons are now with masks while covid-19 is still under “diagnostic uncertainty”. Hence this winding rant.

Lots of uncertainty and anxiety: will I catch covid-19 if I showed up at the gym? at school? at work (if still holding a job).

Anxiety: where do my checks come from after the first wave of stimulus. Where do I go shopping (if stores are still open – albeit limited hours – after all the looting).

There is a theory called “broken windows” in community re-building i.e. if a city block could fix up its boarded windows, it will create a wave of pride, a ripple effect & send out a positive message that urban life and the American Dream is alive and well.

Not tonight. Not last night. Not tomorrow night. No herd immunity. Just herd instincts.

Facism was on the rise during the aftermath of WWI (when unemployment rose and uncertainty abode). Good men stood by and walking men walked on by.

Strong-handedness (Nazis) “law and order” (Nixon) and Trickle-down Economy (Stockman), all have failed to “rise all boats”.

Where do these spontaneous outpouring of anger come from? Seems to me it is more out of frustration and helplessness. That no matter how flowery your rhetoric, reality speaks.

Being poor and oppressed. Being yourself? Being people of colored? Good luck.

Invisible man, inaudible voice.

To “blend in”, one needs a costume and outfit to be treated as “types” i.e. ball players, police officers, judges and lawyers, mathematicians or musicians.

Subject Matter Experts. Acceptance by the color of your skills, not of your skin. Anything of value and exploitable ( like “ghost work”, fact-checking in the age of AI and fake news).

Gotta play by the rules when deep down, you know it’s rigged.

It might get better over time. But it’s time that we don’t have. We’re passing grief and grievances on to the next generation. It has become their fight now, class 2020. Commencement speeches, virtual ones, urging graduates to “make your bed” (if they get up at all, after a long night at the loot) – UT 2019 (a marked shift in tone since “stay hungry” as of Steve Jobs).

Something is wrong with you i.e. the looters- said a black demonstrator on CNN. “Being blacks is a crime”, he continues. One strange phenomenon happens during Covid-19 era: the absence of school shooting. What school? and sadly, the absence of wise men council ( those who counsel Presidents, who speak the truth long or short). Instead, at his side, we found the perpetual presence of experts, in Health and Economics. Again, SME’s that fit the mold. Another clear sign of “exploitable expertise” at work.

The inmates attempt to run the asylum.

It took a long time and coordinated efforts in Architecture. In anarchy, it takes only seconds to set a city block on fire. Raw Rage which sends a message: with all your might, you live a hollow life. And the fabrics and fantasies of your own making cannot sustain. All those veneer and souvenir, Hawain shirts and designer jeans.

Click on it! On Amazon, whose storefront couldn’t be looted. And whose AWS is always humming inside secure bunkers; whose servers serve up all your wishes and whims, fill up your virtual and not virtuous life. Keep curating inside your bubble. Then finishing off this temporal life, being buried in a ply-wood box, nailed shut. Mirror, mirror, who is the fairest of all?

We have already died, having never lived, never seen the truth hence, not set free. Imagine a world where Pink Floyd sings about George Floyd getting a CPR (instead of “I can’t breathe”, not because of covid-19, but of cops).