The peripheries of social media have another young
person dead today – suicide or drug overdose are the two consistent ones,
though both are symptoms of the same overall disease afflicting us all. And
also it’s payday which means I calculate how I continue to have more bills than
pay, despite a decent job, mostly due to medical debt despite insurance, and
there’s like two parallel universes playing out it seems. On one hand I see the
death and despair and constant struggle and people just trying to have a
fucking smile on their face despite everything around them squeezing harder and
harder and harder. And then on the other side I see social media streams of
folks on perpetual vacation, smiling children beaming the confident smiles of
comfort. Adults living a playful lifestyle, posting positivity memes, without
recognizing how much harder it is take a deep breath and remain calm when you
are in a position where everything is squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.
Eric Garner’s police murder death where he was choked while struggling to say “I
can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” has always seemed a fitting statement for the
state of American culture and civilization in this 21st century.
Access to inherited wealth is such a huge thing
that’s overlooked in this country. The ability to be self-righteous, and have
the comfort to sleep in often enough that it’s easy to appear woke when you
step out your house, which you have no trouble paying for. I have a good job,
make good money, but no access to any family wealth whatsoever, none, which
means I am fighting a losing battle every paycheck. There will be no retirement
for people like me, ever. There will either be some sort of devastating illness
which breaks the hand-to-mouth cycle and puts me on the streets to begin the
slow spiral downwards, or if I am lucky I will remain healthy and get to live a
mostly-confined, sub-dreamlike existence in my old age. I am hopeful I remain
healthy, and my mental faculties do not diminish too badly, and I can make the
creative most of that latter confined option. I say all this readily
acknowledging I have a better job with better pay than a lot of people. And I’m
still fucked. I know there are so many being crushed harder than me, struggling
even harder to breathe every day. That’s why people are out here fucking with
heavier drugs, and taking their own lives. I’ve contemplated both options
myself multiple times in the past few years. Why not just be high as fuck in an
opioid cloud? If it’s a 50-50 chance I end up by the river homeless, why not be
high while I’m there?
It is hard not to be resentful of those who speak
to you as if they have it all figured out, while they have done so from the
economic comfort of having access to wealth. This doesn’t mean rich,
necessarily, but having family you can borrow from, people to make down
payments for you, or who you can access times of crisis. Or just wealth built over
generations that you can utilize to travel, take those five trips abroad every
year, or the beach vacation that happens. It’s hard not to be resentful of the
beach vacations, or the small business plans enabled by some unseen wealth.
Anyways, I’ve had dreams of a low rider too,
classic car, candyflake, Dayton rims, just riding around on a weekend, where
the weeks actually still end, instead of this constant struggle against the
inevitable end of this American empire era. I’m not sure I’ll be able to ever
realize those classic car dreams, unless something magical happens to my life,
but they are still there. It is interesting how even the trickle down, which
was never all that real, is less than it used to be. I don’t see a lot of
cruising going on. Far less Caprices on rims with fresh paint bopping around
town than I saw ten years ago. Welcome to the end of the American empire, which
is crushing people left and right, but we keep up these social media
performances of hypeness and happiness and hopefulness, and people are
tormented by dreams of just having a decent hooptie to tool around in. Nobody
can breathe, because the metaphysical air has been completely poisoned. The
game is technically already over, but we are in the pretending stage right now,
cosplaying American dreams still.
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