the big freeze

I spend a downright ludicrous amount of time wishing whatever I’m currently doing would end. Even activities I chose to do, situations I put myself in of my own volition. I feel as though I live my entire life staring at a clock, waiting for…well, frankly I have no clue. I walk so fast and pass so many other pedestrians, you would think I actually had somewhere to be. This isn’t intended to be a piece of political analysis, I promise, but as we navigate another election season, I can’t help but feel my fast-walking tendencies carry over into my political outlook. Accelerationist is a specific term with a specific meaning that I don’t personally subscribe to, but I can say with confidence that I have made peace with certain inevitable truths. I am someone who believes things will get much worse before they get any better (if they get any better), and I am not so afraid of things getting worse that I’ll do anything to avoid it. That seems to be an unpopular point of view. My first impulse is actually quite simple: if I support someone’s ideology I will cast a vote for them. Seeing as though that would end with my voting for either no one or some write-in of my choosing, many people would call that vote selfish. “Neither candidate is pro-Palestine so you may as well vote for the one who hates women less” is what many would say. “A non-vote is a vote for Trump” is what many would say. “Compartmentalize! Prioritize! The greater good [of people in the US] should be your primary concern” is what many would say.

Four-ish years ago I tweeted:

“I think a lot of people’s feelings right now aren’t about breathing deep sighs of relief but about shades of respite. it’s not that any of the things threatening our safety will disappear, but that the rhetoric coming from the top down won’t be so overtly persecutory.

We are ofc going to have to fight Joe on everything. He doesn’t stand for much. But bold lies, explicit defense of white supremacy, inciting violence, letting thousands fall to the current plague due to medical science denial, climate denial, etc are really hard to work with.”

And these are tweets that I partially stand by because Joe truly doesn’t stand for much, and I do believe Biden has been easier to push left than Trump (the sequel) would have been. I say partially though because the white supremacy and medical science denial are of course still hanging around in many respects. More to the point, I don’t believe it possible to push him as far left as I need him to be. To do that would require the disassembling of the imperial project that both Democrats and Republicans live to uphold. This brought me to a prior belief, that a system that holds our votes hostage like this and labels voting with one’s conscience a “selfish act” is fundamentally a broken one. Being forced to play a game I never asked to play in a country my ancestors never asked to inhabit is an unfortunate turn of events indeed. But upon reflection, I arrived at a scarier thought still. If this were simply about making a personal choice to divest from a system I think of as defective, then I could simply turn my attention to the municipal. I could focus on being a force for good in my local community, supporting mutual aid, voting in local elections where impact is infinitely more tangible and there is actually a possibility of candidates even remotely aligned with the abolitionist principles I hold near and dear. But the fact of the matter is that there is only one way to vote for Donald Trump, and that is to vote for Donald Trump. It seems to me that a great number of Trump voters want Donald Trump to (again) be the President of the United States. I don’t know how true it is that a great number of Biden voters want Joe Biden to (again) be the President of the United States. I do know for a fact that a great number of Biden voters want not-Donald-Trump, and Joe Biden presents himself as the most obvious candidate for that position. If the rift is between active desire on one side and taking what we can get on the other, perhaps I’ve reached the end of my time in my home country. Horrified, I began to think it possible that if millions of people in a country want a particular person to run it, maybe that person should. Maybe I’m in the wrong place, and everything I want is anti-aligned with where this country is so clearly headed. After all, I was born here by no choice of my own, the product of undeniably violent forces, so why would I ever expect this place to become what I need it to be? I’ve long believed it necessary to stay and fight for the people that can’t leave, but if I run myself into an early grave, what was it for? Is it on me to change the hearts and minds of a populace that doesn’t want what I want, or is it for me to find one that does?

I only recently watched Liz Garbus’ documentary about Nina Simone “What Happened, Miss Simone?” and I found myself greatly disturbed. The weight of the reality of this country and the death and decay that makes it possible to wake up and go to work each day, this weight wore away at Ms. Simone’s ability to pretend well enough to function. The firsthand accounts from her daughter, of her departure to Africa and subsequent shifts in mental state. The mental illness and medication. Her eventual return to Europe, the old world heart of empire. I began to wonder, where would I go? Should I seek to escape the walls I feel closing in, where would I go? The country I’m in doesn’t want me, but which one does? I could go to the so-called Motherland with my US passport and bring my western colonial attitudes and privileges with me. I could go to Europe or Australia and encounter a slightly different flavor of the anti-Blackness with which I’m familiar, albeit with fewer guns. I could go elsewhere and encounter totally new flavors of anti-Blackness altogether. Any hope I had of belonging in this world hopped into the sea during the middle passage, and a slice of cornbread and some hot sauce is the closest I’m going to get. Beyond the walls currently closing in were only more walls, also waiting to close in. Suddenly I understood why people run into traffic. I understood why the headlights could look like salvation. I think I even began to understand why lighting oneself on fire seemed like a necessary act. Simultaneously, I understood why people order bottomless mimosas and work for Google and become billionaires or die trying and dream of yachts and beaches in Spain and vote blue no matter who. I understood why people followed organized religion, like my mother who never votes and believes that God will do whatever He deems necessary and it’s all out of our hands. All of these options were so unfathomably preferential to embracing the truth. Remembering the Nina Simone documentary, I took a breath and resolved not to let the truth ruin me. Leaving may be a choice that I eventually make for my own wellbeing, knowing that no place on Earth holds legitimate solutions to my problems, but that says nothing of what action I’ll take in November, or what the future holds for the (stolen) land I currently inhabit.

We’re back to things getting worse. I’ve accepted that staying and fighting, if that’s what I do, won’t look like changing hearts and minds, it’ll look like ushering in change by force. The hearts and minds that don’t change will simply have to move out of the way. January 6, 2021 demonstrated that pretty gorgeously. Or perhaps gruesomely. I think there will only be more unrest, more revolt, more death, but on both sides. What remains to be seen is how my vote, or lack thereof, this November will affect that process. Casting aside for a second the reality that I’m one person and my vote will not be deciding anything, there are multiple questions that arise pertaining to what I believe to be inevitable violence: Will refraining from voting hasten the onset of that violence? Does that frighten me? Will voting for Biden delay that violence, kicking the can further down the road? Does that frighten me? Amusingly, I’ve heard just about every justification for every course of action imaginable. If Biden wins, we can push him left (the argument I bought into in 2020). If Biden loses, the Democrats will be aware they can’t use fear to force feed us candidates we don’t like and give us someone further left. If Biden loses, the Democrats will speak to the growing tide of conservatism by giving us an even more centrist candidate that can turn Republicans. If Biden wins things stay the same, but if Trump wins they get worse. The take home for all of these being “truly voting with your conscience means playing the game, anything else is selfish and immoral.” Effectively, we’re choosing between the status quo or the state of affairs so dire that it saw the most politically engaged US populace I’ve seen in my (admittedly young) life thus far. For many, this is an incredibly easy choice. For me, it actually isn’t. I’ll restate that I am someone who believes things will get much worse before they get any better (if they get any better), and I am not so afraid of things getting worse that I’ll do anything to avoid it. What I know for sure, is that regardless of what I do or don’t do in November and what does or doesn’t happen next, I sincerely believe in the capacity of those with dreams of abolishing and rebuilding to foster communities that value each other’s safety, and organize to push for something beyond the status quo. I’ve got friends exhibiting all manner of investment in and divestment from the system at hand, and I see value in all of their approaches. It is my belief that good work can be done both within and without the system, and solid arguments can be made to invest or divest at a variety of levels. Some people who have stumbled upon this piece doubtlessly feel differently and believe me to be one of those goofy lefty political purists who prioritizes their own morality over the good of all. I’m at peace with the fact that you think that! I’m at peace with a lot of aspects of my own being because I’ve recently had a surplus of time to arrive here.

In January, after returning from an astronomy conference in New Orleans, Nashville had a snow day. Actually, we had a few snow days. With everything cancelled, I rested and recuperated from the conference, reflected on what it means to enter a new year, deleted the gay apps from my phone, and relearned how to like myself. I already loved myself, I really do mean like myself. It’s a dangerous thing, to like and trust oneself. It allows you to become so firm in your convictions you’re willing to choose yourself over some people. Right when the clutches of isolation would have snapped me up, I heard word from the people in my life who actively choose me. Three different friends I hadn’t heard from in a while reached out to ask how I was doing. One of them even scheduled a Zoom chat and bought me dinner. Within days, more old friends reached out. Someone I met while traveling in the UK last summer shocked me with a sudden check in. Even more recently, as of a couple weeks ago, a couple dear friends here in Nashville invited me for dinner, an almost weekly occurrence at this point, and reminded me that I’m welcome in their home literally whenever. Even unannounced, though I’d literally rather than die than show up at someone’s door unannounced. These are the people who will stop the walls from closing in on me. I’m figuring out my own course of action relative to this nation, and this journey is for me alone. I don’t intend to disclose my choice this November. I have no interest in influencing others to do what I do. I must live with myself and ultimately die with myself, so that’s my primary metric. Regardless of what happens, a long road lies ahead and hopefully we can all agree that the voting booth is one battleground out of infinitely many. Maybe it turns out that this particular battle is one I’ve lost faith in, but I’m still all in for the war. If you disagree with me that’s fine, if you’re angry with me that’s also fine, if you think I’m a complete fool that’s just as well. I’ll be here regardless.

As I write this, I feel as though I’m doing something worse than shouting into the void. I’m shouting at a full audience, each member of which is going to call my judgment and intellect into question for a different reason. I don’t know if you know what it feels like to disagree at least slightly with every word that has ever graced your ears. It makes me feel as though everyone I come into contact with is cursed to miss one word from every sentence that I utter, with different people missing different words. No one knows exactly what I’m saying, but they get close. During the big freeze, I left behind mourning my inability to be seen fully and instead celebrated the fact that so many people in my life are willing to try.