It's the End of the World As We Know It.

And I feel fine...

That’s great — it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and airplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid…

Lenny Bruce isn’t afraid and I’m not either.

This one’s gonna be ugly.

American alternative rock band R.E.M.’s song “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” is somewhat well known among my generation in the USA, a manic song slightly reminiscent of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” that reflects the paranoid energy of the average American paying attention to politics at the time. A fun little ditty whose upbeat tones belie the political turmoil to come, not the least because the brunt of that political turmoil would not be faced by the average American.

Living in the imperial core is a privilege. Regardless of your gender expression, your skin color, your visible religious alignment, your level of disability — the fact that I can toddle my way to the dollar store down the bluff from me and buy cheap food, supplies, and toys is something I couldn’t do during my recent aid run to Cuba, a 48-hour experience where I and some compatriots stuffed our checked luggage and carry-ons full of requested aid for our contacts to distribute in Cuba, where people walk around with wads of cash and nothing to buy with it. Article coming soon.

R.E.M.’s little ditty reminding me that in 40 years nothing has changed for American politics came on as I drove to the methadone clinic Wednesday to distribute Narcan, hygiene supplies, HIV self-test kits, and more. Given that Trump had just won the 2024 USA elections by damn near a landslide, I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

I spent my recent birthday thinking I’d swallow lethal doses of trazodone and oxycodone after everyone left the party, a latent suicidality that’s been more pronounced ever since I returned from Ghazzah as a volunteer medic with 5 cm of shrapnel piercing my leg to the bone. Waking up to find that the expected had indeed come to pass did not increase nor decrease my already waning bout of lethal depression; unlike so many so-called ‘leftists’ with whom I share a US passport and little else, I couldn’t really be bothered to give a fuck. My material conditions only worsened under Biden, and I didn’t expect they would improve under Harris; more importantly, I am sick to death of the complacency of American leftists, even the ones who self-ID as communists and anarchists and what have you.

For many white left-libs and rad-libs across the USA, it was the end of the world as they knew it. For me, someone who hasn’t stopped seeing the face of every martyr I held in my arms ‘til they died in Gaza, it was another fucking Wednesday.

It’s perhaps naive to hope that this will galvanize cunts into doing something. Liberal yanks, no matter what they self-ID as, love voting for the same reason they love language politics. It requires so little effort. White Yanqui kweers who would crumble under a fraction of what I’ve been through can’t fathom that there is a reality beyond electoral politics, despite Harris’s inability to even promise to protect trans people or abortion rights. But in truth, I know that the material conditions for my compatriots in the global south would’ve changed little no matter which imperialist scum took office, and that more than anything fills me with a burning desire to [redacted].

What liberals are mourning is not the loss of real freedom; ostensibly Americans will still by and large be fine, and those already suffering from America’s fascism like Black folks and trans folks of color and non-white immigrants and sex workers will still have access to resources afforded to them by the imperial core that are not available to those same demographics in the global south. They’re weeping because they can no longer pretend that the world in which we live in will be fixed by electoral politics. The mask has been torn off and the rotting, flayed skin of a dying empire is now exposed for all the world to see. Ironically, everyone outside the USA seemed to already see it, which is why watching white faggots have melt-downs on social media has spanned from amusing to enraging to baffling for all parts of me.

One thing I can’t help but suspect is that the average white American (and some nonwhite ones, too) loves the thought of being a victim. They fetishize and pedestal their own oppression while ignoring the imperialism that deals 10x worse abroad, because first of all, they benefit from it. It’s nice to be able to go to the dollar store and get a packet of six menstrual pads for 1.25. (When I was in Cuba, the same pack costed 1900 pesos, the same as a serviceable cheap meal at a restaurant.) Second, they’re suffering too — why should they concern themselves with the genocide in Palestine, Sudan, Tigray & Ethiopia, West Papua, and so forth? Being a victim soothes them, because it means they can pretend they’re in solidarity with the martyrs of Palestine and the mass rape victims of Sudan rather than imperial pigs benefiting from the spoils in those regions. It frees them of guilt.

Bad news, dipfucks: fascism’s been here for a while even if you personally were too comfortable or scared to admit it. And your material conditions, no matter your status in the USA, are in no way comparable to that of the average citizen of the Global South and if you’re too stupid or guilt-ridden to admit that, you should just shut the fuck up.

I’m watching people talk about holding grief circles. Images with the contact info for suicide hotlines and warmlines fly on social media. Tweets are twatted suggesting that it’s the fault of people like myself (Muslim, apathetic, legally can’t vote) that this happened. My phone blows up with people ‘checking in’ on me. Idiots who sound like Marvel-character rejects talk about resisting and “going down swinging” though they couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger during the last year of a well-publicized genocide. Someone posts a picture of a salad full of vegetables almost certainly picked by underpaid, trafficked immigrant labor and proclaims themself a ‘second-class’ citizen and I fervently hope they off themself before I do. I resist the continuing urges to swallow lethal amounts of trazodone and oxycodone, more out of spite than out of any desire to continue living, because I still have some pride, dammit. I don’t want people thinking I killed myself over a goddamn election.

I woke up Wednesday and continued to do my thing. Cared for my neighbors. Ministered for the sick. Gathered my transcripts to return to school for nursing. And I rolled my eyes at the many, many tantrums and meltdowns of yanqui fags on social media who stayed silent during everything fucking else. It’s impossible. I can’t bring myself to care about their wailing.

It’s the end of the world as we know, and I feel fine.

People in Florida can utilize Kaon City Medix to order Plan B and other supplies via mail. KCM also has other resources listed in our link in our bio on instagram. We are also accepting volunteers in the Tampa Bay Area.

Find a Food Not Bombs near you and get involved.

Find a SRA chapter near you (I do not endorse the Socialist Rifle Association as an entity but being with people is better than lone-wolfing it and you might find some cool people).

Get involved.

Read:

If you are white on stolen land this is required fucking reading.

The Open Veins of Latin America (eng version)

Resources for Critical Resistance (I do not endorse CR as an org)

Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency

Class Struggle and Mental Health: Living to Fight Another Day

Y’all be easy.