In 2004, a close friend of mine ran to be a delegate for the Democratic convention. Howard Dean was still in the race, and we were energized by his vision of what a social democracy should provide for its people. But at the tiny "election" in an LA school gym where would-be delegates gave their speeches to an audience of about five (including me), my friend didn't talk much about Dean's policies. Instead, he talked about being angry. Nearly three years had passed since 9/11, but outside of leftist activist groups and antiwar protests, there was still an inexplicable hesitancy among most elected Democrats to be mad in public. But as my friend (to whom I'm now married) said in his speech, "I am mad. And I'm tired of being quiet about it."
Few of us are quiet about being mad now, obviously, but many of us, I suspect, try not to engage with it too excessively, because of the harm it can do to our mental health. It's one of the prevalent features of our current dystopia (though nothing new to oppressed peoples) - millions upon millions of us trying to tamp down a fountainhead of rage, or at least to channel it into a force for change, and in the meantime striving not to let it drown us. Occasionally, though, you just get mad and let it take over for a minute. And that happened to me late at night this week while reading the recent Azmat Khan investigative pieces in the NYT, detailing the unimaginable cruelty and complete impunity of America's unmanned airstrikes. It's not the numbers that got to me - it's important, but unsurprising, to see the systematic undercounting of casualties - but how vividly was made clear the imperviousness of the program, and the people behind the program, to accountability. As long as they are incentivized to see a "large, heavy object" instead of a child, a "convoy" instead of a group of people fleeing violence, the system will validate that conclusion and excuse them from any of its "unforeseen" consequences. The technology to attack from a desk isn't a way to minimize loss of life; it's a way to make sure none of the lost lives are the ones that, to the US, matter. It's unbelievable that anyone can still believe in a thing like "progress." Over and over again, we see that technological "innovations" exist primarily to make the wealthy comfortable at the expense of unseen others. Whether it's Americans smugly indifferent to death and destruction in Syria or Afghanistan or Palestine, or white-collar workers annoyed that they can't get a product delivered to their door within 72 hours, or people who see the stock market as an even marginal approximation of the health of the economy and the people in it, we are plagued by the deleterious effects of "progress." And I realize that this is far from new ground, but it's just one of those weeks, I guess, because I'm mad about it. I'm mad at the finance bros, the tech bros, the political bros. Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg. People who use their intelligence to make it easier to make the world worse, and then say "fuck you" to anyone who disagrees. Well, fuck you too. Burn it down. Here's a puzzle.
Charles Montpetit
1/2/2022 11:42:29 am
Always like a good rant (especially in an age where constructors strive for blandness, lest they turn off solvers). This said, 59d's "complancency" has one n too many, and the RSS button merely generates a "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it" message. Is there any way one can be sent an email notice regarding about any new puzzle?
Charles Montpetit
1/2/2022 11:46:29 am
Oops, I meant "about", not "regarding about". Sorry regarding that.
kate
1/7/2022 10:06:34 pm
ah, thanks for catching the typo; just fixed it. Comments are closed.
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