via: Twitter
There’s just so much happening in the world right now that it’s harder to keep up with than which Kardashian is pregnant, which one’s still pregnant and being cheated on (karma), and the reasons (if any) why we should care. Here’s just the tip of the tea of what’s gone down this week:
- Paul Ryan is jumping ship.
- Conservative pundit, Jamie Allman, actually Tweeted he would use “a hot poker” to sodomize gun control activist David Hogg. Seriously, WTF?
Via Twitter
- Mark Zuckerberg’s testifying before Congress because the political data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested our Facebook information/data to create targeted political ads during the presidential election.
(For the record, I downloaded my data and was completely taken back by the fact that every. single. Message/comment/interaction I’ve ever made was in a folder labeled “Brandi Amara Skyy.” It’s one thing to lackadaisically click a box that says Terms and Conditions and a whole other thing when you actually see in the flesh what those terms and conditions collect.)
If this isn’t a big brother situation, I’m not sure what is. And yet, we’re still on it. I’m still on it.
So what does that say about our collective consciousness? That we’re willing to give up our personal selves, our right to privacy, for appearances and the most likes? What does it say about my FOMO? And why is it so hard for me in this situation to practice what I believe and value?
- And then, there’s Trump. Still — as in I’m still trying to understand how this (him as the president of the United States) is possible.
This week his tweets about Syria once again broke national security policy; he ordered the National Guard to our Mexico border, and he proposed an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chines products (the same place where all his presidential campaign swag was made).
And all that was in ONE WEEK!
Needless to say, this week has been at the very least a bit overwhelming, which is why I’ve been thinking a lot about what all this means as a whole. How do all these things tie together? And what does this mean for us as a community and global society?
The pessimistic doomsday side of me wants to say that clearly the end is near (and this crazy winter hail and weather we’re having in April kinda feeds those fears even further).
But then the other part of me reminds myself that Black Panther is STILL slaying the box office, that our youth have stood up to the NRA Goliath, and teachers in Oklahoma are on strike until they are paid what they know they are worth.
Oh, and Cardi B came out with a revolutionary album.
Because the real tea is that sometimes, with all the craziness that’s going on, we need a bit of distraction. And as much as I want to be (and live) as a rah-rah-radical and create mini-revolutions every day of my life, the truth is, it’s exhausting. And I have to remind myself that sometimes it’s okay to forgo the “real” news, to retreat back into the safety (and privilege) of my home office, throw on my headphones, and silence out the “real” world to live — even if only for an hour — in one where one Bronx girl’s dreams become a reality through her hard work and hustle.
Because, I really believe it’s our dreams that feed us, and sometimes we need to take a few hours, days, hell maybe even a year to refuel ourselves. And that’s not complacency; it’s survival.
I don’t know about you, but my goal is to build something that out-lives all these old heterosexual conservative white men and I, WE, all need to be full — mentally, physically, soulfully — to do that.
Brandi Amara Skyy is a writer, drag artists, and host of The Drag Show Podcast. Listen to Episode 01: You Are Born Naked and the Rest is Drag … RIGHT?!? here.
