On ISIS, Fear, and the Modern World

A while back on tumblr, right after the tragic shootings in Orlando, I received a question about ISIS, and while the specific attacks I refer to in the beginning of the piece are not as time-relevent as they once were, I feel that the overall message still stands, and I wanted to post my response, semi-edited, on this blog also. You can find the original interaction here, if, for some reason, you want to read my very unpolished and far more emotionally charged reaction to this question.

 

Unnamed tumblr user: “What’s your opinions on ISIS and everything thats going on?”

The world that we live in today is messed up beyond belief, and I’m too tired to be afraid anymore. Orlando, Shanghai, Daraya, Tel Aviv, the horrors never end. I no longer check the news to see IF something horrible has happened, I check to see WHERE it happened, because there’s no longer any doubt in my mind that something terrible has happened.

We live in a world where people can’t walk down the street without fearing for their lives, without fearing that they might be killed for their faith, their race, or for who they love.
I see all the good people who are trying to set the world right, and I worry that it will never be enough, because it only takes one person to kill a thousand. I worry for my friends, my family, for strangers I’ve never met, because I know the world is cruel, and I’ve never known it any other way. My first memories are of walking around a mostly-deserted Boston airport after the attacks on 9/11, watching as bomb dogs sniffed luggage brought by the terrified few and far-between travelers. I grew up seeing millions die for nothing in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, watching people kill each other on false convictions and over petty differences. I was a freshman in high school when the Boston Marathon Bombings happened, a sophomore for the protests in Kiev, a junior when Boko Haram attacked Nigeria, and a senior when a lone shooter massacred dozens of people in an Orlando nightclub, and terrorists killed over a hundred in Paris. None of these things surprised too much; these days i’m more surprised by something good happening, for in this world that we live in now, all we are ever shown is horrors. And none of these things scared me, because this is the world I’ve always known, and after a while you lose the ability to be afraid of what’s always there. These days, I’m more shocked when something good happens in the world. And for these reasons, I worry.

I worry for the future of my country, and for the future of the world, because I’ve seen what humanity is capable of when it’s at its worst. I study the past and see that humanity has never changed, we’ve only put new words on the same things, and I worry.
But I’m not afraid, because I’ve grown up in this world, and because if I give them my fear I’ve only done what they want, and because, despite all of this, I still have hope. Hope that one day the world might change, that everyone will be able to live in peace and get along, that people will learn tolerance, even if it comes reluctantly. I have hope that my brother’s children will grow up in a world better that we did, because despite everything, despite all the bad things that have happened, humanity IS trying, people are still doing good and charities are still working hard, and slowly, bit by bit, the world is becoming a better place than the one our parents and grandparents grew up in, better than the one we grew up in.

And so, despite everything, I have hope for our worlds future.

 

Guten Nacht,

-AnJ

On The Election

Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence are the next President and Vice President of the United States.  Just as it is fact that the sun rises from the East and sets in the West, and that hotels universally have horrible water pressure, it is also fact, no matter how much I sincerely wish it were not, that Donald Trump, a former reality show host who currently seems to make a living insulting minorities, and Mike Pence, a man with some of the most Draconion views possible on LGBTQIA+ and Women’s rights, will soon be the leaders of our nation. The “leaders of the free world”, for better or worse. (I expect worse.)

While disbelief or terrified anger may seem to be the only way to react to such news- I myself went back to sleep in the hope that it was all just a junk food induced nightmare- we must first consider all of the facts. Trump won due to extensive, long reviled Gerrymandering, and because of variations in population density throughout the country which allowed for a majority of Electoral votes without the majority of popular votes. If one is to go purely by the popular vote, Hillary Clinton did in fact win, just as Al Gore did in 2000. While this may not seem like much of a consolation at first, it shows that the majority of people in America are ready for change, that the majority of people are good, forward thinking citizens that want everyone to have equal rights, that society is making progress, even when the government refuses to.

I am not, however, going to pretend that this means that all is well. Even if Trump is blocked from doing anything that he has set his intentions towards, I fear that even his very personality could have negative ramifications for the American people. Trump has admitted on camera to “grabbing women by the pussy,” and feels that his fame entitles him to do so. The issue here- aside from the obvious- is that this kind of behavior from someone in a position of such power is that others will be influenced by his views. We may see an increase in violence against women, perpetuated by those who feel that if the President can seemingly get away with such actions, so can they. I fear that the people with the potential in them to do violence, who have been held somewhat in check by the social climate which has so far been fairly liberal, will begin acting on that potential, and that we will see a rise in the number of hate crimes against minorities. I fear that all the progress we have made in the last decade will be reversed, that we will go back to the times of the 50s, a xenophobic world full of living in closets and fearing that which is not “American” enough for us.

But despite this fear, I refuse to panic. While I would love nothing more than to scream from atop the roof, yelling until Trump is somehow gone or I pass out from lack of oxygen, I won’t. Because that is not the productive way of dealing with this. Rioting in the streets is not the productive way of dealing with this. Denial is not the productive way to deal with this.

Combating wrong with right is the productive way to deal with this. The way to make a difference, to try to stop the world from dissolving into ashes, is to do good. Go out and volunteer at a homeless shelter, donate to a charity, help out a complete stranger. Bit by bit, one small action at a time, we can make the world a better place, and there’s nothing Trump, or Pence, or anyone else can do to stop that, because we are the people, and we have the power to change the world.

 

Guten Nacht,

-AnJ