I feel trapped in an existential and material battle as an artist in this time period. An era in the culture that wants to take artists down swiftly and expect them to put up no resistance or there will be bloodshed of these artists' livelihoods, dreams, hopes, prospects. You know what keeps artists going. The narrative getting shoved and pounded is that artists are inconvenient. As if artists never really meant anything and never have, the machines will take care of that now. Get back to work peasants, climate change debris ain't going to clean itself up. 

Those possibilities presented over ten years ago of the digital landscape are being stomped out I cannot believe how much I let myself miss. Yet once the ruling tech vultures and capitalists saw people were enjoying too much art, interesting thoughts, and connections, they couldn't let that continue. You can't connect ideas, art, and helpful back and forth supporting others out and informing them of ways to make the world better! They have money to make and they demand loyalty to all your time and attention working to make them more money asap. I think a very difficult thing in this moment is while artists have the strength of imagination to intellectually go Battle Royale against this disaster, I don't believe many have the actual willpower to fight fight.

The internet and social media needed to be monetized to death and made unusable and make everyone who inhabits these terrains feel bad and hopeless. There are a couple social media accounts I have that I am able to curate that escape this plight for now. I worry that the right will scorch and whittle away those sections of Instagram they have not infiltrated. The AIDS Memorial page still up is pretty amazing that is allowed with how things are being pushed. It's also more independent, alternative accounts. Like an internet version of those eclectic old thrift, vintage, book, odd and oddity shops that got pushed and gutted for gentrification. Also independent artists and creative people doing their talented thing, cutting past all the doomerism so they can make, live, share and connect. Generative AI is a house of cards but that will take awhile. Tech freaks aren't going to write themselves out of existence and funding.

There was a very good tweet awhile back of mentioning how convenient the machines can get the luxury of writing poetry.

@KarlreMarks

Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint 

is not the future I wanted 

What are we even doing when reproductive rights isn't a red line, that it is acceptable to watch disappear and banned nationally and the people supporting Harris for this are labeled genocide enablers and psychopaths? People don't understand that this current form of the left of 2015-2024 (there is no manger just fracturing, tense and loose threads) is unsustainable and ready to break apart completely and fold onto itself. The irony poisoning, doom pilling, 'the liberals are the actual great evil,' any electoralism is just fascism apologia empire staning is not where people are in the real world and it just won't hold. People aren't looking to jump in or let political infighting into their already busy and chaotic lives. Now neither will people who don't want to be talked down to like everything is actually ok which I know people get turned off by everything is great actually and stop complaining Dem messaging optics.

Yet you are not a coward caring for other rights eroded here and voting cause of that, voting cause you don't want Trump back in is not weak shit. Saying he's not going to be worse certainly is though. Did you fall on your head and get amnesia? Whatever is in these politician's hearts or not it doesn't matter only ground movement and its influence matters. Then people say well it will just be swallowed, defanged and co-opted and sure there is risks but if the risk ain't any form of power or influence than what are we even doing? Just hanging out in the twitter drafts and dog piling. When women who you need to help run these movements are busy bleeding out on the floor your going to tell them that was their noble sacrifice? Some women are going to say that to themselves? The worst is seeing women talk like reproductive rights ain't shit to fight or vote for. Hello people this is the coalition issue of our time, organize.

Incredibly dark and dangerous for the left/progressives to be so divided and organizer types publicly feuding and dog piling on decaying platform run by a nazi. Saw a leftists tweet about how he wasn't voting because of Gaza yet saying how he didn't feel abortion was so important in contrast to the genocide in Gaza!!??? OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!! (Yet I'm not surprised seeing some leftist men doing this. In a separate tweet incident a prominent enough writer in these circles I like who talked about working for abortion rights in past says Gaza is his red line also) And I'm telling you it needs to be studied how liberal and/or moderate men are being more helpful on reproductive rights seeing it as a non negotiable. I'm sorry I say this as a die hard lefty but I see it online, is it that I'm too online? These are not bots but at least CHAT GPT would understand the consequences. 

What was worse a woman in the first tweet example was agreeing with him that abortion and reproductive rights that it felt so small and inconsequential for a hypothetical ????

I thought man we are so cooked. 

That we weren't out in the streets after Roe was taken away with general strike calls is one of the greatest failures of missed political call to actions in the 21st century. Was talking to a woman recently about this and she was baffled emotionally of the lack of organizational response in mass protest, but then thought out loud maybe it was a better grown up decision because of other failed long term mass protests but I said no it's ok to admit that this was a massive failure and she agreed.

There was one group who had more militant protest actions in the beginning after Roe was struck down, but one member of it had a lot of odd controversy and the group was disavowed swiftly and publicly by multiple orgs. Yet nobody did any kind of militant action again. It's unforgivable. 

 

 

It's eerie politically being back in my bellwether corner of PA. I've recently learned I despise living in a place that is a harbinger of elections. Driving to get pizza last night a whole long stretch of houses that had all Biden and anti Trump signs four years ago have nothing on the lawns. Now they are political ghost towns. There's only a handful of weeks left so it would be hard to see that changing suddenly. Was that even true that requests for Harris-Walz signs were flying out the doors that they couldn't keep the orders up? Is everyone just so fucking exhausted and burnt out they don't have that kind of energy to put up a sign? Biden and the Democrats burned a lot of goodwill with telling people everything was fine and getting back on track and stop complaining. Harris has...I wish it were Walz. That is a person made for the moment. With Harris it's similar to Biden in 2020. He just found himself there in this place unfortunately winning the nominee. Many people wondered if he understood the complexities of the moment and challenges because he was so overly and naively optimistic in an egotistical way. He was a political creature of another time. Harris just gave Trump a political ad gift with a stupid gaffe saying there is nothing she would have broken with Biden with on The View (???) and also some other nonsense on Colbert. She is not hated like Hillary but she flounders trying to define herself. But we were suppose to whistle past the graveyard carrying Biden’s corpse? Getting in the other night there was large Harris billboard that made me feel good and some houses I saw in the dark have new Harris-Walz signs yet other houses have new Trump signs. Two creepy ‘Pennsylvania is Trump country’ signs on the roadway. I hate being in this moment and I hate being here in this moment. And yet I am still going to canvas this weekend. I feel I cannot stand back even if the worst is to happen even if the eeriness is settling in. I can’t live with myself to be a coward and tune out. Nor let myself be stewing in my house, cowering, afraid of what these people have in store for us. Yet on the other hand a place in Wales cut off from all this disappointment and political malpractice would be lovely.

Do countries matter more than human lives? That is the real question of Israel and Palestine. The rest is a smoke screen.

"Is that all there is, it that all there is my friend? Then let's break out the booze and have a ball if that's all there is."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/kamala-harris-presidential-campaign-became-a-grim-slog.html

I was always fearful how consequential Biden would end up being if he were the nominee and you are seeing that play out. 

"And it looks like we might have made it. Yes, it looks like we've made it to the end."

https://archive.is/8Rt9b (to bypass paywall)

I thought Harris had overcome her bad political instincts but first impressions I never forget because they always reveal themselves again and again and again.

"But what they do have is a hegemonic liberalism that will get us all fucking killed."

And yet, what I'm suppose to lay down and die and give up? I could but I won't.

I'm canvasing still...and why I am fighting is to stop more disaster and hemorrhaging because it still fucking matters. Read some blurb by a prominent hetro dox type academic art world actor I have weariness of. He said to not really care about politics. Yes, a man who will never find himself in a position to be forced into giving birth. To be forced to give birth to the man who raped them and to be forever tethered and terrorized by him. Nor be on the receiving end of race riots and anti immigrant purges. Neither a man who will be a part of those who will be regular protesters and political dissidents that will be targeted. With the goal to round them up and brought to black ops sites to be tortured and/or disappeared. A man not personally affected by anti LGBTQ rage and risk living as criminalized. Nor be a person at risk to die of an overdose in their grandparent's home because they cannot afford rent or healthcare and never got out of their family lineage of poverty and desolation. So no I will not take political real world advice from art academic men who say to be above politics. Thanks stay in your lane I guess.

So the October Surprise is helping Israel carry a war and a genocide out across multiple countries in the Middle East that also includes Iran. I knew how much Biden would absolutely fuck this up when October 7th happened. I remember vividly the dread I felt watching the news and thinking of not just the mass destruction and collective punishment of Palestinian lives that would occur, but selfishly (I’ll admit that) Biden helping to cost us the election. With his ghoulish and evil foreign policy advisors in tow of course. 

Biden’s disastrous campaign people coupled with Obama luminaries…we almost could have made it, I believe we could have. I think I have mentally resigned. Yet I have been prepared for everything since pre election night 2016. I never believed that Trump would just go away. Jan. 6th was the least surprising thing. I think what surprised me was how much Jan. 6th doesn’t matter to people. That’s eerie and I am not a patriotic person in the slightest. I will never put country over people. Nation states are never more important than human lives. So even with that I was disturbed. Eight or nine people died connected directly to that day and they are people in the GOP involved in the plotting who are still there working in the government. I know in some countries this kind of corruption is very normal but it’s new to me and I would like to not be desensitized. I know a large number of the public are desensitized to him but I will never allow myself to be.

Been pretty good at mostly avoiding politics for a week however it's still unnerving, in almost month you know? Eight years still the same political stranglehold again hoping you get out this time, right? The momentum of Obama could never be matched because of the unique set time, circumstances and conditions in the culture and the political climate. Who Obama was also could not be ever replicated either. Yet you felt the synergy (or could at least observe it), it was exciting, it was building, and then the speech and after has never felt the same. 

I canvas, talk to others who organize and canvas but I feel I am the only one more cautious besides one other person. I observe a lot of different fractions of people on social media and that gives me caution also. I watch around my area signs, flags, banners, stickers, shirts, and I feel unease. When I go back if I don't see more Harris signs up I think I might just go into some resignation even if I'll still canvas. I went up to an older white man in the CVS parking lot over a week ago to let him know I liked his Harris Walz cameo hat. I asked him how he has been feeling and he surprised me responding  ‘you can’t help but feel optimistic now.’ I apologized and said I guess I’m more of a cynic but I said the boat has oars again which he appreciated. I can’t believe this will be the third election and there is still a question. 2016 I thought he could very well win I fretted on and off since he came down on the escalator. 2020 I went back and forth but I held a lot more caution and doubt until nearing the end. This time I don't know honestly. His support never seems to abate, people want to continue the reality show, the pain dial must be kept on high.

I went to see Walz speak and for hours there was a truck with Trump flags protesting up and down the street. When we got out of the rally the truck was joined by three other cars. People crossing the street flipped them off and cursed at them while they beeped their horns proudly. Imagine committing hours to this on a beautiful day? It’s religion to these people. To them Trump is some form of divine intervention. I just want to know how should I proceed through the years because even if he loses it will be another election he didn’t lose and I believe he still has people who would die storming the capitol for him all over again.

I’m sorry people hate this kind of language and sentiments but there are a segment of people who love Trump that would be willing to hunt us (the liberal/left/anti-Trump) for sport and I refuse to not admit that. Though a larger fanbase of his will watch you get dragged off, beaten and disappeared because you are the enemy now. They’ll say ‘so and so were ok but they should have kept their mouth shut’ and go back to scrolling angrily at their phones. He's promoting a literal framework that was a nazi purge what the fuck do some of you think is going on?