I’m Not Giving Up. And Neither Should You

Community member, Lindsey Moon Hartzel, on what she has learned about the United States and Empire over this last year. And why she's not giving up.

I remember crying my eyes out watching Kate McKinnon, in character as Hillary, sing “Hallelujah” on SNL after Trump won the presidency. I was heartbroken, in disbelief that so many people could be that easily fooled by such a charlatan. How could anyone listen to him and believe what he said?! Didn’t they know that he didn’t care about the people, only his own power? Couldn’t they see how most of what he said didn’t line up with the reality of what was happening?

Well, this past year I’ve been served a heavy dose of irony. Watching the Democrats unabashedly support a genocide forced me to look outside of what I thought I knew. To think critically in a way that I hadn’t before.

What I’ve learned in the last year has completely changed my understanding of the world. It has broken open my heart in ways I didn’t know it was closed. It has connected me to purpose and community and humanity. It has given me hope and shown me what incredible things are possible when people are truly willing to fight for what’s important. It has liberated me from my MSM torpor.

Now I look back at that SNL skit and see an incredible piece of propaganda. Now I look at the Democratic Party for who they are. 

People are saying it’s privileged to vote third party / not vote for Harris, because it means we think we won’t be affected by the Republican’s agenda. That Trump will be so detrimental to the fabric of democracy that anything bad the Democrats do just can’t compare. But they never seem to consider how much privilege it takes to think that things are not beyond awful right now. To be able to say that the way things are, in a country that has had a Democratic president for 12 of the last 16 years, isn’t terrifying. To think that Democrats’ actions and policies aren’t destroying this country and tormenting its citizens, takes an incredible amount of privilege and disconnect from reality.

Ask the people of North Carolina whose towns don’t exist anymore. Or how about the women bleeding out in hospital parking lots because they don’t have access to abortions? Are they there because of Trump’s Supreme Court picks, or are they there because Democrats wouldn’t codify Roe vs Wade when they had the chance under Obama? Because they want to use reproductive rights as a bargaining chip every election. Is it Trump’s fault the Supreme Court is stacked or is it RBG’s, who in her late 70s refused to give up her seat during Obama, in order for a left leaning judge to be appointed?

The blue no matter who crowds act like Democrats have been doing nothing but working tirelessly for our rights, and it’s the big bad Republicans that stop them at every turn. It’s so infantile. Just look at how little Obama accomplished his presidency. I used to think that was because he was just powerless to Republicans. But now I can see, it’s because he wasn’t actually committed to those things. Democrats only cheer on social justice issues that won’t cost their corporations anything.

The fossil fuel industry fucking loves the Democrats. Look at how much money they give them. Harris is beholden to lobbyists. How can she not be? There is no meaningful change in her climate policies. Everything is just a symbol without substance. Except for expanding fracking, that has a lot of substance, being the biggest cause of climate change in the world. That’s going to lead to more environmental catastrophes.

And just like all her Democratic predecessors, she plans to continue to overfund the biggest polluter in world, the U.S. military. The fossil fuel industry is destroying the planet for everyone, and our government’s plan is to continue to let it and downplay the severity, so no one panics and stops being good little consumers.

It’s fucking bonkers. Our planet is dying, our communities are washed away, and burnt to the ground. But Israel gets another 8.7 BILLION of our tax dollars to help them murder the civilians of an Indigenous population, not just causing immense human suffering but also irreparable environmental damage.

All the while we allow ourselves to be distracted by whatever Hollywood, NFL, Girl Boss Guru, throws at us . . .

“Look at those moon rebels fight the empire by creating community! It’s such an inspiring show! I think I’ll go home and be pissed at college kids for trying to do the exact same thing” — or — “Let me meditate on finding peace for myself, co-opting Indigenous People’s ancient practices, while simultaneously completely ignoring everything that Indigenous Peoples need in order to experience peace themselves.”

It’s complete cognitive dissidence.

People aren’t connecting the dots because both parties (ahem, their billionaire donors) do everything in their power, so we don’t.

They make us too busy,
Too tired,
Too traumatized,
Too poor,
Too sick,
Too uneducated,
Too under resourced to be able to see what’s being done to us.
To see what we’re doing to the rest of the world.

How both parties are the bad guys because both parties are controlled by the lobbies, corporations, and billionaire donor class.

It is an oligarchy, not a democracy.

Voting for either is a vote for corporate interests.
A vote for empire.
It’s a vote for killing the earth, killing our future, lining the pockets of the few, while we work ourselves to death for their pleasure.

Again, fucking bonkers. But if you rebel against this, you’re the one seen as irrational or deluded.

We have to stop thinking that in order to have rights someone else has to be stripped of theirs. Democrats show performative disgust with Republicans and their disregard for human rights, while simultaneously insisting that we need to ignore some people’s human rights in order to have our own, in order to maintain the status quo. And that’s really it, isn’t it? Our status quo is killing Indigenous People in order to get what we want. And we think that by doing it again, just this one last time, that we’ll buy ourselves enough time to accomplish all the things we need to do to “maintain” our democracy. As if anything of integrity could be built on the back on genocide.

We’ve been tricked into thinking we live with scarcity. That it isn’t possible to create a sustainable society. But that’s only true when we believe it. Once you stop it loses all its power. Just like any cult. I mean, did you see the DNC? It was pure political theater, starring billionaires and war mongers. With a crowd of cheering liberals acting like it’s a 1960s Beatles concert. I’m surprised underwear weren’t thrown. I don’t understand how anyone can take the party, or the government, seriously after that. But people ate that shit up, rose colored glasses firmly in place. 

The people in power are not interested in a democracy. They’ve shown peaceful protesters, students, and professors, for a year just what they think of democracy. What they love is a police state. And that’s what they are investing in. Not infrastructure to protect against climate change, but 69 Cop Cities, where the next generation of police will be trained by IDF soldiers on how to contain an unmanageable population. Just like they have in Palestine. The oligarchs are not interested in your rights. They want your obedience, your money, and your slave labor. 

This last year I’ve realized that I don’t want abortion rights if it means Palestinians have to die for me to have them. I don’t want my kids to have healthcare and education if it means Lebanese have to die for it.

I don’t want to support any part of this duopoly of plutocrats and the crumbs they leave out for us. That anyone can look at either Harris or Trump and not see a vapid puppet of an evil machine, is truly mind boggling to me at this point.

But I think that’s the thing: once you see it you can’t unsee it. That’s why there are waves of people becoming pro Palestine anti-Zionist, and not the other way around. Seeing the truth is overwhelming and can feel terrifying at times. But it’s also very grounding. Because it’s real.

“None of us are free until all of us are free” isn’t a slogan — it’s something I feel in my bones. It’s a string of light that leaves my heart to entangle with others. It’s what makes me feel sane and connected in a world that is constantly trying to divide and isolate us. 

We have to stop paying attention to the bread and circuses and start focusing on how the hell we are going to save this planet. I promise you it’s not going to be Hollywood, or Empire, or billionaires that do it.

It’s going to be you and me.
YOU and ME.
We have to start tearing this shit down.

We need to connect with that feeling of hope we experience when we’ve watched a film that really inspires us, when we’re moved by humanity and what’s possible. We need to generate BEING that, instead of being entertained by that. Because the powers that be are hoping that all we need to feel “connected” is SNL skits and cat memes, that being kept comfortable and entertained is all we really care about. 

And so far, they’ve been right.