A thought that often crosses my mind is that I can’t believe the world that my daughter was born into. And then I feel really sad about it, despite knowing that she very well won’t remember any of this stuff, but one day she might read about it in history books or any sort of resource that outlines the happening throughout history.
It’s bad enough she was born right at the very start of when coronavirus came into the United States and was shortly declared a global pandemic, literally changing the landscape of the world where the vast majority of educated people began to take shelter in their homes, to minimize the spread of a new disease.
But in a way that can only be described as amazing, a global pandemic still managed to get pushed into to the backseat by the more recent civil unrest that’s boiled over on account of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and very recently George Floyd in Minnesota, with the latter being pretty flagrantly executed by a white police officer, when his neck was low-key crushed under the knee of the cop.
As I’m writing this, all across the country, there have been countless protests, many of which escalated into riots complete with looting, and there are hundreds to thousands of people who have been physically harmed, gassed, tazed or impacted by some form of crowd control. The police are widely viewed as the enemy now instead of the agency that’s meant to serve and protect, and it’s times like this in which I’m kind of glad that one, I don’t live/work as close to actual city-proper Atlanta as I used to, and two, add the staying home as yet another ironic benefit to there being a fucking pandemic.
It’s a very sad and scary thought to think of this being the world that my first child was born into, and I feel like the generations before her have already let her down in fostering a world that’s supposed to be safe and better for the future.
Like, think back one literal century ago; what really has changed? In 1920, there was a pandemic ravaging the whole world, and in America, there was massive civil and racial unrest. Granted, a hundred years ago it was on account of slavery, but given one’s interpretation of slavery versus modern discrimination, I think it’s up for debate on whether or not things have really changed that much in 100 years, but I think my point is clear hopefully.
Also the internet easily manages to make any one city’s problem a national one in no time flat, which I think definitely puts points into the things are way worse now category.
It’s really scary to me that police are rapidly being perceived as public enemy #1. I get that there are certainly plenty of questionable badges out there that do or have done deplorable things, but it’s disheartening to see that all law enforcement is rapidly being made out to be all villains. At the end of the day, the police are still meant to protect the people, and if all of this civil unrest escalates to where police is basically dissolved, then what the fuck happens next?
But in the other hand, I can 100% understand the fear and distrust from those in the black community as well as all those who support them. As a minority myself, I know that Asian people are seen as acceptable until they’re not, like being all lumped into the umbrella of being progenitor of coronavirus, but I definitely am aware that no one demographic tends to get it like the black community.
It feels like we’re on the cusp of actually becoming the Watchmen television series, where the police become targets to violence and as a whole have to go under masks for the safety of themselves. The way things are going now with police being seen as enemies, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll feel the need to do the same.
Either way, it’s scary what’s going on out there now. America really does continue to suck, as much as I hate to say it, but there’s no denying America is like a bad dumpster fire meme right now, and it makes me sad that this is the America that’s forever going to be known for in 2020, the birth year of my kid. I can’t insulate and keep her safely at home for her entire life, but I sure can hope that by the time she’ll have to start going out into the world, it’ll maybe not so rabidly insane out there.
