Thoughts on the State of the World

[rockinlibrarian]

 Hi there. I know I don't type all that much over here anymore because I'm always trying to get in a weekly GeekMom article instead, and those take priority, and are sometimes hard enough to squeeze out of my brain (I'm reworking Ye Olde Year of the Tesseract series over there now, in anticipation of the upcoming movie,* if you haven't noticed-- and even with those first drafts written over here still sometimes I TAKE FOREVER). Have I mentioned I've had "This person has ADHD--Inattentive Type" officially on my official medical records for exactly one year and one week now? Yeah. Interesting how long it has permeated my life without me realizing what was going on. But anyway. A month ago my computer died. I had wanted a new computer for a long time anyway and was kind of disappointed I didn't get one for Christmas, to be honest. It was like my old computer felt sorry for me and decided to force us to make it happen. I luckily had almost everything backed up in THE CLOUD (pictures in Snapfish and Shutterfly, music in Google Play, non-article-writing, which I haven't exactly done anything with in the past few years, anyway, on Dropbox). Anyway, my point is, also, that I got a laptop this time, which means I'll be able to do work in the summertime when the kids want me to take them to the pool, and so on, and at the moment I am on the "desk"-equipped exercise bike, trying to counteract my recent bate of sedentariness. Spellcheck says that word should be "absentmindedness," which no, is not what I meant to say, but is equally true. Exercise helps my brain focus, I just don't like to admit that or more accurately ACT on that. This is a bit awkward on my wrists, though.

Anyway, I'm mainly here to get the whole world off my chest.

Just before I woke up this morning, I dreamed I was giving a bunch of my relatives a spontaneous lecture about information literacy, because I'd seen they'd "Liked" an article that led with a Pro-Life stance, but ended up also jamming into it a bunch of slightly related points that were NOT very Christian if they'd JUST TAKEN A MOMENT TO THINK ABOUT IT-- I mean, in the dream this was all very literal, my conservative and I should also add GOOD relatives had Liked an article and I cautioned them about reading their sources more acutely, but in real life this is a thing that has happened across the board-- lots of "good" people following biased news sources and suddenly finding themselves believing things they wouldn't at all believe if they stopped and thought about it.

Then I wake up and my clock radio is like, "...the latest school shooting has prompted more people to put more pressure on Congress to do something about mass shootings," and I actually went, "HAH, THIS Congress?!" out loud. THIS Congress won't even face up to the MASS TREASON happening all around them! THIS Congress won't even throw out the Madman In Chief who keeps trying to provoke a nuclear war! THIS Congress is ripping up every social support institution in the government calling it a waste of money, and yet accepting GENUINE wastes of money like border walls and deporting law-abiding members of society and Military Parades! and THEIR OVERBLOWN SALARIES. 

I'm AGOG. I'm agog that we as a society haven't been able to do anything with these hypocrites yet.

And I'm sad, because while there are lots of conservatives who've backed away from this mess, who actually see what's going on, there are STILL PEOPLE whose indoctrination by Fox News et al has been SO DEEP that they will do and say anything to deny the hypocrisy, the DEEP LEVELS OF HYPOCRISY involved in trying to defend any of this. "Democrats do bad things, too!" is about the best they can come up with, and it never looked like a worse excuse. 

And I'm scared, because I have a feeling it's only going to get worse until it gets better. People who are really scared to admit when they've been wrong just get more and more zealous about insisting they're right. A lot of people will be hurt in the process, whether emotionally, through losing access to resources or livelihoods, or outright physical violence. These issues cannot just go silently into that good night. This is civil war. I'm not CALLING for war by saying these things, mind you. I'm identifying it. It's on our doorsteps whether we want it or not.

But I'm hopeful, because whether it seems like it or not, we have made some progress as a society over the past year or so. GOOD has become more vocal, too, and though that means often exposing terrible things, which shakes up the status quo, forces us to admit how Problematic our Faves can be (though I still hate that concept). and causes the bad guys being exposed to do MORE terrible things... small changes are happening.  People are waking up. People are taking action in small everyday ways and in big institutional ways, if not quite national government ways. 

This past week there's been a lot of dirty laundry being aired in the Kid Lit world, many writers joining the #MeToo movement by calling out fellow authors for sexual harrassment. It's especially rough because we're all in KID lit, you know, we're supposed to be better role models? Though a lot of the names coming up (especially the worst offenders) I've not been particularly fans of, there are a couple of my faves getting called out, but even them I'm not entirely surprised by, and I find it even hasn't stopped me enjoying their work...mostly I guess because my faves have been called out for being creeps but not outright predators. And that's an important distinction, because that's where the most change can come into play-- like this:

I saw this on Twitter this morning. I admit-- call me a terrible librarian, I'm sorry-- to not being familiar with this guy or his work, but he wrote a response to being called out in this conversation, in which he didn't try to defend himself, make excuses, or say "I'm sorry I'm a jerk but I guess you'll just have to live with it because that's who I am," but actually owns up, says I WAS WRONG AND I AM GOING TO TRY TO BE BETTER. Now, when a guy apologizes for being a jerk, there's a risk of "praising him for doing what a decent person would have done anyway." It reinforces the whole patriarchal men-get-more-leeway-to-mess-up thing. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to point out that there's HOPE. People CAN own up to their mistakes and work to do better. I definitely hope all my Faves take this same, introspective route instead of doubling down on their innocence or making excuses or complaining how people can't take a joke. 

And maybe, the more crap that comes to light—in every discipline, in every problem area— the more of these people who have done wrong will step up to make it right, even if it seems the majority of them fight against it all the more savagely. Maybe they can't DO much to fix damage too long done, but they can help stop future damage from occurring. And maybe then more and more problem-people will follow their example, leaving behind the Dark Side and standing with the Light. And maybe, MAYBE, humanity has a chance to get better, after all.

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*Which I'm STARTING to get a little worried about, to be honest? It's just that, so far, in any of the trailers or TV spots, I haven't heard an ACTUAL LINE from the BOOK. The closest is in how the tesseract is illustrated with a string and a toy bug-- but am I hearing correctly? Have they actually replaced the word "tesseract" with "wrinkle"? Yeeeah. I can deal with poor adaptations existing, but this one is just so BUZZED and people are so EXCITED about it, that it would be a real disappointment if it's just a really pretty movie that has nothing to do with the book (particularly when the much-reviled TV movie WAS relatively true to the book, it just wasn't a great movie). Especially because I'm already starting to like Storm Reid so much as Meg that, after 30 years of INTENSE fandom, she's even managing to creep into my head and replace my old looking-a-lot-like-ME mental picture of Meg. And this Calvin is a cutie: I just love the LEETLE perking up of his eyes in this gif, I think he IS going to be perfect. The Mrs Ws, I just don't know about, I think they could win me over as long as Mrs Whatsit comes INTO the Murry house looking more like a tramp than an angel princess--it doesn't look like she stays that way long if she does. I guess you can't have someone bundled up that way in southern California, which is why they shouldn't have changed the setting. :P  

Comments

[sal_amanda]

As always, you are one of the wisest people I know.