Tag: Social Criticism

Something Has to Change

Nick Anderson | 5 Sep 2024

I’m tired. I’m so damn tired of watching a nation of knuckle draggers defend unfettered access to firearms and not the kids being killed by firearms legally obtained by those who ought not have access to them. The fourteen year old who killed four and injured at least 30 others used an AR-15 given to him by his father. The gift came shortly after the student was investigated for threats made against his school the year prior.

The moment we talk about common sense gun regulations similar to those required to drive a car—such as licensing and registration, health evaluations, etc.—the same knuckle draggers who demand extensive identification for those trying to exercise their right to vote cry out: “bUt ThE sEcOnD aMeNdMeNt!” Yet these same intentionally ignorant, peaked in high school stable geniuses piss on our right to free expression and our right to religious freedom (including freedom from religion). Many of them pose the solution that we “aRm ThE tEaChErS” when we can’t even find the money to keep school supplies in stock or pay our teachers a competitive salary.

While we are all guilty of hypocrisy in one form or another, the hypocrisy of this mouth breathing mass is literally killing our children. They’re worried that a student might read a book that exposes them to a world of ideas that might contradict the act of indoctrination they engage in with their kids. They are terrified of seeing queer youth being treated with dignity and respect. They are scared that students might see how many of our social, political, and societal systems are rigged against certain people groups—like women, the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities, and the poor. Ideas scare them more than the inevitability of another school shooting.

Things must change.

And before anyone says this is “jUsT a FaCt Of LiFe,” we are the only country where this is a regularly occurring problem.

Things must change.

Beautiful Crow

The sky is a polished blue,
wearing her softest white clouds.
She makes love to the sun in front of God
and everyone.
The earth blushes
in brilliant emerald breath
held beneath sapphire eyes,
and yet,
it is the lonely cawing crow
with whom I sympathize.
Its call,
ragged and worn,
lingers in the rhythm
beating inside my chest,
trying to make sense
of a world so big,
yet so small—
like humanity’s capacity for love
and its proclivity to hate.

They Said ‘No’ to Our Voice

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban TikTok yesterday. An 81% consensus, 81%! POTUS has said that he would sign the bill into law should it get through the Senate.

Our political representatives can’t come together to tackle healthcare, corporate price gouging, the housing crisis, poverty level wages, college loan debt, the border question, food insecurity, or work toward investing in our nation, its people, or its future. The moment 170 million Americans began talking to each other, however, realizing we weren’t alone and that we could change things, then they acted—to divide our voices.

They said ‘no’ to our voice.

(in)Justice and Monsters

Monsters lurk the lines of my fiction because it is how I cope with a world on fire. I remember as a child learning about the Civil Rights Movement and thinking, “why did that happen? Why did they hang those people? Why did they kill that man speaking up for justice?” I was confused but assured “it was over. Justice won.”

It’s not over. It never ended. The problems of inequality and injustice persist, not only for Black people, but for non-white, non-heteronormative, non-Christian, non-conservative humans. More people are pushing back, demanding justice, but those in power, the same who murdered MLK, Jr., Medgar Wiley, Lemar Smith, Harvey Milk, and countless more, have reignited the fires of hate motivated violence in an attempt to end the push.

For many years, I was ignorant of the unfathomable depth of inequality and injustice in America. I was naive, and so surprised by the number of voices rising to the provocation of power—not to resist that wicked power, but to uphold its scaffolding and institutions, to protect the bloodied hands of the powerful.

Comedian, playwright, and novelist Ben Elton once said: “With privilege comes responsibility, you must understand that.” I wonder if this is why so many disenfranchised people are rising up to protect and defend the atrocities of the powerful. They have benefitted from the current institution. They are privileged in this arrangement, and so they feel it their responsibility to uphold it—ignorant of how the same system is also killing them.

After two decades of work, I have become conscious of my privilege, but my responsibility—my duty—is not to the system, not anymore. My obligation is to humanity. I do what I can to ease suffering in small and seemingly insignificant ways, but these little acts add up quickly.

If we could do our small part together, at once, the impact would be a stone in Goliath’s brain. We would rock the world. Imagine, for one week, we refused to participate in capitalism—get only the barest of essentials from the most ethical businesses. It would be a strike at the wallet of power. They’d feel it. Now imagine if we maintained that pressure.

Right now, orcas in the middle of the ocean are sinking the yachts of the wealthy. It is an ironic twist to witness whales campaigning to “Save the Humans.” Truly, things are far worse than we realize. But if the whales can do their part, should we not do ours?

The monsters wandering between page and pen are how I cope with a world on fire. These creatures can be stopped. Their objectives can be disrupted and subverted. I can save the world from them, but the real monsters, those monsters can only be stopped if we work together.

Deep State Files: The Vaccine

I was forced to receive the devil’s juice just before it was released to the public. I was part of a Deep State Disinformation Task Force sent to undermine the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine. We knew Hydroxychloroquine was effective against COVID-19, but we needed the public to buy into our “vaccine.” What we were given wasn’t the same as what we gave the public. We had all been deceived.

Days after I received Beelzebub’s Bottom Sweat, I began seeing things—people—no one else could see. I heard things no one else could hear. A collective tortured cry seemed to persist in the distance, always lingering just over the horizon. Soon I was visited by a strange being that revealed the “vaccine” had sealed my soul for the great archangel, Lucifer.

In exchange for my soul, the being had imbued me with the ability to see through the veil and into the lands of the dead. All I see, all I hear, are the tortured souls forsaken by God, a perpetual reminder of what awaits me in the next world. Everyday, death haunts me. It looms over me with the promise of hopelessness and despair.

My body has begun aging at an accelerated rate. The only things slowing the acceleration are COVID-19 boosters and the crushed skulls of aborted fetuses. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would have gone outside at the height of the pandemic and licked every handrail just to prove to science that God rules and the devil drools!

But I can’t go back.

All I can do is tell my story and hope it might save you.

Ask Jesus to come inside you and leave the devil at the door.

The Science of Smaller Plates

—a commentary on evangelical diet culture and its assault on women.

Smaller plates
mean smaller meals.
Smaller meals
for that smaller you
because they told you
the best you,
the ideal you,
God’s design for you,
is a smaller,
lesser,
wasting away you.
A smaller you,
they say,
is a prettier you,
a more fuckable you,
and a more fuckable you
is the whole reason
God made you.
A holy,
fuckable,
baby making you
because if men
can control themselves
around you,
then you are failing
to honor the purpose
god gave you.

The Rapture

dedicated to Calvary Chapel Hanford

You promised us a rapture.
You said,
‘no one knows the day
or hour,
but the prophecies are aligned,
so any day now.’

But—

It’s been thirty six years.
You’re still looking up.

Maybe God slept in.
Maybe he’s not coming.
Maybe its time to find
something else
to pour your heart into—

like people.

Your Father the Devil

Your god
points to a mass grave
where tangled Palestinian bodies
gasp for breath,
a gospel
of bullets and bloodshed
brought to bear
upon the least of these.
He is a white AR-15
mowing down children
in the second grade
while fucking little girls
of the same age—
a coward
accusing queer communities
of crimes committed
by his pastors and priests.
Your god
is an idol,
created in the likeness
of your hate.

But Grace

is a headstone
bearing your names,
buried in a landfill
for which
none of us
mourn.

An Ode to Garry

I pray you slip in the shower,
and no one finds you.
I pray you get drunk
and think,
‘I can make that jump.’
I pray you walk off into the sunset
and disappear,
forever.
I pray your birthdays
are full of empty chairs.
I pray you never receive a visit
from the ghosts of past, present, or
future Christmas.
I pray you choke on air
and die—
before deleting your browser history.
But most of all,
I pray
whatever happens,
happens quickly.

The Prophet to the Pastor

In the hard places where bread
becomes stone and crowns
become thorns, there I wander
the palm lined pathways, leading
to the debt you have yet to forgive.
It is exhausting trying to keep up
with you and the nails you drive into
the hands holding out for mercy.
I suppose Grace is just a name
you give your daughters to pretend
you do all this—for Jesus.

But in spite of it all, I still wander,
smuggling in an orchard where
bodies no longer burden the
outstretched olive branches I offer
to those whose backs I buried
beneath broken boughs and
splintered words.

Someone has to sweep the
manger clean. You never know
what displaced souls might need
to rest, like an infant pauper king
held in the bravery of his mother’s
breasts, or a Palestinian leper
just trying his best to survive
the brutality of a Gaza stripped
of its rest.

This world is too hard. We have
forgotten how to make room for
love to thrive. We salt the earth and
examine splinters with wooden eyes
underneath the neon glow where hangs
a miracle whipped Jesus, who holds
a sign that reads: ‘God is love, but he
has his bad days, too.’ If what
you say is true, then God has just as
many bad days as we do.

There has got to be a better way
to make our days brighter—
like bringing in more chairs
and making room for everyone
at the inn, or finding ways to love
the face of God staring back at us
through the eyes of our neighbors—
every neighbor, not just the ones
who gather on cute sing-along
Sundays. All of them. But especially—

especially the ones we’ve crucified
in full view of the Son.

We Never Wanted to Look

Based on true events.

A black student, resolved never to let them
make him feel lesser, is expelled when he
stuffs slurs back into the mouth of some
privileged white kid. The white kid finds a
rally coming to his aid, pouring out
sympathy for the injuries delivered by the
savage, the tiger, the animal, the thug he
provoked—they’re just so loud and violent.

In the same breath, kids on the football
team reenact the brutal qualities of their
fathers as they wrap stones in sheets of
paper and chuck them at the queer kids
when the adults aren’t watching, and I
swear, these mother fuckers are never
watching. This way, when the queer kids
open up their wrists in the hope of ‘better
luck next time,’ the adults can claim they
never saw it coming.

In a classroom, Mr. Peterson, a nominally
qualified science teacher, tells the
brown kids that systemic racism is a lie—
racism, he tells them, ended with the
civil war, biology was settled in six days,
and the most important question you can
ask yourself is: is there life after death? I
wonder if he knows the number of kids
racing to uncover the answer because of
people like him.

The spirit of cruelty is alive and well, here.
Cultivated by a system and culture caught
up in the march of June 1929, when over
three-hundred klansmen made their way
down Draper Street to insist this small
town is for whites only—with the exception
of that one black family they allow to live
on the outskirts to prove to the world that
they’re not just a bunch of bigots.

Broken mirrors and skipping records have
a lot in common with this place. We are unable
to see ourselves with any honesty,
unable to get up and change that goddamn
minstrel tune we’ve been playing since
1873. We’re afraid to look up because the
trees have eyes. We know this because we
hung them there, like the brown Christ we
nail to a tree annually, on every Good
Friday. Is it a wonder, then, that the image
of breaking the shells of rainbow colored
eggs is lost on us?

Look, there are a lot of things you can try
in our small town, just not love or
compassion or mercy or acceptance,
because that—that is just some anti-
American, communists bullshit, and we
don’t take kindly to that sort of thing
around here.

Summer of 2021

This photo still enrages me. I took it in the summer of 2021 outside Kingsburg City Hall. The sea of, mostly, older white faces, armed with American flags, Bibles, and an illiterate understanding of American history were joined by far-right hate groups such as the Proud Boys, 1776ers, and others, to oppose a Pride Month proclamation in the City of Kingsburg. The grueling three-hour spectacle saw these “patriots” engage in anti-patriotic and dog-whistle-laden rhetoric.

The American flag was weaponized and used in a manner not dissimilar to the symbols of hate waved about by white supremacist hate groups. In a display of irony, many of these white (and Evangelical) individuals spoke to the American flag as being all inclusive while actively seeking to exclude what they understood to be a social other, an enemy of America. Several opined they would be called bigots as they spewed bigoted speeches to oppose recognizing Pride month in their small town.

I couldn’t help but notice how many referred to passages in the Bible with the same fervor of those who had once used scripture to justify segregation, bans on interracial marriage, to stand against feminism and the right to vote for women, justify slavery, ignore police brutality and murder, etc., etc., etc. It was the same tired arguments to scapegoat their little god as the source for the hate they called love.

Others appealed to a slippery slope argument, claiming that allowing the Pride flag to be flown would cause all manner of requests for other flags to be flown. This argument, of course, is born out of ignorance. First, such requests are not being made. Second, the only ones who seemed to want to fly other flags were those who came to oppose both Pride Month and the flying of the Pride flag–and the flags they proposed were ones of hate and intended intimidation–the same sort of bullshit that saw statues of Confederate generals and figures erected all across the south during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

This particular moment sparked a radical change in my personal life. I, along with several others, joined with the council member who proposed the proclamation to organize and host a Pride celebration in the City of Kingsburg–which we did with great success. But also, I found it incredibly important that I weaponized my white privilege and my less-than-humane past to confront the white supremacy, bigotry, and systemic bias deeply embedded within my community and the communities surrounding my own.

This turning point made it clear that I could not simply be silent on matters of marginalization and oppression. I must act. Whether that means helping organizations that combat injustice, calling state and federal representatives, or simply calling out fucked up behaviors in the public space, I have to act.

It has been a long journey, and there is still much work to be done, but, in a way, I am glad I was forced to confront this evil head on. It’s made me a better, more compassionate, and a more loving human.