Friends, I am spiraling.

This weekend, I wrote 75% of a very bougie, somewhat self-congratulatory (look at me, I can see the man behind the curtain!) post about market manipulation and insider trading. Today, I was going to finish and post that, ready to bask in my safe outrage about irrational candlestick charts and market movers’ telltale volume spikes.

I’m not going to rehash everything that happened today; there are plenty of very smart people who can help you there. (Also, no research-y links tonight, as I can’t give a rat about SEO at the moment.) Suffice to say, we’ve reached the stage of defying the courts, and terrifyingly so, in a matter that makes me feel like I’m staring down the barrel of a time machine set to 1930s Germany.

This is, I suppose, the part where many people say, “they won’t win, because it’s against what our country is about. This isn’t what America stands for.”

Really?

Yes, I know, we have some beautiful words that we like to trot out when we think about what our country “stands for.”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

-Part of “The New Colossus,” the poem on the plaque at the Statue of Liberty

Consider, however, some of the things we have been conditioned to accept as a matter of course. The quiet, everyday cruelties.

• That it’s completely normal for workers to have to forgo bathroom breaks, work themselves past the point of injury, or continue putting in their hours despite rising floodwaters or a long-track tornado.
• That of course someone who chooses the equivalent of underwater basket weaving as a college major should be doomed to never make more than a subsistence wage.
• That people who are too lazy to work don’t deserve medical treatment, even the life-saving kind — at least not without taking on massive debt. And even for those with health insurance, forget offering proper pain care or otherwise taking seriously any woman or person of color. (x2 multiplier if both!)
• That children should go into debt or otherwise be forced to sit hungry at school because their parents can’t afford to pay for their lunches.
• That certainly, the homeless shouldn’t be allowed to sleep anywhere, and doing so should be made criminal.
• That it goes without saying someone who succumbed to the vices of addiction should be incarcerated, have their life upended, and then be relegated to being only able to get certain types of (low paying) jobs once they’ve served their time. Never mind if the drug they were originally busted for has now become both legal and trendy – defiance of the law still requires long-lasting penance.
• That being pinned down to the point of asphyxiation or shot is only what someone should expect if they have the audacity to question, flee, or otherwise struggle against the police — whether those police really had a good reason to stop them or not.
• That people who have nothing to hide don’t have a problem submitting to a search, with the refusal thereof serving as reasonable suspicion that someone must be guilty.
• That someone with a different lifestyle must be deviant in some sinister way that threatens our good old apple pie way of life.

And these are just the ones we see around us all the time. I won’t even get into the slave children who we vaguely know assemble our electronics and sew our cheap, fast fashion rags in some faraway country.

We like to claim that we are an enlightened nation, and yet, we have built a power structure that rewards complacent cruelty again and again. Sure, we may remember enough of history that an actual concentration camp causes us to sit up and protest, but how strong is the spiderweb of the system going to ultimately prove? Will we be able to tear through it like a herd of bison, or will we flail, feeble as moths?

Friends, I am so concerned. Heartsick, nauseated, exhausted, and worried.

Tomorrow will bring a new start for trying to figure out what to do, but for tonight, I think I’ll settle in with a cat and a comfort show.

Hang in there.

Feature image by Charles Criscuolo on Pexels