If hope is a balloon, light and airy and free, right now it’s firmly attached to an anchor of rage for me. I feel so fucking mad right now, angrier than I can ever recall being, at the state of our world and the sheer madness of what some people are thinking, doing and saying.
As a woman, I’m tired of staying quiet. Remaining calm, stable and gentle. NO. Not now. Not with this lunatic American president spewing hate, misogyny, racism and fear-mongering on a daily basis. Not with the evangelical Christian community I came from (and left in 2014) still supporting these dangerous rantings from a man unfit in every way to hold the office of president.
This tsunami of rage has threatened to take me over completely. I know I have to feel it, to let it have its way, for the purpose of anger is to cleanse and to prepare us for a new stage of positive action.
We are all in for a fight. It’s beyond time for the patriarchy to die, with its failed notions of male hierarchies grasping the power structures of the world. I’d love to believe that we can resist our way to a healthier society with no blood being shed or lives being destroyed, but history tells us this is not how the process works. The arc of social justice is long, messy and deadly.
Clearly, the time for wealth and race to dictate who holds authority is over. Finished. We are watching the death throes of the rich white man wielding power by blaming minorities, women and the poor for everything that goes wrong. It’s time for the evangelical church to perish right along with this male-centred structure of abuse, so something new and inclusive can form instead.
But the question remains, how violent is this clash between love and decency versus hate and supremacy going to get? How many lives will be lost? Exactly how brave are we going to have to be to stand up for what’s right?
Perhaps the fury I feel, together with many other women, people of colour and all who have been oppressed and humiliated for too long, is the fuel we need to move our resistance forward. To say “Hell no” and “Fuck you” with spirit and courage. To fight, but never to hate. To build the type of world that we’ve long believed was possible – not one with faulty top-down ideas of success that hinge on being male and white, but instead one that embraces everyone who has been marginalized and says, “Let’s work together.”
That’s where the hope comes in. And maybe, after a ton of work, time and acceptance, we can cut the string on the balloon and watch it soar into the sky, knowing that the future can be brighter than our distressing and unfair past.
I must admit that I wouldn’t voluntarily choose to see Dunkirk, but my husband had been waiting for months for this one, so I booked it as our anniversary date.
Rich People Problems is about as much fun as you can have reading a book. This is the third book in Kevin Kwan’s fabulous trilogy about ultra-rich Asians.
This book taught me so much. It draws a parallel between the events leading up to Nazi Germany and the state of our world today.
