(no subject)

[hungryghosts]

(This is the secret second half of this Tumblr post - I deemed this part too spicy for Tumblr. Discussion of flaws in leftist thinking, feat. ableism ahead.)

Something that troubles me a great deal is that an awful lot of self-avowed leftists, particularly of the young, chronically online, and - if I may be a little blunt - white and culturally Christian variety, have this idea of The Revolution(tm) as a grand, singular event that Will Happen, someday, to Rescue us all from the clutches of this fallen world and bring us to a new one where everything is Good and Right ever after. In short: they yearn for the Leftist Rapture. And some of those self-avowed leftists are deeply defensive of their Leftist Rapture to genuinely disturbing degrees. One encounter that will forever stick in my mind is seeing a diabetic post about their anxieties around revolution, explaining that while they understood the desire for it, an actual violent revolution would put their life in jeopardy, as it would disrupt access to life-saving medication. While I saw some people reply thoughtfully, I saw many others attacking and shaming them for their anxiety. How dare they doubt The Revolution(tm)! Don't they know that The Revolution(tm) is for their own good? Sure, they might die, but Sacrifices Must Be Made for a better world, etc, etc, etc.

(Telling disabled people they should be happy to die for the cause. That their lives are a fair price to pay for some nebulous better world. Doesn't that sound awfully familiar?)

Building a better world is never such a simple thing. Even in the cases where violent revolution is necessary, it is not the singular rapture that so many self-avowed leftists think it is. The work never ends at tearing down - something new, something better, must be built in its place, lest the old, cruel hierarchies reassert themselves in new ways. And that work is infinitely harder, and never-ending. There is no one coming to rapture us - no god, no charismatic band of plucky heroes, no one-and-done revolution. We each must learn what it means to save ourselves, in this world, together.