Every time I hear news about everything that's going on in the world (especially America) I just don't know what to feel. I don't actively *want* to think that nothing will ever get better and that everyone is just evil, but I only think that because I don't see any other reason as to why I'm wrong. Throughout the entirety of America's 250 years of being called "America" (because it, as a landmass, has existed for thousands of years before Europeans showed up), there has never been a time where everyone was truly "free," just abled, non-queer Christian white people. It's a country built on colonization, slavery and racism but it portrays itself as the best country there is.
How can anyone have hope that things will get better? All of this is ultimately just one step on a massive set of stairs. Native Americans first had their land stolen and were killed and raped en masse, immigrants were forced to work, Africans were reduced to slaves--and chattel slavery might have eventually ended but segregation and hate crimes didn't because white people were mad they couldn't own black people anymore. And honestly, Republicans wish they could go back to the chattel slavery days, or *at least* back to the Jim Crow era, which is the exact reason why "make America great AGAIN" is their slogan in the first place. Slavery still exists in the prison system, but no one cares because as a society we're taught to think prisoners are "evil subhuman scum," which definitely doesn't overlap with the fact that black men are disproportionately targeted by police and arrested for the same things white people get away with daily. Prisoners are also not allowed to vote, and because black men are arrested so often, it cuts out a lot of black voters. Black people also mostly vote blue, so therefore the right-wing regime eliminates their biggest setback keeping them from holding absolute power.
My point is that there has never been a single time that America was a good place to live if you were marginalized in any way, and I'm not saying we should all give up and die, but what can we actually do as civilians to finally make it all stop? Are protestors actually helping to change anything? Of course any positive help matters, go out and protest and donate to charities if you can, I would never discourage anyone from doing that, I'm just wondering how much of a difference it actually makes in the end. No matter how much you protest against AI data centers, another one gets built. For one immigrant that gets released from an ICE detention center, 50 more get kidnapped. For one pro-trans law that gets passed, 10 anti-trans laws are already being thought up. We can be there for each other, and that's definitely worth something, but even when this time is over, there's just gonna be another president to come along and do the same shit anyway.
American people are so brainwashed and numb that even when fascism in their country is so overwhelmingly obvious it's basically screaming in their face, they still don't notice or actively choose to ignore it because they don't want to think about their own compliance in a system that hates the same black and brown people that have done infinitely more for this country than any white centrist keyboard warrior playing devils advocate online. What are we even fighting for? The "privilege" of having basic rights for 5 minutes before they're stripped away again? The privilege of having barely any rights at all, but hey at least it's better than aboslutely no rights?
I'm not even typing all of this up as a way to present my own idea of how we can magically "fix everything," because some glorious revolution isn't going to happen out of thin air. The only way to have change is to do something, I know that, but America *has always been like this* and that's my fear. Shit never changes no matter how hard we try because America itself is built on racism, so that racism will never truly go away. If we fight back, they label us as terrorists, imprison us, or kill us. Everything is so fucking terrible and I feel like there's nothing I can do about it. I wish I could help people but I'm currently in a position where I can't. I've become numb too. Not because I don't care about what's happening, but because I don't know if there's really any way out. Will America never become an actually good place to live? Am I a coward for saying I'd rather die than continue living here, unable to change anything as I'm forced to watch the world burn around me? I genuinely don't know.