November. Oh boy. I've been dreading November. Election season is such shit. Like, I don't live in America -- and probably will never -- but everyone on the internet is an American. Hegemony or whatever. Also, isn't crazy that election day is like a day away from the October Revolution?
A lot has been happening in a minute recently. Politics' a sports broadcast now -- gridiron-Manichaeism. They've already counted the votes apparently. It's not looking good apparently. Oh, and over yonder, Palestine has been suffering an international abandonment to the complete genocidal whims of Israel. It is unprecedented and utterly unnecessary. They reduced Gaza to rubble. They will destroy Lebanon next. It doesn't stop.
The world has been standing still and crashing at the same time recently. 118,000 people and counting are dead. It seems this putrid, satanic massacre will keep going without end because the United States will consider scorching the known universe if even one force with humanity threatens its death-grip supremacy. I have no words or control over my *hatred* of America. There is nothing about America where I don't see blood. Nothing in America is sacred. A source of evil is emanating from the White House.
Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. I find myself in a foetal position, sitting down near the corner of my carpeted room. My face is buried in my knees. I'm cold. I'm so tired of this world. There's so, so many dead. It's an unbearable mourning. You aren't supposed to mourn for this many. And what wounds me the most -- I cannot meaningfully change this. I don't have power over any system. I am a scared girl comfortably paralyzed. A retweet, a donation akin to change for the beggar, reminds me of my own uselessness. I want a billion dollars for every GoFundMe. I want an army the size of a nation that will burn every Israeli settler and feed every child, mother and father in Palestine. I want to do so much more but I can't. The world was designed to keep desires like mine out of power. What do I do, what can I do, what can anyone do, what is to be done...
I raise my face. My eyes see a blurry object suddenly appear at the very corner. Something leans there. I focus more on it and the contours become clear. It's a Mosin-Nagant rifle. It's *my* Mosin-Nagant rifle. I've held onto him since I was 16, in the month of Ramadan, at the same time I found my womanhood. He is the purest product of contradiction. A dark hope, a soldier's song. And he's on cue for this crisis. Immediately, he understands my sadness, that the world has abandoned a whole selection of peoples to die, and he says with an orator's voice: don't worry. I know what must be done.
What must be done, I ask? You know already, he says, you can feel what it is, in the blood inside your heart, in the neurons controlling your brain. It's the Revolution. What always must happen is the combined might of the fearless, unwavering working class. For too long we have sat in this complacency of simply surviving, and look what it has lead us to: a world that does not care about the screams and recorded evidence of two million people dying. This is not a world that countless revolutionaries of old have fought for. It is precisely the opposite. But how delectable will its collapse be. Langley? Tel Aviv? Vauxhall? All these empires built on exploitation? Ripe for a toppling of the millennium.
These words soothe me. Vague, crystal fumes of a heaven on earth start to form. The iridescence show me a tall Tatlin tower, with thousands of olive trees and filled with the spirits of a million lovers. The infinite promise of impossibility becoming possible. Yes, cast me in this spell for longer. Hold me tighter. You're losing your grip.
I look down and I see my phone. I forgot that was there. Oh look, a video. It's a video from a trusted black leftist youtuber -- "breadtubers" or something like that. It's a video three months ago, at the height of that whole assassination attempt, back when Biden was about to drop out. Somehow that was a more calmer time. They're great. So lively, funny, and decidedly US-centric. They speak of how the Christendom fascists have organized themselves and are using this attempt to further apotheosize Trump. They're anti-republican, rather than pro-democratic. A belief that has been shared around. All that matters, they say, is to "vote blue no matter who", since morphed into "no matter what they do" after the blue sent billions of dollars to people who are killing children as we speak. They didn't say no matter what they do, but they will still support blue anyhow. Because that damn elephant will destroy them all.
Seemingly no mention of Palestine, as though they were living vicariously in another reality where the genocide wasn't happening. There was an allusion to it -- as they put it: "Foreign Policy" -- and says the conservative party won't be any better. I guess the implications of that will be further discussed in another video. Maybe they already have made that video? I won't watch it.
Mood's growing sour. Now here's another video, a stream clip from another trusted leftist youtuber. Argentinian. He makes videos that I can only describe as rage-bait-response videos for JDPON activists. I like him too. He's a lot more dry, direct and somewhat inflammatory with what he says, but that's becoming more of a blessing to me as time goes on. And recently, he has been righteously condemning Israel and by extension America. He wants America to collapse as soon as possible, a sentiment that resonates a lot with me. So, he makes this video where he says he wants Trump to win, demonstrably not because he agrees with his policies or whatever, but precisely because Trump will destroy America. He wants the idiot felon to crash the continent domestically and hopefully internationally, even more hopefully compelling the woefully-compliant American people to rebel. To this, the Mosin-Nagant becomes snug in that corner. Like a cat getting its food.
Well, truth always stings I guess. I do want to subscribe to such belief, but some part of me cannot condemn them to *that* fate. I don't know what a second term will mean for the oppressed people stuck in that continent. Because I don't know if, when Trump appears on that inauguration podium, a slaughter will happen.
Somehow I'm on Twitter. My hands are the most treacherous part of me, along with my brain. The present day shows hundreds of people panicking, angry, and deeply afraid for their survival. Tweets from trans activists telling others to stock as much DIY HRT as possible. Tweets telling others that now they will all know what "greater evil" means. Tweets of desolation. Now my hands lead me to Youtube again and my subscription feed shows the American black leftists giving a deeply angry loss for words as to the stupidity of a majority voting for Trump instead of Kamala. Is Project 2025 going to be in effect now? Are good people going to die now? All these fears I can feel so palpably, that I can't help but feel somewhat guilty that I'm on different terms. But then I remember Gaza. And I remember it was the Democratic Party who sent more money than God to Israel. Why do they want to believe that their evil was any lesser than the Republican Party? It was entirely their fault and Gaza will be a parking lot regardless of who's in power. Everything will be. *Oh how complacent are we all*.
I sit in the nightmare bus, with 118,000 spirits around me. Outside my window, I can see a thousand people in rows, looking away from the bus, towards a big map with reds and blues flashing. Some laugh, some cry, most just look, in horror. I think to myself: why are they not in the bus? Everywhere I look, every second I take alive, I feel like I have forsaken every person I have sworn, with revolutionary thought, to demand justice for. I don't want any president elected for they will all massacre Palestine, and I have forsaken the Africans, the women, the LGBTQ, so on. They tell me to "do the right thing" and support the blue if I "care for people like them rainbow emoji", and all I can think about is whether the Palestinian people will be another people denied their homeland. Are the Palestinians another Armenian, another American Indian, another enslaved African, not an Irish, not a Haitian, not a Cuban, not a people who won their independence? How can my heart not break if the answer is "yes"?
I want the freedom of every single wretched of the earth. I want the wretched inside the imperial core to finally make a revolution destroy and replace the American Empire. I know, deep down, that it must happen. So why, the fuck, is the American people so *inert*! These people simply memory-holed 2.8 million in torture for election season, never once considering to advocate for and commit to organizing a system beyond this dictatorial, faux-two party system! How have they managed to deal with 248 years without any sizable opposition? Most countries have tens more political parties for crying out loud! How can I see this and not think that the American citizen truthfully does not want to change anything, and that they are content with sitting in the precipice of complete misery and casting survival votes every four years in an attempt to not reap what they had been fine with sowing, as long as it was in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Libya, Panama, Korea, the Congo, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada... why, oh why does it take so much for them to revolt?
I grip my head tight to stave off the headache I'm getting. No. no no no no, stop. Don't say that. There are people in America who care and are trying to stop this. There must always be people who care. Already something echoes within -- it is infecting the spirit: where is the resistance then? Why are their protests so inefficient? Why are powerful people not dead yet?
I tell myself, it's because of the police helicopters flying over them everyday. The CIA breathes down the neck of everyone. Every state police has access to high-tech weaponry, not unlike the weapons used by Israel. They killed Huey Newton, Martin Luther King, people who dared to give power to a people who have yet to receive true justice seemingly as an example of what will happen to us. Capital Hill Autonomous Zone got shut down by police. The student protests for Palestine went nowhere, just a bunch of students getting doxxed by ghoulish organizations. The Black Lives Matter riots went nowhere, and police never got abolished, still terrorizing, killing people without remorse. Phones can blow up now, if you click a wrong link or something. There are a thousand PHD-holders under the employment of empire. Once again, there is hopelessness all around me. Born from a need to survive. You cannot expect me to throw my life away to fight what may as well be a force of nature for something that may not even happen.
The Mosin-Nagant smiles warmly, knowing already the folly of my despair. My comrade, people have fought under worse conditions. Ordinary people have triumphed gloriously against literal dictators. Even through election! It is ridiculous to believe the government has any insurmountability as nature. It's a man-made object, not an atomic structure. And the States are not Gaza. The States have everything available to make revolution. Just look upon my wooden frame, for instance. Look at my worn scars, how empty and hungry I am for ammunition. If I was to be held by your delicate hands and pointed towards a US ambassador, congressperson, president, I will not miss. Imagine what a hundred of us could do with that power. A thousand. A million. Yes, it will be difficult. But the revolution itself -- taking over the state palace, the train lines, the mail stations, the army depot -- is not difficult. It's the reaction. The civil war. That's the part you need to prepare for. And if I am by your side, you will always be prepared. All life is thrown away if everything keeps being the way things are now. It will only be in vain if you give up.
And there I sit, staring deeply at the Mosin-Nagant rifle. He's refracting strangely. Hypnotic. He is a void, endless and staring back. I plunge towards, with only thoughts of a revolution I desperately need. It is here, calling me with a song I already know. The Varshavianka.
Вихри враждебные веют над нами,
Темные силы нас злобно гнетут.
В бой роковой мы вступили с врагами,
Нас еще судьбы безвестные ждут.
Но мы подымем гордо и смело
Знамя борьбы за рабочее дело,
Знамя великой борьбы всех народов
За лучший мир, за святую свободу.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ.
Мрёт в наши дни с голодухи рабочий,
Станем ли, братья, мы дольше молчать?
Наших сподвижников юные очи
Может ли вид эшафота пугать?
В битве великой не сгинут бесследно
Павшие с честью во имя идей.
Их имена с нашей песней победной
Станут священны мильонам людей.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ!
Нам ненавистны тиранов короны,
Цепи народа-страдальца мы чтим.
Кровью народной залитые троны
Кровью мы наших врагов обагрим!
Смерть беспощадная всем супостатам!
Всем паразитам трудящихся масс!
Мщенье и смерть всем царям-плутократам!
Близок победы торжественный час.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ.
На бой кровавый,
Святой и правый
Марш, марш вперед,
Рабочий народ!
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... I can hear my heart beating. My ears feel numb. My fingers twitch from the shock. Trying to compose my breathing. I look at the corner, the gun is gone. Okay. I slowly stagger to stand towards the door. I put my shoes on. I twist the knob, it opens. I leave, and close. Still composing my breath. I walk towards the entrance of my apartment complex. I walk outside.
Sun's rising. I stayed up late. The immense beauty of the sunlight hurts my eyes. It shines on me standing. I hear birds chirping. They fly all around me, with impossible grace, their feathers becoming one with the air, flying without pain. I feel my skin ripple, with a shiver. We will all fly like them.