Ya Basta

Twenty years.

Twenty years of working harder and harder for less and less.

Twenty years of going into debt for jobs which don't exist.

Twenty years of seeing my society become nastier, crueler, more polarized.

Twenty years of watching the Empire wage monstrous neocolonial wars.

Twenty years of watching the richest 1% steal our jobs, our money, our future.

Twenty years of living in less than 10K a year.


Twenty years of living on one meal a day.

Twenty years of brokenness.

Twenty years of neoliberal hell.


* * * * * *

As a wage-slave, I don't have the funds to be in NY to help the Resistance. But at least I can type these words. And testify to the anger. The terrible, terrible anger which I first experienced in 2003. It would well up suddenly, explosively. It was new to me, something alien to my extremely privileged and reasonably happy childhood (supportive family, good schools, good books, good neighborhoods). I was always polite, shy, geeky. But this anger was like nothing I'd ever felt before. This wasn't geek frustration at a technology not working properly. It was an absolute, terrifying, all-devouring rage.

Heiner Müller wrote about that rage, in words I translated long ago, without fully comprehending them.

Rage at the lies. Rage at the deceit. Rage at the stupidity of a society being driven off the rails by plutocratic thieves who produce nothing but lies, invest in nothing but theft, do nothing but steal.

The words
form the shape
of a fist:
ya basta
NO MORE

The battle begins.