Injustice

Normally I don't express my thoughts publicly online about many political-social events, for several reasons. (My outlet is usually a special, non-public online journal entitled PRRS: Politics, Religion, Race and Sexuality, which contains far more intense opinions and images.)

However, I have lived many decades and therefore I have seen so very much, starting when I was still a kid, involving justice and injustice in personal experiences as well as what has happened to others in society. The one constant throughout the years is that I have always wanted to live long enough to see the day when injustice was finally, thoroughly vanquished by justice, and irrational acts and hatred were defeated once and for all.

I wanted to live in a time when everyone saw everyone else as human beings whose lives were equal and always worth saving as opposed to gratuitously and coldly destroying each other. I wanted to breathe the lack of fear and anger that would result when no one perpetrated violence in the name of false righteousness. And of course, I wanted to personally also stop being the subject of deliberate wrongs that arose from many people who have viewed my own life as inferior and without value.

Of course my wish was idealistic and utopian. I am a realistic person and the world will always be flawed, so I already knew that my wish would not ever come fully true. Nevertheless I hoped to at least see a definite improvement. I hoped that the present would feel more positive and the future would definitely be better than the past. I hoped that there would be a lessening of the conflicts that we always seem to be besieged with and fighting every day.

But after watching the events of the world in the last few years, particularly in 2020 and 2021 during the time of the intense protests against racism, and the aftermath of the demonstrations with the death of some people — for example, a white 17 year old went out of state seeking adventure with a rifle he didn't own, received the support of the police and then killed two people in "self-defense" (a scenario that would never have occurred if he had been a teenager of color and instead he would have himself been killed by the police) and he was later hailed as a hero — and watching how the courts dealt with those events by fully acquitting such acts, I now have one of my saddest thoughts, based on a painful reality.

After all the protests, sacrifice and efforts, after all the history, tears, anger and deaths, I still will never live long enough to see a significant end of racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other excuses that are used to make sure that we never reach goals that have been sought for centuries.

Some people will always be trying to claim the absolute and unquestioned power to oppress and even kill others when it cannot be justified. Many of them now expect to be praised and rewarded for taking a life. They will stand as symbols to be imitated by like-minded vigilantes and supremacists, as soon as possible.

I wanted to live to see injustice permanently lose. Instead, injustice keeps winning, again and again.