The Real Distraction
Let's stop wasting time on conspiracy theories. Our futures are on the line.
LISTENING: to my favorite band, STRFKR
FEELING: exhausted from working overtime to meet deadlines
SEEING: the sun begin its evening descent
I'm tired, and I'm pissed. All over my feed, I see people — some friends, some strangers, some writers and thinkers I've long admired — claim that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a fluke. "Fake news," they say. "Staged!" they exclaim. My response is a simple, "WTF?"
I don't care to debate the details of Trump's fiery fist wave or of the crowd's reaction to it all. None of this is relevant. The conspiracy theorists of the left wind up looking just as nutty as the conspiracy theorists of the right. What good does that do? How do any of these conversations move the nation toward a presidency where climate action matters and where the most vulnerable are afforded the opportunity of a future?
These types of conversations take away from what the public should be talking about: policy. Yes, it's oh so very boring, but policy affects our daily lives. It affects our access to affordable mass transit. It governs people's access to the types of guns used to successfully kill tens of thousands of people in the U.S. a year. It will determine what our energy infrastructure looks like in 50 years.
Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and we need to talk about the 2024 presidential election.
I hate politics. I hate covering it. I hate talking about it. I hate the ugliness of it. It's incredibly disillusioning as a 31-year-old to live in a country where we're forced to pick between two shitty options. It's even more disturbing, however, to live in a country where the populace pays more attention to fictional internet theories than the actual proposals lawmakers are considering.