i finished reading R.F. Kuang’s Babel today, partly motivated by finding that someone had placed a hold on the library copy that was due in a few days.
i think i need a bit more time to digest it. in a lot of ways, it poses the same question as The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – what do you choose to do when you see the full darkness at the heart of the empire that provides you personally with an easy, happy life? but her answers are very different. and before
in the U.S. of my lifetime, this is the most relevant the question has felt, although i suspect i felt it more strongly, in the way that 22-year-olds feel more strongly, when i came home from the year abroad in 2002. idealism betrayed, but these days i have far more company. we have national guard policing the DC streets, a regime of open corruption. maybe just for four years, maybe.
but i can’t completely keep it from my brain that even if there might’ve been some kind of interference in the election… it was expected to be close. it’s not as if 80% of us are repelled at the total abandonment of what i thought America meant.
and how much death and chaos does it deal the rest of the world?
it gets dark in here sometimes.