As a disabled, immunocompromised person living in make-believe no-Covid world amid revolving door poverty, an active genocide and increasing eugenics campaigns globally I am finding less and less reason to continue Being. Tell me how you’re doing it, dear reader, so that I can make living in unending despair at all bearable.
I feel like it's good to learn some history. Not to get all Pinker-esque "this is the best time in human history" but humans have lived under far, far, far worse repression (I'm particularly thinking of late-1800s Tsarist Russia) and overcome those obstacles to organize & overthrow their oppressors. Our problems are solvable. Reading October by China Meiville was a bloomer moment for me.
This is all fine and well until you understand how horribly the sick have been treated for, well, all of it, and this current moment has not managed to inspire much confidence in me that this is changing or will change. Have you read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts? Insulin is “affordable” and “accessible” as of the 1980s because the Walmart guy’s friend got diagnosed with type 1- when’s the last time you ever thought about diabetes aside from whatever shock headline you read about Covid giving it to you? Please tell me of any inspiring historical record of disability justice and the contemporary reaction to it because it’s all extremely depressing to me!
Good general history book for people trying to learn about the period but struggle with how dense it can be at times
Not trying to crap on you or anything but my impression was the opposite, he very much went for the narrativized style of history that felt it could be easily adapted to a TV series. I don't think it got too bogged down in details, names, and places.
lol yeah I also read this as "how dense the book can be at times" even on second glance. I don't think of periods in history as being "dense" but it makes sense now that you point it out
misinterpreted as