Meditations on the Loss of a Voice
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
As 2025 draws to a close, many will agree that it has been another harsh year for anyone with ideals rooted in morality, sustainability and general inclusiveness. And over these last few months, as I’ve shrunken away from ‘fighting the good fight’ and watched myself lose all grasp of the point of speeches and protests and articles in the grand scheme of things, something has grown more clear to me, the more muddled my ambitions have become. A sort of revelation rooted in the lowering of standards, that the American people are facing a plague. Not a viral illness, though we can probably guess just how competently we would respond to another COVID-19 situation. This affliction is a mental and ideological one that appears under crushing environmental pressure throughout a specific population of society, a population that diminishes in numbers the more this pressure encompasses every aspect of daily and political existence. It is a plague of exhaustion and hopelessness that perpetuates its own guilt for existence, the worse things become for everyone else, and pulls the person into numbness against danger that is currently growing closer to knocking at their door. Put more simply, a plague of a loss of voice in the minutely privileged.
When one speaks of privilege in America, the contextual definition of the word can change when moving across socioeconomic spheres. A white or white-passing individual of any variety can be considered privileged in that they will likely never have dealt with fearing the worst of a traffic stop. A neurotypical person may be considered privileged to be able to interact with society without being scorned for barriers that they themselves can’t control. Simply having enough money to be able to get through a medical or financial emergency without losing everything can be called privilege. This mindset greatly broadens the sheer number of people that would be considered privileged, the emotional bias behind that word aside. However, for the purposes of this thought exercise, the ‘minutely privileged’ speaks not of the millionaires and CEO families riddled with nepotism, but of the people who have managed to make it this far without total financial ruin, social oppression, illegal deportation, politically endorsed violence or degradation of quality of life so severe that staying in this country is no longer a viable option. In contemporary America, the broadening of such a label is counteracted by the sheer scale of hardship befalling the population of the country. As the price of living and the state of wealth inequality increase, the sphere of the middle class shrinks. As the political control and aggression of the current administrations grow more intense and targeted against marginalized communities, the more people they come for directly or through their adamant hate-raised followers.
Fewer and fewer people are ‘safe’.
In this group of the ‘safe’ individuals which I personally reside, particularly the ones that have enough empathy and common sense to regard the actions of those in power over the last decade to be appalling, just as everyone else, we are overloaded when we open our condensed information machines and witness another heinous lapse in objective morality, another video of rubble buried carnage, another legal line being crossed and another report on how everything is getting worse every single day. This is the environmental pressure that pushes the first signs of the illness into existence. The generations that grew up being told that they should change the system while abiding by it, unlike their revolutionary ancestors, that they could improve the world as long as they did it the state-approved way, that they could stop climate change if they just recycled their plastics and shut off their water often enough, have grown to know better. They witness police approved peaceful protests fail to enact any real change in these dire circumstances, the conglomerates that predicted and caused the climate crisis by a large majority skirt any responsibility, legally or otherwise, and militaristic empires continue their genocides and atrocities in Palestine, Sudan and the Congo. Our own government blows ‘suspected drug smugglers’ to oblivion without reproach or restraint in the seas and marches towards meaningless war against Venezuela while laying siege against its own people in all manner of ways.
The ‘minutely privileged’, the people lucky enough not to be in the direct line of fire as of right now, are paralyzed in outrage and bewilderment, paralyzed in their attempts to simply function and survive their daily life in our capitalist hellscape. A new scandal each week keeps our minds attuned to the fact that the bar is just being set lower. Presidential and Homeland Security accounts parading AI videos of defecation on protesters and ‘hip memes’ of utterly dehumanized shackled individuals being led onto planes, Kanye West selling swastika t-shirts without consequence and still losing the finalist title of ‘antisemite of the year’ to a children’s influencer who dared show Gazan children compassion, billionaires working on startups to block out the sun, and it all just keeps getting more and more insane and degenerate. Yet they can’t look away, because they know their constant duty to be informed, lest mass ignorance make things even worse.
We understand what the environment hosting the plague constitutes, an increasingly authoritarian and unsafe living space with threats to financial and physical safety to everyone who is not of the ‘standard’ gender, ethnicity or financial position, but how do the symptoms manifest? And what causes them to fester more in some generations than others? Whether or not the person has attempted to resist this illness through political and community engagement throughout their life offers little difference. The individual eventually begins to regard the ineffectiveness of protests in disgust and shame as they reflect on the worsening state of things overall, so they stop going. Those who are socially isolated and have little interpersonal connections within community action groups may withdraw altogether, becoming disillusioned with the methods of effort to enact change favored by the Democratic party, minor controversial but ineffective symbols of indignation. Tiny red pins on Oscars suits and pink signs while children are blown to pieces. But of course, protest or action beyond the lines of legality or convenience is scrutinized and shut down so heavily, so what chance of enacting meaningful change is there to appeal to anymore, while the individual struggles to survive their own troubled life?
While this internal disillusionment occurs, the environmental pressure continues, or rises, and it becomes almost impossible to balance with personal problems. The worse things get, the fewer consequences the bigots, rich, and powerful face. The fewer consequences these elite face, the less change seems possible. The less change seems possible, the worse the symptoms become.
‘No one is going to do anything about it.’
‘This is just how the world works now.’
Sentences the person refused to accept months ago, ideologies they stood in the streets and shouted against in articles, win the battle of endurance. Exhaustion is inescapable in the individual, not one of apathy, but a weakness to effort born from learned hopelessness and overstimulation. They never stop caring about what’s happening, but they stop offering energy to the idea that what’s happening can be fought. Effectively, that person’s voice is lost.
Though it can affect any age of person, acting almost as an inevitability, it would be foolish to disregard the generational differences in the severity and manifestation of this condition. Generation Z was always known to be more absurdist than the millennials that came before them, absorbing themselves in online culture and humor to cope with the severity of the historical events happening around them. And while many activists use this to their advantage for outreach and communications, it is undoubtedly so that the generation that grew up watching recessions both in the financial and political state of the country from their screens while being told of the progressive accomplishments of those who came before are especially hardened by this affliction. Even scandals with horrific implications of power, wealth and immunity to justice, such as the contents of the Epstein files, are known and regarded mostly through online humor. This generation serves as the first prime example of the overstimulation of the minds of even the most dedicated activists through the double-edged sword of exposure through the World Wide Web. Though, the unique position of Generation Z in politics and their relationship through previously unseen levels of exposure could be a piece all on its own.
The affliction serves to defensively numb people to levels of despair and outrage from outside stimuli that could break their perception of the world even further. The individual pays less active attention or regards everything with the same unenthusiastic shrug of the shoulders, as eventually, there is no news that can shock or disturb them anymore.
Although it may be a defense mechanism, it’s not the way to cope with life, let alone what is happening in and around this country. As stated before, the number of ‘safe’ people is becoming fewer with each passing day, a fact we are continually being reminded of by the rulers of the empire. Fewer people can afford to live, and even those who do can be snatched off the streets and deported at any time. It doesn’t matter if you are in court going through the legal process being held in godly standards, if you just happen to not have your papers on you, or, most horrifyingly, if you have everything they ask for. As proven by the case of Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, the powers that be can simply deny your papers existence on a whim.
That is the true danger of this plague. Not just that those who are privileged become too numb to use their safety to help others, but that they become too numb to even regard the danger coming directly towards them. And as things remain unchanging, it will only spread further if not recognized for what it is.
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