Giolita

Inner Mongolian Child

The little girl’s name is Butedmaa and she was just 5 when this picture was taken in 2003 by Han Chengli.

The cuts, the slow ramp-ups, how it matches his dance moves.

You know, as a historian I can’t say that it’s not fascinating to watch the slow downfall of the American Empire in real time; to watch the post-WW2 state of international affairs fall to the wayside.

I always talk about how people who are living through these massive shifts don’t realize what they’re living through, but as a historian it’s morbidly fascinating to watch. And honestly, when Al Qaeda staged those attacks on 9/11, they did so with the intent to destroy America’s place in the global order. And yeah it’s been slow, but I think they won/are winning.

I don’t think WW3 is coming. Of the three global superpowers, two are rogue states, but China seems really averse to full on declaring war on anyone, so unless something happens with Taiwan I don’t think we’ll see anything on a global, nuclear scale. And don’t overestimate Israel’s global importance here. The Levant is an important colonial outpost for any empire and that’s been evident since the Bronze Age. What Israel does next will hinge on Putin’s machinations, not anything relating to the imaginary Elders of Zion.

But while having a front seat to all this as a historian living in/around the center of the American Empire is fascinating, I can’t say I’m having a good time. I would have far preferred for the CIA and FBI to have listened and coordinated to/with each other/themselves and ended 9/11 prep before anyone walked onto those airplanes. I would have preferred for the SCOTUS to think harder about its ruling on the 2000 POTUS elections. I would have liked for the American people to have been stronger than to immediately have turned to Islamophobia and reactionary politics.

But more than anything, I wish I lived a boring, happy prosperous life. I wish the thing adults had promised me and my peers in our formative years had been real. I wish we could trust that grownups were steering the ship. I wish my two Master’s degrees had gained me a permanent hold in the UMC like everyone swore it would. I wish my decade of work as an archivist meant something. I wish writing a NYT bestselling book meant “bitch I got the good health insurance” money.

I wish I wasn’t a 36 year old woman living with her parents nine months from being kicked off of Medicaid. I wish my degrees, experience, and accomplishments were enough. I wish I wasn’t applying to get a third masters degree in adolescent education because I have so few options and I need health insurance.

And I am, all of this said, very privileged.