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Published 09/11/2020 | Reading Time 2 mins 1 sec
By Autumn Brown, Senior Editor
I’m living in a twilight zone, mentally trapped between reality and fantasy. The world around me is a strange mix of horror, science-fiction, and drama, but I’m laughing to keep from crying.
For four years, I’ve been living in this twilight zone. I woke up one day, and a reality star was running our country. White radicals were carrying torches and screaming…for what I’m not sure. Make America great again? What does that even mean? Fundamentally America has never been a great nation for any member belonging to the counterculture; it’s ugly head morphing in form only, though its systemic nature continues in existence.
I’m living in a twilight zone. One day I woke up to trailers selling Tr*mp 2020 flags less than a mile from my home, “we back the police” signs under the pavilion at the park I exercise, and Back the Blue rallies at the local high school. Every day it feels like I’m flailing in racist discourse. America is burning with rage on both sides, and it seems like we’ll all, eventually, be engulfed by its flames.
This twilight zone I’m living in is unsafe for blacks, even in their own home. You can be gunned down at home in your underwear in this new world, eating ice cream. Even worse, you can have eight hot lead bullets pumped into you while you’re asleep in your bed! The tragedy of dying in your sleep takes on a new meaning in this instance. In this twilight zone, the innocent dead are monsters while their murderers roam free.
I’m living in a twilight zone where people protest over wearing a mask to stop spreading a viral, deadly respiratory virus. Still, no one stands up when women’s bodies are controlled, and our fundamental human rights go unfulfilled.
In this twilight, American democracy is under fire as our idiot-in-chief directs his minions to vote twice.
Where there is a clear disregard toward doctors and modern Science in the face of a global virus; and instead, the American public is directed to inject bleach into our bloodstream.
I’m living in a twilight zone, one in which we martyr a 17-year-old murderer who crossed state lines to kill, while another one is savagely murdered for walking in the dark with his hood up, drinking sweet tea, and eating skittles.
A world where saying Black Lives Matter is near terroristic. A twilight zone where a Black boy accused of stealing a backpack is treated more severely than a White boy who slaughtered many while worshipping in a church; one received solitary confinement, the other a burger and fries.
I’m living in this twilight zone that we all assume Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will usher out if victorious in the upcoming election. And while the fog may seem less hazy if Biden/Harris do win, let’s not assume that the worms will shrivel up and die having been let out of the can.
I’m afraid of this twilight zone, but what frightens me most, we’re only at the beginning of our trip through it.