This week's Rage & Softness

here’s what made me rage and what kept me soft this past week

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Without further ado, here’s what made me rage and what kept me soft this week:

Rage:

Reading:

• I am thinking (and reading) a lot about Luigi Mangione, the U.S. healthcare system, and collective trauma and pain. The killing of the CEO by an Italian American has brought up reminders of the ways Italians and Italian Americans have fought against the state for the centuries. I think about Michelina Di Cesare, who was the leader of a gang in southern Italy fighting against Northern occupation and authority. I think about the Italian mob, of which many attempt to recreate. The Sicilian Mafia came about when Sicily changed from feudalism to capitalism. The U.S. Italian American “La Cosa Nostra” emerged from poor, working-class immigrants who were ostracized by Anglo-Saxons and stood by each other because that’s all they had. The mob could have been (and maybe it was to an extent) an excellent example of community care, activism, and protection. Instead, it became another struggle for power. Many Italians and Italian Americans were pressured to join the mafia or mob, or at the very least listen to their rules, which only set up another hierarchical system. All of this history aside, Mangione is white, from a rich family, and if he was poor and Black, he would not have been taken in alive. He also would not be receiving the same amount of (good) attention. I was someone who felt joy hearing about a CEO getting killed. Maybe that makes me a shitty person, but this country is a pressure cooker right now and people are taking matters into their own hands. My sympathy is with the working class and poor folks and sick folks and Gazans. I guess I don’t have enough of it to reach the death of a CEO. That being said, another CEO will pop up like wack-a-mole, so we need to be thinking about long-term solutions and how to destroy the entire structure, not just the head. Luigi Mangione is not a saint or hero, nor should he be treated as such, but he also did something that I’m sure many appreciate and have fantasized about.
  

• I’m so sick and tired of AI, and this article about AI Therapy Bots (thanks

  Raechel Anne Jolie
  for posting about this) has me tightening my fists. We need AI to do menial shit, not important things like therapy or teaching or making art! See also: Hinge CEO: Searching for a partner in real life won’t ‘hold a candle to’ meeting online with AI (I’ve never been so grateful to be off the apps)

• I lol’d instead of yelling when reading the title of this shit: The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone. First of all, what disappearance, second of all, who tf cares! The guy who wrote this reminds me of my undergrad creative writing advisor who was a white man that insisted I read more books by men.