Fire, Marshmallows, and the Lie of the Middle

I’ve written before about my disdain for the news.
That still holds.
But now it’s not just the content that guts me.
It’s the commentary.
The theater.
The smugness.
The performative paralysis.

Yeah — the world’s on fire.
One side’s holding the matches.
The other side?
They’re debating the carbon footprint of different brands of extinguishers.

They hold meetings.
Run studies.
Draft statements.
Formally condemn the blaze —
as long as no one uncomfortable is standing too close.

Every idea is too flawed.
Every effort, too little.
Every attempt at repair gets mocked, memed, buried.

No half-measure is good enough.
No imperfect step is forgivable.
Everyone wants to be right more than they want to be helpful.

Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here with a stick and a bag of marshmallows
wondering if maybe I should give up and enjoy the view.
Flames have a way of hypnotizing you.

But I don’t want to give up.
Not really.

I want to believe in people who build.
I want to believe that “better” is still on the table.
I want to believe that someone, somewhere, still owns a fucking bucket.

But what am I supposed to believe
when one side is setting fire to the world for profit,
and the other is designing new eco-friendly labels for the bucket?

This isn’t a glitch.
It’s the system.
It’s the feature set.
This is how it works now.

Donate to the arsonists.
Or donate to the people promising to think about thinking about maybe trying to slow the fire down —
after they finish this panel discussion.

That’s not democracy.
That’s brand strategy.

I’m tired of voting with my wallet and crying into my inbox.
Tired of being told the fire is “complicated.”
Tired of holding the torch for people too afraid to risk being wrong.

Because the solution?
It would mean dismantling the same machine that sells us the problem in ten colors and three subscription tiers.

And there’s too much money in the problems.

So I sit here.
Still.
Burning.