The U.S. Version of Pandemic Relief Is A Shit Sandwich
By: Talynn Kel
Tags: Oppression, Anti Racism, Pandemic, Covid 19 Crisis, Covid 19

I don’t understand how anyone can look at how this government has moved throughout this pandemic and try to make this vaccine shit about Black people not trusting the government.



Anybody with an ounce of observational ability and critical thinking skills who is willing to accept that their nationalism/pride/belief system is actually the result of decades of indoctrination will look at the moves the government has made and see that this pandemic is an opportunity — a convenient genocide being manipulated by those with power and money to further extend and solidify their positions…all for the small cost of our lives.



There were so many choices that could have been made to prevent the mass deaths but why do that when doing very little will thin out those they perceive to be burdens on society — the elderly, with their social security and government-subsidized healthcare; the homeless in their too visible poverty; the impoverished with their pleas for government aid; the immigrants daring to have a voice; the Black people who never seem to learn their place; the disabled with their costly needs and low output; the fat people who take up too much space; the queer people who make social hierarchies too complicated; the list goes on and on and on. Why do any of the work to make a better world when this virus and time can decrease the demands for change?



We watch Congress lie, cheat, steal, create 5000+ page bills loaded with payouts to their friends, families, allies while leaving the masses, who they are supposed to represent, struggling to survive yet expected to be grateful for any meager handout with the billion strings attached. We watch people who lied about the seriousness of the virus, who advocated against lockdowns and masks be first in line to get vaccinated against the disease they said wasn’t a big deal, or worse called a conspiracy.

We watched as politicians argued for mass death. We watched as they claimed death by Covid-19 to be an honorable sacrifice for future generations. We watched large corporations initially provide hazard pay only to take it away a month or two later. We saw the CDC give shit info to the public because of pressure from more powerful members of the government. We saw large companies steal final business loan relief so they could buy stock. We saw the stimulus bill used to bail out large corporations.

This latest stimulus, which “had to pass,” contained language making “illegal” streaming a felony and provided $1.3 billion for the oh so useful “border wall,” all for the price of $600 per citizen. Who cares about food or housing during a pandemic when we could keep building that wall!

The next administration isn’t talking about how to save people…they admitted they were against defunding the police, an issue that overwhelming harms Black people, before the election. They’ve also shut down talks about Medicaid for All because of the cost. Talks about canceling student loan debt have shifted to canceling $50,000 of dept to a mere $10,000 of debt and other repayment and possible forgiveness options. They aren’t talking about paying people to stay home; they’re talking masks and vaccines and getting kids back in school and reopening businesses. These are not plans that make change; they are plans that delay uprisings during our convenient genocide.

I don’t know how much more obvious it can be for you to see that there are no heroes here. We are struggling to survive multiple stab wounds while fighting about which knife is shiniest. This life is a gauntlet of violence, culling us at will while we fight one another for the scraps from their table. This vaccine is just another tool to keep us infighting while they give themselves, the most protected, more protection, more access, more power over our lives and deaths. So this thing where we attack each other over masks and telecommuting and gatherings are the result of a government that repeatedly chooses to act in their individual best interests rather than the common good. We are the victims of an egregious crime against humanity, so stop lying to yourself about your place in it. We are struggling to survive in a poisoned environment that continually tells us how expendable we are. So, fuck this “trust the systems, institutions, and government” shit. We can’t trust anything that whiteness built because whiteness by its very nature is cannibalistic self-destruction packaged as consumerist aspiration and it is as empty as it is destructive.

They don’t give a fuck about you. They never have and they never will until you somehow become useful for their agenda.



Don’t waste your breath trying to convince me that I should trust anything this country has created. A country that wrote documents and composed melodies declaring all men are created equal and this as the land of the free when those same statements encoded their social hierarchy into their lies. We’ve been sold layers of falsehoods all our lives and many choose to continue believing them because the truth is a tsunami of opportunistic violence that drowns everything we’ve ever believed in a sea of blood and corpses. We live a life of choosing between predator and prey and rather than admit to being a tool of the killing machine, we tell ourselves that we’re building something great, something beautiful; something that you don’t have the capacity to understand but somehow know is for the best. We feed ourselves lies and destroy anyone who threatens our illusions because it’s easier than admitting to our inner rot and excising it. Our lies, while seemingly easier to carry, won’t save us from what we’ve become. The question will be whether we’ll have the fortitude to ever truly see the monsters we are or if we’ll cling to that lie with our dying breath.



The truth is hard. Cowards avoid it, narcissists exploit it, and the monsters revel in it. Heroes face it and try to undo the harm being done. A lot of you think you are heroes when you’re not. But when lies are the only thing you feed on you redefine reality to mask the horror that is you. Monsters never die when you refuse to admit they exist. They continue to ravage and feast on the corpses of one another. This is a nation of cannibalizing zombies that too many people won’t admit that they enjoy consuming themselves.

Don’t play my face with this “trust the system” narrative. Don’t come for Black people like some kind of Covid savior because the time for that has passed. We see the callousness of this genocide being played out in real-time; everything else is bullshit manipulation. Do we need to do our part to try to protect one another? Definitely. But so much of this story isn’t about us caring for one another when we have multiple systems working to undermine all our efforts.

This is some blame the victim rhetoric being pushed and it is manipulative and awful. Stop normalizing this shit. Stop providing us with a list of terrible choices and a mountain of guilt to force us into picking one, knowing that they are all bad. This is a shit sandwich, and we need to call it what it is.

That anyone can make any of this fuckery about Black people not trusting the government only shows they aren’t thinking big picture enough; that they are stuck in the manufactured hierarchies and dichotomies that keep us spinning in circles about what the problem could be rather than attacking the problem that is. Voting doesn’t fix this. The reality is that this violence will not end because we are too afraid of the rebellion that needs to happen. Instead, we tell ourselves it’ll be okay as they openly use our deaths as opportunities to get more control, more money, more power, and more autonomy. We are an expendable resource slowly being crushed to death by their actions. The work of saving lives is only happening on a local level, through activists providing resources directly to people in need. If you want to help, give money, skills, resources to people doing the work with those most affected by this pandemic. Fuck these institutions whiteness has deemed “legitimate” because, like everything whiteness touches, they are corrupt and funnel funds away from those in need.

We’re all we got in this. Stop pretending otherwise.