We’ve all already collectively agreed that we want a refund on 2025. I need not say more, but of course I still will. A girl’s gotta yap!
The American experience is doing the most right now and we’re all exhausted, drained, enraged, and terrified. The last two weeks have lasted two years. (Time jumping, anyone..?) Every day we wake up learning about or, goddess-forbid, living out new historical traumas, each one more bizarre and infuriating than the last. LA is on fire, cities across the country have contaminated water, aliens are coming out of the ocean, Dior bags are in the New Jersey sky, the VP-elect is missing, and the oligarchy is arrogantly basking in the sunshine somewhere eating cake that we can’t afford. I’m tired just writing that sentence, goddamn. Every step we take we navigate one emotional or financial landmine after another in both our physical and metaphysical environments. We’re broke and battered simply by inhaling and exhaling within an arbitrary and artificial boundary on a landmass that was violently colonized by the same white people that are driving the centralization of money and power in America’s infinitely “free” market. In the words of Kendrick Lamar, we’re charged “a fee just to breathe, bitch”.
If there is a silver lining to this terrifying late-stage capitalism driven oligarchy simulation we’re all fighting for our physical and mental wellbeing in right now, it’s the collective consciousness it feels a lot of us are experiencing in unison. Emphasis on the collective. Young people of the world are so traumatized and burnt out from our chronically high cortisol levels we probably developed in-utero that we’re forced to cope using humor wherever we can find it. And I have to say, the level of beautiful pettiness and unwavering unseriousness is really charging the vibrations. Keep it up, y’all. The collective sass has actually made this dystopia feel, dare I say, fun? I’ve stepped out of dissociative numbness and feel again! I feel connected to others. I feel connected to the resistance. In fact, I feel the least morally and ethically isolated than I have since Nov 9th 2016. The unification of young people around the world is sprouting such a magical glimmer of harmony, plurality, and diversity unlike anything I’ve ever before witnessed much less participated in. But the banning of TikTok is just coincidental timing, right? Whatever, we’re all on Red Note anyway (@ZillennialHippie).
There’s so much to unpack in this wild zeitgeist we find ourselves in, we should start a petition to provide a collective wage increase for the therapists of America. National news headlines might seem like they’re written by Shonda Rhimes’ most diabolical table writer, but they’re real and are impacting you and me in the here and now. The astro-girlies and those who (were smarter than me and) started listening to Katt Williams a long time ago know that we have entered a new era. *~The Age of Aquarius~* – an age of transformation and enlightenment. This age is our time to level up in all of our beautifully unique and complex superpowers and confidently step onto the battlefield against billionaires who are busy having a pissing contest and comparing dick sizes.
After the election in November, I promised myself and my community that I would take time to heal and process but when I returned (i.e., stepped back into my power), I would reemerge as the feral and passionate bitch that I am to my core. The journey has taken me upside down, around, and back again and well, here she is, bitches! I’ve taken my time. I have rested. And now I have thoughts to share.
F*ck capitalism. Periodt. It’s the root of incalculable evil in this world. It justifies and engenders racism and oppression. It pits neighbors against each other. It proudly and insatiably funnels wealth, power, and security to the few at the top while anxiety, fear, and anger breeds at the roots and corrodes the system from within. It’s not made for us: for the masses, the working class. It’s not intended to uplift us. It’s not intended to empower us, despite the narratives that have been propagandized and indoctrinated in us for decades. Every time we take a moment to look outside the myopic perspectives of our daily lives to observe the broader modern American experience, we smell the rubber of the tires burning and see the wheels wobbling so precariously they’re practically flying off the bus. The false sense of security from our seatbelt evaporates in the face of the egomaniac supervillains who are remotely controlling the bus. The corrupt controllers are greedily salivating and manically panting as sweat beads on their balding heads and they drive us towards a 1000 ft cliff. “Fear not,” he says, (HE! Let’s not forget that patriarchy and toxic masculinity drives American capitalism) “for I can help you once I’ve hurt you. I do hoard all the resources you need after all. You need me and only I can help you.” Bandaged and broken, dazed and confused, he hopes we reach for his hand in search of support.
But what if…. just hear me out… what if…. we simply said…. Fuck you. “Fuck you,” and we actually mean it. With every fiber of our being. TikTok and the beautifully petty migration over to Xiohongshu has shown us crispy and char burnt American passengers that WE HOLD POWER. What if we hold onto that power and refuse to let it go? What if instead of reaching for his hand we reach for each other? Again in the words of Kendrick Lamar, (I’m noticing a pattern here….) “Let’s rejoice where we at…and [rewrite] the devil’s story just to take our power back.”
In the spirit of honoring and emboldening the power of the people, the words I hold space today are not for or about the election, Trump, Elon, or any of the other loser tech colonizers who stole someone else’s idea to feed their pockets and egos. The words I hold today are for me. For us. Move out of the way, boys.
Today I release the fear of criticism and judgement for my ragged writing that has hardly been brushed off since my university days. I release the self-imposed expectation that in order to be worthy of sharing my thoughts they have to be perfectly articulated, cited, and mustn’t omit any relevant context. Perfection is the enemy of progress, after all. And so, today I celebrate my power. Our power. Today I celebrate that you and I have the capacity to look beyond our differences of language, nationality, skin color, religion, or age and connect. For once, we quite literally have the means and opportunity to support each other and walk between worlds – from Salt Lake City to Shanghai.
We Americans have been indoctrinated from a young age that we are the “land of the free”. Somewhere along the way, however, between the cold war, the war on drugs, the war on women, the culture war, etc., the words, “this land is your land; this land is my land,” and from “sea to shining sea, this land was made from you and me,” went from an innocent feel-good song third graders sing at their end of year recital to some fighting words. Fun fact, “This Land is Your Land” was written in response to a “blindly patriotic [song that was] too cut off from the hard-knock life [of] many Americans” dubbed God Bless America.
Hmmmm… Interesting.
It’s almost (ALMOST!) as if they wanted us divided all along. For most of our lives, “they” have wanted the collective focused on one random and artificially manufactured conflict after another over truly believing in a legitimately united US of A. It’s almost as though a system built on equity and respect would fundamentally threaten to undermine the corrupt system we find ourselves trapped in today. They get off and are emboldened by us having just enough perceived freedom that we feel “blessed” but manipulate and coerce us to use that freedom to fight each other. Somewhere some white male megalomaniac is out there creaming his pants that it’s MAGA vs the “radical left”, women vs the men who control their bodies, that the undereducated believe American colleges and universities are where you go to become indoctrinated, that colonizers are spitting vitriol towards brown skinned individuals from South and Central America to “go back where you came from”, and that white Fox News commentators claim “hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism.” The game is working perfectly for them. Keep the people not only isolated but dug into separate camps so deep that anyone who looks or sounds different can only be a threat that must be eliminated. They’ve put us into countless variations of in- and out-groups and then proceeded to burn the bridges between us. Now, the only way to visit other camps is through the laborious and exhausting effort of “the long way,” and who wants to do that? We’re isolated and hate everyone else, thus keeping us happily and predictably fragmented in our power.
Am I getting a little too conspiratorial? Maybe. But probably not. 2024 was a year for the exposure of buried truths. (Diddy, anyone???) One truth that became abundantly clear to me is that ‘white privilege knows no gender’. Fragile white femininity is just as dangerous as toxic white masculinity. I present the voting stats in the 2024 election as evidence to such claim. While I have tried to forgive myself for my flaws as a human with a relatively sheltered and comfortable lived white experience, I reckoned with a deep desire to resist my contribution to and participation in the destructive force. As Audre Lorde once said, “white guilt does nothing,” and so I forced myself to go “the long way” which required me to and step out of my whitewashed world and invest time and energy in reading and listening to black and brown voices. My journey so far, (note: it will never be “finished”) has been a long, often uncomfortable, and sometimes confusing. But it has also been inspiring, empowering, enlightening, constructive, and beautiful. The “long way” has proven to be worth it.
Another truth that has exposed itself along my journey is, ‘those who have experienced oppression inherently hold more awareness, understanding, and therefor wisdom than those wielding the oppression’. The voices and contributions of black and brown Americans are incalculably valuable by the very nature of being forced to accommodate the white experience as the default while also holding space for and honoring their own unique culture, perspective, and lived experiences. Fellow white people, this is why it’s so important to create space for, listen to, and celebrate the voices, art, and accomplishments of people of color.
Mikki Kendall, author of Hood Feminism, plainly stated that, “What happens to us [black women] will eventually happen to white women, so enabling abusers…can lean in only one direction, yet unchecked racism often renders women who should be allies as complicit in the abuse until they are targets too.” Kendall wrote Hood Feminism in 2020, and are we not painfully experiencing the prophetic nature of this statement unfolding in the post-roe, project 2025, “tech needs more masculine energy” world we are navigating today?
“They” keep us divided by distracting us with artificial constructs of interpersonal differences all so they can slowly, obsessively, and connivingly transfer our power to themselves. From workers that keep the machine running to those who have purchased the machine outright. KDot himself tried to tell us over a decade ago in Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, how we are designed to be easy prey when we waste our precious energy on “mass hallucination baby” because of our “ill education baby”. He made it clear that, for anyone who is not seen as valuable to the American machine, “this is your station, baby”. This is your “street rank”.
And so we circle back around to the collective class consciousness that is palpably pulsating at this moment in history. The cohort of largely young people who are opening their eyes to the manufactured consent American capitalism banks on. We woke now, baby.
With that I want to introduce you to Zillennial Hippie. Zillennial referring to the “demographic cohort on the cusp of millennial and generation Z cohorts,” (thank you Wikipedia) and Hippie referencing, “a person who rejects the mores of established society….and advocates a nonviolent ethic,” as defined by Merriam-Webster. Together Zillennial Hippie represents a spirit driven to create a lived experience out of intentionality; one that honors its truest self in the face of tension and chaos both constructed and demanded by the established society in which we live; someone who is curious to explore who they are and the type of world they want to live in. It’s not really about your age or which generation you identify with, it’s about how you feel, what you long for, what you value, who you want to be, and the world you want to see and participate in.
Zillennial Hippie is a space where we explore who we are taught we should be in contrast to who, deep down, we believe we could be. In a world that feels entirely out of control, here, Zillennial Hippies can ground themselves and seize collective power over our destinies. Here, we vision, we discover, we define, we create, we resist, we grow, we transform. Here, we practice respectful curiosity, honor the journey regardless of the discomfort and effort it demands. Here we resist the exploitative nature of capitalism, fascism, colonialism, and racist patriarchy. We celebrate what makes us human, what makes us unique, and what unifies us.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I choose to believe in myself. I choose to believe in the people. The working class. I choose to believe in a world where there is good that combats evil and one day where power and resources and opportunities are accessible to all people.
I believe in the underdog.
I believe in the reincarnated.
I choose to believe the masses can make an impact in the national and global narratives.
I choose to believe in a community of respect and equity and justice and education and enlightenment. I believe in us.
I am, we are, Zillennial Hippie.
