worldbreaker

Regard a billionaire as you would any calamity
—volcano, oil spill, flood—
with the exception that he—
(yes, almost always “he” — every single one of the top ten billionaires is a man)
—he
will fight back not to be removed
and will insist, in fact, on a right to expand.

a billionaire is a malicious calamity.

This is not much of a hyperbole:
A billion dollars hoarded is enough
to prevent about three hundred thousand deaths in a developing country
or about twenty thousand lives lost to poverty in the United States.
Very few calamities cost so many lives—or persist as long.

A billion dollars will pay for
a month of maternity leave across this country.

So, when a certain
musk
made thirtysix billion dollars
in a single afternoon of October Twenty-Twentyone,
we have quietly agreed that it is fine
for one man to add to his already vast wealth
the equal of three years of maternity leave,
which we are told we cannot afford.

—or cover, with loot of that same afternoon,
more than half of what it takes
to make college free for one year.

Just last year, a certain
bezos
made about
ten million dollars an hour
every hour,
selling,
in sleekly designed packages,
child labor bought at ten cents per hour.
A disparity of
    one hundred million to one
between master and slave
is never before seen in human history,
not with plantation owners, not with pharaohs,
who used up lives hundreds at a time, thousands at a time.
Yet we look up with admiration
to those who consume millions of lives for their privilege,
in this new age of slavery.

We made wealth into its own merit
and worship the most wealthy as the new gods
while they race their dicks into space
in chariots that burn childcare.

And a billion dollars begets more billions of dollars,
like any virus propagating itself
at the eventual cost of the unsuspecting host’s life.
Like a virus that survives by misdirecting information,
a billion dollars pays for
climate denial for decades until it could no longer be denied
—now instead marketed as climate panic as a new reason to hate immigrants.

Like a virus that survives by subverting defenses,
a billion dollars
    pays for normalizing police brutality,
    pays for turning white supremacists into a militia in its defense,
    and pays for declaring privilege a protected right, a religion.

After all, don’t billionaires already enjoy
being exempt from tax as does a religion.

To have
    has become a divine mandate
        to have more, no matter the cost in lives.

A virus runs rampant in our collective body,
shutting down vital organs one by one.
And everytime we step outside to the now unusual heat,
we feel the literal fever of our broken world
that now sweats glaciers, which will not return again in our lifetime.

If humanity is to survive,
this disease of privilege must come to an end.
If humanity is to survive,
no one person should hold power over so many.

You are asked to believe that you are powerless
in the face of this ailment.
But if this were true,
why would they try so desperately
to convince you of your lack of power?

The remedy for this disease is simple.
First,
    choose to know,
then
    choose to care,
then
    choose to change.
And, perhaps, accept that the remedy will not arrive in your lifetime
and then choose it anyway.

See how your despair shapes itself
when you ask to give of itself for someone you will never meet,
someone not yet born,
someone who will not know your name or thank you,
but someone who will nevertheless live
in the world you bring forth.

We owe the extraordinary beauty we have known to those who have not.

Melih Sener