If you pay much attention to the news, you will almost certainly have concluded by now that everything is ruined. You will be certain that even if this is not the very last week of human civilization (which obviously it is), that we are, at least, in one helluva tailspin and things haven’t been this bad since the plague. You can be forgiving for feeling this way.

I mean, goddamn. We’ve got genocides going in, like, five or six countries as you read this. The largest economy in the world is unwilling to pay its most vulnerable employees. Native American women are still disappearing at an unbelievable (and barely reported) rate, 15,000 refugee children have been separated from their families (and two have died in custody), and Americans are finally more likely to die of a drug overdose than in a car wreck. Hell, there are even inches left over to report on the whole Jayme Closs thing, which, wtf.

Then there’s fact that most of the large-scale human tragedies confronting the planet now have direct roots in two things: a legacy of imperialist fuckery and global warming. We, as humanity, haven’t demonstrated that we’re all that interested in changing any of that stuff, and have more or less agreed that the next best thing is to just make a lot of money not solving anything. Like, by building walls, and arresting children, and things like that. It should make us all feel pretty queasy that we look to a shaving cream company with a history of “literally false” advertising and price fixing convictions as a beacon of morality.

Because at its most basic root genocide, toxic masculinity, and corporate impunity all stem from essentially the same premise: me first. Ultimately, it sort of comes down to whether or not we believe that we should be able to do whatever we want whenever we want to. Obviously the dynamics of power come in when start looking at what it is we can get away with, but the basic issue is the same: should everyone else just go fuck themselves?

And how we answer that question speaks volumes to where we land on issues like human migration, the #MeToo movement, white supremacy, etc. An earnest effort to understand and address the problems facing our communities, nations, and species must stem from the basic assumption that other people matter.

The reality is that pretty much everyone reading this is in no danger of ethnic cleansing, and we’ll all be dead at least a few years before a warming climate touches off a human extinction. The relatively new public embrace of conversations surrounding racial, gender, and sexual equality represent the fact that we’re just now acknowledging that our families and neighbors matter. Nevermind people we’ve never met.

We’ve got plenty of runway left for self-serving people to manufacture problems for which they are selling a self-serving short-term solution. We can lie to ourselves about “clean coal” eight years at a time. Bloviating about a useless/impossible border wall is a great way to not talk about actual solutions to actual problems. Let’s be honest, it’ll take a lot of genocides before there aren’t enough people left on earth to buy razors and keep Proctor and Gamble profitable.

Meaningful change can only grow from a true, honest belief that other people’s lives have meaning. Of course we’re behind the ball there, having embraced a political/financial system with a robust record of placing profitability over humanity, and if we’re honest industrialized communism doesn’t have the best track record for human rights. While a violent leftist revolution would feel really good, it probably wouldn’t solve all of the issues we’re facing today.

And that’s probably a good thing, because a violent revolution sounds like it would make a real mess and besides, really, it’s the right-wing extremists that have all the guns.

No, I think that we can get a lot done without burning down the White House. But the trick is that we actually have to care. Gillette made a great marketing video about toxic masculinity, but grooming products targeted at women cost 50% more than those marketed to men. That hybrid Suburban drips with self-satisfied sex-appeal when you take your kids at Montessori school, but it’s not doing a damn thing to make sure there will be glaciers in Glacier Park when those same kids go to college.

A Green New Deal sounds like a great way to motivate a liberal base, and represents a good start, but the fact is that we don’t need to ask Congress for permission. The same tools and forces that have given the oil and gas industry carte blanche to write US policy (foreign and domestic!) are available to effect meaningful change. Our #1 contributor to greenhouse emissions is transportation. Don’t like it? Stop buying gas. Saw a heart breaking video about orangutans? Great. Drop the palm oil and imported beef. The only trick is that you actually have to do it. Posting on Facebook isn’t enough.

The greatest issue confronting the left is not Donald Trump. It is not right wing extremists. It is not even global warming. It is the uncomfortable reality that the tools for change are readily available, and that when the rubber meets the road we are, perhaps, not quite so resolute in our convictions as our bumper stickers say.