I’ve always imagined the journey from Texas to New York to be a glamorous and exhilarating move–like the ones you see on television. Gossip Girl and Sex in the City gave me high hopes.
And although the move has been exciting–insane driving, cars honking every second and face sized bagels–my move was not as glamorous as the T.V. shows let you think.
If you asked me five years ago, I would say I now would be living in a small, brick covered apartment in Brooklyn, watching the commuters dash towards the subway station from my window as a full-time writer. But as reality hits me in the face, I live in the mystery of Long Island, with an hour train ride from the city. A place that could not be more at odds with Manhattan.
Five years ago I was a senior in high school hoping to attend the historical New York University. But after realizing the tuition was over 100,000 yearly and getting rejected, my hopes were against me. I attended a local college in Texas and finished in three years, counting down the days until I was able to make the big move. As I trudged against the stage during my early college graduation ceremony, I clung to the excitement of my life after college.
But that, too, wasn’t like I had imagined it. I moved back home (raise your hand if you did to save money on rent?) risking the state of my mental health for a year and a half. And now here we are, living on the border of Suffolk and Nassau county.
Long Island is spacious. It’s filled with suburbs, families everywhere, Main Streets in every town and, of course, only a 10 minute drive from the beach. It’s not a bad choice. It is the cheaper choice however, especially for a person in her early 20’s, who is still trying to figure out her life after college. And with a degree in journalism, the competition is immense.
Rejection and interview after interview, I still stand living 1,500 miles from home.
See, it’s easy to dream of your future and all the desires you have for the hypothetical life. And even though I am still a dreamer and a loyal futuristic thinker, I do have to face reality.
It’s like Rory from Gilmore Girls, she dreamed and dreamed about going to Harvard and ended up going to Yale. I dreamed and dreamed of moving to NYC and have moved to the outskirts, but like Rory I made a decision that benefitted me and would help put me on the path I wanted to take.
Facing reality means that I am a part-time barista, working to make ends meet. Barely having time to hone my own craft, fighting against the hours in the day.
But in facing reality, I can give myself a pat on the back for even taking the leap to move to the overpopulated state.
Although I do not live in the city–yet–I do live in New York. I drove the 26 excruciating hours, through the pitch black night in Arkansas and through the corn fields of Illinois. And let me tell you, those fields went on for days. We took a breather in Ohio but quickly sped away the next morning, finally making it to the city of wonder. My mom is amazing.
Now, I speak to you after experiencing almost two months in New York. Although the journey may have been a different and a second choice, I can’t leave you thinking I am anything but proud of myself. You, too, may be wanting to move to the city that never sleeps and I encourage you, follow your dreams. But I must warn you that the journey may not be as captivating as the youtubers make it seem. There are rough patches and that is OK.
You won’t have your close friends only a drive away. You won’t have the familiarity of the roads from home. You won’t have the safe box you’ve lived in your whole life.
But: you will have adventure. You will have new friends. You will have excitement. NYC is slowly coming back to life (kind of, post pandemic) and it is available to you.
Everyone’s journey is different, and my desire is that by sharing a glimpse of my journey you don’t feel alone. Your journey, if you take the risk, could be beautiful and it will most importantly be your own.
Helicopters touching down on the roof of the embassy in Saigon and evacuating American personnel—along with very few allied South Vietnamese—was the scene precipitating the American pullout of forces from Vietnam. It seems those optics are destined to repeat themselves in America’s latest foray, as Afghan National forces are quickly and steadily overpowered by the Taliban on the heels of an American pullout from its longest war.
For one to label the Taliban’s recent advance across Afghanistan as swift would understate the complex web of logistics and troop movements at play. Between the two, the Taliban is under-equipped and outmanned compared to the Afghan National Defense Forces. The Afghan National forces also boast an Air Force, with the Taliban’s most advanced aerial capability being unmanned drones. These facts only beg the larger question of what exactly is happening in the South Asian nation, why the armed forces are collapsing, what is the government’s plan to respond, if one exists, and, frankly, how long will the Afghan government and Kabul remain in place?
The decision to withdraw American and allied troops was announced by President Biden in April, with plans for nearly all foreign forces to be out of the country by September; four months later than the plan originally negotiated by former President Trump. The Taliban, for their part in accordance with said deal, pledged not to attack foreign forces as they prepared for withdrawal, though Afghan National Forces were not part of that moratorium on violence. Directly following the announcement by President Biden of the departure of foreign troops, the Taliban began their current offensive.
The armed group began their assault, tearing through the traditionally insecure rural swathes of Afghanistan, slowly encircling provincial capitals and seizing border crossings in the progress. Early signs of the coming collapse of the Afghan Army came in the falling of the Islam Qala border crossing with Iran, as well as the Spin Boldak crossing with Pakistan. The Islam Qala district and border crossing fell to the Taliban on July 9th, with customs and government officials fleeing into neighboring Iran. This came mere days before the Taliban’s seizure of another key border post, Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, on the 14th of July. It’s estimated that tens of millions of dollars ($) worth of trade come through the two ports each month.
The seizures came amid numerous reports of Afghan military personnel and police fleeing ahead of Taliban advance by the thousand. The Taliban, in the earlier weeks of the offensive, seemed intent on strangling the central government by quickly taking border crossings, undermining the government’s ability to finance their troops while filling Taliban coffers. The prospect of losing rural districts to advancing Taliban forces was expected following the exit of foreign forces, although the bitter string of defeats, cross-border retreats, and loss of border crossings had to serve a debilitating blow to the morale of Afghan National Forces as well as handicapping the economic capabilities, strategic maneuvering, and supply routes of the Kabul Government.
The losses of the Kabul government were quickly written off by Western allies, as a predictable consequence of the retreat of foreign forces. The Taliban’s troop movements and attack strategy have been extremely calculated, first taking swathes of rural territory to facilitate supply lines, moving then to take strategic border crossings, and most recently the encircling and assault of provincial capitals. The strategy follows a line of encirclement, then of strangling the central government into submission. Highlighting the steady loss of territory to the Taliban is the tally of districts under its control: on April 13th, the day of the announcement of the withdrawal of foreign troops, 194 districts were contested, 129 under Government Control, and only 77 under control of the Taliban. Today, as is depicted below, the Taliban control 247 districts, 97 are contested, with the government in control of only 63, including Kabul at the time of this writing.
The outset of August proved to be the busiest time for the armed group as the they had for the most part completed its strategy of encircling provincial capitals, often taking surrounding districts with little to no resistance from Afghan troops. At this point the only recourse for the government had been to attempt to mobilize anti-Taliban public volunteer “uprising forces” in effect boosting the manpower and resistance the ANSF can project. Even this though hasn’t proved to slow down the group as the Taliban have amassed more territory than the group has held to date, bolstered by the gains of their blistering August offensive.
District Control Map, Data sourced from the Long War Journal, Graphic by AP News
Focusing solely on the actions in August, we see a group that seems to far outmatch the government forces, albeit outnumbered, it is a reach to now say the Taliban aren’t armed similarly to the ANSF considering the amount of territory, cities, and bases the Taliban have taken. With the previously mentioned tactic of encirclement in mind, the Taliban invoked their next phase, seemingly of choking off the government from controlling provincial capitals, while continuing to isolate Kabul. In doing so, the Taliban took their first provincial capital on August the 6th, seizing Zaranj, the capital of Nimroz province. This seizure served as the writing on the wall for defending Afghan government forces as by the end of the week on the 8th, the Taliban had captured and were administering four provincial capitals, including Sheberghan and Kunduz, major cities in the oft-restive Northern region. During the Taliban’s time in power during the late 90s and early 2000s the provinces in the Northern region came together in the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance”, almost the entirety of the former bastion of Taliban resistance has been seized by the group, with Sheberghan and Kunduz being the key cities to fall in the region.
Members of the “Red Unit” the Taliban equivalent to Afghan Special Forces
The momentous advance of the Taliban has yet to be stopped by government forces, from seizing their first capital August 6th until the writing of this article, the early hours of August 14th, the former has seized 20 provincial capitals, a majority of the 34 provinces. On Saturday morning the 14th the Taliban began a multi-pronged assault to take the last government held city in the North, Mazar-i-Sharif, as embattled President Ghani pledged to keep fighting.
The armed group continues to put pressure on Kabul as well, albeit indirectly, as the group has taken the second and third-largest cities of Herat in the West and Khandahar in the South. In a more direct move, the Taliban on the morning of August 14th seized Logar province and had begun to enter the Char Asyab district located just 7 miles south of Kabul. The attacks by the group on heavy populated areas such as Herat, Khandahar, as well Lashkar Ga of the strategic Helmand province are especially dangerous to civilians, as extremely confined urbanized warfare leads to higher civilian casualties. According to a United Nations report, civilians’ casualties have returned to a 2017-2018 peak of over 5,000, with newly renewed violence being the culprit, of the 5,000+ casualties, 39% were attributed to the Taliban, with 25% being attributed to pro-government forces, often via airstrike targeting anti-government forces.
The prospect of urban fighting, including airstrikes inside the city of Kabul, had been an absurd scenario only months ago, although now considering recent gains seems a more and more likely scenario. As more and more land, provincial capitals, and infrastructure fall to the Taliban, the prospect of Kabul as a reprieve from direct conflict is no longer the reality on the ground. In direct response to these territorial losses and in fear of what may happen over the span of the next few days, the Americans as well as some other European countries are sending thousands of troops to Kabul to assist not its defense, but their retreat from the embattled capital. The New York Times reports that an additional 3,000 Marines will be sent to Kabul, with another 4,000 stationed in Kuwait on stand-by. While only American personnel will be evacuated, the United States has been attempting to arrange third-party nations to host translators and other Afghans who assisted the coalition; it is unclear what, if anything, is keeping Biden from simply accepting those who assisted US forces on a humanitarian and asylum basis into the United States immediately.
At the time of writing over 400,000 people have been displaced in Afghanistan since the beginning of the year, joining the almost 3 million Afghan people already internally displaced due to fighting. The UN estimates that 250,000 have become displaced since the beginning of the Taliban offensive in May, with some 80% of that number being women and children fleeing fighting. Clean water, food, and shelter are hard to come by amid the deteriorating security situation, and very few places, if any are free from fighting.
This all comes amid the American withdrawal from the War. What was the reason for our being there? What did we gain? Who did we help? As Americans we might ask ourselves these questions, as we should always question our government’s actions. The answer is a painful nothing and no one. To be privileged enough to ask what we gained is indicative of the differences of power and suffering in the United States’ longest running conflict. The Afghan people suffered mightily for 20+ years of War between foreign forces allied with the government and insurgents, only for foreign forces to create a security vacuum following their hasty retreat. Questions must be asked of the feasibility of the Americans’ occupation in the first place, did the short-sightedness of conquering a lesser military in the Taliban cloud the complications of forming a working government that served all Afghan people. Why was the security situation as insecure as it was prior to announcing a withdrawal, why was the situation stagnant for years? Most of our questions will forever remain as they are, questions, one thing is certain though, Kabul will eventually come under direct pressure and will in all likelihood fall in the coming days and weeks rather than weeks and months. Continued suffering of the Afghan population writ large is certain.
One must wonder what the South Vietnamese thought as they saw the last American helicopters abandon them to the advancing armies of the North, one must wonder why 46 years later the American imperial military machine has made the exact same mistakes. Most of all one must wonder why Americans have allowed this practice of military intervention, further destabilization, and retreat to ravage many a country and civilian population. Another thing is certain, this destructive practice cannot continue, in perpetuity military adventurism has historically caused the fall of empires, continuing down this path, the United States could be the next.
Updated August 14th 1:23PM EST: Capital of Balkh Province, Mazar-i-Sharif, has fallen to the Taliban. Mazar-i-Sharif was the last major city remaining under Government control in the Northern region.
Updated August 15th 1:21PM EST. President Ashraf Ghani flees to neighboring Tajikistan as Taliban fighters enter Kabul.
Updated August 15th 3:58AM EST: Taliban fighters seize Jalalabad last Government controlled city outside of Kabul, completely encircling the capital.
This photography piece demonstrates how contemporary art works go about discussing topics in highly conceptual ways that examine the interwoven cultural nuances.
pictures, good pictures, wondering if they mean much to me or much to anyone else for those they capture are mine the pieces of my puzzle no one else but me was there behind the lens behind the bends of the breaking backs moments crashing causing tidal-waves of feeling i am present in some absent in all the continuity is palpable years of flicks and flashes picking passages of time to document i hope someone sees these and feels that they too are present though they are not i hope that those that are present feel omnipresent almost godlike looking upon themselves it is not a mirror but the peering through the looking glass the poormans timemachine bring me back to the time that i found you and you and you all gathered in my kitchen so present so pleasant so candid and genuine i know they are gone but they are here all here all peering into the present to see how far youve come i hope when you look upon them you do not see flaws and imperfections i hope you see light and genuine perception this is the closest we will get to seeing ourselves through another’s eyes do not see this as some surprise i have loved you for so long the songs that play they echo through the day through the glass it passes from lens to lens from ass to end from pig to pen and now to then i see you. perfect and crystalline. just as i left you. i hope you can find me. i hope i am just the same. and if not. i hope it is in the ways that never mattered.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Viktor Orban presented himself to the Hungarian people as the harbinger of a new time, railing against any vestiges of Communism in the former Soviet state. Clinging to the reactionary rhetoric of anti-communism and championing liberalism Fidesz underperformed in its first initial showings in the 1990 and 1994 Parliamentary elections, leading Orban and its leadership to take a more conservative turn ideologically. The solution as Orban saw it was to move from a liberal centrist party to a center-right party, while forming alliances with parties almost solely on the Hungarian right. The announcement came at the 1993 Party Conference, in consequence many of Fidesz leaders split from Orban and the proposed rightward shift, leaving Viktor Orban as the party’s unrivaled front man.
The subsequent elections following the re-orientation of Fidesz in 1998 saw surprising success as the Party received slightly less votes than the Socialist Party although Fidesz received the most seats in Parliament due to the allocation of seats at both a regional and national level. Fidesz joined in a governing coalition with two other center-right and right wing parties, due to the mandate being an extremely small margin, the government could not implement any sweeping changes.
Lacking any real legislative power to effect changes with their fragile 1998 majority Fidesz would fail to return to a majority in 2002 and would be relegated to the opposition until 2010. Due to a change in Party politics, Orban was forced to step down as the leader of Fidesz while Prime Minister in 2000; returning to Party leadership following the 2002 loss of the Premiership to the Socialist Party and its liberal governing coalition. Following subsequent failures to capture the reins of government in 2006 Parliamentary elections, Orban faced pressure to step down as the face of Fidesz. Reprieve from calls for his resignation came only when it was revealed in a closed Party meeting that the governing Socialist party had lied to the nation specifically with respect to the state of the economy and more broadly the Hungarian nation’s interests in order to retain votes. The infamous speech known as the Oszöd Speech would upend Hungarian politics and led to massive street protests and marked a nationwide, if not continent wide tarnishing of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP); the speech hamstrung Fidesz and Orban’s greatest political adversary paving the way for a return to power for the latter.
The elections that precipitated the Oszöd Speech would have far reaching ramifications, with Hungary’s political landscape completely remade following the scandal as well and the 2008 financial crisis. Seizing on the Socialist Party’s growing unpopularity and corruption and while weaponizing high unemployment following the 2008 economic crisis Orban and Fidesz positioned themselves at the forefront of the polls, while the far-right Jobbik Party saw a bump in popularity as well. The results in the 2010 Parliamentary elections saw a stunning capture of a super majority by Fidesz, passing an important interval that would allow the party to freely make constitutional changes. The results were particularly shocking considering the shares of seats lost by the Socialists, diving down from 192 seats in 2006 to a meager and legislatively powerless 59 seats in 2010. This underscored a truly full-fledged collapse of the Socialist Party in Hungary, forcing the former political hegemon to scramble to form any meaningful opposition to Orban while attempting the process of repairing the party and organizing for future elections.
Upon his ascension back to the top of Hungarian politics Orban began to ensure and insulate his power, undermining the nation’s long fragile democratic institutions. One of the first actions Orban took was to rewrite the 1989-90 Constitution that was authored following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The changes enacted by the re-authoring of the Constitution sparked outrage among civil liberty groups, NGO’s, the EU, as well as the United States; some of the most controversial changes include restrictions on the media during election campaigns, limits the power of the Constitutional Court, lowers retirement age of judges, as well as dictating the state show “preference” to “traditional” family relationships. Some of the most impactful when it comes to the state of democracy in the country came with the changes to the Constitutional Court, as well as the limitations imposed on the media during campaign season. Those restrictions on media stated that only state-run media may campaign for politicians, an insular policy for Fidesz to monitor the media while only allowing pro-Fidesz literature and advertising in attempt to ensure the ruling party maintained its grip on power. With reference to the Constitutional Court, Orban modeled his takeover after that of Turkish autocrat Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Both men in seeking control of the highest judicial institution in their respective countries expanded the number of court members, packing new seats with members explicitly loyal to the executive rather than the democratic process in the two nations. Confusing critics and possibly in a move to dissuade international criticism both men also expanded the criteria for cases making it to the Constitutional Court, were the budding autocrats supporting the Court by adding new members coinciding with a greater caseload, or was the court-packing solely to undermine the Court’s ability to check the Executive?
Outside of the rewriting of the Constitution and augmenting it’s specialized Court, Orban and Fidesz launched a concerted attack on the nation’s democratic institutions such as the judiciary, the press, the election commission, as well as the tax service. Part of Orban and Fidesz’s attack was to load the judiciary, tax authority, and election commission with party/Orban loyalists in attempt to subvert the institutions obligation to democracy, re-orientating it to rather protect Orban and the Fidesz Government. Furthermore, Orban initiated a system of control over local government modeled after a Putin policy in Russia known as a “vertical of power”, Orban’s variation included the centralizing of some local government functions via the newly written Constitution as well as Orban handpicking allies and party Loyalists as local governors.
Lastly an element of the decaying of democracy and rule based law comes the demonization, discrimination, and harm done to minorities in Hungary. Two groups in particular have been targeted by Orban and Fidesz in order to rile up support among their center to far right base, those being migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the LGBTQIA+ community. During the refugee crisis that the greater-EU faced during the mid-late 2010s Orban and his Party took an extremely hard line against migrant quotas proscribed by the EU to it’s member states, all the while demonizing refugees and migrants as terrorists, as well as describing those fleeing violence as individuals trying to overturn the predominance of Christianity in the EU and greater Hungary. Orban went so far as to erect 4-meter high fences along his nation’s border with Croatia and Serbia in order to stem the flow of migrants seeking the EU all the while describing the refugees as “poison” and asserting his nation didn’t want or need “a single migrant”.
More recently Orban has drawn the specter of the EU and drawn international condemnation for his Party’s recent passage of a set of laws that rights groups and the West have described as discriminatory towards the LGBTQIA+ community. The law mimics a set of discriminatory laws put forth by Russia, and can be considered the “banning of gay people from featuring in school educational materials or TV shows for under-18s”. The newly passed laws have already spurned concern within the already oft targeted community, casting a dark shadow over a recent drag competition, in which a contestant said, “We are afraid to get on the tram. When we do so, we put our hands in our pockets to hide our painted nails. We have always done this, though”. The outrage was such that at this year’s delayed 2020 European Football Championship the mayor of Munich, the location of a Germany v Hungary match, asked UEFA, the competition’s governing body, for permission to light the stadium up in rainbow colors. The request was denied by UEFA who claimed to be staying “politically neutral” on the matter, missing the point that neutrality on this issue is siding with discrimination. The mayor of Munich plans to instead light the entire city up with rainbow colors and flags in protest of the Hungarian law as well as UEFA’s compliance.
While the politics of a football match are leagues away from democratic backsliding, the collective outrage from the international community, corporations operating in Hungary, the EU, and rights groups is positive, and the pressure must be continued. Orban and Fidesz have laid bare the fragility of democracy and demonstrate that if an EU and NATO member can participate in democratic backsliding and the undermining of institutions then it can happen anywhere. Democracy is a constant work, taking it for granted is a privilege, and ignoring warning signs of institutional decay and backsliding can and will have wide reaching ramifications for the future.
Last summer, I was out getting coffee. A man walked over to me. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “It’s just that you look so much like my sister. She died three months ago.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, showed me a picture of a smiling woman.
“You see?” he said tenderly. “Just like you.”
I looked nothing like her. It didn’t matter. I was what he wanted his sister most to be—standing in front of him, talking with him again.
In that moment, proximity was resemblance enough.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 3, 2015 ON WISDOMPILLS.COM
Digital artist, surrealist photographer & retoucher Erik Johansson infuses his prints with images portraying an untamed imagination and a bended reality that is, by turns and definition, startling, touching, and wonderfully strange.
Think for a moment about the softened melted clocks in Salvador Dalí’s masterpiece “The Persistence Of Memory.” The surrealism movement lives on in the image-altering tools of Photoshop and the creative powerhouses using it, seeming to channel the hands, mind, and brush of Dalí.
Take a look for yourself…
Go Your Own Road, 2008
Free Breakers, 2015
Wet Dreams on Open Waters, 2008
Iron Man, 2008
Walk a Way, 2014
Cutting Light, 2011
Cut & Fold, 2012
Groundbreaking, 2012
Intersecting Planes, 2011
Arms Break, Vases Don’t, 2008
You can check out more of Erik’s work at his website (with behind the scenes videos), and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
