death rides a pale horse (the horse has diarrhea)
more people now accurately recognize that "democracy" has never really been america's actual goal in world affairs, and also that "being democratic" certainly is not its current brand. it's not necessarily that people think it isn't useful.
because what you're talking about is Identity, right. what is america's "Identity" right now, what does it perform internationally, what version of itself does it perform and why. i don't think people are saying they are growing tired of Democracy they're just saying the US has no democracy energy
which, of course, is accurate. it hasn't really been a democracy in quite some time. the reagan/clinton tag team killed it. parties, regardless of name, were both founded, essentially, on their relationship to labour. one was pro, while the other one was willing to listen to owners.
they STILL say that that's what they are, but do we believe for a second the republican party has cared about the working class or labour at all since, i dont fucking know, maybe nixon did ok compared to what came after, who knows, but it wasnt ALL lipservice from all of them, right, not always
like joe biden today is basically your ideal republican, right. in a sane world conservatism just looks like him. the status quo insofar as grandpa can still understand it. that's the line. everything older than that is useless for the future, comparatively, at least as a tone-setter
but jimmy carter, i dont know his policies, but that is a man that understood the integrity of labour. i'm sure his admin was pigshit, but thats roughly down to congress back then. but from reagan on NO one talked to the working class without lying. the UK has been the same since new blairbour
the reagan/thatcher doubleteam totally eradicated class solidarity by completely pummeling the working class while simultaneously blasting distracting noise into the public entertainosphere so people could distract themselves while the companies led carrots on sticks connected to slavedrivers
clinton and blair took over and did the exact opposite of anything good and now the "good guys" were now completely playing lip service to labour in favour of money, largely led by tech. dot com boom anyone? it's the same jeff bezos from before too, like, just look at it
i honestly dont even know that al gore would have handled 9/11 any better, at least by today's standards. honestly he was doing so much work reputationwashing himself by going on futurama and being chill about manbearpig like we arguably coulda got here even sooner without w fucking up so big
and then what have we gotten in retrospect with obama? same. same. same. it's meaner now, under the trump, but who did america run to to save them? the angel on hank hill's genuinely kind but foolishly conservative heart, joeseph robinette biden III, Esq.
we've just been living in the 80s since the 80s, basically because they got too big in the 80s to be kicked out in the 90s, the 2000s got too scary, and now we're just trapped because now the 80s is just a filter on tiktok you know DONALD TRUMP is the president right opus the penguin hated him
the same cia killed che guevara, martin luther king jr, fred hampton, keeps mumia abu jamal in prison, the same henry kissinger got hired over and over, feted and dined over and over, by both sides of the aisle, america has been broken since lee harvey oswald shot its plan in the head, good for him
because honestly, kennedy and Lincoln were the EXACT same thing, but opposite men pulled the triggers, and only one of them was correct to do it.
Lincoln was shot by, like, if this was today? fucking, luke Wilson. i dont know any zoomer people. fuckin, matt bennett from icarly. who cares. he was an incredibly racist piece of shit, but he and his brother were big time fancy pants fancy boy actors. like, one of the most famous people in "the world" at least in those echelons. it's like if fucking will smith shot the president instead of slapped chris rock. he'd be our fucking Luigi Mangione, face immediately on mount rushmore, fuck it, now it's mount willy style, we are starting a new calendar so we can begin the new new willennium
but like, look what happened after will forte: president boy got gatted: remember all that land reappropriation and nationalization and 40 acres and a mule shit that was supposed to start happening that had, i'm sure, all the NORTHERN aristocracy standing around like "hey, um, hold on, about all that 'taking the land and money from the rich and giving it to the people they wronged' thing, um, that's JUST gonna be for slavery stuff, right? and all the stuff our families got rich off adjacent to slevery or like, pre-we-changed-our-minds-about-the-slavery-stuff times dont count because we say we're cool with it for just those ones? okay. but like... what if the poors start noticing things or asking questions, and hey, um, who's that writing for the new York tribune that i heard sent a letter to president lincoln again?" and then hey look at that the most racist idiot drama boy in rich northern rich kids town dramatically slays his tyrant and breaks his fucking leg jumping down so he can fucking soliloquy on the stage like fuck off Andrew JOHNSON killed Abraham Lincoln and you only have to ask mister James. T. Crow about the evidence on that one.
whereas with kennedy? oh my god our boy lee was just so in his feelings for emma goldman. and like, you remember the whole "Camelot" thing, right? like that wasn't going to be wrong for a really long time. like even after they domed the fucker his parties just ran the entire government except for maybe the executive once in a while until rush Limbaugh and newt Gingrich, (im convinced they're the same man, i was like 11 years old for Clinton get off my dick) didn't understand the good thing he was ruining like eric fucking cartman and Enron's ken starr'ed his way into blowing up liberal democracy forever because he was just a big enough entertaining enough blowhard that could dogwhistle all the racist stuff the people really wanted to hear if they were going to have to do a race war or something to get what they wanted which was a race war because they think theyd win because theyre a bunch of dumb fuckin florida crackers, literally, they think in the exact same way as the originators of that terminology, its an apt pejorative, really, but you have to actually know what you're saying for it to mean anything beyond a fart noise in someone's direction
but my point is like, hitler is the one people say they'd go back in time to kill but honestly, if anyone proves to have done that, look when they got him. he was done. we do not live in the timeline where he died as a baby and so the proof is like, that one dude who was probably pretty hard to kill unless you were a traitor so its possible but otherwise you're just waiting on him to do it and ooooops there he goes and he does it sure yup okay let's get back to work, what's on the agenda for today, president vance? when do we swear in vice president musk? sure, yeah, we can figure that out" and like they still got a nuremburg out of it so so long as we watch the ratlines which is WAY easier with all of these smartphones they made us have actually, good call on doing all that facial recognition too that will be useful, haha awesome, anyways, where was i? yeah i think we'll be chill once the rats scatter if we do this the right way is the point.
so like, dearest lee, you tried mate. you really did. you did the damn thing. damn that ruby to hell, i dont care if groudon is objectively cooler than kyogre, i mean i like orcas too, they're actually hella sick actually so like, its fine, but i'm sorry babes you done did a czolgoz we need to stop doing czolgozes why is it always the unfuckable anarchists and marxists and shit that are the ones to take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them?
most of our people just get turned into mealy-mouthed white claw kombucha buzzfeed journalists for the gram or the vine or the buzz or the lulz or whatever these days, or at least have to work exclusively with them and market to them and listen to them because they're the only voices that matter, being themselves the last population of people who give a shit about paying for the service of looking at what amounts to journalism anymore, ie: people yelling about themselves to everyone else about someone that is pretty much just like them. because you're all fucking insufferable to be around! which is why only Yous are at this fucking party anymore! grow a fucking spine read a fucking non romaantasy book you fucking losers. ask some goddamn questions for a change. truth to power! and celebrities and certainly microcelebrities do not count as power, unless they're just advertisers for the status quo which they basically all are so i guess it's fine actually. but throw a fucking brick through a window at LEAST you fucking layabouts. get off X and tiktok and pay a fucking tention for a while and see how absolutely dogshit the world you prop up /actually/ is.
but like, that's what i mean, it was the same cia, right. Eisenhower, all of them. they all killed the same leftists for decades after world war 2. they're still doing it now. whats that red dot about? nah im fuckin with you. i hope.
the greatest trick the devil ever played was making you laugh at "douche vs turd" on south park. but, honestly, what else was going to happen? even michael moore got high on his own supply. the dude who made roger & me and the awful truth, he's the one you were supposed to listen to. but then we got bowling for columbine and jon stewart on the daily show and being a progressive mouthpiece made money and once you have a lot of money it can be pretty hard to change things up in ways that jeopardize the money you now have because it turns out that money can indeed buy happiness but only because the entire point of capitalism is to turn money into a barrier between who has an actual quality of life and who doesn't. the rich don't use their money for anything. they don't spend it or if they do they don't spend so much of it that the interest doesnt replace it all. only people who steer their proverbial cars into the fast lane and blow it all on golden mansion gates like mc hammer or something go broke anymore. even modern zoomer millionaires, all the tiktok boom kids, they just live in empty-walled content house mcmansions and survive on lunchly sponsorships because they just think that's what food is because they're fucking idiots, unless they're foodfluencers or tradwives then its all stuff that was hippie food 20 years ago like small batch granola and canning and sourdough and shit because performing an aspirational existence so people can look at it through the little dream-window in their palms and imagine it for themselves, because chemically that does a lot of the same thing to actually having it in a human brain so that they can clock in at the amazon warehouse or turn on whatever app lets them pick up food and drive it to you or whatever.
you're all just incredibly embarrassing out there some times. and i honestly? i honestly love you. i don't think people are bad, or brainwashed, or lazy, or anything. i am thoroughly sure that most people, even if they dont know specifically what's wrong, they know this isn't right. they know something's fucked up. you can't see pogroms in the streets of belfast and think this is what is supposed to be happening, unless you're the one organizing and egging on these pogroms because you, idk, cynically profit off the idiots doing them or because you share their opinions that everyone not like you should be dead or in chains or at the very least go away forever so you never need to think about them. but then you'll just invent some new class of person you deem to be subhuman and throw their babies off the cliffs to the wolves once you're back in the uncomplicated iron age like you want to be. the adversarial "you" here, that is. the "you" that things that you and i are not the same. because we are.
we both want to chill by some green fields, maybe a nearby copse or fjord, in a cozy home that we never feel trapped in, that never feels too small to hold us and our loved ones. maybe some animals to hang out with when we need a break from the people. what else is there? what else are we supposed to be for? building systems of interoperability between us makes complete and total sense. it's community! once you have two people who can get along they can align the things they are individually good at or like doing (and liking doing it is just the first thing you need to get good at it even if you start out bad, but you probably won't be terrible, because you like it, you have an idea at least what the expected motions or outcomes should be, so you can do your best to replicate them even if it's sight unseen because... you have to? you can't like something that you can't envision, you can always strive for it. maybe you're just curious how symmetrically you can split a log, just for the challenge of it. the fact that even logs are probably easier to build a house with is a secondary effect. and then hey, now that's knowledge and skill you have and you can share, and if the next person you meet doesnt understand log stuff that's fine you've got it).
human civilization is just an ever increasing game of cognitive offload. we let the people who know how to do the things we dont know do them, because we trust that they know what they're doing, because we typically know what we're doing when we do the stuff /we/ say we are good at, at least well enough to, upon sober reflection, know what we can try differently next time if we fail the first time. so long as the last time didn't kill or otherwise maim us to the point of invalidating us from future attempts. but even then, if you can live you can still teach even if you can't do and that's better than the knowledge leaving with you. we invented writing things down for a reason.
and that's honestly beautiful. i mean, i'd LOVE to get into husbandry or farming or woodworking or blacksmithing or whittling or trampoline dancing i dont fucking know, they all sound sick, but would i be good enough at them to do them full time for my whole community? i dunno, probably not, but i bet i can at least make some shitty mugs or a table or something if the people who know are busy or if we dont need the table or the mugs to be that nice or last that long. like, i'm just happy to help.
but there's a significant problem when you reach peak cognitive offload, and it's when no one at the top understands the incredibly complicated things underneath them. and this isn't just "the ceo of tech company Y could never solder a circuitboard and keep the company running by themselves if they had to" because of course not. maybe apple had a chance with woz around or whatever, but the days of competency leadership are THOROUGHLY dead, and bastards recognized that speculation and hedging were the real ways to make it rich while doing nothing. vulture capitalists. jack welch. bain capital. god can you imagine if mitt romney had won? he probably would have been a shoo-in if it hadnt been for 9/11.
they're gonna try it again with mayor pete, with all his mckinsey and cia shit. just you watch. they tossed it in a gay chipmunk costume to try and sneak it past us. and i mean, i can't blame people for falling for it because the gay secretary of trains and shit sounds like a way more chill thing to make the president after all of this MAGA bullshit, but i just want you to all understand that going down that road is just lying down on the same tracks, the knots will just be a little bit tighter. the moustache on your assailant less twisty and gauche, more trim, tidy, respectable. more ned flanders-y.
hunter biden would be a weird start, but if they're gonna pick anyone that exists already i'd take him. but i'd much prefer basically anyone else. chris smalls seems like a decent choice. i'll give him my endorsement for now. whatever.
because douche and turd wasn't /wrong/ they just decided to make a joke about diddy threatening to shoot you for not voting because voting seemed pointless so why be so dramatic about it. they were right that guns should be involved, but the endless consumerism comfort pablum kiddy pool that they'd all been swimming in since the leave it to beaver days meant that the last dude who tried to refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants was a fucking idiot loser hopped up on nihilism and the turner diaries who blew up half the murrah building and made the whole idea of political violence too yucky and the system was too ready to suck up the collateral damage so nothing actually changed anyways so well if you can blow up a building as a bad guy and nothing happens what makes you think blowing up a building for the right reasons will change anything either? might as well just hit the taco bell drive thru and watch jerry springer until my shift at the kmart or at whatever scam engine the jordan belfort gordon gekko patrick batemans are running.
and look who's the first back at the bat willing to use street violence to do things now. we're just literally back to pogroms in the streets of belfast. hell any time a brown person touches a knife in the UK the racist hooligans burn a car outside the toby carvery. and starmer sits there tut-tutting or saying that they have "legitimate concerns" like fuck the fuck off you goddamn jelly-spined dickheads.
like, i don't think i'm nuts, but i certainly feel like it with all this bouncing around in my head all day, every day, when i don't see the understanding on anyone's faces. but i might be missing it, i'm just autistic, i'm nothing special here. this is all baby-tier level theory. and i'm almost certainly wrong, or too broad, too unkind, too cynical, whatever, i honestly don't care anymore. it all tracks in my head, i'm happy to adjust if and when i see things change the trajectory. but everything just keeps falling on this line and i can follow it backwards and see all the stuff on it still and like, that's what all those words were about. it's just very tiring. you must all be so tired out there. i'm sorry.
we can't even say "what is wrong with this/you/everything" anymore because i think we all know. or if we don't all we need is a little reminding or prodding. we're past the point of confusion. at least this current spat of nationalism, authoritarianism, fascism, is very very indelicate on the surface. it can still be delicate under the sheets, and i'm sure it is, but unfortunately for it and fortunately for us, they are saddled to a significantly turbulent and feculent horse that just can't stop shitting and farting and kicking the children in the petting zoo that is being so irresponsibly run in the head. like, why have they not put this horse out of its misery yet? at LEAST keep it in a side field where it can't kick the children in the head, their skulls can't take it, we're down like, idk, how many children did bibi murder in gaza? we're down that many children at least. look there are even some chill goats and baby piglets and stuff over there, in that electrified dome covered in halloween store cobwebs and warning tape saying that they are evil and dangerous and not to be trusted but idk man i think a butterfly just landed on that pigs back and now they appear to be doing some sort of charming song and dance number about the power of friendship and caring but you've got all these guys with skulls on their gaiters shooting people in back of the neck for looking at the butterfly and the singing pig and your diarrhea horse is just stomping on that kid with the breathing tube in the hospital gown and this seems like maybe we should leave this petting zoo or something, this was a terrible idea for a vacation why did we do this the postcard seemed neat at the time it must be old or like, maybe ai imagined all the nice stuff or something all they've got here are gestapo and a diarrhea horse this sucks.