[1168] All Aboard

I'm really struggling to believe in anything. This is a fairly longstanding tradition, but it manifests as anxious butterflies during what I perceive to be key inflection points. I’m familiar with being constantly, chronically, fucked with. I am intimately aware of what it feels like to feel absolutely helpless indefinitely. It taught me how to become a bully. It showed me I can functionally black out and numb all pain during a violent reaction. It rendered everything worthwhile and good about me as something to pick at, ridicule, or resent. I’ve teetered on the edge of ending up in prison or hospital before I figured out how to put words to what was happening in me.

None of us can predict the future. I don’t think anything is predetermined, nor do I believe in fate or karma. I might invoke them jokingly or colloquially, but I think at bottom, so much of the best and worst things that happen to any of us are a direct result of choices. They might be choices made under duress. They’re almost certainly choices made with so little information it’s hard to conceive how it’s appropriate to invoke “choice” at all. A choice, by definition, is going to be a binary proposition. You affirm, or you deny. You bring into your awareness, or you eschew further contextualizing. Our brain automatically shortcuts most information in service to this process.

I can tell an extremely damming and deliberate story about how I’m in a decadent 2024. I can point to instances from history that kicked off the degradation of “the middle class,” our education systems, our sense of civic duty, etc. I can point the finger at the internet and the technologies we can’t wrap our ape brains around. I can cite heart-wrenching story after story of the consequences of being intellectually lazy, personally indignant, and in denial about the depth of hatred and fear. I can blame. I can explain away. I can hedge. I can intellectualize and attempt to stomach how all of the stuff “out there” isn’t really what we are or who I am.

And it would all be a lie. It would be a lie that others around me would be eager to celebrate and expand upon. It would be the kind of lie that would keep me divorced from the nature of how I utilize my hatred and my exhaustion in service to taking less accountability than I could. Because my shock and horror are too intense or morally righteous, when I condemn, when I seek to destroy, it would be okay. This is the mind of a fascist.

It’s 12:30 AM on Wednesday after election day. Again, millions of people have sat out. Millions of people have celebrated rape, racism, greed, pride, indefinite 4chan-esc detached irony, and the wholesale lack of accountability. It’s the rot everywhere. It’s the one thing that truly unifies us all. We’re all correct. We’re all entitled to our tears, our hatred, our means of acquiring whatever we want in whatever way we discover. Steal? Why not, I’m just smarter. Kill? Negligently ignoring something is soooo many syllables.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the women who have already died from the abortion rollback. It’s peak insanity. It’s peak Christo-fascist power and control. The smartest, most empathetic and best-equipped people and healthcare tools sit idle as those in power threaten prison and fines for helping. It doesn’t get worse. It just gets more frequent. That’s something I don’t think really sets in for people who wish to point at any individual tale of woe or absurdity. It’s already, right now, as bad as it can get mentally, in how we talk about it, and how we aren’t approaching fixing it.

I remind myself regularly to not be a reactionary. I don’t want to just sit in my fear and pain and speculation. That’s what was happening as I watched the country maps turn red. As I watch the numbers in support of detached yet vigorously hateful and spiteful ignorance march its way forward once again. Pride comes before the fall, and I can think of no one more proud than the people who apologize for belief systems and representatives that mask and hide the broader reality of consequences.

Van Jones famously said Trump was a “white lash.” I think he was dead wrong. The whole country was denying the story of how their needs weren’t being met, denying themselves a chance to own their complicity, laziness, hatred, and insecurities. You’ll hear often about “the extremes” of “either side.” I would put to you that you exist as an extreme of what those people put into action. You can be extremely lazy and feeling intellectually inferior. You can be extremely entitled to your “small town” views that don’t concern themselves with anyone but you and yours. You can be extremely angry and indignant that something didn’t go your way. The story of how your extremes manifest are as individual as it gets.

If we need a heuristic, you can look at voting. I’m the kind of person that can literally never justify endorsing Trump. Him as a person is antithetical to everything I try to be. I don’t want to be “rich” like him, slap my name on everything, sexually abuse women, fuck my family, lie with every breath, provoke and incite violence, pretend to be ambiguous about my relationship to explicit hate groups, cozy up to dictators, find myself getting supported by people like Ben Shapiro or any sycophant building their brand on the right. The “reasons” people use to vote for him are overwhelmingly incoherent lies. He is their representative.

I mention Shapiro because he’s the fanciest dancer claiming to support Trump’s policy independent of everything he’s ever said or done otherwise. This, again, is how fascists, apologists, extremists pretend to think. Provided there’s something “bigger” or “practical” or “the real goal,” everything, your death and ruin included, gets sublimated in service to it. Why protect the planet when Jesus is on his way back? Why quibble over poor people having rape babies or women controlling their bodies when we’re gonna return to the ways of God? Why trust the science of vaccines when I have a right to kill you when I’m in power? This is the conclusion, the unyielding ambivalence in service to selfishness.

We get Trump because we deserve Trump. We’ve been trying to have a mythical future that refuses to directly combat the forces that broke our government. We’re suffering the fissures of recycled propaganda. We don’t teach in compelling ways. We don’t hold people accountable. We don’t model behavior. We don’t reign in our worst impulses. It’s all wish-fulfillment. What was Kamala going to do with a broken Senate and wholly corrupt Supreme Court? Trump faced no consequences for encouraging people to kill people. What do you think is really and actually going on in your country? You haven’t conceded what’s really been lost anymore than Trump did the last election.

Hope is fickle. Change is arbitrary. We’ve only demanded the performances of each other, not the work. We’re all addicts at the group meeting carrying on like its fun and games and our lives are going so smooth since we found each other. 5 seconds after we leave we’re screaming at the people in our lives, crying over our circumstances, and building more chronic conditions for which to seek an addictive fix.

You hate as deeply as any fascist Trump supporter, as any “Christian,” as any “religious” nut job talking a million miles an hour like Shapiro constantly justifying justifying justifying because the fact of their limited, scared, irrational beast at the heart of their behavior can’t be contended with. They don’t own it anymore than you do, it’s just their time to be attaching language to the nature of the self-destruction. What did the Left do? Reacted with DEI, defund the police, and trigger warnings. They didn’t figure out how to get Bernie in charge, they looked for the next coolest victim narrative to attach their identity to.

It’s hard not to feel like we deserve it. We deserve to keep dying for no reason. We deserve to keep talking in circles with fanatics. We deserve to eat the scraps of oligarchs and submit to wage slavery. We are addicted to the grind, consumption, excuses. We want to hear the same story every day and feel proud and confident in each recitation and share. We want the awkward, evil, rich bullies to win, because those are our gods. That is who we wish to be in a world that’s treated us so unfairly by asking for anything accountable.

I’m not giving myself to the fear, ignorance, and hatred no matter how often it’s on offer. I own the hatred I have for fascists of any stripe and era. I will never be okay with the patterns of thought and behavior, so, so smug, and confident that bring nothing but shame and embarrassment and death. I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand or feel like they do. I’m going to take what I feel, and choose to operate like someone knows his power and responsibility, even in the maddest of worlds. Maybe in a generation or two, if I last that long, my example will mean enough to be of better consequences than the ones I’m suffering.

[1150] Seething Is Believing

I want to talk about lying.

A couple days ago, I somewhat accidentally brain-dumped on one of my friends. I was reflecting on my efforts over the last few years, and the conclusion I came to was that I was first and foremost severely affected by lies.

If you’re a long-time listener first-time caller, you’ll know that lying was a particular pain point for my mother. She would flip the fuck out and engage in the most dramatic displays of violence or breaking my shit if she felt she was being lied to. As an adult, I can figure out that she was very poorly coping with how often she probably felt betrayed in life, but it no less left an imprint on me.

But I’m not here to talk about the past. I want to provide a framework for understanding lies. I think between lies and the truth, it’s much easier to discern lies. Often, they’re as simple as the exact opposite of whatever it is someone is telling you. Most insidiously, they’re something we “deeply believe” is the truth, only betrayed by a faint whisper that, for me, manifests in my gut.

Let’s begin.

We’re familiar with the idea of “white lies.” These are presumed moral behaviors to save someone unnecessary pain. When I was deep in my god vs. science debating, inevitably you’d get challenged on whether or not you’d lie to your dying grandmother if she professed that she would see you in heaven. Are you, atheist cunt, so devout in your lack of belief you’d stamp on your grandmother’s sentiment? It’s an absurd scenario that most remotely human people would navigate without issue, white-lying because not believing in something doesn’t give you license to be a dick.

We have what I call “political lies.” These are the kinds of lies you literally have to tell to occupy certain positions of leadership, or any time you’re speaking to more than 1 person. It’s a fool’s errand to blame a politician for “tacking to the middle” for this reason. It’s in the job description to compromise. It’s the nature of democracy and new information. You’re going to be lying, but it’s not even your fault more than it’s the nature of the incredibly complex arena we’ve constructed to mitigate our differences.

Modernity has hopefully shed some light on the distinction between these kinds of lies and the next batch, “operative lies.” These are lies that work. Work for what? Work for you. They can be about anything, for anything, as long as you feel they are keeping you safe. That’s their primary function, to keep you locked in mentally to “wherever you are” that you deem is where you need to be. Any arena can be abused for your purpose, be it national politics, your family, your job, or your artfully cultivated circle that might even only contain you and your pets.

Operative lies are the important ones to parse further. An operative lie becomes pathological when most outside observers would judge you to be self-destructing along normative metrics. This is where addiction falls. The sense of “this is where I’m safe” bar gets set too low, so all of the operative lies you employ end up servicing destruction to your relationships, finances, and health. This is part of the reason I am professionally suspicious of literally anything my clients tell me. Addiction shuffles your whole self-concept and what constitutes lying.

Here’s where it gets even trickier and scarier. Operative lies are how we house a collective and cooperative society. It’s not just out of the mouths of our campaigners and would-be leaders. We’re each baked into “normative lies” that operate to keep things copacetic.

This feels almost “too obvious” to speak to, except we confuse how to relate to these different levels of lying all the time. I can also personally attest to how often I’m punished for violations of these normative lies, and it’s no small part of why I’m choosing to explore now.

One of the biggest normative lies I’ve been at the mercy of was an implicit understanding after explicit commentary about the inevitability of my successful future. It’s the “go to college, get a good job, you’ll be set” lie. It wasn’t said maliciously. They weren’t saying it to a kid who was flunking school or unmotivated. But it was a normal expectation bred from incomplete information. I’m certainly one of millions who’ve been through that rough awakening.

For my generation, it seemed to be the start of a major transition away from functional operative lying guiding fair-enough norms of society, into the chaos of pathological lies that only serviced the operations of those with power. The bar got set too low. We collectively began shifting our language around self-destructive new norms to operate at this unsustainable level.

In this new jungle of habitual pathological lying, every playbook for success has a sort of standing refutation built into the brain of everyone you might engage. And they don’t even realize it! Because the self-destruction doesn’t look like an overdose. It doesn’t look like self-harm that needs hospitalization.

What does it look like?

It looks like my time at DCS, where a catch-phrase like, “I care about the children” placates over aggressive, illegal, and policy-violating behavior, while the state massively under-pays and under-trains those tasked with keeping them safe. People who do care and behave as they should get punished and chased away. The underlying shameful cheeky sick satisfaction of those who embody Mean Girl bullshit are ultimately steering the ship.

It looks like the dozens of people who advertise themselves as having the specific set of skills you’re looking for, and 2 of them proving capable of doing what they advertise. Yet, they get paid, get reviews, and leave you feeling incredibly confused by how they command such a high hourly rate to not help you accomplish what they said they could.

It looks like friends who devolve into acquaintances and then into memories. There used to be a village. There used to be friends you held on to your whole life. The bar for engaging or working together got set somewhere in the story of the sanctity of your individual dreams and capacity, and we’ve slowly eroded the meaning of belonging to anything bigger than ourselves. We don’t think we exist past whatever is in our head, and don’t bother being shaped by influences vastly different, but vital to illuminating our depths.

It looks like the thousand and one “I’ve got a secret!” Instagram ads about making money, reaching the “next level” of whatever your hobby, and any commercial that’s telling how you must spend more money and acquire more things.

The thing I believe cuts through all the noise is inside us all.

Maybe you think my broader and somewhat hastily conceived categories are confusing and woefully incomplete. That’s fine, I literally just made them up based on my operating instincts. What I do in response to each of the categories is what makes them easier to understand. I listen to my body in how it feels to try and believe in one of the lies at each level.

Let’s go back to dying grandma. “I believe you’ll disappear into nothing and there is no god, let alone heaven!” If you can say that, full-throated, and not recoil, okay, you, psychopath, there is no deeper truth for you than seeking the consequences of that behavior in that moment. A normal person is going to feel like they’re lying. They’ll pull back. They’ll feel “off.” The truth is illuminated, how much they care about grandma, in shutting up and playing along.

Take an extra moment and think about the truth being illuminated from the lie. How you manifest your care for grandma is through silence or nodding along.

Let’s look at political lies. “I’m anti-fracking!” There’s too many competing and convoluted truths to be revealed. Is it true you care about the environment then? Is it true you’re concerned about corrupt corporate capture of energy? Is it true you need to align your views with the party? Is it true based on information today, or information that might be changing faster than we can process? The only truth that can be reliably revealed is that the person saying it thinks it helps more than hurts their chance to get elected.

How about these personally operative lies? What do you need to tell yourself to get by every day? Some of my classics are about being smart and still decent-looking. I point to the stuff I own, interests, work I do around the house or stuff I make. I talk about the struggle to create and stay cheerleading for unknown possible positive outcomes. These things aren’t lies, but taken as a whole, can give me pause and a reason to reflect on if that day, in that moment, I’m living up to the story or including enough humbling detail. I know when I don’t feel like a champ, king, or boss no matter how well I eat that day, how many shows I’m headed to that week, or storied my accomplishments on an instrument or weed whacker.

That said, whatever my personal failings to find focus, motivation, or the ability to account for a consequential detail, I’m not less embedded in a deeply sick and delusionally lying era. At this rate, I’m probably not going to be much richer than I am now, but you’ll hear routinely how “the average American” still suffers from the complex of being a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” We’re still teetering on full-blown, albeit incredibly stupid, fascism. We’re praying for a long and jovial ride on renewed “hope,” as a nice substitute for investment, sacrifice, and accountability.

To me, we’re still stuck at the misplaced bar. We’re still addicted. We’re operating under lies that tear us apart, little by little, and then all at once, as they infect each new thing we care about or took for granted. And it feels impossible to combat because we don’t even listen to ourselves. We’re getting super-charged algorithmic ways to play someone else’s game and learn someone else’s language. It’s self-reinforcing through the lies underneath pretension, gate-keeping, language-policing, and every instance of cliche insecure lashing out.

The truth of my circumstances has come out through my genuine adoption and beliefs in the lies. I keep learning the hard way. I keep putting my time, my money (credit card debt), my energy, and my future in the hands of people and systems who can’t understand how to hear the truth of themselves, let alone me.

I’m constantly looking for a way to establish a true and persistent “floor.” A place I can work from and believe in that isn’t riddled with the kinds of lies that tear down what they profess to build. I’m leaning deliberately towards my friends and family that haven’t played on what I got conditioned to feel was normal. I’m every ounce of every hopeful, forward-thinking, genuinely believing in himself asshole who has appeared on 1,150 blogs over 21 years. I won’t let myself forget how to recognize a lie.

I swear, on everything, I’m trying. Nothing about me recoils over that.

[1021] Tribe

I did absolutely nothing to prepare myself for getting back into “work mode” after my trip to Phoenix, so now I’m finding it a bit of a struggle to pull it together to knock out my handful of tasks. I had many times I wished to write in the last few days. The last several times I’ve written it registered as annoying and wasting time and effort repeating myself. A few major themes arose this time though I wish to explore. A general recounting of the trip I also want recorded.

Again, I found myself on a plane. It felt a little less “enlightening” or “liberating” and more “routine” than the one earlier. Flying is fascinating every time, but like all things, you can habituate and take for granted what’s happening. I needed to get to several somewheres for this trip, driving wasn’t going to cut it, so quick trip across the country, and now I’m back home.

“Tribes” came to mind. Bill Maher talks a lot about the tribal nature of the country and our politics, but I don’t know that I let it sink in as deeply as it felt on this trip. We want to belong so deeply. I was listening to some of the people’s conversations around me, and it’s always striking when they talk about the band members like they’re friends. They just use their first names like they’re talking about a brother. They talk about their lives as though they aren’t experiencing them through Instagram updates. There’s this deep connection, seemingly less about whatever band, than just the desire to feel like these people are representing something much more than themselves through their music.

When we talk about “politics” and whether or not our message is “inclusive” enough, I think we somehow completely miss the notion of the tribal identity. Who feels like they belong in the narrative around speech policing and identity games? It’s eggshells and resentment. You know what resonates with tribe members? I, me, mine. “Protecting” whatever abstract notion of things like “freedom” or “the unborn” that you can slap the designator on. Anger and hatred are felt across all tribe members no matter what their political compass might tilt towards. Who do you really feel is on your team? Who’s angry at the same things you are?

Do you know your enemy? When we’re trying to explore what or whether it’s worth getting angry about, things get complicated because we’re not taught to look for a soup of causation. There are many ingredients in the mix that speak to the overall taste and expression. If you want to be indefinitely incensed by abstract “isms” and “ists” you’ll never get to the heart of your issues. If you want to bemoan “poverty” or “injustice” or “inequality” you’re not giving people the specific tools to address how it’s manifesting, not just in their lives, but as a measure of their perception of their lives.

A poor person who grows up poor doesn’t think they’re poor. A rich person who grew up rich doesn’t think they’re selfish and entitled. Dumb people don’t think they’re dumb. Hippies don’t think they smell. It’s never enough to offer soap, “educate,” bemoan what’s “fair,” or talk in terms of a “minimum wage” when it’s all an infinitely abstract and individualized series of perceptional markers. “Hate?” “Hope?” Those win elections. You personally hate or hope for things. You get on the ground and validate, you win.

I don’t care how similar your experience sounds to someone else’s you experience it in the confines of your individual mind. You can get help in how to identify similar trail markers or environmental stimuli, but you have to recognize and choose to walk the path yourself. If you have a strong notion or set of experiences and evidence to suggest how people find that path, your wisdom and insight means nothing if you can’t recognize the nature of the road they’re currently on.

I saw Mest, Zebrahead, and Unwritten Law. The venue was excellent if only because the doors were opened between sets to cool down the room. The crowd was energetic and respectful. There were mosh pits, crowd surfing, free things thrown and collected. I had good tacos at the restaurant portion of the venue. I was first in line, front and center at the stage, and I got there, to the AirBnb, and the airport in timely and safe ways. I had breakfast at an award-winning nationally recognized spot. I got to familiarize myself with a bit of downtown Phoenix and Tempe. It’s about as good of a trip as you could ask for.

I then came up against the ambivalence and disregard of Frontier Airlines. I’m still embroiled in what will almost certainly be a civil suit for the return of $200 they’ve effectively stolen from me. I come off a great trip with a 10+ hour delay keeping me stuck in the Phoenix airport, overpaying to eat, and searching for a way to stay comfortable and plugged in until my flight that was supposed to arrive at 12:30 in the afternoon now ensures I’ll get home at 11:30 PM. I had a decent amount I planned to get done that day, all still pending and contributing to the mental backlog that is preventing me from moving on to my work obligations. The stress of the situation was 5% being made to wait, and 95% the attitude and posture of Frontier.

My tribal principals regarding what’s fair and who should be accountable have been violated. I’m not driven through a persistent uncontrollable rage to try and get my money back, and were I to “let it go,” when I don’t need or want to would functionally enable the continued taking advantage. I didn’t eat enough yesterday, given my wonky schedule and headspace, so combined with the stress of arguing with Frontier, I started getting light-headed and feeling generally “off.” I forgot my keyboard at work, and even drove to work in the first place intending to use the many hours before my first group to do everything I’m hoping to achieve when I get done writing today.

I have the practice and self-awareness to know when, and over what, it’s worth calling it quits. I sent $150 to a guy whose shitty car I was going to buy. He’s poor, excuse-making, and full of shit. I tried, nominally, for a month or so to politely explore how he might return the money for the car that was sent to the junk yard and never received. It’s extremely unlikely I’m getting that money back, and weeks ago I deleted the chat bubble on facebook that was our only means of communicating. That’s a different kind of stupid and impoverished situation. He doesn’t know how poor and dumb he is, nor how badly he smells. I knew I was gambling. I’ve heard the song he was singing from hundreds of similarly situated clients over the years.

The second we stopped bothering to police ourselves in service to the wrong kind of entitled and selfish claims or ownership and self-expression is when we forgot how to dutifully and justifiably punish the obviously objectionable. It’s most frequently a story of “they did” verses “I can.” It’s reflexive and fluid. “He manipulated me! They control the narrative! They’re the ones with the most power!” As though you don’t have a brain or agency. Well, you don’t. You’ve donated it to the dialogue that keeps you disenfranchised and at the lack of mercy from whatever’s not really thinking about you in the first place.

Wherever you go, you can overhear a conversation about a person’s sports team. Mest is from Chicago, and their lead singer spoke of the Bears’ first draft pick for doing so terribly. He’s as much in his punk-rock tribe as he is his sports team’s tribe. The bouncers were discussing the fate of, I forget what teams were competing in the playoffs, but I think they were close enough to Phoenix. The trivia nerds playing on the patio outside of the venue overwhelmingly answered that Larry Bird played for The Lakers. We’re constantly indicating what tribes we do and don’t belong to. Even when we’re wholly not part of it, we know which one is closest or what we’d default to if cornered. We’re disinclined to access that which unites independent of our familiarity or preferences.

I wish I had a bigger tribe. I wish I had more in common with people than where we were from or that we saw the same TV show. I wish I had people who I could dedicate my effort to enabling and they were inclined to reciprocate. Instead, we all generally get walled off into our own worlds. I’m not downplaying or denying the impact the friends and connections I have in my life, but I see it in our dynamics as well. I’m very lucky to ever get someone on board to come to a show. I’m almost never called to come join whatever someone else is doing. They’re either not doing anything, or we’re just not in that kind of tribe, if we’re really in one altogether. I’m not suggesting they aren’t “maintaining their family” or “defending their stability and status quo,” but I talk to enough people in a regular way who make literally no time for themselves to enjoy, indulge, decompress, or even acknowledge there’s a world beyond the bounds of their stress and obligations. I would literally invite everyone I remotely liked to everything I ever do, just as I did with the party house. I’d be right back here whining about how they’re all too tired, busy, poor, or more into “their tribe’s music” to enjoy anything about the show we might head to.

People in my tribe might be kind of bored if invited to a football game, but would recognize an opportunity to drink more or make funny comments, people watch, and spend time with their friend. People in my tribe are looking to build and experience. That’s the prevailing character trait of Hussain, Byron, and Hatsam. They’ve contributed to growth and building things up or creating something new. Where others talk, they do, or did. You make the best of the ongoing shit sandwich of life or your options. You acknowledge the absurdity, dig that much deeper, and come out mangled but self-assured about what you’re capable of. I can walk to the top of mountains. My former tribe apparently plagued by the idea of how I must not be enjoying myself.

What are you using your tribes for? To self-validate like a basic politician getting you to agree to what you already agree with and stay blind to the consequences of their votes? Does your desire to belong lead you down paths that I tripped all over in trying to befriend the wrong characters? Do you pretend your favorite team or band feels connected to you and your details like you might in hoarding and reciting information about them? You’re just a person first, and they’re just a player. Are you capable of recognizing what they’re playing? Are you willing to see what you’re playing at?

[545] 3 Strikes You're Out

With the election drawing near, I’ve been thinking a lot about my immune system. Its contradicting name notwithstanding, the perpetual battles it engages to keep me alive is a marvel to behold. Whether processing the air filled with cancerous particles, navigating what accompanies my food, or keeping my spots clotted from picking and popping, it never gets a day off.

It also needs help. I had my shots as a kid so I wouldn’t develop old world diseases. When I shock the shit out of it by drinking too much or otherwise injuring myself, I’m desperate for a pill. My self-imposed guilt of eating poorly has me trying to boost my insides by massive increases in salad and exercising and dialing it back on the crap. 

This wondrous tool which has overcome countless illnesses and trained our human selves in the art of survival will still get overwhelmed. It’ll take on too much crap it can’t get rid of. It’ll miss connections or suffer catastrophic damage or some other competing cell system will find a way to corrupt it. As of yet, we’ve no way to escape this despite the futurists professing otherwise.

Scale it up, and I think of herd immunity. This is my concern for map making. I don’t know if the United States is a breed of animal that knows how to catch fascism and then find the proper medication. I then have to make the global herd appeal. Hitler didn’t take down the world. I wouldn’t expect Hitler 2 to be able to either. But would that kind of presidency act as a booster shot or form of cancer? Both can get you sick, but one in service to training you how to do better. The other taking over and corrupting until nothing we’ve devised can help.

My attitude towards my immune system is a lot like my political perspective. I do things to undermine it. I trust that the general system is still in fair working order. Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m still in my 20s because a minor ache or lesser ability to deal with hangovers can make you think you’re nearing the end by comparison. When I’m sick, I’m not the sickest. But I still have to take care of myself. I have to be mindful of what I allow into my body and into my head which translates into what comes out of my mouth and into my behaviors. You can drink too much, plenty of times. You can’t catch just a little bit of cancer.

I don’t know that we respect the difference. When you truly negotiate it has to do with taking manageable blows. When you’re fueled by ignorance and anger, you delight in destruction. You no longer get to borrow from the well of civilized words to discuss your grievances. People should treat you like dangerous children first, “politically opposed” far away in second, often if at all. Unfortunately and of course, they don’t. It’s because they’re “tolerant” and “polite” and “mature” etcetera. The effect on their health is too slow. Give them a pounding headache and they’ll rush for the pills. Couch an opposing grievance in rhetoric, showmanship, group identity politics, and genuine sympathy for relationships in their own life, they let the headache pound until they can’t see or think straight.

This is pretty old political and psychological news, by the way. A confused and angry population is easy to control. The myriad ways in which the mind is befuddled and tricked is literally built into our tools for survival and representations of the world. Our senses certainly don’t tell the whole story, nor are you capable of being aware of the millions of things that have to continue going right for you to keep acting in the world.

I suppose what bugs me so much is our lack of discernment. Destruction and death and sickness will happen. But why do we choose them so often? And I do mean to distinguish “often” from “at all.” Any glimpse into my inane fights online puts me in the same realms of “idiotic” things to do.

If you want to learn about the world, why pick the name-calling blowhard racist? Why do you trust his opinion more than the people out trying to do the work? Why pick your feelings instead of what actually helps? Anymore, I genuinely don’t understand it. I know we’re moving fast through history. I know we’ve resources our evolutionary history is ill-equipped to deal with. But the hallmark of our place in existence is our ability to adapt. It’s to learn and morph and change our DNA to tackle problems. How long should it really take the herd to learn from 2 different wars that we consider involving the entire world? Even if they didn’t we still figured that’s what was at stake. Just existing at all.

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The Cubs won the World Series yesterday. They did it after doing everything in their power to try and lose it. After the game, people said what an amazing series it was, how it’s one for history, and how people will be talking about it forever. They didn’t talk about whether it was nerves that made the Cubs forget how to infield. They didn’t talk about being down 3-1 and having smaller odds of winning than Hitler 2 becoming President. They emotioned all over the place. They celebrated in the streets. After 108 years, the out-pour, the release and celebration is all that was being offered. Sure, I’m a Cubs fan, and good for them.

I still find sports one of the loudest examples of our terrible discernment. We put so much effort into, even now inventing arbitrary stats and comparisons so long as we can follow them with “and that’s a new world record.” It’s an open secret that the “best” teams are often the ones who fronted the most money to buy up all the best players. It forces us to combine completely unrelated things into a shortcut identity that absolves us of any greater responsibility than to buy a ticket or jersey. I think when it comes to things to think about or spend time on, we genuinely would pick sports over functioning democracy. I find this unacceptable.

And perhaps as an aside, in some utopian vision of the future, I’d love for the worst thing we ever do to each other to be shitting all over a different areas’ team. If we had a hundred thousand more games a year and no war, consider me working to become the best sports fan ever. I’ve watched 3 Cubs games this year and still want to clap at strikeouts and yell at the TV per my culturally ingrained conditioning. It feels good. I get it.

We can’t keep picking sports. We can’t flirt so hard with getting cancer. We can’t keep “respecting” feelings. We can’t play pretend and with false equivalences that think like a child where evil is evil and that’s that so Hilary sucks and Hitler 2 is icky, but I like the slogan! Instead, understand what’s happening for what it is. Don’t be shy. Don’t be polite. You don’t have to be a rabid dog like the examples they are setting, but you are allowed to bite when someone literally threatens your survival. We toy around with the idea of who has the nuclear codes or whether it’s wise to refer to climate change in terms of “beliefs.” It means world war. This shit will kill you. It will kill your kids. It’s already killing others and their kids.

And let me clear, I’m only talking to the regular actual nice liberal intelligent people. This blog isn’t for the person who breaks their TV when their team loses. These words aren’t for people who talk to newscasters in clichés and through their incendiary signs and clothing. It’s for the adults in the room who, even if they’ve been waiting 108 years for their team to win, they still wouldn’t poison the other teams to get there.

I’m not trying to scare you or working to be convincing about the world. I’m relaying and reporting the unyieldingly obvious set of circumstances like a headache you’d take a pill for. And it really does give me a headache! It’s not pain I looked for. It’s not a choice I made like going out to drink. It’s the first stage of someone trying to kill me. Hitler 2 tried to take my thoughts by endlessly reciting his name, so I made sure he’d always be Hitler 2 to me. Greedy children poison water and mono-crop food, so I plan to learn how to garden and filter. We’ve been handed a very complicated and fast-moving economic and social system bolstered by infantile historical perspectives. So I try to share the absolute best materials I’ve read or watched to help cut through the noise and adopt goals that reshape our social and monetary responsibilities to each other.

You need a better grasp on who you really are as a part of the system. I’m a Cubs fan who feels compelled to find out how many of the players are even from Chicago and how much winning really costs. In an ideal world I could find deep connection and respect for my noises and gestures heaved at my symbolic brethren. Maybe the future will allow me to drink every day and remain in peak health! In the meantime, these mean times, I have to moderate. I have to be humble about my limitations. I have to take on even more responsibility for the example I’m setting, because unlike any other point in our history, I can go viral like cancer.

Are we only going to allow ourselves to see the celebration and feel the relief as we bask in the beauty of our collective achievement and identity!?  Or can we point out some peoples’ idea of winning is to scream while they destroy things and set cars on fire. Don’t let them get away with it just because you’re wearing the same human jersey. Your responsibility to the tribe needs to be more than you’ve given them to dictate your emotions and behavior. The stakes are the same every day and every year no matter what story someone tells you about some cursed goat they believe in.

[523] The Body Politic

I need to readdress the idea of good, gooder, and best. When I first spoke about it, as time provides irony with a field day, it was with regard to relationships. I see, or at least pretend to see and sometimes argue for, a difference in relationships of convenience, abuse, or mutual encouragement as existing on a kind of sliding scale. You can be in a good relationship that “keeps the lid on” something about you or perhaps opens you up to new experiences, but remains couched in crippling insecurities about being alone. Depending on what level you want to look at or what you want to be steered by in life, the description can change fairly quickly.

This time around, it's about politics, as the conversation keeps swirling around Hilary or Hitler 2. As a habit, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with often false dichotomies. Literally nothing exists that's “only” one or the other. Besides me begrudging people for introducing bad philosophy into their “pragmatic” conversations, I see a sort of “fundamental” concern that keeps getting ignored. I don't believe any reasonable person thinks it's hard to distinguish the nuclear fallout of a Hitler 2 presidency verses the, albeit very bad, neoliberal warmongering wall street jerking of Hilary. I get it, sorry poor children of the world, America doesn't really give a shit about you, Hitler 2 is right around the corner.

My concern is about where does the hard and fast line exist between “practical” and “idealist” show up? I contend that things change, almost randomly, for any number of unforeseen reasons. To maintain that the “only” way forward is to remain complicit in systems that are broken seems so ridiculously callous, lazy, and unwise but I hear it over and over again from politicians I admire or celebrities I enjoy, and I'm trying not to adopt a kind of doublethink about where they're coming from, and why I'm not voting for Hilary.

Say you never have to make a decision. Say your whole life is carried out for you by servants or a level of extravagance reserved for royalty. How would you make your decisions? What's most distracting? What's most pragmatic? Do these words even mean something to you at that point? Your attention is already whatever you want it to be. Your desires are met and there's nothing to “sit and deal with.”

Now you have to introduce some outside force. You get in a car accident. You decide to not just buy, but build the most amazingly safe car ever built and mandate the roads be cleared for your travels. You get sick. You build the most amazing hospital and import the world's doctors. You're reacting to your fears. You're making decisions in service to combat the dangerous reality that surrounds your extravagance. Consider what Hitler 2 promises and how his solutions, solutions for fear mind you, are as fanciful and hard to imagine as the person given all the resources in the world insulating themselves from danger or death.

To state the above explicitly, when nothing exists that concerns you beyond fundamental truths of existence, you can choose to live in fear.

Here, the hard work of discussion and philosophy needs to remind us that advocacy and sticking by what's best can remain worthwhile and viable in a world absolutely consumed by hatred and fear. Because make no mistake, the business as usual is complicated legalese that spells out someone in power's hatred for your being. Hatred for your rights, bodies, opinions, or even presumption that you have something they don't. And they have so much, and it's never enough, and it's because it's rooted in fear.

You're royalty. No bills to be paid. No wars to be fought (that you're not creating for amusement.) You're not hungry, you're not even bored. You can choose to live for other people or ideals that exist outside of your safe space.

In order to do that, you need to not just be aware of how good your life is going, you have to be able to explain, in due detail, all the forces that have to come together to make sure it remains a safe space. The millions of minds that lend credence to your royalty. The advances in science that will help keep you alive. The guards and caretakers and entertainers that you devour. You have to introduce guilt. You have to hold yourself accountable to something that nobody else can. What you've learned, what you've argued for, what you'd like to see in the future. It's when you've actually done the work to become something more than what you've been born into.

It's a tall order when all you have to do is react to remain complicit with the other side. How easy is it to fear Hitler 2? It's a cliché. You don't even have to think about it. In fact, I would argue, the ethos and purpose of modern society is to be able to label Hitler 2 as such without irony. Of course, I'm afraid of him. Of course I want to laugh more than cry when I see footage of his followers. But I'm not going to live my life in anymore fear than is necessary. I'm not going to pretend Hilary speaks for the same things Bernie does. What are synonymous vote percentages in lieu of a conscious or basic awareness of the problem?

That's what bugs me. I understand there's a political game always afoot. I get that there's sometimes inconvenient truths about the balance of power and influence. I do not understand approaching a system so dominated, by what used to be incidental quirks, as it now completely renders the desires of the population mute with your “vote” for what's going to keep it that way. Even if you're vote is symbolic. Even if it only has the fleeting impact of a set example. Are we going to get where this irrational, angry, and afraid animal needs to be by exercising it like the hateful planners at the top figured we would?

And honestly, I feel I'm not even explaining it as compellingly as it feels. If you want a child to do something, you can threaten them or you can encourage their best behaviors. I view humans as perpetual children. Hilary is threatening us with Hitler 2. Hitler 2 threatens everyone and encourages people to as well. If it's “my” vote, I choose die in the self-righteous flame of actual progress. I've been saying I don't believe in progress, which seems as of late to speak to the deficiency of language. There's things I want over other things. I want Bernie over Hilary, practically anything over Hitler 2, an informed and rational population over oligarchy and capitalism. And what I want is still out there, and it needs advocates. It's realities want a shot at being the new “practical reality” (you know, unless you're already there as a different civilized country.)

If Hitler 2 wins, it will be your fault. You don't know what you stand for and you deny your fear. You took it easy on your racist uncle. You adopted a catch-phrase about undocumented workers. You refused to read links I often provide offering context or numbers that soundly destroy some mythology shat out over pundit bickering or Hitler 2 himself. You allowed yourself to be swallowed, as we're all swallowed, by the system and then resolved yourself. You got tired and didn't ask why. You gave away all your time and then clung to the weekend that much harder. You threw personal pity parties and trumpeted your shallow conception of self-worth and righteousness as waves of ignorance and guilt washed out the notes.

My vote for Obama was because I hadn't figured out what I stood for. I was raised in a Democrat household. I believed minority opinions needed to be elevated and by that metric alone might help things. I thought the system was “basically good.” By all comparisons, my life is a breeze, the breeziest of breezes, and it's because of this country. But the foundation of my life is not because of the politics of today. It's because the people before me stood for something that we've lost all institutional memory of. How does it come back for my grandkids? Not with my vote for Hilary Clinton. How will I know I don't want grandkids? When you show we've accomplished so much only to elect Hitler 2.

[521] Salt To Taste

If you're willing to pay attention, you can catch your own attention. It's also hard to imagine if you're habitually taking your awareness and perspective for granted. One method that I seem to have recently discovered is to just shut up. When you shut up, and focus on shutting up, then you can retreat and wait for what provokes you to want to speak. At that point, you may get more “heartfelt” professions from your inner core than mindless ramblings.

Pulling away from too much political dialogue has certainly helped me. Every headlines, every interview, every “debate” is reinforcement. You are forced, your perspective locked in, to how those people frame the issue. I wouldn't be able to justify my vote for Jill Stein listening to the mainstream media. It's essentially a vote for Hitler 2! They don't recognize what I'm trying to affirm. They don't see it as the cart being put before the horse. I'm lumped in with indignant “Bernie or bust” types who don't understand math and should be as afraid.

Here we can perform the layers and splitting game. Of course I'm afraid. I was afraid of the millions of people who showed up to vote for Sarah Palin in any capacity. Now that they're back out and stirred up more, I'm even more afraid of their new glorified posturing ignorance. A vote for Hilary Clinton denies those people exist. It's to shove them under the rug. I want to channel their fear and make it fight against what I actually believe. Hell, not even “believe.” What I've gone to great lengths to write about, read about, and argue for that is actually rooted in history or science. I don't “believe” we should care about each other or that there are ways to afford what we want. I didn't pray about it.

I'm generally looking for the surprise outside. I like to think I'm a redundant open book. It's why it's kind of relief to feel motivated to write. There's potential for new analogies or discoveries. I can piece together the handful of lines I thought might have kicked off a new blog a few days or weeks ago that couldn't hold up. It was my birthday 2 days ago, and I had about half the desire to be a selfish rod of destruction as I normally do. It clicked, I don't want anything for my birthday that I didn't want the day before or will want the day after. I don't need distractions or even strictly money. I need a place in society lol. I need to feel invested in more than my future.

To me, at least, “things” just feel like they're going to get worse. Hitler 2 is the new normal. Jobs being consumed by technology will leave people who've wrapped their whole identities into catch-phrases surrounding the nuclear family adrift. We'll keep being angry at each other. We'll still be isolated. Our conversations stunted and afraid. Our prospects appearing at random and still draped by a cloak of exploitation...Uber. But, I'm not sitting here shivering. I don't even have a pain in my stomach. I just look at it and go, “duh.”

I can't stress it enough, I can't repeat it enough. I don't know if you should take anything away from this more than the following idea. I almost never, in fact practically never, hear people express how wrong they are. We are culturally isolated from our capacity to be wrong. Line after line flows in service to arguments and rebuttals and never not once does someone go “you know, I may be wrong.” When it does happen, it's half-assed like, “Oh, I agree Hilary isn't literally the devil” and still not even phrased with the operative word “wrong.” If you've no capacity to respect how wrong you are, let alone how compoundingly wrong those wrongs pile up, the potential truth of your words can't begin.

If you sat in a room next to someone with completely “opposite” views and neither of you said a word, how would you feel? Murderous intent? Suspicious of their motives? Terrified of their color? The words fuck everything up. Blame them first. Blame yourself for using them irresponsibly. Blame a system that teaches you that yelling is better than reading. Figure out who you're mad at, learn that it's yourself and often forces you've yet to properly identify and then stop being mad and start trying.

[461] Lessons In "Fuck It"

Every day I feel a little dumber. The sentiment usually goes the other way. “You learn something new everyday!” The idea is that someone should always be curious and striving to learn, even if it’s from something like a word-a-day calendar. The world, an endless mystery with evolving technologies, myriad cultures, and new opportunities every day imbues the power to motivate and help you self-determine. Or so the sentiment at least hints.

So why do I feel dumber? With every new piece of knowledge you have a responsibility to recognize its sides. That doesn’t mean there’s always good with bad or vice versa. It just means that nothing is self-contained and you can run yourself ragged in pursuing the implications and influences. An easy analogy is to think of comic book arcs. You can read a single series that alludes to 6 different series that in turn each point to 6 more, all leaving a small but particular mark for those in the know.

When I learn, I pick up on the thousand ways I’m going to fail. I probably overuse the word “naive.” I think it’s the quintessential attitude, a sort of dispositional lifeblood if you will, underpinning most peoples’ motivations. Because in order to be naive, you only have to feel as if you’ve acknowledged dissent and then carry on. It’s where you get terms like “haters” and “naysayers.” Haters tyin’ to keep you down because they can’t appreciate the higher plain your actions and perspective exists on. People who don’t believe in you because they don’t share, or more likely aren’t capable of, your capacity for a vision for the future.

Essentially, it points to a difference in “acknowledgment” verses “internalizing.” Say you lash out in anger over some political point during a debate. Your opponent can quietly nod and say “I understand” as they move right into their point of view. They don’t feel your anger. You want them to feel your anger, because presumably then they’ll understand just how you got there, but they don’t. Like a practically neglected child, a random pat on the head or reaction to crying doesn’t in turn automatically manifest loving feelings.

I can acknowledge, for example, the many barriers to success in the political realm. From gerrymandering, rampant corruption, general voter ignorance, too many moving parts, historical perspectives lost to time, the cost of “doing business,” the grand timescales movements and revolutions rest on, what’s happened to the “best attempts”...the list could go on for a while. But until recently, maybe the last couple weeks, it hasn’t struck me as a kind of “existential lost cause.” I didn’t really feel it.

Notably, I feel it when I listen to my political heroes. When my leaders paint the world as a dramatic borderline chaos factory with little to no advice on how we get better barring an unforeseen miracle or catastrophe, everything I think to do in spite or to help feels very dumb, small, and pointless. It’s not a nutjob Tea Party member that scares me when they bang the war pots and pans together. I lose hope when Chomsky details perspectives and decisions over years from the people closest to the flames. I’d love to believe in Bernie Sanders, until Nader and Hedges lay out his position in larger contexts that laugh off capacity stadium attendance.

And yet, I don’t necessarily feel the desire to turn into a straight cynic. My understanding of a cynic is someone like Ben Carson. A person who can fluidly and perpetually lie about literally everything defines the kind of absurdity of our times. The fact that he’s a brain surgeon again shows God to have a sense of humor. A cynic would seek the attention for the sake of it. The cynic would seek to capitalize on the bluster and ignorance. I, on the other hand, want to just be left alone.

Who wants to fight for a lost cause? When you can feel so profoundly how screwed up the world around you is, how do you go anywhere but away? “The World” isn’t ready for and doesn’t deserve the kind of luxury and opportunity that’s on offer. We take it for granted. We assume things will work themselves out. We’re too “smart” for our own good.

I throw out the idea of being a kind of “sociopath” so often it’s lost all its luster for me. Another way of relating to how I feel might be characterized as an “overflowing empath.” I started in life feeling too much and just got paired with a crazy person long enough to learn when to shut it off. If I feel too much, and I just feel dumber, maybe the direction “in general” has won out. Maybe in my heart of hearts I know that whatever experiments I run, whatever resources I create, and whomever I meet or work with, will only be drops unable to quell a spectacular sea of fire.

It’s that I don’t believe in us, even a little. I don’t know if that’s being dumb, or self-preservation. I believe in me. I believe I can survive and ride out the times, provided I generally stay away from large cities. But the world from my corner has been shrinking for so long, I think this is a point where I say it’s swallowed me up. Bernie isn’t my savior. My heroes are old and detailed. The momentum is such that fighting all but provokes martyrdom. Revolution? We’re not evolved.

[382] On Disillusionment

I'm interested in how quick the pendulum swings, and for what reasons. Of course I mean between when you're motivated, and when you couldn't possibly care less. I'm interested in this because of how I feel myself respond to something affirmative. How things that are in line with my perception genuinely motivate me to talk a little nicer, work a little faster, and excited to get on the path to learning more.

I just watched this documentary on Ralph Nader. Peeks into history that account for so many things that make our lives better today are invigorating. From the countless hours that a single man put into advocating, training, and campaigning, your life today has been altered in incalculable ways. It's a reminder of your obligations, ability, and potential impact.

I think about the people my age who've become disillusioned. They aren't getting the jobs they want. They're always at risk of getting sick or becoming a burden to their parents. They're bored as shit. Frequently lamenting that they didn't go into a different field or alluding to the external problems that keep them stuck. They feel as if they're in impossible circumstances after a few years of not getting the dream, and primarily for themselves.

Then I think of the people who lined up behind Nader. I think of the teams of people and the amount of legislation that was passed in order to protect human well-being. Years spent researching, writing books, advocating, door knocking, and testifying. And it gets railroaded and degraded piece by piece. Imagine not only having to work hard to get “common sense” things to happen, but then seeing your hard work deliberately targeted and torn down by monied interests. Imagine watching old friends turn their back on you and what you are fighting for because they no longer believe and blame you. Imagine people physically turning their backs to you and shutting you out because you won't play their political pandering game.

Would you keep going? Would you find resolve in some adage amounting to “if I can only help 1 person, then it will all have been worth it!” How many people have figured out or discussed their motivation before they lamented the paycheck or lack thereof? How much of your motivation to change something is tied to how comfortable you make yourself first? You don't need to be rich to read, to advocate, to organize. And that's the brunt of what's striking me so hard.

Nader shied away from the limelight and offers to run for president for a long time. He wanted to drive home the idea that people should be “professional citizens.” He didn't betray trust. He had people sending him all sorts of problems and help me letters, well outside of his purview, but it spoke to the kind of trust he could illicit from his fellow man. I feel like a kindred spirit; even if it only starts in my endless advocacy of people beginning to actually talk about things.

I catch the documentary while I'm in the middle of “The World As It Is” by Chris Hedges. One of the pleasures of writing is that you perk up and get to recognize when something you said is being echoed in different examples and tweaked words, but no-less your point. The idea that “how do we fix it if we don't know how to talk about it” is prevalent. Hedges consistently praises Chomsky for his attention to detail and pages of digressions into the minutia of some conflict. Chomsky's not writing to be relevant 100 years from now. He's testifying to the truth that wins debates. He's giving you tools where and when they're needed that the other side is too lazy to find or determined to avoid.

There's an idea of scholarship speaking to genuine emotional outrage for your circumstances. It's not just storming the street with a pitchfork. You're armed with the knowledge that you're right, the details matter, the consequences carry, and your obligation to the world and future are worth the struggle. That's another reason I want people to speak up. I want to feel that you're obligated to anything. Even if it's just a call for an answer to a question about something important. I want us to find more room to be each others' keepers, and not squander the opportunities to connect or brainstorm. The right ideas are always there, but do you feel them. The people who are crazy sure feel them, and that's why they move into positions of influence.

The day where we're all just comfortable enough to start on our high-minded liberalism's idea of how to change things is not going to happen. I'll never catch up to the intellectual dedication and rigor of people like Hedges, Chomsky, and Nader, but that doesn't mean my voice doesn't matter. It doesn't mean there isn't an uphill battle that is always worth the fight. Your testimony matters. Your voice gives someone else license. Exercise it.

It can't be done alone. You can be isolated, you can be demeaned and painted in various lights. But that only becomes a problem when you make society's problems yours and yours alone. When they need a champion who isn't given a loud enough voice to remind people that they're the champions. Our biggest, baddest, business as usual corruption factories are made out of individuals. They're “truth” is in morally bankrupt greed and corporate culture. We need to speak more truth to power. We need to hold ourselves accountable to the system that has fucked us, but a system that we help stay that way.

Just talk. Just start telling me what you see or what you'd want to do. Or what you're doing. Or why you think there's nothing to be done. Talk.

"I don't care about what they say about my legacy. What are they going to do? Rip airbags and seat belts out of cars?" - Nader.

[353] Not An Optimist

What's your impression of our [US] country? I ask in earnest because I'm about to offer mine. This will be heavily characterized by my thoughts after watching “Inequality For All” by Robert Reich.

If you want a history lesson of inequality, this is a movie for you. You will learn how and when wages stagnate. You will see parallels from the 1930s to what's happening now. You will get every number your heart could ever want regarding GDP or value. What you won't get is really anything to do about it. This is unfortunate because Reich knows his shit, is data backed, but most importantly, he's in the minority of anyone who seems capable of fixing things.

This doesn't mean he doesn't know how. Many people know how and I'd argue that he's one of them. But his method isn't rooted in what appears to be the actual state. His version for fixing things is to rise up and realize that we make the laws. We create the government that structures how free enterprise works. If we would only take it upon ourselves and remain optimistic, because history is on our side, things will eventually play out for the better.

For my part, I'm in no way an optimist. I don't acknowledge that we have a real government. I don't know how you can have a Supreme Court with justices that rub elbows with the Koch brothers. I don't know how money or corporations are people or can speak. Gerrymandering exists. Lobbying exists to the tune of investing 150 million to make 1.2 trillion the next year. We can't change the laws because we literally don't have people who speak for us. The best we are is an angry mob in the streets.

I really want to drive home how unhappy I am that the “optimist” attitude seemed to be a selling point from the film. Reich travels the country listening to peoples' stories of hardship. Working 2 and 3 jobs to pay the rent and barely feed the kids. People shacking up with friends or back home. He knows that technology and cheap labor over seas means that there is no new jobs just waiting over the horizon. These people have ideas about starting families or one day finding a better job to maybe afford a house or better car. These people should be rioting in the streets. Optimism in this context only serves to slow things down.

India and China are emerging markets. Both have a massive amount of people that want the same crap Americans want. Do you think companies care about getting you a job so you can afford their crap when several billion people are hitting the scene becoming engineers and doctors so they can live up to the example we set? Things will not get better here. Legislation is dead because it's bought and paid for. Unless you find a way to subvert the current paradigm, you're absolutely stuck suffering it.

His point about history being on our side strikes another kind of chord. My perspective of history shows that there's very human things that go wrong at any time well before we decide to be responsible about the free market. Not to mention, in a global economy, we're still contending and negotiating with plenty of areas of the world who don't think as “progressively” as we pretend we do. If anything, history is teaching us that no matter how angry a group of people gets and does something to reform, with enough time, money, and influence, the rich will get their way eventually anyway, as if they weren't all along.

To me, we ignore an overall philosophy. We don't appreciate that greed, is in fact, bad. People are fundamentally selfish. Even if it's private and they don't try to justify it with bastardized interpretations of social Darwinism and Ayn Rand. When you stop talking about human capital and consider yourself to be wealthy because of your manipulation of law and percentages of pensions, things go to shit. I don't know why we pretend that this is not what's happening. I don't know how people forgot to be human. I know the internet is distracting and poverty in this country looks different than in others. But why did we volunteer to be so stupid about it?

Reich's movie isn't going to do anything more or less than a Michael Moore one. A few people will learn a little more about how we're getting royally fucked, but it's not prescriptive. It doesn't identify bad guys because it doesn't believe there really are any. It's just “capitalism's” fault. It's our fault because we haven't crafted the correct amount of laws. We're talking about the Secretary of Labor under Clinton with all his information and influence and practically zero ability after 30 years of the same mantra able to shift the underlying tide. So what, we put one person like him in Congress and cross our fingers?

I look at all of my broke friends and their debt. I look at the ones who even with jobs are making what a teenager at a shit job would make even if they got “specialized” training. How many of you are just around the corner from a white picket fence and a kid? I look at the laws that have track records of keeping the country perpetually screwed over many years. I look at the smart people who aren't doing it any better than the next smart person.

This is why I think we're fucked. Just because your county or town does something a little different or manages to find a small piece of pie does not mean anything about the overall system. It doesn't mean people are smart enough nor inclined to figure out how to call out the real people making real decisions that take real food out of their mouths and really cause a lot of harm.

I live in the now generation. I don't even want to talk about things like gay rights or abortion because it's tantamount to discussing the merits of slavery. We shouldn't have let them go. I don't need pundits telling me tired, broke, and word for word arguments from 30 years ago that don't work. I think fuck them, stop giving them a voice, fix it and move on. Just “be happy” and wait for history to take over doesn't work for me.

And fuck pretending that everyone's an innocent bystander. You can listen to Jaime Diamond explain that Wall Street is STILL doing the same things that crashed the economy in 2008 today, in front of Congress, and nothing gets done. He gets to stay rich and his bank lives and we'll be the ones living the consequences of it for, if we're lucky, just under the majority of our lives.

Finally, economists have this habit of talking about growth. We need growth. We need people to buy buy buy. If we don't the economy slows down, people don't buy, we don't have taxes, we don't invest in infrastructure, everything starts to go to shit because it's broken and people are dumber. Granted, this is how it's worked since the 70s, but I think it's because people haven't figured out how to subvert power. When I hear growth, I hear pollution. When I hear buy, I think back to when I learned that the idea of an identity being wrapped up in what you buy being crafted by companies back in the 50s. I think of mental health and priorities when you attempt to “Americanize” billions of new people to repeat the process.

Maybe we look at what it could be like if we pulled out. Maybe we create things independent of shitty decision making from rich assholes who deny you the right to be educated, healthy, or even basically functioning. They only win that game if you allow yourself to play it.

I'm not happy nor optimistic because I don't know anyone who really experiences what we have in this country who is. Maybe I should just get more rich friends?