Author: Matthew
Wow, good morning. Epstein, Cuba, Iran . . . this administration is a perpetual exercise in patriotic reevaluation. I suppose if we can endlessly justify Palestinian Infanticide and Child Mutilation of all flavors, one more humanitarian crisis couldn’t hurt.
“Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
-Ayn Rand, The Roots of War
*Always so simultaneously precisely-correct and hypocritically off-base Rand was (The Roots of War is a pro-capitalist, anti-leftist essay).
I was born on July 4th, which always intertwined a celebration of patriotism with every birthday. My Boy Scout leaders were more often than not Veterans who nurtured an expectation that we’d all inevitably join the military. In fact, as we approached becoming Eagle Scouts, special attention was given to regularly reminding us that we’d collect some additional ranks upon enlistment. I remember watching Born on the Fourth of July (The Tom Cruise Film) around Fifteen and grew so instantly disinterested with Military participation that I took a year off of scouts. I would eventually become an Eagle Scout and am proud of that achievement, but, by seventeen, my politics had evolved so solidly around the development of our Middle Eastern post-9/11 retaliatory conflicts that redefining “Patriotism” for myself became necessary. I only ever half-entertained becoming a soldier of some kind anyway, though many of my closest friends did, and I, like we all do, appreciate them doing what we would not more than they’ll ever know, and some of them are no longer around . . . and that influences one’s patriotic perspective as well. I’ve a very close friend deployed now and I’m terrified for him. I love the United States for what it can be, not what it is at this moment.
The United States currently exists to Protect Pedophiles, Recommence Imperialism, and Commit Genocide . . . and I guess usher in Jesus’ return so he can, what(?), explain how Pedophilic and Genocidal Imperialism isn’t quite what he had in mind.
“Our President will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
-Donald Trump, talking about President Obama
I woke up at 7 am Eastern Time to the news I went to bed dreading—a war between Abrahamic Literalists (on the eve of Purim, the beginning of Lent, and middle of Ramadan). As of this morning, Donald Trump’s administration has begun a combined bombing campaign against Iran, likely at the behest of his participating handlers—Israel—after yesterday’s negotiations proved . . . ineffective. Thus, The United States and Israel commenced a military offensive against Iran.
Now, if you’re wondering, considering the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, will Israel target children . . . well . . . within a few hours of this joint offensive against Iran, a school had already been attacked, killing many Iranian school children. The tally of children targeted by Israel is ceaselessly expansive. And WE are complicit. All this to distract from globally-organized pedophilia and to obediently bow to the desires of a country holding evidentiary blackmail against our President.
Patriotism’s ideological Platonic idealism may be a coping mechanism to appreciate the wonderful potential one’s home has, but it often feels insufficient, doesn’t it? In the face of some contemporarily manifested contortion of Enlightenment-based potential, we find ourselves slipping into a version of ourselves many of us never thought possible, and without even having fully rectified our past as well. And, of course, our potential is currently dictated by a compromised administration of infanticidal, sex-trafficking warmongers.
It’s always the children.
-Matt
“The bodies burned so bright
That god closed his eyes
Torn apart in red horizonsGod closed his eyesCurse the heart of red horizonGod closed his eyes[…]From the river to the sea”
-Fit for an Autopsy, Red Horizon
“How are you feeling, Darling?”
-Blackadder
“I thought I lost you somewhere
But you were never really ever there are all”
-Goo Goo Dolls, Here Is Gone
Ya’ know, our daily disheveled clambering through this tar pit of “oh, you thought yesterday was fucked up? Wait’ll you see tomorrow!” has got me frantically spinning in some peyote-ridden horror-waltz, catching flashes of peripheral shit-your-pants, while Meg Mucklebones and Darkness dance circles around me like some laughably-grotesque hysterical-delusion.
The exhaustion of our cyclical horror-history’s heavy as hell and paying attention is hard.
I’ve been trying to write lately, seriously, especially after my re-read of the Hunger Games last year while discovering Tender’s “Go Steady,” coincidently both during the yet unresolved Epstein “What the actual fuck is going on?!” So, these writings—some eleven pages of disorganized thoughts on child-predation, pulling from my own experiences as a child targeted by adult family-friends (a man and a woman), and three essays on “we’re in a toxic relationship with so many individual components of society at the moment, we need to break up with them, and severing ties with abusive manipulators is a healthy and natural first step”—are shelved until I can just think for ten fucking seconds; Jesus Fucking Christ.
“Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land[…]”
-William Blake, Holy Thursday
“Here shines the sun of a lower god […]
Here burns the light for the blind world […]
Here burns the bright torch of soul […]
Here reigns thy mighty crown of thorns […]”
-Rotting Christ, Sanctus Diavolos
“Some people […] say: ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever because this is just a ride.’ And WE . . . kill those people. ‘Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up!’”
-Bill Hicks
My Everyman’s William Blake: Poems and Prophecies’s still a top-shelf book for me, even though I haven’t read from it in many a long time. It was Rotting Christ who help me really Feel Blake’s words over just reading them. The Sanctus Diavolos guitar solo is my favorite of any and in it I feel the desperately hopeless hypocrisy-exposé as our divine society, wealthy and able, disregards the suffering of others, discarding them to Lang’s Moloch, or, as in our now-unfolding horrorscape, grotesquely mistreating them, adult and children alike, and transporting them to some ethnically random international detention center. This seems to apply to not only the undocumented, but citizens—ill children, veterans, partners . . . and if you interfere? EXECUTION.
Keith Porter Jr.
Renee Good
Alex Pretti
Nearly a dozen individuals killed now [8 or 9 In 2026 alone (it’s January)], disappeared or imprisoned children chanting: “let us out,” repeatedly raped detainees, or how about a deported caregiver whose son dies from a rare illness his father had managed for Years, or permanently blinded or deafened protesters . . . all justifiable?
“I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pretti, but I don’t. I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. It’s very simple.”
-Megyn Kelly
Are we great yet?
“I’m checkin’ my chest, holdin’ my head
Catchin’ my breath, watchin’ my back
Smokin’ this grass, beatin’ my dick, thinkin’ of ass
I don’t know what they broadcast, the newsflash is fake
Every day, I’m feelin’ like you, I wanna escape
And if y’all niggas feelin’ like me, y’all niggas should say [MT]
My country shitted on me (my country)
She wants to get rid of me (naw, never)
‘Cause the things I seen (we know too much)
‘Cause the things I seen (we seen to much)” [N]
-Nas & Millenium Thug, My Country
Never forget Trump’s desire to shit on his political opponents—he’s using his Gestapo to do just that now. Ah, the Gestapo.
Remember, whenever you’re like . . . ten, and you first encounter The Holocaust . . . the Nazification of Germany seems so staggeringly improbable, right(?) . . . like, beyond unreasonable . . . confusing even. How did they get there?
How did We get Here?
Well, how ‘bout a little story to begin answering that, which I’ll deliver with hopeful brevity (prob not tho)?
November, 1918 and beyond.
The scapegoating campaign employed by Germany after the first World War encouraged citizens, who’d been successfully mislead into believing their military had endured the horrors of war without defeat, to accept a broad host of many responsible for Germany’s loss. The war weary citizenry among the accused, to be sure . . . BUT, the primary scapegoats were the saboteurs who’d “stabbed” the soldiers “in the back,” hoping to weaken Germany by establishing a republic (which some contemporary Americans will tell you is totally not a type of democracy, while political scientists will word salad themselves to: “it’s nuanced.” Thankfully, Greece’s Hellenic Republic is pronounced Elliniki Dimokratia to resolve these etymological quagmires for us) and seizing power for themselves.
But, as conspiracies so conveniently often are, this “stabbed in the back” mythos was so malleable that it inevitably lent its clutches to wide reuse. Originally, the Social Democratic, German Democratic, and Centre parties, which would make up the Weimar Coalition, in addition to the Communist Party, were primary targets, but any and all undesirables were eventually tethered together as the list of November Criminals broadened. Of course, perpetuating a domestic citizen opposition to the war as cause for defeat, which the US did after Vietnam, couldn’t endure as the eventually-enveloped German Peoples Party and the National Socialists required the assimilation of German citizens while convincing them of their populism. So, the conspirators naturally included the above parties, lefties, jews, gypsies, Jesuits, homosexuals, and whoever else the Nazis would come to believe wanted to deliberately weaken Germany, which is always what people who live in a country want to do, right (duh)? Quite, and establishing a loyal, paramilitary combat-force to dehumanize the “enemy” and ensure these ends manifest is the next step.
“You are here because the outside world rejects you. This is your family. I am your father. I want you all to become full members of The Foot. There is a new enemy—freaks of nature—who interfere with our business. You are my eyes and ears. Find them. Together we will punish these creatures.”
-The Shredder, Ninja Turtles (1990)
“’Cause we have a nice little database . . . and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
-Ice Agent, when asked why he’s filming a protestor
The early aggressors of this effort were the Sturmabteilung—virulent right-wing stormtrooper antagonizers of the movement, commonly called the Brownshirts. Co-founded and lead by Ernst Rohm—a to-some-extent openly homosexual early ally of Hitler’s—as the Gymnastics and Sports Division, the Brownshirts recruited by targeting disaffected young men—angry, unemployed or economically-unstable, personally-disillusioned, right-wing gang affiliated, or otherwise rejected and/or marginalized. The organization provided an outlet for German men who felt stabbed in the back by lefties and outsiders to channel their violence toward their opponents while providing a sense of belonging—a surrogate family of sorts, like Shredder’s The Foot.
Starting to sound familiar?
Back then, terms like “Cultural Bolshevism” helped ideologically villainize progressively altruistic individuals, similarly to Jordan Peterson’s “Cultural Marxism,” to turn outcasted young men against the very individuals fighting for a freedom these men had resolved to extinguish once realizing it applied to all—think of who they hate and you’ll see how suffering the freedom of others is simply intolerable for them. We want Them to have Healthcare, housing, education, and food . . . they want Us to die.
And, sure, there’s a bit of reluctant condemnation seething from the fascist propagandists, but it’s performative and optical-preservation. There’ll be no legitimate criticism, nor an actual policy reposition. So, if you’re wondering where the “Don’t tread on me” people; 2nd, 4th, and 1st Amendment advocates; January 6ers; and Small-Government supporters have been hiding during all this are, or at the very least, why they’re so uneasy to champion protesting . . . just be honest with yourself about what they want to accomplish, and where the previously “standing by” paramilitary groups of disillusioned sociopaths probably are. They want a civil war. They want to eliminate the “enemy.” So, they either Are ICE or support the murders—that’s Their “side,” and they can’t defend their previous positions regarding freedom, protest, and firearms because then they’d be supporting the enemy, which they simply Will Not Do.
“The 2nd Amendment is not there to hunt deer, it’s not even there for family home protection, nor is it there for target practice. It’s there if, god forbid, ever, the government got so tyrannical, OR some power within your country got so powerful (not necessarily a government)—It could be a gang, it could be a cartel, it could be a paramilitary group, it could be chaos—that you have to be able to protect yourself against a more powerful organization. That’s why we have the 2nd Amendment.”
-Charlie Kirk
“So, Ladies and Gentlemen, please, let’s get loud . . . for Kyle Rittenhouse.[…]Kyle! Kyle! Kyle!”
-Charlie Kirk
*Que the dubstep, just like Erika Kirk’s rage-baiting, funeral-turned-Reichsparteitag, fake-Christian, theocratic hate-fest.
Even though Charlie Kirk’s reasons for topical silence are unfortunately obvious at the moment (Erika seems positively traumatized), it’s still mostly crickets from everyone else like him.
The sophomoric Libertarians and hypocritical “Fiscally-minded” Small Government Republicans have long been swallowed by Maga like the German Peoples Party’s absorption by the Nazis in the early 1930’s. Few will lend their voices to oppose the overreach and violence. I just don’t know how we can rope them back into reality.
Now, Post-WW2 Nazi Germany “De-Nazified” with obvious success, but it was a complex and arduous process. The United States barely held the Confederacy Accountable (which I’ve discussed HERE for May the 4th), half-heartedly addressed our historic ethnic injustices, pardoned the January 6ers, and continues to champion right-wing violence, so some semblance of reintegration will be challenging for both sides.
This is where we are. And I thought I’d detoxed.
Forreal.
I spent a bunch of last year discarding local and digital toxicity. I cut off any I considered progressively aggressively ideologically immoral, which worsened further or expedited appropriately after I watched Adolescence (which I’ve discussed-ish before HERE last year). Adolescence prompted a deep-dive into the red-pill/manosphere online community, which I was marginally familiar with (the Andrew Tates and such), as we all kind of are, and ended up watching content, made by men and women alike, heralding some Christo-fascist utopia. Wild, I know, but even after this deep-dive, armed with the coded rhetoric of Incel, Christian, and Pick-me hate, I continued robust-adjacent social-circle participation amid those I considered acceptably “just conservative,” or reasonable enough to communicate a more broadly humanitarian and/or equity-driven inclusive altruism. But the newfound bravery to wear one’s hate on their tongue, especially in my area, just empowered these bigots to let their secretly hateful perspectives fly free. And the shock that the ones you care about are actually quite awful is astonishingly challenging to compartmentalize.
This communicable normalization of confident hate-mongering and crafty dog-whistling manifests now as publicly-proud fascism. I heard both the regurgitated authoritarian, patriarchal, misogynistic, white-supremacist, homophobic, xenophobic, ideologically-exclusive brainwashed propaganda we all know And the very coded rhetoric I’d only just discovered literally overflow like a torrent of rancid tar from the newly-empowered mouths of people I’d known for DECADES! They’re all watching the same Handmaids Tale propaganda dogshit . . . and . . . they’re all finding it compelling. Ten minutes of Nick Fuentes labelling heterosexual intercourse as homosexual, vilifying sex-workers, justifying murder with sexual orientation, and redefining pedophilia while championing “America First” by encouraging the imprisonment or violent annihilation of the left for his preferred Catholic shit-topia will likely be enough for you to realize just how gone these people really are—tangled in their supernatural justifications to oppress, traffic, and rape women and children, murder the opposition, and secretly stuff fat dicks down their throats the way they stuff their mythology down ours. And, of course, they make no secret of their hate or predatory perversions:
“I’m a Catholic. I love everybody.”
“These people that are suppressing the name Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power.”
“The reason that people have negative attitudes about black people is because most peoples’ interactions with black people are negative.”
“I wish there was a zombie apocalypse so we could kill George Floyd two times.”
“Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan. It’s like, well, he was also really fuckin’ cool.”
“Sometimes you gotta be the villain. Epstein’s my boy, dude. Let’s just be honest: Epstein was cool as fuck.”
“It’s not really pedophilia, ok. They weren’t trafficking 5-year-olds, it’s like they were technically not legal [talking about 15-year-olds].”
-Nick Fuentes (every one)
“He was into the barely legal type. He liked 15 year old girls […she realizes what she’s saying is disgusting, but continues…] He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby. […] I think there is a difference—there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.”
-Megyn Kelly
So, all these people you’ve known forever, who chit-chat like all’s well, justifying worsening horrors, driving you insane . . . This Is What They Want! And I understand, they’re not all Nick Fuentes and Megyn Kelly, but they quietly, or secretly, share their perspective, or at least disregard it to an end, and are growing sufficiently confident/comfortable to voice those perspectives and/or justifications. Fundamentally, though, you just don’t magically become that kind of hateful all of a sudden. It’s not some rapidly epiphanous self-discovery. You have to have secretly been that way for a long, long time. And, of course, as awful as it feels to accept that about those you love, convincing yourself to accept the orbit of a narcissist in a relationship of any kind is profoundly damaging to your psychological well-being. You have to remove them from your familial, social, and romantic realities—like a cancer . . . which is what they are.
Now, I’ve been the removed familial, social, and romantic toxic component in my youth, and while those deep recollections ever burden my hopefully evaporating hyperthymesia, the accompanying ego death can just as easily breathe life into self-betterment as it can churn into a violent descension. We can only hope that as we abandon these Now-Literal-Nazis, who seem to support executing citizens for exercising the very rights they’ve long claimed to champion, and as the rest of the world leaves us behind, they will begin to Wake The Fuck Up! Being hateful won’t get them into the Ultra-Wealthy Elite Club for International Looters and Rapists. The elite hate their base as their base hates the “others,” because to them, their base are the others . . . and they’re usefulness extends no further than that weaponizable fears and hatred the elite can use to oppress, loot, destroy, and repeat however many times we allow it.
“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
-George Carlin
“Fire and tears enlighten my world
This world dressed in fear
Awe the emotions of wrath
Behold the serpent’s fear”
-Rotting Christ, Lex Talionis
“Good luck everyone.”
-Blackadder
Aftercare: There, there. I know. Just breathe. Let’s come at this from a slightly different perspective, shall we, where the similarities remain discernably foreign. What do we mean when we say: “Nazi Germany”? Well, that The Country IS The Party. Thankfully, “Maga America” continues to elude an equivalent global, or all-encompassing domestic, vernacular . . . but possibly not for long. Nevertheless, the rapidity of unifying class-solidarity amid the more-than-ever obvious bipartisan economic oppression, The Catholic Church’s desperation to “get it right this time,” even if just to salvage their mythology for perpetuity, the continuation of good ol’ American pop-culture, global connectivity, and our historic resiliency will likely waver much more reluctantly than the easily-fooled and hateful among us have. Sure, the United States ultimately offers little beyond its existence and could theoretically be gradually forgotten and left behind, as implied by Mark Carney. The world may yet abandon the Dollar as the global reserve currency and international gold reclamation’s gaining traction. But the United States is still a major global exporter of goods—2nd largest after China, for now, if I’m not mistaken. Our economy will likely take a Great-Depression-adjacent hit (I know), and the dollar’s devaluation could be totally deliberate for the cancerous ultra-capitalistic Maga party-members to gobble up their stolen loot and flee to their 3rd world compounds. We’ve got Measles outbreaks, 2020 GA (my state) ballot raiding’s happening now (I’m an election worker so Nov. aughta be interesting), our consumer-based economy’s ability to broadly consume’s ever waning, and maybe the AI bubble’s finally bursting (and hopefully the malignant data-centers with it), I have no idea about Crypto (I’ll have to ask my crypto friend . . . we all have one) and as our economic pressure diminishes, this Administration may fallback on our military pressure. Look, I get it—I’m physically sick to my stomach, nauseous, and ill daily . . . I can’t even think anymore. They’re hateful, violent, pedophile rapists without any sense or morality or empathy. BUT this Administration Will Eventually End (even if they manage to rig ’26 And ’28 . . . although, at this rate, they’ll have to over-rig any sway their way), maybe even a generation from now, and if Nazi Germany can De-Nazify, then so can we. Remember, The New Deal came After The Gilded Age and Great Depression. Plus, we still make some of the best music and films Earth has to offer. In the meantime: Stand up, be loud, embrace your humanity (a weapon unique to our “side”), and feel inspired.
“Drifting through this boundlessness
This madness of our own making
Sound our dire reveille
Rouse all from our apathy
Lest we
Cease to be
Stir us from our
Wanton slumber
Mitigate our ruin
Call us all to arms and order”
-Tool, Descending
“This goes out to Che Guevara
A revolutionary destroyed by his country
Just tryna to fight for what’s real
This goes out to my nigga’, Malcom El-Hajj Malik Shabazz
Just tryna fight for what’s real
This goes out to Martin
All about peace and destroyed by his own country
This goes out to everybody in the whole world
Just tryna fight for what’s real
To Patrice Lumumba
Just tryna fight for what’s real and destroyed by his own people
This goes to my hood nigga’s
Coming up every day just tryna survive . . . the only way we know how
But see, we know too much now, and we seen too much now
So ain’t nothin’ gon’ stop us now
To my country” [-N]
-Nas & Millennium Thug, My Country
These Rotting Christ, Tool, Nas, and Goo Goo Dolls songs are absolute masterpieces, Go Steady’s a great song too, The 1990 Ninja Turtles film is the best movie ever made, Idiocracy’s a critically hilarious treasure of depression-fuel, Metropolis’s far-and-away the best silent film, William Blake’s a hauntingly contemplative poet and prophet, The Hunger Games are Annual Re-reads for me now, Blackadder’s easily the best Britcom, George Carlin is untouchable, and Bill Hicks was leagues ahead of his time, so, seriously folks, enjoy your pop-culture, in whatever flavors you delight (Chill out, I know these aren’t all domestic).
“Feel he rhythm
To feel connected
Enough to step aside and
Weep like a widow
To feel inspired
To fathom the power
To witness the beauty
To bathe in the fountain
To swing on the spiral (x3)
Of our divinity and
Still be a human”
-Tool, Lateralus
“For where-e’er the sun does shine,
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.”
-William Blake, Holy Thursday
“And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn’t just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!”
-Idiocracy
Alright, I’m done . . . cheers. ;P
-Matt
*Every conservative quoted in this essay is a “Christian” (well, I dunno about the ICE agent). Gotta love the demonic duality of religious-conservative death-cult hatred.
**Title quote’s from Idiocracy
The poor shall eat when the desire for healthcare is abandoned . . . welcome to America, land of the deliberately divided, impoverished, and sickened. Stay strong . . . last night’s sweep felt nice.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I drew the above political cartoon after our President’s micro-penis military parade. A friend of mine called it “Jumping the Shart.” Of course, I had no idea the President would eventually communicate his interest in recreating this picture with horrifying precision.
I don’t write as much, as well, or as often as I’d like. And, lately, I’ve thankfully enjoyed some miscellany of distractible indulgence. Even still, there are epiphanous moments of shit-your-pants “goddamn!” when everything comes together amid showers or yoga (whence I prefer to organize my ideological . . . stances?) . . . or dangerously both at once . . . sometimes with wine . . . or beer. And, while the precise, effectual articulation manifests with flawless clarity in those moments of precarious Dandayamana under a scolding, artificial downpour, the divine revelation of self-perspective evaporates the moment I go to record it. Makes me wonder how Muhammed managed to remember all that shit from the cave.
. . . Anyway . . .
Beyond those miraculously Mohammedan moments of saturated contortion and existential clarity, though, single-task preoccupation is frustratingly ever elusive. Of course, this is on a personal level, and perhaps with only a handful of topical variables to organize. For those of us who struggle to quiet the torrential whispers of perpetually-distracting internal dialogue—an onslaught which erases one moment of profound clarity with another many times a second—recording any of it with the laborious gait of either pen or keyboard proves a nearly-insurmountable challenge . . . beyond the seemingly impossibility of task-initiation (if you know, you know . . . and I love you) . . . so, shoveling extra shit onto our camel to boot is stupefying.
This is magnified exponentially by the rapidly-fluctuating, multi-topical, absurdly-depressing ongoing socio-economic and political shit-show of degenerative subjugation we must not only consider, contextualize, and capitulate, for our progressively precarious participation, but also imagine a plausible endurance after its probably-dystopian, but ultimately unknown, eventuality. So . . . we’re fucked.
It’s just so much easier to distract to the point of wild abandon.
I mean, it’s honestly overwhelming to deeply consider every catastrophe dangled regularly before us. Daily, The United States of America shocks its citizens (at least some number us), the world, and the spectating Jesus and Aliens. The Trump administration—an overwhelmingly obvious ideological eventuality of the Reagan administration’s abolition of the middle class—loots the coffers of its increasingly-impoverished sub-elites at every turn. It’s subtle politically-performative permission for private enterprise emulation and the combined allegiance of both—THAT is fascism.
Liberating individuals of their wealth in tithe to the rich comes in many forms. A tax payer’s money may subsidize a farmer, who buys over-priced pesticides and farm equipment repairable only by the manufacturer, funneling the taxed-wages of an underpaid big-box retail employee to Monsanto or John Deere, until that farmer, for whom the subsidies were inadequate, since our trade war with China demolished our ability to sell soybeans (for example), and we bailed out the very country China is buying soybeans from now, must eventually abandon their occupational/cultural participation, selling their farm to an equity-firm with shareholders including our Vice President.
I’m sure you can come up with other equally-infuriating examples—Mike Johnson running cover for child sex-predators by weaponizing food and healthcare to avoid swearing in Adelita Grijalva, OR perhaps mothers ushered onto Onlyfans for adequate familial income and provisions (how dare they give up or supplement their inadequate 9-5’s with marketable services . . . only the elite can do that), only to be castigated as immoral sex-workers and opportunistic whores by the right [I think we all know who the opportunistic whores really are (and that’s barely an Erika Kirk joke . . . more like an AIPAC joke . . . but both work)] . . . OR “America First” and/or “christian” talking-heads condemning Universal Healthcare and villainizing empathy . . . seriously, there’re so many fucked up things.
The United States exists to harvest the remaining wealth of its consumer-citizens like batteries powering the light of indulgence. And when people protest, the President of the United States communicates his desire to literally shit on them.
Yoga and Showers really just don’t offer the time I need to consider how absolutely insane everything is. And trying to write down the hypocrisy in hillbilly dipshits bemoaning the relocation of Civil-Rights era Confederate Monuments while their cult-leader demolishes the far-older East Wing of the White House to build a Gilded Ball Room for Gatsby-esque galas before the Pedo-Protecting Republicans deliberately instigate food wars is befuddlingly overwhelming. I just don’t have the time . . . or the energy.
Cheers to all of you out there conquering your ADHD to participate and prosper in your own way, especially if it helps others or distracts them from whatever the fuck is going on out there right now.
God bless,
-Matt
Aftercare: Look, aftercare’s important after an onslaught of discomfort. So, just breathe . . . relax. The November 4, 2025 elections give hope. People are waking up, even if it doesn’t feel like it in your area (and it certainly doesn’t in mine). But, shit, Marjorie Taylor Green’s starting to appreciate that the political class does not exist to actualize the preferences of the voters, and if she can epiphany her way to “people should have affordable healthcare” and “subsidizing genocide is generally disagreeable to the citizenry”(hypocritical savvy self-service aside), then perhaps there’s hope for the other “christian conservatives.” Pray for them. They may’ve swapped Jesus/empathy for Kirk/judgement as their martyr/ideology of choice, and the admission certainly suits their preferential disposition better, but pay-for-play corporate politics are being too obvious and the class war’s progressively more overt. Reagan’s redirection of positional ire toward the poor and sick is finally failing . . . and we should be thankful (some are super-surprisingly pairing Revelation’s description of the Anti-Christ with their once Orange Overlord . . . now, that’s progress of a kind). Now, will this awakening permeate the paramilitary incel squad (can’t spell incel without ice)? Likely not . . . or . . . not until they or their families are directly impacted . . . and that may soon be a reality. So, good luck during the upcoming food wars and insurance depression.
“May the odds be ever in your favor.”
– Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world.”
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
“Though I’ve hidden in the dark for life
I want to dwell in a house of light
Light, speak to me
Give me a sign
Did I know wrong from right?
There’s no answer in this life
To the lie that separates me
From the light that still surrounds us everywhere”
-Rivers of Nihil, House of Light
“The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.”
-Fritz Lang, Metropolis
We lurch ever onward amid progressively pointless participation, the whips of desperation and ego at our backs. To where? Toward a hopeful beacon of tangible reward, set back always by the consequences of our actions . . . unless, of course, we’ve simulated a society where a reward can be collected by our own selfish making—a ruinous contest of ‘me best and me first.’ But what rewards meaningless participation? Well, evidently virtue-signaling and happenstantial coincidence . . . so keep your phones at the ready . . . never know when it’s your time to shine. Our challenge to simultaneously participate in this contest and fabricate meaning from the absurd’s a progressively daunting expedition—one fraught with the repeated collection and abandonment of profitable positions and vestigial ideological guidance. But, to succeed, should the relics of our self-guided, albeit fabricated, meaningful participations, prove sufficiently profitable and materially bettering, a regular reshaping of our selves to accommodate necessary marketability appears mandatory. So, we may as well capitalize on those coincidental consequences and relics of desperate meaning, contorted, convenient, selfish, or otherwise as they are. This is a luxury. This is America, and our way rules.
“The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—the misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.”
-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Nonsense garbage like Some Country’s Got Talent and Shark Tank nurture our performative desperation. ‘Watch my debasement for a coin’—every endeavor now is such.
America is the benchmark for capitalizing—financially, socially, romantically, occupationally—on individual perceptions of self-worth and desperate validation—a flavorful cornucopia of jealousy, superiority, and vanity. Our contorted perceptions of marketable righteousness amid perpetual competition, as we flounder in a domestic sociological degeneration, deliberately necessitate demographical warfare—every action an exercise in individual achievement over domestic-symbiosis, division over unity.
In the film discussed here, the only individuals with an historical investment in domestic/natural symbiosis and unity over division—the Pueblo—offer competency, cool-dispositions, and problem-solving righteousness in an age where such values are simply disadvantageous for growth and reward.
“The need for money is therefore the true need produced by the economic system, and it is the only need which the latter produces. The quantity of money becomes to an ever greater degree its sole effective quality. Just as it reduces everything to its abstract form, so it reduces itself in the course of its own movement to quantitative being. Excess and intemperance come to be its true norm.”
-Karl Marx, Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
-Frederick Douglass, Collected Speeches
“I watched a man die in the cold
He slept in the street
We left him there with nothing to eat
I watched a man burn in the coals
Shoveling shit into a furnace
Trading a check for his soul
The city is a fucking prison
Force fed failure. Eat what you’re given
The ivory tower, the higher power
I swear they’re laughing as we claw at the scraps”
-Fit for an Autopsy, Hydra
Money at all costs, by any means necessary, only our vanity and selfishness to guide us? Who can blame us? We’re deliberately desperate, suspicious by design, and commanded toward division. Amid such parameters, there’s no tangibly-affluent material excess for the mob beyond that which manicured showmanship might collect, save our parents’ waning sacrifice and fleeting affordability. But with only just under 15 million in some 260+ million American adults making over $200,000 a year (~6%), the odds are hardly in your favor . . . so dance faster little ones.
Ari Aster’s Eddington, which I uncomfortably enjoyed at the behest of a charmingly authoritative film advocate, showcases America’s absurdity—success by selfishness, reward through vanity, survive by hysteria, medicate through distraction—like the revelation of the wheel to a cog . . . manifest Absurdism in a truest form. The film’s many components are unique and ridiculous in their own right and are no doubt being speculated upon by apt critics aplenty. And while I presume my considerations were just as abundant as theirs (probably not . . . but maybe), I’ve only got about four hours to articulate my fascinations and the juice’ll be spent. So, let’s get on with it:
I no doubt regularly take for granted my academic interests, education, and desperation to explain myself to reality, and thus presume everyone’s at least encountered Stoicism, Existentialism, Humanism, Buddhism (which includes Jesus tonight, so pour the sand outa your panties “christians”), and possibly Optimistic Nihilism, and of course they may have . . . but do they remember . . . do you? The flames of wisdom-past flicker in our lanterns, guiding and easing us through turmoil. But the immediate illumination of instant gratification, selfishness, and vanity light the path before us brighter, even if leading us into frivolous societal disregard. Our uniquely progressive contemporary absurdity, though, which, even so illustriously armed with wisdom and self-preservation, we often feel helpless to navigate, intoxicates the calls of our ancestors, muffling an inclination for genuinely empathetic participation . . . so we disregard it . . . if we ever even heard it at all.
There’s a homeless man about the town for the first half of the film and regardless of whichever ideological conglomeration he finds himself amid, there is no empathy for he has little to offer save the righteous pleasure in helpfulness. But the actions of some good Samaritan sprout no further than a hurled water bottle from afar until the desire to rid the town of his nuisance solidifies his own demise. What does he have to contribute save his removal . . . in the interest of growth and betterment for his community? Nothing.
It’s a cliché to adjective to hell and back our cancerous adherence to perpetual individual and societal financial-growth . . . but let’s do it anyway—Capitalistic? Sure . . . Dystopian? No doubt . . . Immoral? The “Christian” party elected a pedophile and regularly legislates to kill the poor and the sick . . . Kakistocratic? “First of all, your honor, just look at him.” Our trifles of material indulgence and often-frivolous sexuality distract sufficiently enough most of the time, but the distraction is the addiction . . . and it has its own price—the numbing of connection . . . of humanity. I presume I need not illustrate and articulate the socio-economic/political absurdities enveloping our daily regularity (many well-displayed in Eddington) . . . and those imaginations your mind just conjured likely manifest unique-to-you (or unique to ‘your side’) frustrations.
It was clever for Eddington to’ve avoided including political parties (unless I missed it. I’m not gonna look it up though, so . . . ). What hill we choose to die on, so to speak, is nearly-exclusively partisan now, so we know which parties who belonged to during the film. But if those aforementioned tools of wisdom-past be either neglected, abandoned, or never encountered at all, the gravity of each partisan purity test devolves into a self-aggrandizing exercise in virtue-signaling.
Without a thoughtful, legitimate individual appreciation for some topical persuasion, what partisan-esque “side” we choose, what ideologies we adopt, how we actively participate in defending or propagating either, and with whom we share whatever we come to “believe” is ultimately charged by the insistencies encouraged by this Dystopian, Capitalistic, Immoral, Kakistocratic, Absurdity called these United States, and this charge is administered by both sides (one more than the other of course, but, from the top, division however achieved is the goal).
We must make money . . . as much as we can . . . however we can (often at the expense of others), and we’re human . . . so we fear . . . and want . . . and desire. And in whatever way we can suppress those fears, act on those wants, collect those desires, and profit from them all as much as possible often enough becomes the adopted partisan-esque ideology we perpetuate. And the powers-that-be monitor these demographical divisions, nurture them, and tow the lines that separate us from one another. And even if there is some pseudo-libertarian-esque adherence to liberty in the face of medical emergencies, those emotional or psychological responses are also swiftly collected by our overlords to ensure our continued degeneration into absurdity—whatever keeps us desperate, isolated, suspicious, frustrated, and violent.
The isolation breaks us, as it did during the pandemic, the frustration angers us, as it does daily, and the violence festers until America does what it does best—destroy. We are desperate for connection, even when we’re not, we hide from negative emotions, in whatever way we can, and become aggressive when things don’t go our way. Mix in our fears, wants, desires, sexuality, jealousy, and materialism and we’ve a rancid mix of desperately hysterical vanity.
Let’s look at three characters to illustrate this—Joaquin Phoenix, The Black Police Officer, and the Chubby White Kid (I’m not looking their character names up . . . sorry).
Joaquin exists in a sex-less (or at least intimiacy-less) marriage, directs his frustration toward his ideological opponent, and sees that opponent’s insistence upon emergency medical directives as infringing on his personal liberties. He has some empathy but lacks any tangible competence beyond weaponized accuracy. As the film goes on and these inadequacies and frustrations fester, so increases his aggression until violence consumes his empathy as he betrays those around him until he finds himself fighting for his life, show-casing his only skill—violence. His reward is bitter, but deserved, and the undiscovered or minimized truths of his actions are superseded by the immensely profitable existence as a mascot for whatever ideology he represents.
The Black Police Officer comes from a family of law-enforcement and thus takes what he considers his responsibilities seriously. He becomes enveloped by the racial unrest after the George Floyd protests, but continues his occupational responsibilities in the face of his ex, who considers her socio-economic/political positions righteous and beckons his ideological realignment. The quagmire of his ideological predicament appears perpetually disregarded as he exists as a monolith of those wishing to exist amid the absurdity without being roped into the chaos. Unsurprisingly, our next character’s jealousy, retribution, and self-interests drag him into it nevertheless and the Black Police Officer becomes an easy scapegoat for violence merely because of his skin-color, dating history, and occupational responsibilities.
The Chubby White Kid cares little for genuine societal-evaluation but his interests in the Black Police Officer’s ex, who claims to care a great deal for societal-evaluation, encourage his participation in a charade to win her heart. This fails as his friend collects her interests instead. Ever invested in appearing righteous in her eyes, however, the Chubby White Kid continues adopting a self-interested adherence to his newly-acquired ideological positions. His journey’s a common one: Establish a brand, reinforce and perpetuate it to collect the preferred rewards of participation and engagement based on the manicured museum exhibit of performative self-aggrandizement. His filmed act of heroism amid the film’s concluding chaos jettisons him into a profitable ideological spotlight like the doppelganger of our own real-life Kyle Rittenhouse.
In an effort of martyrdom-for-show, Joaquin and the Chubby White Kid both adopt and perpetuate ideologies which may bring the reward they desire—a happy marriage, community respect, the girl of their dreams, acceptance, and tangible public admiration. The Black Police officer seems to simply exist within this reality, possibly devoid of any recognizable super-ideology—the masses in the middle, existing on the line of the Yin-Yang, squished between the deliberately festered wall of death propagated by whichever overlords profit the most from our embattlement [the tech business and its corporate investors (currently ravaging these communities, massively inflating utility prices for citizens) versus the suspiciously well-funded anti-fascists in the film].
In the end, Joaquin’s a vegetable and puppet for the community and his ex-mother-in-law, while the Chubby White Kid, coincidently with no real ideology of his own, gets recognition and financial acceleration leading to whatever rewards await his future. The Black Police Officer is left scarred, an unwitting participant in the show, stoic, unfazed by the absurd chaos which ensnared him and unfolded around him. He continues exercising his marksmanship. Because he finds solace in connecting with his passed father? Or because what sense is there in extracting meaning from our absurd existence if creating it for ourselves is too troublesome? Perhaps a refined marksmanship is his personal meaning. May as well refine what we’re already good at. When the dust settles, there is only the perfection of violence.
“We are tourists
Watching the funeral of life
At last, the last disciples burn
Eight billion parasitic worms
An ocean swallowing the shore
Pain now and pain forever more
Undeserving of the petty possessions
A shelf of bones, your trophies bought in blood
Absent at birth, and unimmaculate conception
Return to dirt, allow the gardens to flood
We are tourists
Watching the funeral of life”
-Fit for an Autopsy, Lurch
Reality’s absurd no doubt. Finding meaning in its chaos often feels pointless. We live in a reality of The Kids in the Hall’s Social Justice Art Class versus MadTV’s Darlene McBride. Our ability to disregard this ongoing battle minimizes our ability to participate socio-economically as recognition for our ideological efforts grows progressively more paramount. The pressure builds. Stoicism, Existentialism, Humanism, Buddhism, and Optimistic Nihilism still offer a glimmer of self-guidance to extract meaning from the Absurd, but an aggressive suppression of broad-education limits access to the tools to find our true selves and care for those around us. Mental health is disregarded, inaccessible, and depressing. We’re pitted against one another in a hunger game of desperate self-preservation. Good luck.
After care: I know it’s rough. We all sell ourselves shorter than we ought to, and sacrifice our individuality and mental health to get by in this absurd and flawed system. You are not alone. You are loved and unique, but don’t let that go to your head. The tools to navigate the absurd are available in many ways. Find comfort in your family and nurture the relationships worthwhile. Not all are devoid of altruism, compassion, empathy, and egalitarianism. Realizing there’s no ultimate meaning to anything doesn’t mean finding meaning in life is pointless. The genuine connections we forge along the way, our efforts toward legitimate self-betterment and personal growth outside the barriers of selfishly fabricated participation, and the care we take in looking after our loved ones are great ways to start. Feeling is meaning.
“There’s love all around you.”
-Queen Latifah, The Secret Life of Bees
Take care of your Selves.
-Matt
“In the end, cowards are those who follow the dark side.”
– Yoda
