Yeah, but I’m also not delusional enough to believe I have enough 0’s in my account that it makes a difference. I am of the two wings of the same shitty bird persuasion, disillusioned with every freaking party because every political party serves a master who is not we the people, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.
I have gone off the deep end and down many rabbit holes, but at the end of the day, I’ve generally felt this way since I was a teenager, long before I could get radicalized from YouTube or Facebook. The two-party system is fucked, fucks everyone, and Thomas Jefferson* was right when he said a well-educated populace is necessary for democracy to survive. There’s no democracy, it’s democracy theatre.
I guess, I always believed in the Supreme Court to some degree, but now I see more puppets of the rich who get selected by other puppets of the rich, and I don’t even get to vote for these folks. Their selection is a new political game and strategy, and another way to get people to “vote defensively” i.e. – this candidate is a piece of shit, but better than that piece of shit, just vote for our color and we’ll make it okay (unless our corporate overlords don’t want us to…) And now there’s evidence directly showing this is true – look at all the Clarence Thomas shit, look at the shit with his wife. So we have so much evidence of these people using their positions for profit, and yet….we continue doing the same shit over and over expecting different results…insane!
People who have more money than I will likely ever comprehend make decisions and use hot-button issues to distract everyone from everything. Watch Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio. or any other of our elected officials. Look who times their big stock sells right before banks fail, or whatever. Watch the special interest groups and lobbyists armed with nearly bottomless assets of billionaires and billion-dollar corporations swaying literally everything. Not for nothing, but when kids are getting shot in school, I don’t think we have time to argue about Bud LIght cans. The rabbit holes and conspiracy theories can be whatever they may be, but there are things that are uncomfortable truths. I don’t know how anything can change when, really, our elected officials should look like a NASCAR race car with those who have bought and paid for them.
I can try to be an educated voter, but look at how many campaign promises become campaign lies. Look how many have simply profited on their “public service”. Look how many cater to the highest bidder, and how little we actually know or understand. PAC, Superpac, election laws, etc. Look at Boebert spending campaign funding inappropriately just like #45. Look how the rich keep getting richer, and everyone else just…keeps voting and wanting some kind of change that never happens. It’s like the most abusive relationship ever. Vote for this color to protect your bodily autonomy (even though we never did anything about it when we could), vote for this color if you care about that color, etc. When you see how campaigns are mapped out, strategized, and executed based on maximizing certain populations, special interests, etc. When you see how social media has basically made a direct pipeline of misinformation and echo chambers… I donno man. I wish it was a conspiracy theory, but these are just facts…
Another thing I really used to believe in is the separation of church and state. I used to think it meant neither can interfere with the other, but that’s not true, eh? But, I actually see now, the intent was probably more like — do not let government become your god, creed, religion, personality, etc. But, look how it is… So many reds won’t talk to blues, either color is the cause of every problem, and on and on. It’s like, literally anything and everything can be used on social media to just get people fighting. Abortion should never be a government thing. It’s a medical procedure. It is. Gay marriage is a literal license granted by the government, it never needed delineation on gender, etc. Why does the government get to tell me who I can marry? They don’t belong in my bedroom. They belong managing interstate commerce. The ethics, etc. are totally not part of government. I know a lot of people don’t want to get that, but when someone is murdered, and someone sues for damages or whatever — you get paid for the cost of the lost life; as in Lost Wages that the deceased can no longer earn. That’s the only way a system like the government can calculate the incalculable value of life. Life is a moral issue, and the government isn’t the morality police. They can’t be. Facts will never care about feelings – either way. We were not supposed to police each other, we were never supposed to enforce our theology and YES, your definition of life IS your very theology, your understanding of god/divine/how the fuck we got here, it’s your personal creed. If life is sacred, it’s all sacred. This is why government and religion must be separate. This is why a bunch of folks got on a boat, and sailed across the ocean. They did not want someone else’s god bossing them around. Where the fuck did that energy go? I’ll tell you: someone found it is exceedingly profitable to get you to forget facts and focus on your feelings, someone found it profitable for you to decide god wanted you to go hate people in his name — see the crusades, this isn’t new shit, it’s the same fucking manipulation.
This other’ing – getting anybody to view anybody else as less than, inferior, not part of, whatever you want to call it: this is the fertile soil Hitler sowed his fucking oats. It’s not like Hitler just… fucking woke up one day and was like, let’s try genocide today. You have to have the shit to ferment, the hatred to foment. All of this is just other’ing. Someone who “kills a baby” is less than human, doesn’t deserve x, someone who changes their body or wardrobe is xx, someone who thinks those ways are evil, hypocrite, less than, other than. MAGA’s are assholes, anybody who is a republican is this, anybody who is a democrat is that… But here’s the thing… we all sit to shit. we all wipe our asses. Everything is designed to call out the differences and get us fighting, but 99% of our shit is the same, we’re all human, etc. We are all supposed to work for the betterment of all. It was supposed to be equality for all, liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness, and until more unity can be achieved in the pursuit of these gains for everybody regardless of if you like ’em or not…This is how we have shit like the Inquisition and so on. It is incredible what humans can do to people they deem subhuman, and we are currently in an environment where basically everybody is dehumanized. So, I also donno, man.
The last thing I used to believe in is that Thomas Jefferson* said political parties would be no good for anyone. That people would simply vote along party lines and not truly vet out the best candidate. This responsibility was of we the people to ensure that we were represented. At this point, we are basically under taxation without representation, and yet… we keep fighting symptoms of the problem instead of the root of the problem. It’s as if taxes have become so accepted, so background, we have the idiom about death and taxes. When we can all collectively estimate we’re paying ~20-30% of our hard-earned dollars in taxes and this…? This is what we’re paying for? Busted roads, inappropriately handled nuclear bombs, crumbling infrastructure, people living on the streets, starving, doing fucking fundraisers for medical procedures, etc. My kids get to conduct active shooter drills and spend their days freaked about potential lockdowns, getting locked down, or getting shot….This is what I’m paying for??? There are countries that pay similar rates and have insurance ffs. We get to pay taxes AND insurance, while the insurance company gets to decide what procedures and prescriptions we get to have – not the medically licensed professional…. on and on and on…And again, people keep fighting with people. It’s not Bob down the street who is unemployed that is the problem. It’s Amazon making billions and not paying living wages, etc. that’s the problem. Insurance shouldn’t be tied to employment, and insurance companies shouldn’t exist. Instead of fighting over who deserves what – especially since that’s been defined for us “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness”. Given medical care is necessary to the function of life, there is no fucking argument here. Our medical procedures are part of life, can be part of liberty, can even be part of the pursuit of happiness… where’s the debate? Why are so many hellbent on making rich people richer? If we get rid of insurance companies, they don’t get to dictate prices or care…there has to be a better way, and I don’t get why so many want that way to screw over the people less than them…but othering makes others rich.
Our currency continues to say united we stand, divided we fall. And yet, it’s so rare to find the people that see all of this being done to generate profits, that neither side has anyone’s actual interest at heart, etc. But, I don’t want to sound hopeless, because I know there is one type of voting that does work, and it is voting with your dollars, your hard-earned cash, in accordance with your ethics and morality. This is done basically every day and when people work together in these real, tangible ways, things can change. Not to mention, more valuable than paper money is our attention. Look how much is spent and done to get our attention, get us pissed, get us fighting. Social media is designed with the same psychology hacks as casinos. Look how much money our attention generates. There’s another far meaningful way to vote. Fighting in comments, clicking articles with clickbait bullshit, letting anything emotionally sway you and get you spending more time online… all of these are votes with “more like this please” It doesn’t stop if it is still working, and if anybody is getting riled up about anything, the first question must always be, “Who is profiting off my outrage right now? Who is getting richer while I’m getting poorer?” Whether it is cash, intelligence/logic/critical thinking, or quality of life, somebody gets richer off your poverty. You and I are always more valuable if we are miserable, distracted, disconnected, and fighting with our fellow humans. It keeps us from getting inward, figuring our own shit out, and for lack of better words “Be the change” man. Be the change. Don’t legislate, don’t hate, just make the world you want, in whatever sphere of influence you have. Don’t hate or alienate your brother or sister, because we all actually need each other, and the more collective bargaining we have, the more powerful we are. The end.
This really is no different from the movie Ants, ya know?
*It’s important for me to note that Thomas Jefferson is one of the white dudes that helped entrench slavery, racism, and patriarchy. Jefferson basically introduced the notion that the color of a person’s skin was a marker of biological inferiority. Until Jefferson, this was not a concept, and his concept was and still is used to justify racism. I know the horrors he committed, including rape and destroying families to make more money. This is what our country was founded on, and it is the root of the problems. All men being created equal is problematic from the second word and shows how wrong they were, but that doesn’t mean everything was flawed. If you can take away the man and focus on the message – education and unity, really… A hypocrite said it, but the speaker doesn’t change the veracity of truth. Truth is truth.
Mah Butt Itches 
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