For Fucks Sake!!! But the work begins again. Today is Day One.
Our country just got sent back in time. But there is still work to do, so I might as well keep writing.
Should our country be run by a kleptocratic government filled with rapacious pyramid schemers who ...
- are determined to kill our unions
- determined to dramatically increase the cost of living for 99% of our interdependent team (so they can extract and hoard all of those "winnings")
- determined to eradicate public education
- determined to eradicate our shared knowledge about reality itself
- determined to turn their hate for everybody who isn't a compliant sycophant into national policy
- determined to rig our courts and our entire judicial system to favor that hateful and kleptocratic policy agenda
- determined to make free labor "great again" and build concentration camps for the non-compliant (concentration camps that are owned by their buddies from the yacht club who own the private prison industry)
- determined to eradicate our robust infectious disease prevention apparatus (because there is big money to be made in the horse de-wormer/RFK Jr. "pharmacy" business)
- determined to turn the most lethal military that the world has ever known into allies with the most brutal dictators on earth (because the assholes behind the mob-like extract and hoard business model always align until they have power and then can start trying to stab each other in the back and then do more extracting and hoarding)
- and, most importantly, determined to deliver the next mass extinction on earth by going all in on the booming business of dead dinosaur fuel?!?
YES! SOUNDS LIKE FUN!
- The United States of America, January 5th, 2024
Most of our teammates who voted for our looming national nightmare did not vote for this agenda.
The drugs sold by the Murdoch Family Cartel and every other "news" cartel in the USA are powerful fucking drugs. Propaganda works.
These powerful drugs have sent far too many of our teammates into an alternative reality. But our team is not yet forever lost in this vicious-cycle-dependent universe. So, the work to defeat the most vicious business models on earth continues until this work can no longer be done.
We fight on.
THE ∞$VorV?∞ SCALE
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
I don't know friends. I am beyond heartbroken. We just lost the most important job, besides World War II, that Americans have ever had.
Today is day one of this newsletter/weblog, and they will usually be much shorter than this one, but I have a lot to get off my chest today.
I saw a random post a few weeks ago. I couldn't find the original source, but it went something like this.
It's 2024.
Every American Citizen is awaiting our biopsy. And half of our family is rooting for the result to be Cancer.
I didn't want to believe that half of our family would vote for cancer. But they did. Hell, at least half of my own family did. I love them dearly. I always have and always will.
I love our entire American family dearly. Always have and always will.
There are so many really good people who genuinely believe that they voted for the same future that I did.
Propaganda works.
This is why I am writing today and will keep writing until I can no longer.
The following is an excerpt from a book I've been working on about our country uniting in a post-MAGA world.
It's a book that now needs a massive edit as a post-MAGA world is suddenly far away from today.
BUT I JUST WROTE THE FOLLOWING RANT ABOUT ALL OF THE "GOOD NEWS" FUCKING YESTERDAY.
YOU KNOW, THE DAY THAT FEELS LIKE IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO! THE DAY THAT I WAS FUCKING OPTIMISTIC THAT I'D SEEN THE LAST OF TRUMP'S UGLY MUGSHOT ON ALL OF MY FUCKING SCREENS ALL DAY EVERY DAY.
Sorry about that. I'll stop yelling.
This is what I wrote in the before times ...
THE GOOD NEWS!
From 2020 to 2024, our country saw substantial anti-trust enforcement for the first time since the 1980s.
That is right! We stopped letting some of the Robber Barons play Monopoly and stopped many of these assholes from rigging our economic game!
We have also been freed from a fuckton of predatory junk fees from Big Banks and just about every other industry. We've also seen massive reductions in the cost of essential pharmaceuticals and so much more.
President Biden and his team successfully stopped so much of the rigging.
AND! The most significant infrastructure investments in my nearly half-century-long lifetime were made during this same period. We won't see the benefits of most of these investments for years, sometimes decades. But the investments have been made!
Sorry, Fox News hosts. History will be very kind to the legacy of President Biden unless MAGA figures out a way to rewrite American history and kill every investment that he and his team created for our team.
The extraordinary patriots on his team, like the superhero and Monopoly buster Lina Khan, have even figured out how to fix one of the worst things about Ray Kroc's vicious business model!
Joseph Lamour
(much more on Ray Kroc's vicious business model throughout this book)
Most importantly, during the past four years, we have also seen a massive rise in union power in the private sector! Because of this union power, wages have risen and are still growing!
What has all this meant to our economy in the big picture? It's a simple answer. Look at what we have done since the pandemic compared to every other G7 nation.
The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy
The high quality of recent economic growth should put a wind at the back of the White House’s next occupant
SOURCE: The Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal 5 days before the 2024 lection!
And, of course, we have so much more work to do.
- The minimum wage is still far below a living wage for far too many of our teammates. Union power is rising, but union power must grow much stronger than it is today.
- The cost of housing is still a shitshow across the nation.
- Prices for far too many essential items — like groceries — are still too damn high. Monopoly power is finally being fought, but it still exists.
- Greedflation and price gouging still exist because monopolists and aspiring monopolists still have power over far too many rigged markets.
- Our healthcare system is still an overpriced shitshow.
- Our internet and online public squares have been enshittified.
- Getting a world-class education is far too expensive in this country.
- Getting from point A to point B in the American Transportation System is far too expensive, not to mention the fact that it is also a murderous shitshow that predictably ends the life of 40,000 of our teammates every fucking year.
- Blind Rapacity is fueling the rise of Authoritarianism across the globe, and this is tanking economies and fueling a mass migration crisis.
- Blind Rapacity is also fueling Climate Change, and this is tanking economies around the world and fueling a mass migration crisis.
- The faces of Elon Musk and Donald Trump are still on our fucking screens 750 times a day. Don't get me started on Jake from State Farm. And that lady from Daredevil who keeps asking about what I have in my wallet during every commercial break in every fucking game that I want to watch. NOTHING! AND QUIT REMINDING ME OF THIS SAD REALITY!
- And the Rupert Murdoch business model is still alive and flourishing in the USA and around the world. You know, the business model that fuels the worst possible outcomes for all of the above.
The answer to every one of those massive challenges will never be the answer preached by Rupert Murdoch's professional propagandists. And the answer will come from the aspiring authoritarian kleptocrats in our world who are always screaming ...
I AND I ALONE CAN FIX THIS!
So yeah, these conversations are fucking important.
We, THE PEOPLE, have a lot of work to do. To overcome some of these massive challenges, we must understand how our essential systems were rigged in the first place.
This is the purpose of this book.
So now, the day after I wrote all those words about the "good news," ... we, THE PEOPLE, have so much more work to do than I thought.
But the purpose of my work remains the same.
Bernie Sanders described our situation far better than I ever could.
The night that Trump won in 2016, I got drunk, screamed, and shook my fist at the clouds.
On that glorious Tuesday night of 2020, I danced and celebrated alongside so many of our friends in every major small 'd' democratic city in the world.
Last night, I had a few drinks, but then I was tired to much of anything. I didn't sleep well. And today, I didn't crawl out of bed until 2 p.m.
I don't know when my next good night of sleep will happen. If ever.
The American Dream and the multi-cultural melting pot of food and culture that is our great country is fucking dying. White men (mainly Gen X white men like myself) are the primary class of voters who decided, "YES, let's kill that stupid fucking AMERICAN dream and all of our best meals!"
Trump surrounded himself with tech bros and podcast bros and fighting bros. The men of the Christian right and the architects of Project 2025 were there too, but they receded a bit as Trump courted the kind of men who may not go to church much anymore but who still want the respect traditionally afforded to men simply by virtue of being men. Vance spoke to this directly in earlier podcast clips and fundraising appeals that may have been damaging to his ticket’s female support but might also have piqued the interest of resentful male listeners: He derided single cat ladies and by extension the entire category of women who believe that their lives are just as good (if not better) without men than with them. The men Trump and Vance courted likely don’t believe they hate women at all, despite voting against women’s most fundamental rights. Many of them seem to desperately want female affection, approval, and, perhaps most of all, respect—but, having not exactly earned it, long for a time when female deference was essentially mandatory.
That is the America that Trump and Vance promised these men they would bring back. Yes, it’s an America where a (white) working-class man could make a living wage—but the fantasy is less about the number on a paycheck and more about the ability to have a financially dependent and adoring wife, or to be able to be as violent, crass, and unrestrained as one wishes without social consequence. As much as pundits and voters may point to the economy or immigration or crime as the reason voters backed Trump, the truth is that Trump offered virtually nothing in the way of actual policy on any of those issues. He offered instead the promise of masculine strength and male dominance, of men returned to their rightful positions of authority in the White House and in houses across America. He talked to men who are frustrated and men who are adrift, many who feel—despite all evidence—mistreated and even discriminated against. And he promised them a return to power.
This—the special treatment of men, and of white men in particular—is the original American identity politics. And in 2024, it has put another man in the White House, the latest in an unbroken masculine chain more than two centuries long.
Jill Filipovic - Slate (SOURCE)
The closing message had been made, and the propaganda won.
The "tough" guys won—for now.
The chances of a realized American Dream look bleak to those of us who do not believe in the MAGA 2.0 pyramid scheme. But I still believe in this powerful dream. And I will write about this dream every day for as long as it exists or as long as I exist.
Hold the line, and then we will build a country that is all in on that community investment and stewardship zone!
My Weblog for Wednesday, November 6, 2024
These are the best things I read or listened to today. For the foreseeable future, this weblog of links will (hopefully) be published around 7 PM EST.
Jill Filipovic
Sorry ladies, we, the men in this fucking country, fucking suck. The "toughest" amongst my tribe are the weakest assholes in our nation. And we are about to show the world how fucking weak of a country we truly are when led by these assholes.
This is the best advice you can read today.
Hamilton Nolan
I highly recommend Hamilton's blog and all of his essential writing on the power of union power. His book on the subject is a must-read.
The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor
Here are a few of my comics about the power of union power.
And this.
It’s OK to have a good cry. I did. Now, I’m thinking about what comes next. Who I need to talk to, what we need to build, because I believe that we can organize to meet this moment and reduce a lot of suffering in doing so. There will be harms we can’t halt, but we can do a lot of good, and we will.
— Puff the Magic Hater (@mskellymhayes.bsky.social) 2024-11-06T07:50:04.035Z
Our trusted fourth estate is broken in so many ways.
And this will be a consistent theme in this weblog.
Why? Because it's heartbreaking that stuff like this did not get covered. This policy would have dramatically improved the lives of our parents and grandparents.
SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS
Where am I going to write these next chapters of my life? That's a great question! But I will write about the journey.
But, for fucks sake, if my art gets some attention, I won't likely write about these topics for long.
But maybe every critic of our new King — with his newly anointed "I can do anything I want" powers given to him by our corrupted Supreme Court — will get a one-way ticket to that beautiful island spot known as Guantanamo Bay!
Or a nice room in a high-floor skyscraper with slippery floors near big and beautiful windows!
Or our last cup of delicious tea or coffee!
That's fun stuff to look forward to for my possible future!
But who gives a fuck about my future. I am as big of a nobody as there is. This art and everything published by this new little corner of the interweb is about our future.
Most topics we discuss are macro-sized and will take years, often decades, to solve.
If I can afford to do so during the next four years, I might travel. Not to escape the bullshit that critics of TRUMP 2.0 will almost certainly face ... but to shine a light on that bullshit.
My goal will be to show my fellow teammates (who mostly look like I do) that life is pretty fucking great in places that aren't ruled by authoritarian kleptocrats who try to control the lives of women and everybody else that does not look like the power-hungry authoritarian kleptocrat does.
The American economic game just got so much harder to win, but we must win this fucking game.
Our great nation has been diagnosed with Cancer. But we are still in the stage where this vicious virus can be beaten.
We will lose this battle if we are still sick on January 6, 2028.
Until then, we must keep fighting.
Stay strong, my friends.