I Should Buy a Boat

Okay, my plan is a stupid plan, but in today's weblog, I will link to a plan from Elizabeth Warren that gives me some much-needed hope today.

The day after that awful Tuesday in 2016, I told my closest friend the following words ... "I want to live on a boat and just be able to go when I want to go."

All these years later, I still do not live on a boat.

Except for a six-month stretch in Mexico, I haven't gone anywhere that I have wanted to go. I have been too broke during this long stretch of my life to live my dream. My reality is my fault, completely, but still, I aspire to buy a boat more than ever after Tuesday's defeat and just go.

IMPORTANT NOTE! I'm not talking about the type of ridiculously sized boat like the biggest assholes in the USA own. You know, the rapacious assholes who will rule our lives in 2025 and for the foreseeable future.

I'm talking about something used, trustworthy, seaworthy, and simple. A one-bedroom, off-the-grid, floating apartment that can be sailed across any ocean.

Okay, not so simple of a dream!

And for fucks sake, I don't even know how to swim! Seriously! I am the idiot who wants to live on a boat but does not know how to swim! Fucking idiot.

I know that living on a boat is not a low-cost life, and this life could be a catastrophic life for a non-swimming human, but living anywhere is no longer a low-cost life. And the risk of catastrophe just got so much higher for everyone.

Authoritarianism is rising and successfully "winning" globally because of this fact. To make things far worse, the assholes who preach that bank robbers should be in charge of stopping the robbing of our banks are "winning" right now.

Traveling the world during the next four years would be a very privileged thing for anybody to do. Most of you have families and obligations that will make it impossible to escape the pain that we are all now awaiting.

In reality, because of our nation's importance on the world stage, there is nowhere in the world that a boat can take me that is separated from the pain of a looming USA-led global crisis.

But here is hoping that a bit of my writing — whether I am writing during the hours that I am not working a difficult night shift in a warehouse (my life until I can afford a different life) or while docked in a new home (hopefully one day in the not too far distant future) — helps a bit with the journey we are all headed toward.

Despite everything, as the news just kept getting worse and worse late Tuesday night, I just kept thinking ... I have to figure out how to buy this fucking boat.

And just try to go when and where I want to go.

Also, I probably should start learning how to swim before I can afford to live this dream. :)

So, this website is my boat acquisition strategy. Smart? Probably not! Definitely not! But thanks for reading! And thanks for possibly sending a few bucks toward this dream!

Today's Weblog

The link between media consumption and public opinion

And the haunting conclusion from that October 18th report.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that today’s media landscape is polarized, particularly at the edges. This isn’t without consequence. The end result is that Americans feel that crime, immigration, and the economy are all worse than they actually are. This will affect the election. Watch this space.

Propaganda works. Fuck the Murdoch Family Cartel and every "news" cartel for sending so many of our teammates into an alternative reality with the drugs they have been selling.

I always make time for the best columnist in the country during times like this.

There is paywall here, but I think that is a gift link.

Molly Jong-Fest created the best series I saw about the coming Project 2025 shitshow that is going to take over this nation. If you don't like sleeping, watch this series. Seriously, very informative breakdown of MAGA's complex but detailed plan to rig this country for decades.

And on yesterday's podcast, Molly had a conversation with Slate's Dahlia Lithwick was what I needed to listen to.

And on this same episode, Molly also had an important interview with a Angelo Carusone. Angelo has been documenting the rise of MAGA since the beginning. So many important lessons about how the MAGAverse united every conspiracy theorist in the nation. This is the story about how so many men in this nation have been radicalized by grifters and liars.

More importantly, lots of lessons about the fight that continues in this entire episode.

And I found the big-picture perspective from this two brilliant historians helpful.

And I think I'll always close with something that gives hope. And today, my hope is with true Patriots, like Elizabeth Warren. Patriots with a plan.

Stay strong, my friends.