Forgive me for this post…
Increasingly, I avoid politics. Where I once participated, now I disengage. The madness is too much. I’ll get stupid on my shoes. Politics as practiced right now is unsuitable for the moral or the intelligent. The rational in search of answers find none. The emotional in search of enlightenment are misdirected.
It’s a shame to back away from the Monster. We are not Frankenstein. The Monster is not our creation. We’d like to help the Monster become something better. But the swamp is too intolerable and we’re wise to stay out. As for Frankenstein? Fuck that guy.
Why did it get like this? That’s the question of human society! Everyone from Ancient Greeks to Medieval Feudalism to a blowhard on a barstool has asked the question.
I formerly assumed humanity always strives to get its head out of its ass. Now I know this is sometimes true but sometimes not. Recently, it’s not.
When I sip the heady liquor of society’s ways of self organizing, someone has taken a shit in it. Ideas are served on a plate of emotional incontinence. Everything is AB tested slogans.
I can see why. It’s more fun for a monkey to fling poo that a man to become wise. I suspect the ancients knew. If they were here to teach me, what would the Greeks say about demos (the common people of their state)? Could they explain it in relation to Trump catching a bullet in PA? I wish I knew.
Despite a noble desire to learn, one’s first goal is self-preservation. You cannot learn from the irrational. But you can catch madness via contagion.
The human mind is easily hijacked. Right now it’s hijacked hard. We’ve weaponized mind control like spastic irresponsible monkeys. We humans move fast… and often blindly. The Wright Brothers flew in 1903. By 1945 we had mushroom clouds over Trinity. That’s a huge leap, and one from which you can’t go back. (Both for flight and bomb.)
The last few decades we’ve lived the biggest experiment in mental manipulation since the Gutenberg press. I encourage you to consider your place in history. What I said sounds trite and goofy. But am I wrong? Can you honestly tell me you haven’t felt it? People lost their shit in 2020 partly because monkeys couldn’t help obeying other monkeys on a screen. I’ve lived through that “progress”. So have you. I remember three channels of black and white networks and dial up party lines. I remember when nerds fine tuned 9600 baud modems. Within a decade Grandma was on Facebook. Shortly thereafter teenage girls were committing suicide over the number of “likes” on a “feed”. The Gutenberg press felled Kingdoms. This era has done the same.
I suspect the first few decades of everyone carrying a social manipulation device in their pocket was always going to get weird. It was in the cards.
The good news is I don’t think it’s as bad or irreversible as it seems. Leave the cell phone in your car’s glove box. Go fishing. Detox is pretty easy.
Plus, generations change and the younger ones are already adapting (or trying to). Young people have their own bullshit and they don’t care about yours. They find previous generation’s terrors quaint and silly; which is probably healthy. Ask a Millennial about Mutually Assured Destruction. Watch them shout back at the geezers. “Missiles are dumb. Global Warming is serious.”
One terror is substituted for the next; but there’s always a terror. It’s an endless cycle. They say only intervention by the elite, whether in lab coats or priestly robes, will save us. An Aztec priest cuts out a beating heart to pay debts owed to the gods. Paul R. Ehrlich says we’ll all starve over The Population Bomb. The UN invited Greta Thunberg to enlighten them on things about which she, a teenager, somehow has unique knowledge. The high priests demand sacrifice; monkeys looking at screens comply.
The tell is that disaster is always epic and looming but can only be addressed by giving the high caste what they want. And the finish line is always 30 years away.
I think that’s the way our minds are built. The end is never Tuesday, or March 11th; those are measurable. The end is always roughly half a generation out.
Forgive the paragraphs of hemming and hawing. I hoped to get you in the right mindset for one question:
Have you enjoyed the summer of 2026?
Have you noticed how gloriously boring it has been? Did you step away from hyperventilating media and actually look around? Have you been to a county fair?
Do you appreciate some measure of gaining stability? Do you complain that the corrupt are not hanging from light poles; when a few years ago they were running amok? Not long ago, your ass could be fired, cancelled, debanked, sued, or arrested at any moment. That can still happen but it’s less likely.
Have you noticed the lack of riots? Do you rejoice at cities not burning? What about the missing busses full of agitators? Did you savor the silence of Wall Street not being “occupied”? Have you gone all summer without bumping into a glowing green Fed encouraging you to do something stupid?
People in the business of colorful tantrums are temporarily out of business!
It’s not perfect. There’s still unrest. There are still people who think Trump will steal their lawnmower and rape the housecat. Some folks still wear masks (and maybe always will).
But bask in the lack of funding for nutjobs leading to less nuttery. “No Kings” geriatrics trying to relive 1968 was a faint echo. They toddled around cosplaying what it’s like to be oppressed. And there’s a subset of women who get off on Handmaid’s Tale and hunky murderers. That creeps me out! A few people got overclocked, did immensely stupid things, and got ventilated by law enforcement. Much like Neil Young wrote about in Ohio… except back then his music wasn’t half bad. Media reporting on opinions of Bruce Springsteen and Better Midler went nowhere. Why? Because nobody under 50 even knows who they are.
Lord help us, we’ve had some straight out assassinations. Evil walks among us. But it was worse just a few years ago!
All my life I wondered why people who hate anything “normal” have infinite money. All that cash turned the mild soup of human friction into a caldron of shit. How’d they do it?
Last year I heard about some government whatzit. A nerdy acronym like USAID should have nothing to do with me. Yet it did. And there were (are?) many like it. They used unimaginable funds (regardless of whether legit or graft) to annoy us. Just fucking shake us into frenzy.
A reduction in the money flood made a difference. It was immediate.
Remember our lives three or four years ago? Infinite cash meant some dweeb was bitching at you. Bitching about what? Everything! Drinking through a straw, buying a plane ticket, eating meat, choosing a lightbulb, flushing a toilet, seeking a car that wasn’t shit, listening to music, reading a book, or mowing your lawn. Parents had to hope their kid’s school would teach fractions and not cut his balls off!
Back then I wondered what life would be like if nuts left me alone. Imagine life without being attacked by infinite money. It turns out it was attainable, and fast. Without infinite funds to bus in a crowd of lunatics, you don’t have so many crowds of lunatics.
I like it! Peace is nice.
I’ve very much enjoyed this summer. We stopped paying for riots. We had fewer riots.
Savor it. It won’t last long.
Corruption will rise again. Whether now or five years from now, another group of misfits will have funded themselves with tax money or a gift from China or whatever. They’ll be wrecking a mall in Des Moines. They’ll do it in the name of gay dolphins or some other goofy (irrelevant!) reason. Sophists will download new arguments into their programmable brains. They’ll justify whatever they’re paid to justify. The newest Thunberg will be doing her Joan of Arc set piece. Whatever USAID was or is, will be back. It’ll have a new name but the same staff.
But don’t despair. At the moment, the sun is shining!
Enjoy peace while it lasts. Calm is self reinforcing. Good times last longer when you take time to enjoy them.
A.C.