When they go low, we go high??? #thereisnohighroadifweallriseabove #riddlemethisliberals #UnpopularOpinionsFromUnpopularPPL #amirite #moreoftenthansometimes
I will start by stating that anyone who might know my heart, laid bare as she is, should probably come to her with an open mind. They need not present themselves naked and bleeding as she does. Her clothing was ripped away long ago by ruthless captors preparing her for Lingchi; a thousand cuts by a thousand hands. While this tremendous suffering has delivered her to extraordinary perspective, it is clearly not a requirement of those who would look at themselves honestly without benefit of torture, if such a person exists. She is not for sale. I will not link her to others for the promise of monetary gain or notoriety, nor will I defend her against those who could never understand her and would never make an effort. I will, however, share her freely with any who could and would.
We face a pivotal moment in our country… all of us. On the precipice of a second Civil War and another hundred years of capital slavery, we are poised to repeat history forever. Or, maybe, just maybe, if we have learned anything in this age of information, we can finally admit that the system doesn’t work for any of us. I suggest we stop blaming underserved people, on both sides, and begin looking towards a better way together, for the sake of our future as a species. I am not holding my breath. I will say this, now, about The Man, before I lose anyone so inclined to continue reading… #IfILoseYouItsBecauseYouCantKeepUp Netflix showed us how to bring down the Evil Empire 20 years ago… All one need do is offer something better, no fire and/or blood required. That is just deserts.
Riddle me this, liberals… Will you don your pink pussy hats and take to the streets, come January of 2021? Or are women’s rights solved with the anointment of Creepy McFeely Dementia Patient №2 and the muther-fucking POLICE 🙄🙄🙄 Do female health problems solely relegate to our incubation processes?! #spoileralert How many liberal white people marched with Black Lives Matter in 2015? How many of us had any background in activism, prior to Trump? #spoileralert Did anyone else happen to take note of the crowd size across the Western world, on January 21, 2017?… or maybe even write an uninspired piece of journalism about it??? The riots of the women’s march would consume the world in firestorm. Biden should be an incendiary device, not an extinguisher.
I am a recently reformed leftist. That’s not to say I agree with anyone else’s ill-informed, highly misguided concepts, but no one is ever going to be exclusively right or (left?) wrong about everything. To discredit anyone as such does none of us any favors. I like to tell my children, “The person who is always right is the one who never learns anything.” We will keep going in circles until we get off this hamster wheel. I propose we break out of the muther-fucking cage. We can only do it together. The first step is acknowledging our faults in this fight. Not to quote Creepy McFeely Dementia Patient №1, but seriously, “on both sides”. I will admit that I have been fallacious in many wars for peace. Shocked and outraged at the divisive ideology of half our voting populace, I have publicly shamed, disavowed, and blocked friends and family who did not share my views. I felt emboldened. What better cause than actual fucking Nazis?! #amirite #moreoftenthansometimes I was truly aggressive, overflowing with potent argument and powerful vocabulary, forever and always writing novels on coworker’s Facebook walls. I regret some of those posts as much as an evening of drinking. I was drunk on righteousness. The night of November 8th, 2016, I barely slept. I laid there tossing and turning, refreshing the election results every 15 minutes and pleading to gods I’ve never held for it to all have been a bad dream. I felt Hillary’s loss like a loved one’s passing… legitimate stages of grief. Oh, my sweet summer child… I was taking classes in community college at the time. One of my peers said that she wrote in a family member’s name on her ballot. This upset me significantly. How could anyone throw away their vote with so much at stake?! In 2020, I felt her sentiment to my core. Same shit, different day. #amirite #moreoftenthansometimes
Here, at the end of 2020, I have come to know a thousand torturous deaths, only to be resurrected a thousand and one times, with a thousand and one hard lessons, internalized. #EatYourHeartOutJesus The self-awareness I have gained from this treatment could not be found by a man sitting on top of a mountain in silence for a thousand years. #EatYourHeartOutBhudda Today, I preach education over condemnation, to infinity and beyond. After 4 of the most challenging years of my life, due to circumstances entirely unrelated to Creepy McFeely №1, I now understand why so many Americans continue to sit out our presidential elections. There are myriad, multi-faceted, deep-seeded grounds for my own disillusionment with the process. One basis for this rational was conveyed most eloquently by South Park, as they are so often want to do:
“I think voting is great. I just didn’t
care this time because it was between
a giant douche and a turd sandwich.”“But Stan, don’t you know, it’s always
between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Nearly every election since the beginning
of time has been between some douche
and some turd. They’re the only people
who suck up enough to make it that far
in politics.” (South Park, Douche and Turd, s08e08, orig. air date: Oct. 27, 2004)
Speaking of old Comedy Central references, I watched an interview with Jon Stewart, shortly after his retirement from The Daily Show, which afforded me some small amount of insight into our current predicament, as he, also, has been want to do throughout his career. Some mediocre journalist asked him if he regretted his exit from pundit television right before Trump’s entrance into presidential politics. Mr. Stewart replied something along the lines of, “You could replace Sarah Palin’s grandiloquence with Trump’s and they would be indistinguishable. This is not new.” That’s definitely not a verbatim quote lol I didn’t take this message to heart right away, but I began contemplating the wisdom of his words.
As an “elder millennial” and a child of the 90’s, I grew up being taught of slavery, racism, and sexism as though they were distant troubles of a less-civilized past society. I called Southern California home when Rodney King was savagely brutalized by law enforcement, in what is still the most infamous bystander-recorded video of police violence in American history. My dad has said he could recall seeing fires off the freeway, after those officers involved were exonerated and the rioting broke out, so long ago. We were on our way home from a museum, apparently. I, myself, remember helicopters flying past our home in pursuit of O.J. Simpson during that notorious high-speed chase with the white Bronco. I am all-too-well-versed in the unfortunate rhetoric among white communities during those times, always spoken in front of children without acknowledging their presence or comprehension abilities. I am still treated like a child, at 35-muther-fucking-years-old, while my presence and ability to comprehend the world around me is, similarly, still ignored. Police are still horrifically abusive. Progress is a fairy tale told to children, and I have outgrown the need for such fantasies.
I remember the Twin Towers falling at the beginning of 10th grade, 9 months into George W’s presidency. Had I graduated, I would have been class of 2003. America declared war on Iraq in March of my senior year. The overblown propaganda I heard during the early 00’s was at fevered pitch, as it was in the 90’s, the 80’s, the 70’s, the 60’s, and before, as it is today, and as it will be, to infinity and beyond, until we break the cycle or destroy ourselves. I would venture to the stars. Far too many of my coevals walked in graduation ceremony only to die on field of battle. Back then, in my extremely limited world view, I was under the impression that no one would ever vote Republican again. How could they, following the terrible decision-making that led to our country’s recession and severe debt, while disrupting an entire region on the other side of the world and creating more enemies? Now I understand. Same shit, different day. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were both in favor of the Iraq war. We have to ask ourselves, as progressives, why do we continue to allow the democratic establishment to apologize for all the times they’ve hurt us?! It seems to me that we are in as much of an abusive relationship as our conservative counterparts. I can still hear Immortal Technique’s, ummmm… immortal(?) words in my head:
“I’m baptized by America
And covered in leeches
The dirty water that preaches your soul and your facial features
Drowning you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers… Bush knocked down the towers” (Immortal Technique, Mos Def, Jadakiss, Eminem, and DJ Green Lantern, “Bin Laden”, Baby Grande Records, Viper Records, 2005)
America is forever in debt to defense contractors. This nation is bought and sold by such. Rich old white men creating policies that ultimately generate more power and wealth for themselves, while putting the rest of us in further turmoil. Neither elephant nor donkey can claim distance from this malevolent plot to undermine the people. How can anyone still support the Affordable Care act over a single-payer option in Coronavirus?! Our healthcare system shut-the-fuck down in a global pandemic, and to say it was shitty beforehand would be the understatement of the millennia. Maybe if med school was free, we would have enough doctors to go around in poor communities. Maybe there would be no poor communities if there were no wealthy ones. Politicians and corporate oligarchs would receive censure and true consequences in a better world than the one they have built for themselves, that which the rest of us struggle to survive in and fight each other for scraps. Whether “Bin Laden’s” chorus was meant to be taken literally or not, they’re not wrong. This type of practice has, without question, led to war-profiteering, socioeconomic sabotage within communities of all colors, the pillaging of world resources, and the enslavement of disadvantaged peoples across this nation, and throughout the world. Capitalism is what empowers these forces of darkness. I would take bread lines over expo lines, any day. That was a waitress joke. Dems like to high road their opponents, but I would argue that red and blue amounts to nothing more than overt and covert. They both have the same track record. Blue is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. In recent years, I have learned to appreciate those possessing more outwardly symptoms of personality disorders. The ones I truly fear can keep the mask from slipping for as long as necessary. All I’m saying is, I would check the Biden camp, the Clinton camp, and the Trump camp equivalently when searching for human skin lamp shades and sadomasochistic rape dungeons.
I have voted democrat in every presidential election since I was first allowed to participate, John Kerry vs George W Bush, circa 2004. God, that line was muther-fucking long. That was one where the D almost took the electoral college without the popular vote attached. I remember buying into hope and change at the end of W’s era, as more than a just a campaign slogan. I swelled with pride at the dawn of a new day, and this actual embodiment of change to champion our cause. Hope and change, too, are nothing but stories told to placate children. I will no longer be pacified by propaganda anymore than I will be moved by it. I noticed that both sitting and incumbent presidents were in favor of the Wall Street bailouts, at the end of 2008. I will ask the reader a few rhetorical questions that I already know the answer to. Is it, in fact, a free market if it continuously gets bailed out? Who decides the winners and losers in that game?! Why are we so insistent on working to live, instead of just living? Can capitalism really high-road communism on bread lines after Black Friday for muther-fucking toilet paper?!!! Did anyone ever tell Americans that toilet paper is, you guys, I’m seriously, not only completely non-essential to human survival, but an entirely inferior way to clean oneself?! At least I am comforted by the fact that people will fight over teepee at the end of the world. If I don’t have a clean squeeze bottle, I have a thousand socks without a match. Something about reduce, reuse, recycle… #amirite #moreoftenthansometimes
Where was I? Oh yeah, cancel-worthy opinions... #YouCantCancelMeIquit. They got me with Obama, on appearances, alone. He had to be different. He was, without question, 1000x more suave than any of his presidential counterparts, past or present. Never before in history, could a president get it, like Obama could. The fact that I imagine he wouldn’t want it, makes him all the more capable. Kennedy pales in comparison. Was that a melanin joke?! I miss the man’s public speaking voice, even if I don’t trust it for a goddamn second. I continue to draw inspiration, forever and always, from his courage and dignity, as his adversaries changed the rules around him and continuously tried to humiliate him. #changingtherulesdoesntchangethegame He always rose above, no matter what was thrown at him. He had no choice but to be perfect, for the sake of his own best interests, if not the future of black men in America. He was, certainly, no fool. Obama was perfect, by American standards, whether it was a mask or not. #superlowbar I won’t shit on Obama. He has had enough of that. I would like to commend him for doing what he did, for what he could, with what he had. That shit must’ve SUCKED, with a capital S. I extol him, alone, for the level of restraint evidenced in the absence of a not-so-untimely end for Senate Majority Leader McConnell. He was already old, back then, OK. Obama could’ve had Merrick Garland and significantly fewer migraines… My own healthcare absolutely improved in the years following the 2010 ACA, even if it was a band-aid on a bullet wound. 10 years ago, it was significant. I could sit here and list his failures, but I, abso-fucking-lutely, am not here to do that. There are not countless videos of Obama molesting various women and girls over the years. Biden, on the other hand... PTSD and common muther-fucking sense guide me to suspicion of all authority figures, handsome, well-spoken gentlemen, and/or otherwise. The hair sniffers are the ones a girl doesn’t want to be alone with.
They got me with Hillary, again, on looks, with a side order of fear. #goddamnit #Fuckmetwice This woman publicly blamed video games and music for the nation’s violence, while her husband expanded and militarized our police force, empowering and enabling the brutal subjugation of poor people for decades to come. For real, Madame Secretary? You guys, I’m seriously. Testosterone plays for blood, like, literal fucking blood sports. I’m not here to shit on her, either, but #goddamnit #fuckmetwice #amirite!!! #moreoftenthansometimes She looks like me. Bad policy or no, she knew what was is like to be dismissed for any intelligent thought she might have had, while encouraged into quiet submission and femininity, before she was was ever shackled to that disgusting train-wreck, by way of marriage and/or presidential race. Patriarchy transcends race, culture, and class. We have all felt its raging boner digging into our backs as it spoons us in the dark, not-at-all innocently. In 2016, I imagined my daughter growing up and seeing this visualization of a leader she could actually relate to. This is just more fanciful make-believe that I am no longer able to find solace in, tales that seek to shelter, rather that illuminate. Now that I’ve seen the light, I can’t unsee what’s hiding in shadow. I could never go back to black, not if it was all I wanted, in all the world. While I am unfathomably foolish, I am not so witless as to desire gouging my own eyes out... something about a red pill.
Speaking of fools… fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Ask me to accept Creepy McFeely Dementia Patient №2 and the muther-fucking POLICE, as salvation from Creepy McFeely Dementia Patient Numero Uno and his sidekick, “He, who was voted most likely to have a skin lamp/rape dungeon kink, in high school”, and the bridge is torched from both sides. It doesn’t matter how many train-going-the-same-direction-vs-straight-to-hell metaphors are thrown at me. That shit’s already been derailed. It plunged off a cliff, Thelma and Louise style. The wreckage has been reduced to nothing more than smoldering ash. There is no way backwards. No one will ever convince me that the cinders of my naivety can be restored to former glory. Now that’s muther-fucking progress. #Icandometaphorsbetterthanyou
Before I barrel onward any further with my immeasurably unpopular musings, I would like to point out, to liberals, especially, that I am a victim of horrendous abuse, at the hands of a wide array of predators, in collaboration with the system at large. My current life status, as the stalking obsession of a homicidal, sex-abusing madman, has laid waste to my physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Aggressive men, groups of men, and perfect gentlemen will trigger debilitating PTSD episodes. I have been known to hide, terrified, breaking into hysterical fits of sobbing over the Amazon guy knocking at my door. This has happened more frequently than I care to admit, on this platform. The census man was downright confrontational with me. I cried every day he came. Mine is not a case of ill-informed rantings against my own best interests. Nor is it one of professional trolling that will reduce to my calling anyone names. True, I have been known to use a biblically vengeful poetic metaphor from time-to-time, based in factual observation that is fully relevant to my claims, but it is not to injure anyone. Human ego is wounded far too easily, however, and I will not apologize for offending its delicate sensibilities. If my words would harm anyone, I would dismiss them, as others have so readily dismissed me. The student becomes the master. I would like to propose another rhetorical question I already know the answer to. If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, how many liberal white people would have taken to the streets for BLM in 2020? I can’t say I would have been so emboldened with any kind of marching enthusiasm, were it not for Trump’s own spirit. Is he the epitome of evil and the worst thing to ever befall our democracy, or is he the blaring smoke alarm that has finally alerted us (white people) to fire in the (white) house, waking us from a hundreds-year-long coma? Any warning device like this is agony to the ears, by design. The only message it is capable of communicating is “This shit’s on fire!”, in an exceptionally perverse way. Whether or not we wish it would shut-the-fuck-up, ignoring it and going back to bed is not an option for survival.
Hillary would not have been a win for women. She was a concession prize we were never going to be afforded and I’m glad she lost. That’s a hard lesson of womanhood, like all of the best teachings in life, and one I will not soon forget, any more than Hillary will, I’m sure. This is the life of woman under the rule of man. A promise of safety and security, flowery words to blind us, some bullshit ceremony to bind us, then a miserable existence with nothing but concessions on our part, zero self-fulfillment or gumball machine prizes afforded along the way, only to be awarded the familial equivalent of Caesar’s end, forever destined to be Trumped by patriarchy. #ettubrute Women have so much power. If we could stop fighting each other over a lifetime of indentured slavery to, you guys, I’m seriously, just the one bad dick, forever, they would not be running things. In order to accomplish such, we would have to renounce their gods, and that is a coping mechanism many of us are not ready to part with, I fear. #itsatrap #thecalliscomingfrominsidethehouse
My position on Trump has evolved, drastically. I have learned to hate the game, not the player. Men like him hurt me every day, without benefit of office. The laws he exploits in front of our faces have been ruining all of us since the founding of our country. This is not new. Not all white men had the right to vote, across the board. That sacred honor was only reserved for property owners… rich, white men. Wealth begets wealth. The last thing I will say here about Trump voters is this. They are just as disenfranchised as the rest of us. If we, as progressives, are truly champions of the downtrodden, we should not be rubbing any poor person’s nose in the dirt, but lifting them up with ourselves and focusing on the bigger picture. How many brilliant scientists, engineers, painters, poets, and genuinely beautiful souls are fed bullshit propaganda, denied access to any kind of support in education or health care, forced to seek out unhealthy coping mechanisms, jailed for these coping mechanisms (sound familiar?), harassed and killed by the same police, only forming a legitimate trauma bond to them, instead, and voting against everyone’s best interests, in culmination of hundreds of years worth of coordinated psychological warfare committed by rich, white men. There is no high road if we all rise above.