By the time this post goes up, Trump will have done something obscene. I don't know what he will have done, but something horrible enough that no one with empathy or any sense of decency would have even thought to do it. That's going to be the thing that happens every day, and it won't be long before we forget that there was ever a time the president didn't act like this. Indeed, I think that we've already forgotten, even though we are approaching and may have even surpassed the asymptote of normal. How much longer before we divide by zero? 

    Having seen an ad for Charlie Kirk crap on YouTube two days in a row, I think it's fair to say that YouTube has fallen. We won't figure that out for a while, but I'm calling it now. I have to say, I'm thinking that I'm just going to use this as an excuse to demand whatever the hell I want. The apocalypse has arrived, so how the hell can I possibly make things worse? 

     The fight to defeat fascism won't be easy, and along the way we will discover that most of our friends and loved ones believe things that we think are horrible. We will find out that we're not fighting for the same things, or for the same reasons. And we will discover that the greatest advantage our enemies have over us is that they know how to lie to themselves. So let us take a lesson from the market. Find who you are now, and hold onto it with all of your strength. The world will do all it can to take that from you.

    Am I the only one who's stopped thinking of a future for America? Whenever I picture the future now, it's a post-apocalyptic world where we're just trying to survive as best we can. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

The Monolith

 The Monolith stands silent,
Unyielding,
Unmoving,
The monolith stands alone
Among those screaming in outrage,
Begging for the return 
Of morality.

The monolith stands aware
Of all it has done,
The evil it perpetuated,
The messages it sent,
The knowledge it should have kept secret.
The monolith stands emotionless
As its armor cracks,
Revealing the vacuum within.

Evil engulfed those 
Who first gave it life,
We should have been careful
When they spoke nonsense
Yet instead we backed off
And let them take stage.
The monolith destroyed us
By letting us destroy ourselves,
Turning men into gods
And turning knowledge
To dust. 

    To all immigrants in the United States, past, present and future; you belong here. We hear you, we see you, we will do all that we can to help you stay safe. We will not let our awful friends, family, and colleagues decide for us what's right and wrong. Do what you must to stay safe. We won't let our government banish you from the place that you were meant to be. 

     I won't lie, I'm disappointed in "President" Trump. He's blatantly trying to go back to a past that didn't exist, and everyone but him knows that it's not going to work. Dude, I know it hurts, but you lost, and no one appreciates your efforts to make the Democrats look decent again. If you're going to wreck the country, at least try a little bit harder to do it in a new way. 

     I'd like to think that if I had as much money and power as Elon Musk, I'd gather everyone I knew together and try to convince them that the only chance we had was to get Trump and his cronies out of office. The whole, "If they're going to break the rules, I don't see why I should follow them," thing. I don't know if I would, since I'd be able to just leave, but I'd like to think that I would. 

     I wonder what methods our government will use to try and keep the people fighting it off screen. It seems to me the strongest weapon we have is the internet, and I hope that we'll be brave enough to use it. 

     I feel like fighting capitalism is about fighting the sense that someone with a lot of money and good heart will come forward one day to save us. It's not that it couldn't happen, but it's not going to happen regardless. There just isn't a way for one person to create a world that suites everyone, because no one has a personality large enough to encompass all of the people in a country, let alone the world. 

     I think that it's time for Elon Musk to become my enemy. Not my ultimate enemy, I just want to officially say that I'm against him and thus pull myself over the bar for minimum good behavior. The sad part is, he's not even fun to fight. He doesn't seem to respond when people bully him. 

Inauguration

 They say that those who do not know history
Are doomed to repeat it.
So why does it feel like only yesterday
I was here,
Waiting for the moment 
I didn't want to come.
Why does it feel like only yesterday
That a man that everyone hated
Beat a woman everyone thought would win?

Four more years
If we're lucky
Of constant reminders
Of the depths 
A person will sink to
In the name of feeling 
Like they're in charge.
Four more years
Of waiting for a second chance
That we won't get.

Will we fight?
Will we run?
Will there be an epiphany?
Could it be that someday a God
Will descend
And fix everything
At the very last second?

     Having a world built by billionaires only works if you don't think about what being a billionaire means. Namely, how having enough money to take control of an entire country affects your view of yourself and the world around you. I can't see how I would not become a psychopath if I had billions of dollars. The ability to get rid of anything you don't like is just sitting right there. So I have to ask, in a world where we don't give people illegal drugs because it could cause them to become evil, why are we letting people have billions of dollars? 

     Billionaires shouldn't exist. Allow me to raise you the possibility that Elon Musk et al didn't choose to destroy the world, they just chose to live in a reality that no sensible person would live in, and they had enough money to take the rest of us along for the ride. They didn't think they would destroy reality because how could you destroy reality. It's reality, immutable by all but the most powerful beings in the Universe. And yet, they did, and despite all of our pleading they don't seem to be able to stop. Worse, they're making people like them feel horrified when they realize, "Hey, I could be just as bad as Elon Musk if I had billions of dollars." Or empowered. I'm not sure which is worse. Either way, forcing people to confront the failings of reality is the exact opposite of what these dumbasses were meant to do, for that alone I think they should burn in hell. 

     I wonder how banning TikTok will change the world. Something tells me this will backfire badly. It's not out of the question that the youth of today are so addicted to social media that they will destroy the government just to get their next fix, after all. 

     I'm a loser, and proud of it, so every time someone insults Elon Musk and his ilk for being a loser I find myself thinking, "Don't compare me to that asshole." 

     Sometimes I just sit back and think that of all the people I could have chosen to be, I chose to be me. I don't really regret that decision. It works, and that's all that I need it to do. But then I think about all how everyone else, to some degree, chose to be who they are, and sometimes it's okay, but other times that person's a billionaire who can't manage charisma no matter how much plastic surgery he has. I'm not cool at all, but I think even I can say that I'm cooler than Elon Musk, if not by much. I have to say, if that's true, than why the hell is society so set on giving Elon Musk billions of dollars. 

     I wonder if Adam Smith felt the way that I do about the world. I've always had strong but unreasonable opinions about what is and isn't important, and my opinions don't often intersect with what other people believe about the world. Because of that, I believe that the world's at it's best when we act according to our own beliefs, since all the people with "good" opinions will outweigh those with "bad" opinions. If I had to live my life just guessing what other people wanted, I'd go mad. Yet a lot of people seem to think we should live like that, making crude guesses and annoying people by constantly demanding they clarify something they didn't think that they needed to clarify. At the end of the day, a world of selfishness, like a world of selflessness, needs people to really commit to it in order to work. 

    In the future we will look at this moment as the moment that hubris overtook us. It was possible, once, to simple curb our expenditures and let the Earth take care of itself, but we're well past that moment. Now, whether we want it or not, we are stuck being Earth's caretakers. 

Sunlight

 Sunlight
Used to be good.

Once there was a time when sunlight
Meant warmth and protection,
Flowers and trees,
Water to splash in
And grass to play on.

Not that long ago
Sunlight
Meant a world that was safe.

Now sunlight
Means fire and destruction,
Mountains of ash,
Ages of emptiness.

Sunlight
Made us better,
Until we overcame 
Our limitations. 

Now sunlight
Means that we stand
Under a ball of flame,
Burning us to death. 

    Maybe when society collapses completely and we're all living in little enclaves, I'll open up a school for Infinitelists. I think it would be neat to reintegrate science with religion. 

     I'm thinking of relearning about physics. Religion these days needs to contend with the existence of science and scientific rules, and I think it would help to have a framework people can use to shape your world to fit around science. Physics seems like a good place to start. 

     I think we should adopt a new aphorism for this year; "Our world is only real so long as we believe it exists." We've grown too accustomed to the idea that our leaders own the world, too accustomed to the idea that if we believe in something than we can just will it into existence. But behind every utopia is a boring, smelly reality with incomplete bits that everyone has to share, and we've been neglecting that reality in pursuit of our hopes and dreams. Now we need to rebuild that world, so that we have somewhere we can retreat to when we're tired of dreaming. Moreover, we need to remind our leaders that they aren't the ones who make the world real. We are. Unionized or not, collective or alone, we shape the world they rely on. If they neglect us, they will eventually be wiped off the face of the Earth. Their dream of staying safe in their bunker while the world above them falls apart is not one that they can realize. To quote Mockingjay, "If we burn, you burn with us." 

    I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a good sign if fire season starts in January. 

    I realize this news is a day old, but why did Meta decide to stop policing misinformation? Do they want to create a world where fascism is the only valid viewpoint? I do realize the answer these questions is, "Yes, they do want fascism," but I still hope the people in charge have enough integrity to at least pretend they don't want to be fascists. Clearly, they do not. 

     One week into the year, and the most you can say is that it didn't start off with an insurrection. Maybe things will get better soon.

The House of Entitlement

 Somewhere in the world 
There's a person who has everything. 
Everything a person
Could possibly want. 
You know that person
And you want to be that person,
But something, most likely money,
Is keeping you from becoming that person. 
So lacking the brains to make greatness
Or the social skills to monetize it, 
You steal the world 
Of those above you. 
You steal their home,
Their family, 
Their very existence,
In the name of saying that you're the best.
No one in the real world knows of this theft.
Only those who share your brain know 
What has happened. 

This is the Last Resort.
No one who lives here
Has their own home.
Everyone lives
At the behest of someone 
They believe to be better than them.
Now that you have chosen
Your place of existence,
Who you are and what you do
Is now known to the world. 
The person you are now
Is someone you run from,
While the person you stole
Is who you wish you could be. 

   I really wish that I was able to stay in my home city of Bellevue. I don't belong here, but I don't really belong anywhere else either. Like most outcasts, I dream of finding an otherworldly place full of people who get me, but barring a complete destruction of the barrier between us and the Infinite, I don't think that I have a chance at finding it. This place is awful, full of class disparity, racism, and Cyber Trucks, but it's still home. I don't think that I'll ever forget what this place used to be, before I realized that I didn't really belong. But I want to belong. I want to see it change for the better. I want it to be what I think all American cities should be, when they're not ripped apart by the storms of change. 

     I keep waiting for the moment everyone turns selfish. That's how I know that the real fight is about to start. 

     I've been thinking about what I would consider the ultimate success story to be. In truth, I don't really believe in success. I just believe in different degrees of failure. I just see people trying to make the most of what they have. But every world that I've seen has something you're supposed to want more than anything else, and I can't think of anything I want that much. I have a lot of small wants. Is it possible to build a world based on that? 

     Why do we worship billionaires? They're only poor saps who got everything they wanted, without realizing it would turn the world against them. If they'd been properly prepared by their teachers and parents, they would have known that unrestrained wealth is the worst thing that could happen to a person outside of abject poverty and homelessness. I think we need to start pitying them. They're under immense pressure to avoid giving into the impulse to go from being ultra-wealthy to being merely wealthy, thus meaning they're doomed to a life of isolation from the real world and loneliness the likes of which you won't find outside of the severely mentally ill. Poor fools. Had they but known, they could have avoided their fate. 

 Happy New Year, everyone!