quote for the post election hangover

"Make sure you vote this year, because OMG it fucking matters.

For all of you still pretending our system is some kind of quaint democracy, here’s what we’re actually doing: two groups of super-rich people let you chose which one of two slightly-less-rich people gets to be military supervisor and de-facto political party leader for the next four years. And a “political party leader’s” job is 100% to determine which groups of super-rich people get taxpayer money given to them over that period of time.

Don’t worry about the military supervisor part - either guy will basically just let the military do what its been doing consistently for the last 50 years, which is making sure stupid poor foreigners don’t fuck with the super-rich people and their stuff.

And they only let us choose the glorious leader at this point because it gives us a sense that we matter. Which keeps us from rioting and attacking the super-rich people every time things go bad for us. Which they always will, because the only reason they don’t consistently is because sometimes the stuff the super-rich want accidentally happens to benefit the rest of us. That’s what makes our system better than what the Chinese do - our system is loose enough that there’s still some overlap between the rich and wannabe-rich. And that’s what you need to keep the wannabe’s happy.

That said, as the slice of the wealth pie controlled by the super-rich continues to grow at the expense of our slice of it, it’s going to be harder and harder for our collective wants and needs to line up. The top 20% currently control 85% of the nation’s wealth, and it’s increasing every year. When the Recession happened, it hit us, and was barely a blip to them (if they didn’t directly profit from it - many did). How much less will they care about economic crises when they control 90% of the wealth, 95%, 98%?

I’m not a Communist. I believe in free enterprise on a rational scale. But that’s not what we do in America anymore. Yes, you can run a small business, but how many of those exist only in service to enormous corporations? Look at our structure. There is no capitalism in a vacuum. We’re a republic controlled by a class of billionaire aristocrats who control the economy by the sheer size and power of their companies, which control elected lawmakers through lobbying. We are an unofficial, backroom plutocracy.

I oppose big-C Communism largely because it always turns into 10% of the population controlling 100% of the wealth and telling everyone else what they have to do to earn temporary access to tiny portions of it. We’re moving there. That’s why both parties dictate social ethics - they only represent minority viewpoints, but those viewpoints are supported by the aristocratic class, so they are more important than what the rest of us want. From there, it’s up to the billionaires to propagandize us into caring about their views on abortion, gay marriage, government debt, public healthcare, etc. They dictate, they get us on board, and then they pass what they wanted all along and act like it was our idea. And we feel like we matter.

So go vote. Feel important. It’s just like wearing makeup or getting plastic surgery, or buying overpriced junk you don’t need, or yelling out to nothing in church - you feel temporarily important on the basis of delusional romantic fantasy, and forget how fucked-over you are for another few hours. That’s the American Dream, after all. That’s why people come here. Because at least here, we have a good enough infrastructure that you can be comfortable while you delude yourself.

Enjoy it while you can. This expensive carousel will only spin so long, before the rich owners decide to pack it up and move the fair to another town."

The Virgin Prince

Okay, that's a bit over the top. I dont think it's as bad as all that. Not really. Hopefully.