Freedom 01/07/20

Coming to you live from the Capitol! Just kidding.

This is breaking news as I’m writing this, but a bunch of Trump supporters stormed the gates of the capital, overcoming what has to be the weakest the security force you could imagine for a literal place where laws are made. That’s America for you: everything is expensive, and nothing works.

Within the hour I’d received a text from my Trump-loving dad, who linked to an article PROVING beyond a SHADOW OF A DOUBT that the Trump forces that made their way into our most hallowed halls of whatever were actually…wait for it…Antifa.

I felt the most overwhelming fart noise rising up from my guts. “Who cares?” I said to myself, staring out the window at the gentle January rain. “Who…fuckin’…cares?”

What difference does it make if Antifa infiltrated the Stop the Steal gang? I mean, the CIA definitely did, but that’s because that’s what they do. There are moles everywhere! But seriously, what difference does this make in the narrative?

What difference does it make to be correct about something, let alone correct about it first?

The takes rolled in hot and heavy. I don’t have Twitter anymore, but my friends sure do, and as if they can sense that there is a being in their midst who isn’t consumed with 24/7 rage, they send me screenshots. I can’t stop them. It’s fine.

On the one hand, you have folks mad that the media isn’t calling these people white supremacists. I have no idea if they are or not, but really, I ask again: what difference does it make? Everybody who thinks they’re white supremacists believes before they even saw the tweet, and everyone who doesn’t, well, doesn’t. The needle is moved not even a little. When it comes time to switch out the President for an even older, more-broken-down model, the switch will happen no matter whether Trump pees his pants and stomps his feet or not. Although that would be funny.

On the other hand, you have people who really want to “Stop the Steal,” which is hilarious. You live paycheck to paycheck, you have no health care, the rich put their money to work making more of it while you sell your dialysis machine on Facebook Marketplace…bro, the “steal” has been going on for as long as I’ve been alive.

I saw a meme going around of Bane in the Batman movie. He’s holding Ben Rothelsberger’s head in his hands, and in big impact font, it says DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE IN CHARGE? There’s a misspelling in there somewhere, but who am I to point that out? I don’t even remember the actor’s name. He was good in The Place Beyond the Pines, though. Anyway, the Bane thing is, in my estimation, the one good thing that comes out of all of this. If people want to storm the Capitol, they should do that. At least they’re not succumbing to what Kierkegaard (I think) called “the dizzyness of freedom.”

Going full Bane-mode means accepting consequences (maybe). A lot of these people will go to jail, presumably for a long time. However, they jumped off that cliff. That’s something that all Americans, myself included, find themselves too scared to do: to truly make a free decision.

In this case, I guess I’m using “free” as a synonym for “something that will fuck you up, but that you believe in enough to do.” Technically they didn’t get to the point they’re at any more freely than I did when my latest Amazon package showed up. The Roomba is nice, btw.

The American refrain is that “things are fucked up and the government should do something about it,” as though the government has actually ever really done anything about anything that matters since the Civil Rights era. Maybe gay marriage? That one was good, although if you ask some gay people, it sucks. People’s mileage varies on everything.

I remember when the shutdowns first started, and I felt worried that people would lose their jobs, kill themselves, not get important treatments for “non-essential” things like cancer, starve, or get addicted to opioids. The left, which is more compassionate than you and don’t you ever question that or they will fucking kill you, essentially said “well, the government should make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Do you guys…know how the American government works? It’s a rock and a hard place, sure, but don’t pass the buck! Make your decisions boldly. Submit to the dizzyness of freedom, the scariness of making a choice that has a downside. They all do.