Tech Bro-Monarchy vs. Lucy and Her Football

The football gag as seen in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

I’m sure it’s something of a trick of memory, of recalling a history that never truly was, but even so……. have the presidential elections ever been this truly dismal? The fact that we are to plunge forward into this end of Empire scenario with this cast of characters is probably fitting. Out with a cringe, not even a whimper or a bang, I suppose.

On one side, we have a truly unhinged man-boy. A person who has never felt the consequences of his own failures. A man who bullied his way to sustained riches, making sure he didn’t pay the little guy contractors unfortunate enough to end up on his path. A man is perfectly fine with wrapping himself in reflected evangelical furor as he lives as a veteran “brave soldier” for avoiding STDs, as “vaginas are landmines….it is my personal Vietnam”. He lives this way as some kind of cosmic joke, supporters who slurp up the racism, the sexism. Because he truly lives as many of them would like to. The evangelical wallpaper covering that hiding place that is full of rot. A place of self-indulgence and a desire to force others to serve you, never to earn their support.

And the creature above has the perfect side-kick (who by the way, is obviously a billionaire plant waiting to side-kick Trump to the curb, maybe via 25th amendment when installed). A man who can’t even settle on a name, who screeches for personal responsibility in others as he blames Mexicans for his mother’s habit of stealing patient narcotics. He espouses a personal responsibility for your pain and suffering. But for the poor billionaires….they need a collective give-away via erased environmental protections and governmental largess for their companies. After all, they are out there just struggling to rub together enough coin to make sure they have the means for their 29th generation descendants to be able to blow up planets in neighboring galaxies should that be needed. But did you get cancer from their toxic sludge factory river that flooded your home? Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me. Have you tried positive thinking and more protein in your diet—maybe start eating your deceased relatives? Maybe a 6th case of Covid would assist what ails you in this brave new JD Vance world.

And lest you think I’m painting a picture of competence and normalcy from the other side, let me dissuade you of that notion. Harris is speaking of course, and you better not have the temerity to bring up a genocide on she and great-grandpa’s watch. Everyone knows it’s disgusting to bring up murder while girl boss stuff is going on. And the joy, oh my god, the joy. It’s contagious coming from the DNC, unless you’re a pregnant lady with an ectopic pregnancy who could have had that scary issue be a non-issue should the Democrats have opted for codification of Roe instead of a continued bogey-man funding trough. The emails scream “Are you ready to sign off Democracy to Donald Trump!”– this from the party who literally went to court to make sure they didn’t have to be democratic, that they could choose an accepted candidate for you.

But this is the shtick of late day capitalism, isn’t it? You create situations that do nothing but lurch the narrative to the right with no clear winning alternative. This breeds cultural infighting, the angry reactives plunge towards religion and guns, as even that soulless Hillary Clinton said. But she was very much a part of the group that sent those empathy averse souls in that direction. She’s as heartless as they are. It’s become clear that the way to win over rural angerhounds is to provide something tangible to them. Calling them names and oozing with Bill Maher slime does nothing but make the no-moral-center liberals feel good about themselves. Hey, at least I’m not an inbred living in a red state. I’m much better than that as I send money to a campaign that is unapologetically fellating Netanyahu and crew while they literally attempt to wipe a people off the map.

So we need to vote our way out of this situation every four years. We have a new business plot (just like Smedley Butler days) afoot with Trump/Vance. Possibly plans in place to not certify results, to not leave if they get themselves in the White House. Then there is the sensible version, the ones who suck ass, but in a more relatable fashion–maybe they won’t insist on primae noctis with JD Vance before you get new furniture kind of sensible. Kind of like a shitty boss who does some serial killing on the side and might look the other way if your daughter needs an abortion.

With a country behaving in such a manner, I think we all need to steel ourselves to the fact that the next few years will not be great. We have each other and that’s all we can rely on. It’s becoming clear that perhaps the only thing we have to fight against such a slide into disgrace will be actions like work stoppages or the like. They do need our toil—that much is clear. Of course, they have considered this, and we all must make the mortgage/rent or fall into the ever-widening gap between those able to survive and those who aren’t in this world without empathy. There are no easy answers but at least if you’ve read this far you’re considering the questions.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see more asymmetrical warfare; by that, I don’t mean violence, but things like mass disruptions from hacking endeavors to make the stranglehold of debt and tracking more difficult. things to erode the means of control. When it becomes too difficult to survive, to pay the rent– a tipping point may be reached by many of the people. There are individuals out there with amazing skills and when they become unable to live a decent life—all bets are off. It steers into the unknown, but perhaps a hopeful unknown.

That may be when things like work stoppages occur, when freaky communes start cropping up. New ways of living on the outskirts of the “acceptable”. At this point, for most in America who disagree with the war-state and corporate takeovers, they are most definitely in the minority. Individuals as islands alone, just trying to survive. But every single time someone new becomes aware of the unnecessary trajectory that the sociopaths have us on, that unwritten future blurs and coalesces into a new possibility. We are in the birthing stages of all of this. Obviously, this isn’t something sustainable. We know this.

Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.