giving a fuck, or, "the world has turned on its head", rough and unformatted

y'know, it's about that time where I kinda sit here and try to write. I'm not a good writer, and I'm definitely not very persuasive for the most part. a lot of what I do revolves around gaming or my interests, and depending on my mood you get what the front page really is; a bit of screaming into the void. well, unfortunately I think this article is more of the latter, where I passionately plea for the reader's ever-dwindling sanity in a sea of constant noise. this is absolutely less formal than most of my work could be. and for that, I apologize profusely.

you see, this year has been nothing but dogshit in the grand scheme of things. sure, there are some positives that could be affectionately and reverently looked back upon, but that's really just the bits of undigested corn in the massive turd this year has brought upon us. last year was no different, and  there was a lot of running around with our heads cut off trying to navigate the hollowed-out remains of the government. consistently, the regime that is in place, is too stupid to govern, and prefers overwhelmingly to just... sell everything off and laugh while they take the money. and that is largely what is going on.

some important points I guess have happened far more recently as regards the "war" in Iran, or with Iran, and how badly it is 'going'. that, at present, can be described as "going nowhere in a hurry". secondarily, the arguments of the simpletons in power against the pope. now I'm not a "Pope #1" kind of guy. there hasn't been a pope I've rooted for. I don't stand out front with the Vatican flag going "yay spaghetti", that just doesn't occur in my world. but you have to hand it to first-day Catholics and wanna-be protestants for creating more reasons for excommunication to remain a thing within that sphere of 'Christendom'. telling the pope, the bishop of Rome, that he doesn't know anything about 'just wars', when his order wrote all about it centuries ago, is quite the self-tattle.

I am not terribly ecclesiastical, some of their titles are cute, they aren't the paragons of virtue. however, arguing with the leader of a city-state whose religion encompasses nearly two billion people and accounts for the rest of your chosen faith's numbers, is not a good look. especially when you've been chicken-hawking so hard that most of the armed forces are clamoring to exit, because you've pushed the idea of a "holy war" against Islam, and Muslims in general. you have to be obviously and patently stupid. most people don't buy the "Islam is the enemy" line unless they've sucked down enough conservative news media to wind up with literal shit for brains. the culture war grifters have been foaming at the mouth for quite a long time to do their crusader LARP and it no longer translates into anything meaningful. it's smoke and mirrors for the regime.

there are three main areas why Muslims aren't real keen on the United States, or the West. It boils down to imperialism (the Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the outer reaches of the old Ottoman Empire), regime change (easily our US-British invasion to 'prevent communism' in Iran in 1953), and oil. Oil! The thing that makes plastic, and makes cars move. Half the reason why in the 1930s we started helping the early Saudi government find shitloads of oil. And it's when regime change got us into a mess in the 70s as well. Being friendly with the Saudis and still going on about our regime-change kick is precisely why Iran hates us. The administration reacted heavy-handedly to the idea that Iran was going to nationalize their oil fields, and in so doing, deposed a democratically-elected leader, installed a despotic monarch and let him run roughshod over the Iranian populace.

When 1978 rolled around, the Iranians were so tired of the Shah's oppressive secret police, that they began an uprising. The Shah fled; our government did not release him back, and he died of cancer in 1980. The Iranian hostage situation lasted over a year until assurances from the Reagan team had them returned, right under the nose of Jimmy Carter. When Reagan won election, they were immediately returned. And not long afterward, the Iran-Contra affair occurred. As detestable as the Iranian regime actually is, the US regime is giving up the  completely necessary counter-propaganda against it, by not only engaging in flagrant illegality (not just bombing children, infrastructure and government offices, but also letting Zionistan assassinate good-faith Iranian interlocutors), but also engaging in blockades when there's no real military force to project.

The US regime is also blockading Cuba in an effort to effect regime change, which is not likely to happen even if they started pulling off Bay of Pigs invasions. There's no effective mustering of forces to even attempt that, so the US resorts to siege-like starvation and naval blockades, which have mostly, but not entirely, worked. Zionistan has been expanding its war to create a "Greater Israel", by now leveling South Lebanon and committing mass atrocities. It is frustrating and demoralizing to see that few countries are actually trying to do the right thing by denying Zionistan weaponry and alliances being used to further genocidal campaigns against Palestinians and Lebanese people. The US regime consistently halts its own attempts at stopping them by mere votes.

The government has been weaponized against people who clearly understand that Zionistan is an apartheid state, by calling protestors "terrorists" and sanctioning extreme legal and personal abuse oftentimes without their knowledge or assent to such charges. It is unfortunate that for each day we must remain awake we are constantly assaulted with such horrors, nearly powerless to do anything. Flotillas being sent to Gaza are violently detained, sexually abused, and then deported, if not outright killed or maimed within prisons. The defense forces kill and mock those who dare to stand up against the state of Israeli occupants.

And if it is not enough to be angry, AIPAC and other Israel-facing organizations are pushing to redefine antisemitism as 'hatred of Israel'. Zionist antisemitism exists, and those who hold that view demand that all Jews must approve of the foundation of Israel, otherwise, they are "not Jewish". AIPAC also has many representatives within the US government. It is definitely true that these outlets of Zionism screech about supposed antisemites, yet never actually point out the actual antisemites. Judges and other legal outfits have been debanked on behalf of the US regime for attempting to try the Israeli government on facts surrounding genocide and other human rights violations. And, the longer the US regime hangs on to Zionistan, and funds it, and approves of its murderous ways, this will be a sticking point as to why the US regime ought to leave.

So many people have made the claim that 'Israel' is the only democratic state in the Middle East. But democracy does not mean one-party rule by the right-wing. It never has. Most of the parties in 'Israel' are right-wing. Left-wing 'Israelis' are either rare or shunned, or both. And, often, any normalization of relations with the Arab states around it, has been sabotaged consistently and thoroughly, especially by Netanyahu. That's been the last 30 years. Foundationally, 'Israel' was formed by salami tactics, buying up land, kicking Palestinians out, and then slapping a "God approves" on it to make it look legit. No right of return was ever granted to Palestinians. And that was by design. Circling back to a point, religious wars are not good wars, nor are they just. Religious faith never won a war. Faith in tactics and executing plans did, but not a single god ever scored a point or even threw a grenade for the "good guys". No scale was ever tipped.

Fanaticism? Yeah, that has won wars. It's insurmountable. And the US regime definitely has made many a martyr and fanatic. When we bombed Iran not more than a few months ago, we set into motion something that cannot be stopped. Killing children and mothers and noncombatants is a dastardly war crime. It is a crime that demands prosecution to the maximum extent. Letting that slide for any reason is cruelty for the already-wronged. When those children died, they were declared martyrs. Six years ago when we killed Soleimani, a skilled negotiator, he was also declared a martyr. In dying for the government, there are now going to be fanatics who will never negotiate or surrender. No white flag will erase those crimes so long as they remain unpunished, and worse if they are promoted and upheld as 'the right thing to do'.

What Hegseth and Trump and every commander of the armed forces ought to know is that they cannot be absolved or abjured of these crimes. Not for long. Iran, and its leaders, have constantly stated, consistently, that "Death to America" has never meant 'death to all Americans'. It has always meant 'death to the policies of America', and with those strikes, they are being proven right, that America can never be dealt with even-handedly. Especially if 'Israel' is calling the shots. You can understand the gross reluctance of most Americans when they say they never voted for war, and it's true. A fifth of our electorate, our voting populace, asked and received Trump a second time. They've led the rest of us by the nose into a world of shit.

And, to the people who complain about why we haven't removed Trump from office, the writers of the constitution could not have forseen the complete falling-apart of our institutions. The whinging and the yelling at us will not remove him faster. The Second Amendment is not a savior's device, it was not intended to be. The 25th Amendment is not a viable solution when the party in power is beholden to one man. They will never sign off, and he will simply write that he is capable of exercising the duties of being president, and that would end that stunt real quickly. Impeaching him does nothing if it cannot remove him from office. At this rate it only registers disapproval and nothing more. Europeans, especially, seem not to understand the intricacies and issues of our government whatsoever; their democracy comes from a different funnel of interests than ours do.

Vested interests run America, not the people. Inverted totalitarianism is the order of American power, and the sooner Europeans and others come to that conclusion, then they might have a sliver of understanding in that area, and maybe have a dash of pity for the constantly-disenfranchised and overly propagandized average American. Armed insurrection against the government would just mean a second civil war, and it doesn't seem like anyone would care about millions of dead Americans. If it came to pass, the government would assuredly win, and impose on the rest of the people an inconceivable, intolerable series of burdens. Those asking for insurrection do not seem to care or to bother about the power vacuum that would entice foreign governments to intercede on their self-interest, up and against the populace.

Right now, the government is beholden primarily to some 600 people who all goof off in DC. These are people who commit insider trading, perfidies and sexual improprieties, taking legal bribes from corporations and special interest groups - not to serve the public or to have a sense of duty and accomplishment. They are fundraisers with legal power; nothing more. Our choices in government are party A and party B. Neither of them are left-wing, even though party B constantly weighs invective against party A for being "leftist" and "radical". Party A is beholden to the same donors as party B - neither of them rock the boat too much.

Party A happens to care somewhat about its constituents, but not too much or they lose funding. Some of them are bright centrists or center-left people, but that is not the party as a whole. Party B is full of disaffected lunatics, sexual pests, pedophiles and grifters who LARP as 'real Americans' who 'care' about 'the working class' until the truth comes out about their proclivities, at which point, they act like cancel culture proponents. Party B doesn't want people voting for their best interests, and Party A tries to keep some of them from voting for them as well. But you see the picture, and you maybe understand a bit now.

Asking for regime change in America is going to be like pulling teeth, and, for as long as this current regime is in power, we're going nowhere fast. The government voted to start allowing strip mining in a pristine area of northern Minnesota. They're also going to start drilling on tribal lands, too. The tariffs that were exacted on us are not going to be repaid to people, but to the corporations. None of it will be used to lower prices. Gas will be insanely expensive. Fertilizer is still being held up in the Strait of Hormuz, thanks to the blunders of the department of defense and the president. Shipments of helium are probably due to vent into the atmosphere because they are still also held up. The people are paying increasingly more for less and less. The regime wants less regulation because they want fewer lawsuits for what they intend to do. ICE are still rounding up random people and holding them either hostage, deporting them, or straight killing them. The asset stripping of the government continues apace, privatizing everything possible and dropping the quality to basement levels. There seems to be no escape from the ensuing criminal reaches of a government staffed by idiotic madmen. 250 years? It's been a good run. All's well that ends, well...

Americans... we are a stubborn type. We take a lot of shit. We don't deserve most of it. Some of it we do. A lot of Americans believe in their exceptionalism, that schools centuries long have inculcated. Sometimes we are magnanimous assholes. We dream big, and then sleep barely a wink before being told to move on and create the next abomination. We have a capacity for gregarious intermingling, and for unimaginable xenophobia. In the past we ended up giving too many pointers, and from those pointers the Nazis arose. We only fought against fascists because they were elbowing in on us. A more perfect union has never existed, contrary to what most of us have been told in school. America has been crumbling constantly, for decades and decades. We could easily abolish all the nonsense around us, for certain. Nothing about going metric; feet and inches and miles, degrees Fahrenheit.

But we are ultimately deluding ourselves. America has never been a number-one nation, and people who clamor for that never-was idealist notion are deeply deluded on levels that would stymie the average Brit, or German, or Italian, or Australian, or even Japanese. We are drifting backwards into the morass of snake oil salesmen, doctored meats and foods, deadly treatments, preventable diseases in children, and overall unhealthy attitudes. America has been deeply anti-intellectual. It remains that way. Being 'too smart' means that you are a liability for others and for yourself. Scientists whose work kept this country at least working, no longer can bear the tides of ignorance and superstition. The emotionally-stunted are in charge; doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, believing the wrong thing - lands you in hot water.

It robs you of the agency to act in your own best interest, it stifles creativity, it 'democratizes' attitudes of entitlement and haughtiness against you. The humanities are a taboo and that is because arts are a challenge against the anti-intellectual forces that hang over us. AI and LLM thievery are abound. Original movies are nearly non-existent. Writing is seldom performed. Schoolchildren are suffering screen withdrawals. Most of the newest generations have never interacted with paper and pen. Media is bright and colorful flash-banging to quell the intuitive aspects of the young. Physical media is making a comeback because people have learned that streaming is not the same as owning and choosing to engage on your own time.

Americans are not born stupid; they are made to be stupid, and it takes a lot of browbeating to do. Americans are immigrants, counter to all protestations from nativists and separatists. We all come from somewhere, even the indigenous didn't stay in one place forever. Our history is absolutely both disastrous and wondrous. We commit atrocities and perform miracles in the same week. The fearful 'christian' revisionists constantly attempt to whitewash our history because it makes them feel uncomfortable, and I say, damn you! Be uncomfortable. Sit there and shut the fuck up! Learn something. Your Jesus didn't die to mitigate your uncomfortability. Reckon with the fact that our history is damnable and praiseworthy, and stop telling us your sky daddy ordained this land for us, he did no such thing! America is not a Christian nation. No amount of wheedling changes it.

Enough is enough, and it's time for a change.