It is inevitable every american knows what is going on right now in the news, and we all think we have our own opinions on it. We can’t avoid it. The blasting of the messages is so interconnected now with an incestuous circle of genocidal psychopaths putting their narratives before our eyes on the numerous screens we essentially rent out from them, calling it progress and enlightenment, and in our ears to remind us that we can view more before our eyes. And more and more.

At the risk of sounding like a nostalgic luddite or an old hag, this state of things really didn’t exist when I was a younger adult first on my own. I was 20 when 9/11 happened, and screens weren’t really everywhere at that point. I hadn’t even seen the fake footage of “Palestinians cheering” about 9/11 until a few years ago when someone mentioned it. Not every gas station or doctor office hallway had a flat screen with a CNNNBCFOX robot giving orders, and the internet was for email, looking at porn, or reading the Onion. I was too busy working, going to school, and having a general “irl” in a way that also seems like a relic now. My how times have changed. Really!

The 20th century is lasting a really long time.

— Jehu (@Damn_Jehu) August 7, 2017

What fundamentally pisses me off about all the stances and postures being taken right now is how fucking unserious everyone is about them. I really don’t fucking believe anyone stirred at this time to take a stand for whatever reason, and it’s not because I think they’re lying to me. I’d like to think I can say who and what is what when the dust settles, but since 2015 I’ve been holding my breath waiting for that to happen, then I passed out a couple of months ago because that wasn’t a good plan, so I’m just assuming now it won’t. It won’t until there is a greater confrontation, and what we’re seeing now is not it. Not by a long shot.

At the same time, americans are profoundly programmed to await The Great Confrontation. A singular fantastical event that is formulaically pounded into our skulls every time we’re told bust a block and consume unholy amounts of sugar and trans fats to the point the system of belief it instills seems to be embedded into our DNA. The Great Confrontation has us on the edge of our seats until we get a thrill surprise ending that seemed impossible, that was so covertly guarded we couldn’t have known it would have saved us all. We only had to believe. Maybe we would have fucked the whole thing up if we, merely the audience, had taken part and had some autonomous choices in the whole thing. Nah! That shit doesn’t happen except for in the…wait, what?

It’s funny how Trump was just some two-bit reality star until, I think, this past weekend. Everyone knew better than him in those times, like, around August 7 or something. Nothing was getting over on them! Now, Jesus hopscotching Christ, where the fuck does he stand on white supremacy? Neo-Nazis? No one is serious about these pseudo questions. No one passing along tired meme after meme about the seriousness of the great office of the yuuunited states of america being violated by such a clown or how important it is to recognize the hero CEOs stepping down because they are on the one side, the true side of good can’t be serious because they are not thinking long enough to consider what they are sharing. Maybe there are neurons firing, but they are carefully being recorded in all this to perfect an ungodly networking project that will convince them that the denouement of this episode will truly be revolution. They resisted, after all!

It is because of that level of stupefaction that there is no point in going through some scapegoating routine that might feel good. That’s another ploy I’ve seen play out. One marginal faction scapegoats another that, in an immediate sense, might seem more substantial or necessary to the whole scheme. But that is viewing the current drama through the 20th century lens. Call a collaborationist a collaborationist for sure, but where is the fucking palm? To clarify: if someone signs up with an established organization that has an approach that varies widely from your tendency but that can be aesthetically lumped into your online clique, on a platform controlled by sociopaths, is the best exercise really to toil against that to wrest eyeballs?

Because we are existing in a sea of opinion and the postures struck to be able to even proffer one, and one voice capitalizing on the event du jour for their group’s or their own visibility in the wake of it really starts sounding like the next one and the next one. And let me stop you there: no, I’m not equating anyone who is not a nazi with nazis (my god, how hard is it to be against nazis? Even Mitt Romney is doing it, amirite?). Rather my point is this: any time the bottom rungs of the left, those among “the left” who have to work for a living, are told that participating in this or that (particularly late summer, as of late) symbolic event can really do something for “their cause”, it has ended up backfiring. The spectacle doesn’t work in that direction by design.

I’ve tried to fool myself into thinking otherwise for too long, and I am so sick of seeing the scripts unwind. I’m so sick of the predictability of it all, and that’s not because I just want a new reality television series. I want something real like a lot of people do, many who are drawn into this televised bullshit because of that. And they take their lines, thinking them unique, and I know from experience that they are not by going down certain “party line” paths. This has taught me something, but it hasn’t necessarily done anything for my so-called “cause” I’ve been assigned for trying to think for myself.

For these reasons and more, I no longer bat an eye at the more “wacky” comments I see around the web suggesting that the MK programming is being ramped up and people’s chips are being fucked with to exacerbate the rage, anger, or feelings of accomplishment according to the certain cues given during simulated events. A “malfunctioning chip” is no longer a metaphor; virtually everybody carries at least one around at all times. We breathe in and consume god knows what that clouds our judgment and convinces us it will be okay as long as we are protected from the bad stuff and trust when a company does something benevolent in the name of “protecting our privacy” or “rejecting white supremacy”.

And so many of us feel good about it, and that’s the extent of the actions involved. Feeling. Back patting for taking down statues of psychotics whose heirs are in the board rooms being praised for standing up to Trump or whoever the next big bad is in this god forsaken drama while their correctly sexed and raced faves turned Libya into a slave state, oversaw the inception of Yemeni depopulation, burned antifascists alive in Ukraine, and never breathed a word about Darren Seals’ murder. Studying this mass hysteria over symbols branded to be a strike in line with “resistance” that really serve the rulers is way more important to me than finding the next tepid entity of recovering democrats to mount as the worst for trying to convert the uninitiated.

Honestly, I’m not sure of what else to do. I don’t know who is behind these calls for dissenters to show their faces to planted livestreamers, and I’m not interested in getting out there for the sake of just being out there. That is a fascist call in itself. Where is the strategy? Tactics? There has to be something more to all this than accepting the FBI manufactured pathology of true dissenters being perennial losers who can only mourn for martyrs none of us knew of till the past weekend once the last administration joined in during this supposed watershed moment.

Falling in line is easy in this regard; the mourning is inculcated as necessary. Some days I’ll be driving home from work over a serene lake I actually have the privilege of driving over and just think, wow, what would it mean to be in the midst of real war like FARC? What would I do? Who would be my true comrades in such a state that wasn’t synthetic from top to bottom? Because I do believe that is coming, and as we should all be well aware of by now, it will not be televised, and it will not be a singular confrontation that can be fought and done with in convenient segments so that we can go back to our regularly scheduled lives.

We are witnessing a vast undertaking to co-opt and curate a false opposition comprised of a social media left that has been allowed to develop and flourish even in its malformed state. It really has. No one has organically pushed for and won the freedom of speech seemingly afforded to people who propose to truly oppose the capitalist state by shouting about Amerikkka and other slogans because few have taken on the challenge of investigating how far reaching the programs are. It feels good to think in 20th century terms of who is against whom in all this while everyone participating is tracked to see where they can fit.

Where will a controlled population look to for blame when a “violent, radicalized left” is no longer a quirky phrase to throw around by those who want to be part of that now? I think their shine will rub off soon, and I think they will join up with the nazis who have never been in the streets. They’ve been in suits for as long as most of this front has been alive, and they can’t fathom it. The liberals are obvious in their reliance on the state, but where will the television darlings be? The choosing of sides is only seen through a glass darkly for now — controlled and molded by people whose ideas of “resistance” only include how useful we are as conduits.