You Really Don’t Care

Welcome back, everyone! To start off, I’d like to say that I love an open dialogue. I may be one opinionated bitch, but I am always willing and able to change my opinion should someone present a well thought out and founded counter-argument. So if you are just someone looking to rant and be validated, find someone who cares how you feel. If you want to actually comment and discuss a topic, you can join me on twitter @DannOpinions.

So, we have finally reached a point where no one really cares when someone turns someone else’s human tragedy into a personal opportunity. I’m not just talking about corporations, though I will. They have been raping us for years, and I feel that I am one of the few (though we are growing in number) that is tired of the raw deal I’m getting. Everyone else seems fine to consume off of the elite’s scraps until there is nothing left. I’m also not just talking about governments so corrupt that they can do illicit deals for private gain while having it splashed through the media, and no one cares. We all get in our cars. Go to work and meet for drinks after. We fuck and swim and travel and eat and drink our bottled water and all the while the world is burning. You know it. I know it. They know it. But no one cares. Don’t tell me you care. You don’t. I know it. And if you were honest with yourself, you would know it, too. We are the lemming generation that they have spent the last 200 years creating a workforce of complacent hopeless minions set to do the menial tasks, even happy to, so that the elite can dine off our backs.

I grew up Baptist, and I like to say I am a “Recovering Baptist” because I still struggle with all the shaming and guilt that religion places on people for simply existing. It took the fact that I was gay for me to realize that the religion I was following was a form of societal control over my thought processes. I know I’m gonna offend people by telling them that their religions are a form of control (I specifically am discussing organized religions and not faith as that’s a completely different topic), but I think the time is passed for us to worry about feelings. Feelings are not facts. They are not valid in social discourse. How you feel does not trump what is true. Religion has no basis in facts. Instead it is a way of presenting one moral imperative as superior to another, creating a class system of believers and non-believers. ‘Believers’ are taught, and I speak from experience so don’t bullshit me here, that they are right and are the only ones who are right. This in turn means everyone else is wrong. When we are right and they are wrong, we get a sense of righteousness over them. This entire concept is false. Anyone who says they know the secrets of the universe should instantly get your ass in a knot. By supporting religions the way that our world has done, we have created a situation where we have given to others a direct methodology for our own control. Anyone who wishes to manipulate the system of religion or their followers for their own personal gain, absolutely can, and don’t be naïve in thinking it’s not happening countless times a day. The Catholic Church is a vastly rich corporation (Tada!) for a reason. This didn’t happen overnight. Leaders have used religion and the dissemination of information to control the masses for millennia. Why do you think the masses weren’t allowed to read the Bible for the first 1000 years of Christianity? Control of information is power. Religion is also a way for us to remain distracted while the world burns. Fight over all of your different gods (all of which are the one true god of course) while the elite steal your ability to support yourself and pollute the environment to ruin. Time to stop being the doormat. Be the foot.

Yesterday the PresiDUNCE of the United States of America announced that he can pardon himself of crimes. Do you even know what that means? Do you even care? If you have half a brain you can imagine what that would mean for the US. You can also extrapolate that anyone so concerned with pardoning himself is guilty as hell. And even so, you don’t care. Honestly, I can barely muster the effort to care. I look at the situation and think, sure, this is the outcome people have been praying for for generations. Someone who comes into power and takes all the remaining control and choice available by any means necessary so that the general populace no longer has to think, just get in their cars, drink their sodas, and Snapchat. Tear down the unions and feed the machine like good little cogs so that the millionaires can become billionaires. And just like all the huge corruption scandals of the past 80 years, this one will simply add to the pile. No one really cares as long as you don’t take away their Netflix and guns.

Recently we have watched countless children sacrificed for consumerism. Literally bodies are piling up. Bloody messes of children. Chests ripped open. Heads blown through. Math class? Who cares when you are worried you might have your arm shot off in the next five minutes. The bodies of these worthless children are piled at the feet of the gun lobby and what can they say? CONSUME! CONSUME! Buy more guns minions! Protect yourself! Give us your money! Make us rich! You have to protect yourself! Nothing sells guns as well as dead children. It’s the greatest marketing ploy any big business could hope for especially when it happens indirectly so that they can claim innocence in the aftermath. Guns don’t kill people; people kill people right? Well, that makes sense if you have the brain capacity of a gnat. People can’t shoot people if they don’t have guns. People don’t shoot people. People with guns shoot people. But of course, let’s pray to our gods (the ones that we are constantly fighting and distracted over) and continue consuming. Because the NRA knows damn well that they can control you through your religion, they do it, and play off your emotions, and sell more. Make more money. Buy another jet. Get another vacation house. Buy another yacht. All while the parents of those bodies weep and priests console from their pulpits and collect money in baskets. #thoughtsandprayers

If I were a large corporation, a church leader, or politician, there is nothing better for my continued success and gain of wealth than for people to be distracted while I pick their pockets. Dead children? Who cares. Americans (as a generic whole) don’t care or their laws would change. Sure they weep for a minute or two, but if it came to changing their lifestyle, it’s best to have dead kids. Seriously. It’s clear as glass. The US is the only ‘civilized’ nation on the planet, the entire fucking planet, with this problem. That’s not a coincidence; that is planned. You are pawns. Worthless interchangeable pawns. So am I. I have a small little soapbox to yell from, but just like you I’m struggling to pay my bills and feed myself while trying to enjoy my life; I can barely find time to fight the machine let alone the energy. That’s what they want. Keep us busy so they can take and take and take. As Grace Jones sang in the song “Corporate Cannibal”: “You are all a bunch of fucking slaves.” (Tada!) And let’s face it, she’s right. She’s right the world over. Slavery exists today, and they’ve made us happy to be slaves. The entire system is broken; it’s not just the US. We are all on a bullet train towards a cement wall.

The plantations of our ancestors have been replaced with corporations. We slave away at our minion tasks only to be forced to spend our earnings back at the plantation. The elites of our world are shrinking in number but their wealth is growing. They suppress knowledge, berate the media, and ridicule education in order to maintain the upper hand in an ever-changing culture. They keep a slave wage so you are too busy trying to survive and don’t have the energy left to fight. And guess what? It’s a brilliant plan. It’s also working perfectly, and you are all happy to continue along as you have, because they’ve been raising you to be minions and consumers since you were born. Work. Buy. Die.

I am white. I am male. I make a decent living. I am privileged. But I am just a mid-level pawn. They would love us to keep fighting amongst ourselves over the scraps so we never look up and see how full their feast is. Competitive victimization has made us focus on who is the most hard done by, as if that were a badge of honour. Really? Which minion has it worst? We are all still minions. Yes, I am, too. We literally have numbers given to us at adulthood by the government so we can take our place in the great money-making machine. Some have a few greater perks, but in the end, no one cares if any of us are sacrificed on the altar of consumerism as long as the bottom line remains the same and the elite retains their power.

I said that you don’t care. I bet that got you a little riled up. I bet you’re reading this and thinking: “Fuck you Danno. I care! I just don’t know what to do about it.” Don’t you? Think. I’m sure you can come up with something that would change the dynamic. Why else does the simple act of recycling make you feel so good about yourself? Of course, real change never comes without some cost. And let’s face it, you care, but you don’t care ENOUGH to give up your perks. No one does. That’s their plan all along. Basically everyone who has Facebook, that’s over 1 billion people, has seen some video about the damage our environment is experiencing. We are killing our planet and what would they have us believe? Global warming isn’t happening. Deny! Deny! Deny! Just ignore that we’ve had our 400^th consecutive record-breaking warm month (Tada!). Scientists? What do they know?! It’s all false. Let’s believe the people set to profit off the skin of Mother Nature instead of the doomsday scientists with all their pesky facts. Let’s demonize education and keep people ignorant. Let’s focus solely on ourselves. The “Me Me Me” generation. Anything it takes to keep the rich getting richer and rest of us licking the asses of the elite desperate for the slightest taste of riches.

I started this rant by stating: we have finally reached a point where no one really cares when someone turns someone else’s human tragedy into a personal opportunity. Just yesterday while Trump was basically announcing his guilt by claiming he can pardon himself so you had better stop looking into his crimes, a man in Italy took a selfie over the dead body of a man (Tada!). Oh yes people were “outraged.” Oh yes! Of course. But you know what? Probably 85% of you would be him if you could. Better to be famous for something awful than not to be famous at all. We clamor for the slightest opportunity to turn some other minion’s tragedy into our success story. We desperately want to be the elite. We also know what it takes. Walk over each other and eventually you have enough bodies under you that you can start to profit from them and your newfound view over the crowd. Of course putting it that way will make your back go up. You obviously think you are a good person. Most people do. Charles Manson did. Hitler, the “good” Catholic boy, did. Trump does. Harper does. Putin does. So do you, and fuck it, but so do I. I think I am good person. Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. One thing is for sure, good or bad, we all are willing to step on each other for one more piece of the pie.

We live in a time with the most freedoms, the greatest access to tools for our success, and the greatest flow of resources…or do we? People won’t even touch a vegetable in the grocery store unless it’s wrapped in plastic. Never mind the fact that it was grown in sheep shit. Better cover it in plastic though to keep it clean. Fucktarded. As we worry if our sheep shit grown broccoli was touched by someone, children in the developing world are paid pennies a day to collect garbage floating onto their shores. There are so many flip flops thrown out that they are causing a crisis of such proportion that there is even a company dedicated to collecting them and turning them into art so they no longer strangle the rivers – of course, the art is also available for us to consume once again and placate our guilt and our need to buy (Tada!).

We feel a sense of uneasy dread as we head into the future. What does it hold for us? Will we be able to shake off our corporate slave drivers and reconnect with our mother, nature? Will be ever be able to see a future where the wealth is evenly distributed? Where governments actually represent the people? Where corporations again provide for people instead of just shareholders? Where banks no longer control our markets? Where the wealthy elite are held to the same standards they hold us to? Where white-collar crime is treated with the same contempt that a dime bag dealer is? Where children aren’t marketing ploys to sell more? Where police are held accountable for their abuses of power? Where politicians are no longer above the law? Where leaders are for the people and by the people instead of for themselves and by corporations and their lobbies? Where the great religions are seen for the moneymaking corporations they have become? Where karma actually exists? Where we are all equal? Where there is no more bigotry and hate? The answer is a resounding: NO! Not unless we refuse to take it anymore. As Ivor Guest wrote: the elite “deal in the market, every man, woman, and child is a target. A closet full of faceless nameless pay more for less emptiness. Make you scrounge in my executive lounge. You’ll pay less tax but I’ll get more back. My rules, you fools…slave to the rhythm of the corporate prison.” What they don’t want us to know is that we actually have the power to change everything. We the people have the power. We the people outnumber them 100 to 1. All we have to do is do something and stop the cycle of power. That is all.

I’ll just put this totally true cartoon right here: