Reflections on Europe

I apologize for my absence. The three regular readers of this blog are most likely wondering where the hell I went after being so faithful for…a week or two.

Well, now I’m answering that question. I was on vacation. In fact, as I write this post, I’m on a trans-Atlantic flight back home. It’s an eight-hour haul with a little over six hours to go, and the Wi-Fi is out. But that’s okay. We human beings weren’t meant to be plugged into the algorithm 24/7.

The reason for my trip was to celebrate my graduation from college. I was allowed to select a destination within reason, and the country I had wanted to visit ever since seeing it on The Amazing Race in 2023 was…Slovenia. 

I traveled with both of my parents. Maybe I’m a little old for that, but whatever. It was and is my first trip abroad since Donald Trump was reelected President in 2024, so I felt rather wary of how I would be perceived. After all, it’s no secret that Americans are persona non grata all over the world, but particularly in Canada and Europe. In specific terms, I don’t know exactly what I should have been afraid of given that Europe has far fewer firearms than my own country.

Even so, I bought a backpack with the Canadian flag on it and used it on this trip. This is a practice known as “flag-jacking” that originated during the George W. Bush presidency after he invaded Iraq. Canadian tourists, after all, have much better reputations abroad than Americans. I did not exactly pretend to be Canadian; when pressed I told people the truth. I just wanted to send a message that I do not approve of my country’s administration.

As it turns out, I may have been overthinking this all along. Most people I met didn’t ask me about my country’s politics. It turns out that Reddit is not real life - who would have thought?

There was one exception. While I was touring the Postojna Caves (more on that later), one of the people beside me asked me if I liked Trump. Needless to say, I gave him a resounding no and asserted that Americans who support Trump generally don’t travel to Europe very much.

So I visited two countries on this trip, Italy and Slovenia. We flew into Venice, which is not worth it. It might be the closest major airport to our next destination, but the city itself is basically a floating souvenir shop. Except that it’s not floating at all, instead slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea. 

It’s been said before, but very few people actually live in Venice these days. The detractors who refer to the city as “Veniceland” have a point. Once upon a time, it must have been amazing given how much history is in that place. Nowadays, it feels like a Disney version of Italy. In early spring it was already a zoo, and in midsummer it’s probably as crowded as a pandemic-inducing factory farm. The locals would be fed up if there were any locals to begin with. 

After two days in Venice, my parents and I rented a car and drove a few hours northward. The first thing I noticed was just how much less traffic there was. According to urbanist YouTuber Not Just Bikes, countries with robust public transit and walkable cities are (perhaps ironically) also ideal for drivers. The reason is because not as many people there need to drive, therefore those people who do drive want to drive. 

This stands in stark contrast to us Americans, who mostly get our licenses at age 16. In America driving is seen as a right and necessity rather than a privilege. But that’s a subject for another day.

I also noticed that the roads in Italy were in far better condition than those at home. Seriously - I live in one of the most affluent parts of the United States and potholes are common. Even when there aren’t potholes, major roads are still far from even much of the time. The Italian motorways were almost spotless. 

We stayed in the ski town of Cortina d’Ampezzo. I am in fact an avid skier, having partaken in the sport since I was six years old. And let me tell you, it was the polar opposite of Venice.

Despite Cortina’s reputation as a glitzy resort that attracts tons of visitors from all around the world, the town felt virtually free of tourists. There were some, yes, but I saw plenty of locals around too. I even bought a new pair of sneakers at a department store where the employees spoke lackluster English (though it was admittedly still far better than my Italian). There’s something immensely gratifying about going somewhere locals or domestic tourists visit.

The skiing was, in absolute terms, not ideal. At lower elevations of the resort, it was very much slush season. In late March, of course, this was hardly unexpected. In fact, relative to what time of year it was, the upper part of the mountain might as well have been Hakuba. All of this, with minimal crowds!

My favorite memory from this part of the trip will likely always be the cooking class my mother and I signed up for. One of the hotel’s chefs walked us through the process of making ravioli with beet filling. Even if we paid good money to take part in it, the activity still felt like an honor.

Think about it. All of us live in a world of vastly increased globalization relative to how it was thirty, even twenty years ago. It’s a lot more common for Americans to watch Indian movies or South Korean TV shows. Conversely, American retail chains can be found all over many European cities despite some Europeans’ best efforts to boycott them.

Italy is another example of a “cultural superpower.” There’s a reason Italian restaurants can be found all over the world. There’s a reason the peninsula received more visitors in 2023 than all but four other countries. Thanks in part to mass media, most people have at least a cursory understanding of why someone would want to visit Italy. 

There is something almost spiritual about this globalization, and yet it has its downsides as well. Indigenous languages are declining, as are some languages that have official status in one or more nations as many people turn to English as a “default” lingua Franca. Some people say that cultures are all becoming the same…

…which is one reason why the cooking class felt incredibly special. At a time when some restaurants are chastised for mass-producing their food, at a time when much of the produce at my local grocery store was sourced from other countries, the people in and around Cortina have been using fresh ingredients to make their ravioli for hundreds of years. The chef aims to keep this practice alive even in an age when that might become more difficult. 

While many of us rely on AI to do simple tasks, the chef who taught the cooking class did not. My mother and I tried to revel in the manual task of rolling out the dough and painting the edges of each dough circle with water. (That is one reason my mother took up ceramics). What dough could not be used was put in a bowl, where it would be used to make pasta in the near future. No ingredients would go to waste. 

My biggest takeaway from the cooking class was this: Just because something is a tradition doesn’t always mean it’s bad. 

At the end of the class, we got to keep our aprons and were given the recipe to make the dumplings at home. We’ve promised my father that we will make them in the near future. 

We drove to Bled, Slovenia the next day. Now, believe it or not, you can’t drive directly from Italy to Slovenia. Or at least, it takes a lot longer to. The reason for this, I presume, is the mountain range along the border. Unlike the Americans who built I-70 in Colorado, Europeans were unwilling to “pave paradise and put up a parking lot”. But whatever - three countries for the price of two.

Bled is best known for sitting on the shore of the lake of the same name. The lake is probably Slovenia’s best-known tourist attraction; acccording to photos, it’s bright blue whenever it’s sunny out. Of course, the keywords are when it’s sunny out - we hardly got any sun when we were there.

Our hotel, the Rikki Balance, at least had a wonderful view of the lake even without the sun. Supposedly the hotel was named after a Swiss doctor who helped discover the health benefits of the area’s mineral resorts. Lake Bled was a pleasant place to walk around, and we even took a pletna boat to the island in the lake’s center because that’s what you do when you’re a tourist there.

That’s the other thing: Sometimes a tourist activity is popular for a reason. It doesn’t have to be undiscovered to be worthwhile. The place reminded me of Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire, except that the mountains surrounding Lake Bled are much higher.

While Bled isn’t suffering from overtourism nearly to the degree of Venice, I couldn’t help but observe that it wasn’t a place where many people actually lived. Most residents were probably employed in hospitality. 

The other minor gripe I have with Bled is that for a place with as many tourists as it gets, there weren’t too many restaurants. Yes, I understand that might make me sound like an Ugly American™ - and in fact, most US towns of this size have mostly fast food joints. But we had only two days there and ate at the same restaurant twice. Indeed, if you count the hotel’s buffet as a restaurant, there were two such cases in Bled.

Bled does, however, have that famous cream cake. I’m not normally one for whipped cream, but when it was on the menu, my diet went out the window. And it was on the menu everywhere in Bled. (Why shouldn’t it be? It’s a local culinary specialty.) Even if food in Europe is generally healthier than it is in America, I still won’t be surprised if I’ve put on weight this trip.

We spent two days in Bled before driving to the capital city of Ljubljana. Now, in case you didn’t know, there’s a well-known town called Postojna that’s home to some caves. One of the longest cave systems in Europe, in fact! It’s no wonder that plenty of people were there, such an international crowd that the tour guides don’t bother speaking to the guests - instead, we were given audio guides programmed to the language of our choice.

Let me tell you: The caves are well worth visiting. The karst limestone caverns formed over a period of millions of years. When people say they travel to Europe for history, that’s not generally the type of history they think of. And yet it’s somehow even more spectacular than the cathedrals. In the time it took to build the Sagrada Familia, each stalactite and stalagmite grew about a centimeter at most. It really brings to mind how minuscule our existence on this planet is by comparison.

In the grand scheme of things, it was not that long ago that spelunkers risked life and limb to dig some of these tunnels through pitch-blackness. Nowadays, tourists from all over the world can pay to take a train down and safely explore this underrated natural wonder. There was a gift shop at the end, which had a selection of children’s books like The Dragon In Postojna Caves. I bought a sweater that I intend to wear decently frequently.

Finally we reached Ljubljana, our final stop on the trip. As European capitals go, it’s relatively small, with only about 300,000 people living there. The old town, where we stayed, is centered around the Ljubljanica River. And let me tell you: It’s hard to overstate how excellent the location of the hotel was. Thanks, Dad.

Ljubljana is known as the City of Dragons - one of the most notable bridges over the river is called the Dragon Bridge due to the green statues on all four corners of it. Legend has it that the hero Jason of Greek mythology slayed a dragon there. 

Although I’d imagine very few present-day Slovenes actually believe in dragons, the mythical fire-breathing creature still holds significant sway over the capital city’s history and culture. Dragons feature prominently on Ljubljana’s capital and coat of arms. Most of the souvenir shops dotting the old town sell dragon plushies, dragon sweaters, dragon pendants, or even dragon-themed chocolate. I’m not kidding about that last one.

Ljubljana, in my mind, isn’t “becoming” the next big thing in Europe. It’s already there. While it wasn’t nearly the zoo that Venice may have been, early spring is not peak tourist season in the Slovenian capital. According to a waiter at one of the restaurants we ate at twice (which my father claims made the best hamburger he’s ever eaten), in the summer Ljubljana is like Venice. Given that he spends orders of magnitude more time there than I do, I’m inclined to trust his word on that.

In my experience, Ljubljana was somewhat touristy. There’s a dedicated Tourist Information Center near the Dragon Bridge, and many people were taking selfies in front of a cathedral. I even saw some graffiti telling tourists to go home. 

While I’m not trying to minimize the very real negative impacts that mass tourism can have, I will say that I felt welcome. Even when people found out I was American, they treated me well. 

Now that I have a little over an hour before I land at Boston Logan, I want to gather my final thoughts about Europe and Slovenia in particular.

First of all, the café/restaurant culture is very different from what I’m used to. In the United States, many people get coffee at a drive-thru. It’s physically, environmentally, and emotionally unhealthy - that’s no secret. Everyone is in a hurry at restaurants in America. This isn’t the case in Europe, where cafés are a very common “third place” for people to hang out and linger over drinks.

Part of this is because most American cities are not remotely walkable. And even in the more walkable ones like my beloved Boston, restaurants seldom have much outdoor seating. When my local “Irish pub” reopened during the initial deployment of COVID vaccines in the spring of 2021, all the seating was outside. Yes, it was in a former and future parking lot, but I miss outdoor dining in the States. I wish that feature had continued. 

Another thing I noticed was just how green everything was. At the end of March, some buds were poking out, and I can only imagine how colorful Ljubljana must be in May or June. And it’s not just green in terms of vegetation, but also in terms of infrastructure.

You see, every year a city in the European Union is awarded the title of “European Green Capital” for their efforts against the climate crisis. Ljubljana won this award in 2016, and the locals are quite proud of it, as they should be. In the absence of an Internet connection, I can’t tell you precisely how the winner is determined, but I saw very little trash on the streets. And of course, it’s very easy to walk around the compact city - the only vehicles allowed in most of the old town seemed to be the police, presumably other emergency vehicles, and the electric tourist train. 

This extends to the country’s natural heritage. Slovenia’s coat of arms contains the country’s highest mountain, Triglav, and waves to represent its short coastline. Every sane person on this Earth understands that we must protect the environment, but this need feels especially prescient in a country with such natural beauty in such a small expanse. I mean, the place is smaller than the Netherlands, yet it has mountains that were once glaciated, evergreen forests, bright green fields as far as the eye can see, and an Instagram-worthy coastline on the Adriatic. 

As much acclaim as the nature in the United States gets, it’s a lot less accessible to the average resident. America  is massive, and internal transportation is in a sorry state indeed. It’s only likely to get worse under the Trump administration, but it wasn’t great to begin with. Slovenia is far more friendly to people with a limited amount of time - I was only there for four days and feel like I did the country right.

My last observation is that the flag of Slovenia, (which is roughly the same colors as the Russian flag except for the coat of arms in the upper left part of it) was seen frequently. Of the fifteen countries I’ve visited besides my own, Slovenes probably flew their flag more than anywhere but the USA. 

In the US, flying the flag on your property is coded as right-wing. The patriotism, nationalism, or whatever you want to call it is constantly in your face. It’s like people think you’ll otherwise forget what country you’re in. 

By contrast, Slovenia has a lot more things to be proud of. It’s a much smaller country (population only 2.1 million) that’s often overshadowed by its neighbors. They don’t bully people around like America does. Their patriotism is a lot gentler and honestly simpler. I’d even say it’s better. They’re not saying they’re better than anyone else, after all.

I’m sure that Slovenia isn’t a perfect place. If you live in Ljubljana or Bled, I have to imagine that tourism has driven your cost of living skyward. Inflation is probably higher than in the US (for now) thanks to the major war a mere two countries away. 

And yet, as I take myself back to the very pedestrian-friendly streets of Ljubljana, which have been there under several empires prior to the modern-day Republic of Slovenia, I’m convinced that you could do a lot worse.

Overall, I’m very glad I made the trip. As convinced as I am that the contestants on The Amazing Race 35 were paid to remark on how beautiful Slovenia is, that really wasn’t necessary. The scenery speaks for itself, as do the 2.1 million people who are lucky enough to call the country home. As long as you are willing to be a respectful visitor and don’t mind a connecting flight if you’re not from Europe or Dubai, I can’t recommend Slovenia enough. I might describe it as a more budget-friendly version of Switzerland.

All the photos below were taken by yours truly.

“Every Country Has Its Problems”

Rodrigo Duterte, former President of the Philippines, at his ICC hearing. Image taken from The Guardian.

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was recently arrested and sent to the Netherlands to be tried for crimes against humanity during his drug war. Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro is indicted for attempting a coup in 2023. And of course, South Korea’s insane few weeks ended with former President Yoon being held accountable.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is President of the United States again. Let’s talk about why that is.

Whenever I complain about something happening in the United States, it’s very common for well-meaning people to come at me with the following refrain: Every country has its problems. No place is perfect, they say.

Here’s the thing: To a point, I agree with them. There is no perfect country anywhere in the world - even Reddit’s beloved Finland is pretty dark in the winter. 

But whenever someone says “every country has its problems” as a way to dismiss the very real atrocities currently occurring in the United States, atrocities that rarely if ever occur elsewhere, I think they’re very wrong indeed. And I’m going to dissect that claim here.

First of all, let’s consider the case of health care. Famously, it costs a fortune here depending on what you need and how greedy your health insurance company is. Consider that a few months ago, the CEO of such a company was assassinated, and much of the country is cheering on the gunman. People are even donating money for his legal defense. This is despite the fact that many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, in no small part due to these health insurance companies.

The United States does not have universal health insurance like essentially every other wealthy nation does. It’s been said before, but all you need to know about the American healthcare system is that there’s a popular TV series in which the main character turns to cooking crystal meth to pay his medical bills. It’s considered some of the best TV ever made, in fact.

Walter White, a TV character who could not exist without the American health care system. Image taken from Wikipedia.

People have always complained about having to pay medical bills, as they should. But this came to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the United States especially hard. And again, this was largely due to the country’s lack of universal health insurance. It’s profitable to deny care to people who need it, after all, and people aren’t going to get tested if it costs too much money for them to do so.

More than a million Americans perished from the virus, and you’d think that would make a pretty good case to make healthcare free. (And yes, it’s not actually free, but it’s paid through your taxes in other countries. Same thing.)

Instead, there are still many lawsuits in place to repeal some or all of the Affordable Care Act. And yes, that’s also known as Obamacare, even though a sizable chunk of Americans don’t know that they’re the same thing. But the ACA was barely a band-aid on the gaping bullet wound that is the American healthcare system, and even that could easily be repealed under the new Trump administration.

Speaking of bullets, let’s talk about another crisis plaguing this country - gun violence. The shootings everyone thinks about are the high-profile cases of school violence like Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde…fuck, there are so many. Then there are others that happen in public spaces, including the deadliest of all - the 2017 Las Vegas massacre. Bump stocks were banned after the latter event, but the Supreme Court re-legalized machine guns last year. 

What has happened in terms of gun control? Absolutely nothing! And indeed, Sandy Hook was the end of the gun rights debate: If you were going to write a story about an event that would get Americans to finally give up their weapons, you couldn’t do much “better” than Sandy Hook. 

This stands in stark contrast to other countries. The United Kingdom banned most firearms after the 1996 Dunblane shooting, and Australia did the same after the Port Arthur Massacre that same year. Canada has had a handful of mass shootings, but here’s the thing - most of those guns come from down here. I’m surprised they weren’t already boycotting us even before Trump!

Make no mistake, people still want gun control. A majority of Americans claim to, in fact. And yet, if anything, firearm laws in this country have become more permissive in the years since twenty first-graders and six staff members were gunned down at Sandy Hook. Couple that with the seventy percent or so of Americans who apparently favor Medicare For All, and you should realize something.

So why is that? If the majority of the population wants things to change, why have they stayed the same?

Well, let’s talk about the United States Constitution. It was written to be very hard to amend - in fact, there has not been a new amendment since 1992.

Because we’re so polarized, and because the bar to ratify a new amendment is so high, it’s my belief that we’ll never see another amendment, no matter how much we might need one. I don’t mean to draw a moral equivalence between the Democrats and Republicans here, but the two parties will never agree on anything significant enough to warrant an amendment ever again. 

Some people might wonder why there aren’t any protests. Part of it is the Kyle Rittenhouse precedent - remember how he literally got away with murdering protestors? Then again, I reject the notion that there haven’t been any protests. Remember 2020?

Massive George Floyd protests that ultimately amounted to nothing. Image taken from the Associated Press.

After the most enormous protests in American history, something would need to change regarding police brutality, wouldn’t it? And yet, the most significant legislative response has been to ban discussion of race in classrooms. That’s pretty disgraceful - we’re worse off than we were before the unrest.

Some people say that Europe is more racist than the United States. I’ll admit that I’m a white man, so I’ve never had racism directed at me, but people who claim that the previous sentence is true literally have no idea what they’re talking about.

Let’s talk about Germany, a country that has learned from its past. Symbols related to the Nazis, perpetrators of horrific crimes during the 1930s and 1940s, have been banned in Germany and several other countries. Still, some people say that Europe’s got more racism than America.

I have not spent any significant amount of time in Germany; maybe black people there are more likely to be jeered at, or even called a racial slur. But that’s typically the worst-case scenario in terms of racism in Germany. Nobody fears the police unless they’ve committed a crime.

In America, it’s quite different. Even after the absolutely massive George Floyd protests, over a thousand people are killed by U.S. police every year, and African-Americans are disproportionately targeted. And that’s not the only example; I’ve talked about redlining and its relation to societal apathy in the recent past. 

So what’s my point here? How is this related to the saying “every country has its problems?”

Well, it’s simple. Other countries may have problems, but they solve them. Whether it’s Australia passing gun control after one major mass shooting, or France amending their Constitution to enshrine reproductive rights into law, or literally every non-U.S. country committing to fighting the climate crisis, other countries fix problems when they arise.

There’s a reason we can’t be like this too.

Most Americans might want things to change here. But as soon as they’re told that “things changing” will benefit people of color too, they suddenly dig their heels in. Racism runs deeper here than a desire to improve their own lives, and that’s pretty sad.

We are a uniquely sick country, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better. I think it’s more likely that we limp along until we implode under the weight of our archaic stone constitution, which might as well be toilet paper anyway.

Trump Isn’t Kidding About Canada

A border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. Image taken from the NPR website.

Well, he’s doing it. After repeatedly going back and forth on when he would implement these horrendous policies, United States President Donald Trump (yuck, I hate saying those words again) has begun his series of tariffs on Canada and Europe.

Canada and the EU have, of course, retaliated, as they have every right to. And I greatly oppose Trump’s action, not just because it’s going to make things more expensive for the average American. It reinforces to me that the U.S. had no right to elect Donald Trump due to our oversize impact on other countries.

But as horrific as the tariffs are, as disgusting as this betrayal may be, I want to bring your attention to a post Trump put on Truth Social the other day. Now, I’m not going to link to that post - we shouldn’t give him our traffic. However, embedded in that Truth Social post was a claim that the only solution for the tariffs is for Canada to join as the “51st state.”

For some, it may be trivial to dismiss that as a joke. That Trump’s just bluffing, and he isn’t brave enough to actually follow through on that threat of annexation. However, this is far from the first time he’s asked for Canada to join the U.S. - he’s been saying this nonstop since he was elected again this past November. 

Yes, Trump lies about a lot of things, and some might say that this echoes his plans during his first term to “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it.” Never mind the fact that U.S.-Canada relations are unlikely to ever recover after Trump leaves, if he ever leaves. But that’s beside the point for now.

In his Truth Social post, Donald Trump stated that the border between America and Canada was “artificially drawn.” If this doesn’t send a chill down your spine, I don’t know what will. And there’s only one reason for that:

He sounds just like Putin.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during their infamous 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland. Image taken from NBC News.

Prior to launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has killed countless civilians and turned entire cities to rubble, Vladimir Putin constantly referred to Ukraine as an illegitimate state. In his speech announcing the start of his “special military operation”, he claimed that he wanted to “de-Nazify” the country. He published this essay arguing that Russians and Ukrainians were “one people.”

It’s also no secret that Trump wants to be just like Putin. Look how many dictators he admires. Remember when Xi Jinping removed his own term limit and Trump said that “we should try President For Life someday”? Well, I do.

As horrific as the war in Ukraine is, a conflict between the United States and Canada would be even worse. Canada is in NATO, meaning that in theory, the rest of the alliance would need to help defend them if it were invaded. And I believe that America’s former NATO allies would fulfill their obligations under Article 5, since their security depends on it. 

I won’t come close to naming all the horrors that would occur if America invaded Canada. It’s entirely possible - maybe even inevitable - that nuclear weapons would be used by one or both sides. That’s to say nothing of the domestic resistance in the United States. While I cannot speak for every liberal, I know that I would like to defect to Canada if the U.S. launches a full-scale invasion of its former ally. The real question is whether or not they’d have me.

The conflict would be truly worthy of the title World War III, and it would be the end of the United States, as well as possibly the end of the world. 

The question then becomes: Who would stop Trump?

I don’t think there’s any way Trump will be talked down from giving the order if he’s truly determined. He has no conscience to begin with, especially since he doesn’t need to run for reelection - he’ll either be out in four years, dictator for life, or dead. Either way, he’s President right now, and his second term is all about revenge. Trump is going to invade Canada if he thinks doing so will “own the libs” who voted him out in 2020.

So, again, who will stop him?

The generals? I doubt it. He nominated Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense not because Hegseth was qualified (he isn’t), but because Trump was confident he would remain loyal. Project 2025 called for purging the military of generals who would refuse to follow orders, and that purge is already taking place. If the generals defy his order to invade Canada, he can just fire them until he reaches someone who is that insane.

There were adults in the room last time. There are far fewer this time.

Congress? No way. Even after Trump incited a mob to personally kill all members of Congress and overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, the Republicans in both chambers still remain loyal. There is no red line for them. They care about kissing the ring more than they care about their own lives, so they’ll never turn on Big Don.

January 6 Capitol attack. Image taken from Britannica.

The people? Leaving aside the fact that half of “the people” keep supporting Trump no matter what he does, it’s unlikely that the protests would be massive enough to be noticed by those in power. It’s not like the media’s been covering them very much. Besides, as I’ve written about just the other day, our cities aren’t designed for protests.

And let’s be honest: You know as well as I do that even if the protests were as enormous as the George Floyd BLM protests in the summer of 2020, they wouldn’t do shit. Those protests certainly didn’t accomplish anything progressive; if anything this country’s gotten more racist since 2020.

Even in spite of the annexation threats, however, I remain envious of Canadians.

It’s not just that they have free health insurance, or that there are a lot fewer mass shootings (and those that do occur can be blamed on American guns). It’s not just that women in Canada still have the right to bodily autonomy. It’s not just that they have better protections for the environment and LGBTQ+ rights, and it’s not just that they keep supporting Ukraine even as America has pivoted to supporting Russia.

It’s that, unlike how it is in America, I would be proud to be Canadian. 

It’s often said that Americans who don’t want to be associated with Trump pretend to be Canadian when they travel abroad; this practice is sometimes referred to as flag-jacking. Come to think of it, I might do that next time. But there’s a reason why the sane Americans do this - Canada has a far better reputation abroad than the U.S. does.

After all, when 9/11 resulted in the closure of U.S. airspace, Canada took in stranded American passengers. When Europe needed help defeating fascism in World War II, Canada joined because it was the right thing to do - we only joined after we were attacked ourselves. Don’t even get me started on the unjustified wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the former of which some Americans fled to Canada in order to avoid being drafted into. 

When the Canadian hockey fans booed the U.S. national anthem a few weeks ago, I wanted to join them. The nation of Canada reflects my values far more than this hellhole - the great white north has all the natural beauty (and more) with none of the political insanity. As Reddit will frequently tell you, politics don’t run peoples’ lives in Canada the way it does down here.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford (a Conservative) strategizing with Canadian Prime Minister-designate Mark Carney (a Liberal). Such a scene would be unthinkable between a Republican and Democrat in the States. Image taken from the Toronto Star.

Here is my stance on the invasion, which I fervently hope does not happen:

I’m not going to apologize, because to apologize means to expect forgiveness, and I don’t expect that. I just want to make clear, in the strongest possible terms, that I do not support any of these atrocities, even if they’re committed in my name.

If you’re a fellow sane American, the best thing you can do is call your Congressperson and tell them to back Seth Magaziner’s (D-RI) bill, HR 1936, which is literally called the “No Invading Allies Act”. There should be no invading allies. Period. 

Trump might be bluffing. I sure hope he is. But counting on his threats being a bluff would be an even dumber decision than Biden running for reelection. We need to act as if Trump might actually invade Canada, because it sure looks like it.

“I’m Sick Of Politics”

A grayscale image of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Johnson, and Ron DeSantis from Salon.com.

Take yourself back in time five years. Do you remember where you were, what you were doing? Maybe not. But there’s little doubt that you remember how you felt.

As of when I post this, it has been precisely five years since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. The rest is history - over the course of three years, more than a million people succumbed to the virus in the United States alone. There were days when more people died than perished on the day of the September 11 attacks. 

And yet, despite losing a 9/11 worth of people a day, the pandemic seems to have vanished almost entirely from the public consciousness. If you lost a loved one to COVID, you probably still remember the pandemic, but if you didn’t, it’s easy enough to memory-hole that period. Hell, it no longer holds the same space in my memory that it used to.

We can have debates about why this is, but one thing is worth remembering. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Lots of Americans right now have decided that they are going to check out of current events. “I’m sick of politics”, they say. And honestly, I get it. Having every bit of news you hear be related to what that orange asshat said or did yesterday…it’s exhausting. The other day, I went to AskReddit, and seven or eight of the top ten questions were related to the infamous Trump-Zelenskyy press conference, a humiliating moment for the United States indeed.

So yes…you might be tired of politics. But the German people in the early 1930s were probably also tired of politics, and look where that got the world. 

In other words, we can’t afford to check out. We just can’t.

I mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic above. It’s often said that Trump is responsible for making the outbreak far worse in the United States than it needed to be. And that’s true, but what many people don’t realize is that if Hillary had won in 2016, the pandemic could have likely been averted entirely.

Look at it this way: Trump disbanded the entire pandemic preparedness team in 2018. Maybe I just want to be bitter, maybe that wouldn’t have actually prevented the outbreak from reaching US shores, but I want to be clear about one thing:

When John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, speaks out against his former boss on CNN, I don’t respect him any more than I did before. Bolton was the driving force behind that decision, and over a million Americans (and at least eight million worldwide but maybe a few times that) paid the ultimate price.

And we elected him AGAIN.

People demonstrating in support of abortion rights outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in 2022. Image taken from the Center for American Progress.

Now let’s talk about another direct consequence of Trump’s first election. The people in the above image (or at least, some of them) no doubt believed that they were doing something productive. Never mind that protests never accomplish anything in this country. 

Truth be told, however, the day to protest that decision was November 8, 2016. Hillary Clinton warned us. The President elected for the 2017-2021 term could fill as many as four Supreme Court seats, and in the end Trump filled three with Injustices. I call them Gorey Gorsuch, Gang Bang Brett, and the Contagious ACB, just because I need a modicum of levity to stay sane.

These three Injustices have gotten to work quickly. The Supreme Court is on a warpath, and it’s gonna be a bloodbath of rights dying in broad daylight.

Abortion was first. On June 24, 2022, five Injustices, including the three appointed during Trump’s first term, handed down a decision worse than Dred Scott. Women are essentially slaves to men now - how can someone be a proper citizen without bodily autonomy? I say that not because I want it to be true, but because it simply is.

I don’t need to list the number of reasons why a woman might need an abortion, medically speaking. Those are widely available wherever you get reliable medical information now that the CDC is gutted. Here’s one more qualified source.

I consider myself pro-choice, but my opinion doesn’t really matter, because I am not a woman. I will never need to bear the cross of pregnancy and all the health risks it poses. But five Injustices on the Supreme Court wanted to get in the way of a woman’s decision, and the consequences are horrific. Just ask the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, whom Trump mocked. What a depraved man.

Here’s the thing: Abortion was only the beginning. Japan might be the next country to legalize same-sex marriage, but the USA will probably be the first to take it away after previously legalizing it. What’s next? Cameras in every bedroom to make sure people aren’t having the wrong kind of sex? There’s every possibility that Trump’s election in the face of Dobbs will only embolden these theocrats to make more horrendous rulings, some of which even I can’t imagine right now.

An image, probably AI-generated, that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social to promote an invasion of Canada.

Now let’s talk about our neighbors and former allies to the north. Canada has a new Prime Minister, and his name is Mark Carney. Carney seems like a cool, decently progressive guy - I’d certainly vote for him if I lived up there. And part of me wishes I did live up there.

But you cannot ignore the fact that Trump clearly wants to invade Canada. He keeps calling for them to be made the “51st state”, and referring to outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau.” And the horrifying thing is, I’m not sure anyone can stop him if he really goes for it.

I’m having a hard time being friends with anyone from Canada on Discord. I feel responsible even though I didn’t vote for this shit. But when the tanks start rolling into Toronto and Vancouver, “I didn’t vote for him” won’t be a valid excuse from my fellow Americans. 

Truth be told, however, I don’t know what American civilians can do to oppose the war. It’s easy enough for me to say I’ll defect and fight for Canada if that happens, but I don’t know if they’d have me, or if the U.S. would let me leave. What I am confident about is that if Trump actually invades Canada, he won’t lose a single supporter he currently has.

Almost nobody in Canada wants this. They. Will. Fight. Back. It’s going to be World War Three, since the rest of NATO will be obligated to come to their defense. Millions of people on both sides are going to die needlessly all for Trump’s ego, making the hockey brawls look like absolute child’s play.

But the worst part? This was all unnecessary. If some Americans had just been willing to have a black woman as President when the alternative was a convicted felon with nothing to lose, we’d still be close allies with Canada. We wouldn’t have alienated the rest of the world, and we wouldn’t be pariahs. I don’t even know if I feel comfortable traveling abroad when everyone, rightly or wrongly, associates American civilians with Trump.

But no. Harris was too pro-Israel, so we had to collectively fuck around and find out anyway. I have immense sympathy for the people of Gaza and Canada, but I have immense hatred for the people of Dearborn who sat this election out (or worse, actually voted for Trump). You have the blood of Canadian civilians and American soldiers on your hands.

The point of tonight’s post is this: After a long, contentious election cycle, you might be tired of politics. I know. I am too. But politics isn’t tired of you.

Sprawling Apathy

There are many well-documented advantages to living in a city. There’s more to do, for one, as compared to a small town that has nothing but a bar and a handful of strip malls. It’s easier to stay physically active when you live in a walkable neighborhood, which has all sorts of health benefits. It’s even considered more ecologically friendly to live in a city, in large part because the increased density of an urban area reduces emissions from transportation.

Conversely, suburbs and rural areas hold many well-documented disadvantages. There tend to be fewer “third places” at which people can gather. A “pub crawl”, or a night at a single bar, is less enjoyable when somebody needs to be the designated driver and that person cannot drink. (In theory, of course - I am a teetotaler.) Car dependency and urban sprawl is bad for the environment considering that 28 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, as of 2024, come from personal vehicles.

All of these pros and cons are widely known and frequently talked about in any discourse on city planning. I don’t mean to minimize any of these issues, but a recent Reddit post on r/SuburbanHell felt topical and worth looking into.

Simply put: It’s a lot harder to organize a protest in car-dependent areas.

A Black Lives Matter protest in Brussels, Belgium from 2020. Image taken from the Global Times website.

Take a look at the picture above. It’s from the racial justice protests of 2020, during which some of the demonstrators in Belgium called for statues of King Leopold II to be taken down. This effort was successful, by the way. That’s Exhibit #547 in why protests are far more effective in other countries besides the United States. But have you ever stopped to wonder why that is?

It’s easy enough to blame the American system of government, and you’re not wrong to think that. This is the same government, after all, that did not pass gun control even after the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. And now, while Donald Trump and Elon Musk are robbing the place blind, many people from elsewhere in the world have been expressing their shock that Americans are not in the streets like the French would be.

To be clear, there have been protests. You could argue (and I would agree) that the protests are not nearly so massive as would be warranted given the current situation. But they exist, even if the mainstream media won’t cover them. Political apathy certainly exists here, but I would argue that’s not the only factor leading to the relatively small scale of these demonstrations.

Going back to the example of Belgium, their cities are far more compact and walkable - at least, major cities like Antwerp and Brussels. Even in times when people aren’t protesting, it’s a lot easier to meet up with friends when nobody has to drive. It’s a lot easier to bring lots of people together in one space at one time. Therefore, it is far more feasible to hold a massive protest.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the States. I live in Greater Boston, a city that is relatively walkable but still has plenty of cars. If I were to attend a demonstration at Boston Common today, I could take the MBTA subway downtown to Arlington Station and get off there, then join the crowd. But the T’s so damn slow that it’d take 45 minutes to get there.

Stock image of urban sprawl in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in Texas, USA. Most people here don’t interact very much. Image taken from Dreamstime.

If you’re driving to the protest, that’s another story entirely. You need everyone to be able to park their car nearby, and yet most parking garages have only hundreds of spaces. To get the sort of crowd that might actually be noticed by those in power (which is, you know, the whole point of a protest), you’d need thousands of people in the streets, and not all of them live within walking or transit distance. This makes it far more difficult to hold a protest of sufficient size, especially given that most US cities are not like Boston.

This infrastructure-induced atomization is not an accident, either. Rather, there’s plenty of evidence, if you know where to look, that car dependency leads to a lack of societal solidarity and greater atomization, and that this was an intentional decision. 

We’re constantly told that the United States is polarized along racial lines, and that systemic racism is present in many areas of public policy. This is true. But in some of America’s most segregated cities, even the infrastructure is a reflection of this systemic racism.

Consider the Francis Scott Key Bridge. It collapsed last year, killing six people. To be clear, that was a tragic disaster that should have been avoided. However, as Common Dreams wrote at the time, the bridge was built along the Interstate Highway system so that people would not need to drive through the city of Baltimore. Additionally, other infrastructural investments could have better served Baltimore’s lower-income residents (a group that is predominantly African-American).

Take this screenshot from Google Maps. It’s out of date, of course, given that the bridge is no more. But you can clearly see that the road containing the bridge skips the city limits entirely, when it should have been just as easy for people to simply drive through Baltimore. In that case, the $141 million (nominal money in 1977 terms) spent to build the bridge could have been saved.

Google Maps screenshot of Baltimore, showing the Francis Scott Key Bridge selected. The bridge clearly goes around the city, avoiding it very intentionally.

This is hardly the only example of systemic racism in Baltimore, or even the most egregious. The Common Dreams article linked above states, for example, that there’s a twenty-year gap in life expectancy among the residents of the city’s poorest neighborhood and its richest. The latter neighborhood, Roland Park, is a well-known “streetcar suburb” often associated with white flight. I don’t have time to discuss its history in great detail; many scholars have studied this topic more than me. For these purposes, just know that it’s a major issue.

Baltimore is only one example, however. All over the United States, there exist cities zoned specifically so that African-Americans and white people rarely saw each other. Look up redlining - it’s a thing. 

It’s been said to death before, but ignorance is one of the most dangerous forces in this world. It was a lot harder for white people to empathize with African-Americans if they didn’t live alongside the latter group. And indeed, Baltimore (and many other major US cities) were designed so that white people did not have to live alongside African-Americans. 

So if you’re reading this from somewhere other than the United States, and you’re going to claim that Americans don’t protest because we’re fat and lazy, or apathetic, or that lots of us support what’s going on…well, you’re partially right. Individual choices are at fault, at least to some extent.

But to blame it solely on one of these factors misses the bigger picture. It misses the way cities were built for the car (or rather, bulldozed for the car), making it more difficult for people to gather in large enough numbers for a protest. It also misses the way our cities were designed in the first place to reduce solidarity between different racial groups.

We do not, of course, need to accept that the past is destiny. But to discount the past as a reason for the woes of the present is equally foolish. 

Leopards On Parade

I know it’s been a long time. Too long, honestly, and I don’t have a good excuse. I just didn’t feel like following the news as closely as I perhaps should have been. Here we go.

Thumbnail of Ryleigh Cooper’s CNN interview. Image taken from CNN’s website.

While I was driving with my mother today back from downtown, we listened to a segment of the David Pakman Show about Ryleigh Cooper. If you’ve heard the phrase “regretful Trump voters” (which I’m sure you have if you’re online in any capacity these days), then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about here. Here is an article about Cooper.

For those who couldn’t be bothered to read that article, the TLDR version is this: Cooper, 24, is a federal worker from a rural part of swing state Michigan. Or at least, she was a federal worker for the U.S. Forest Service. 

Now, in case you’ve already forgotten (which many people have), Trump’s first term was marked by many attacks on environmental regulations and our system of federal lands. There should have been no reason to assume that things would be any different in Trump’s second term, unless “the same as before, but more of it” counts as different. But that’s beside the point.

In the month and a half since taking office, Trump has fired many federal workers. He’s done this with the aid of Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose role hasn’t been clarified yet and will probably never be. For all intents and purposes, Musk is currently President, but again, that’s beside the point.

So let’s get back to Ryleigh Cooper. And I have to tell you, while listening to her CNN interview, I felt like my brain cells were oozing out of my ears. I could not believe what I was hearing, and I don’t think you’ll be able to either. And I’ll let her explain it:

“As someone who is more of a swing voter, sometimes that’s what it comes down to. Those single issues … that are resonating with you at this moment.”

Fair enough. A lot of people in this country are single-issue voters; that’s no secret. It’s one reason Trump and other GOP Presidents were able to get Roe v. Wade overturned after a crusade of nearly fifty years. But what was Ryleigh Cooper’s most important issue?

Well, Cooper, like a decent number of women her age, was trying to get pregnant. She’s been through numerous fertility treatments in an effort to do exactly that. She voted for Trump because she wanted to be able to afford an IVF treatment in order to have a child.

Now, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: To want a child, and yet fear that you’ll be unable to have one, is undoubtedly a very difficult experience to endure. As a man who intends to remain child-free, it’s not something I’ll ever go through, but I empathize with this part of Cooper’s story.

But let’s turn the clock back four months and pretend it’s time to vote. I struggle to imagine how, if your singular issue in the 2024 election is anything related to reproductive care from the pro-choice side, you could make yourself vote for anyone but Kamala Harris.

 After all, during her brief (by American standards) 2024 campaign, Harris championed abortion rights and pledged to preserve access to IVF. Trump, meanwhile, said once that he would make IVF free, but he has also bragged about overturning Roe on multiple occasions. He appointed the Supreme Court Injustices who handed down that decision, so he’s responsible more than anyone else for it. Actions speak louder than words; or at least, they should.

This is a classic case of leopards on parade. Cooper voted for Trump thinking he’d take away opportunities from other people; she admitted this herself in her CNN interview. But she thought she would be safe from the negative consequences of electing him. Which, as a newly-fired federal worker, she clearly wasn’t.

A meme about the “Leopards-Eating-Faces Party” that looks like the Japanese flag. Taken from Redbubble.

The other thing I want to address is the broader issue at play here. David Pakman, a very wise man, once said that “millions of Americans have no idea what’s going on”, and he couldn’t be more correct about that. 

Ryleigh Cooper thought that voting Trump was the best decision to make from the standpoint of reproductive rights. It doesn’t matter how much the rest of us know that Trump’s record on these rights has been nothing short of cataclysmic. The politically engaged among us know that there’s a vast gulf between Republicans and Democrats on this issue, and that Trump’s the reason women like Amber Nicole Thurman died after being denied medically necessary reproductive care.

Here’s the thing: The important words there are politically engaged.

Lots of Americans don’t follow the news. On some level, I don’t blame them, for the news is pretty damn depressing these days. But the fact remains that a lot is going on right now, and the German people were probably sick of politics in 1933 - look where that got them. It’s hard to keep track of everything Trump’s doing to flood the zone, and I get it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Truth be told, Ryleigh Cooper is far from alone. She’s a microcosm of what Green Day would call the American Idiots. According to the Atlanta Black Star article I linked at the top of this page, Cooper voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, making her a swing voter. If you’re undecided between a party that’s centrist to center-right (the Democrats) and a party that’s completely off the rails (the Republicans), you’re either dumb as rocks or woefully uninformed. 

If you were paying attention, Trump was telling you exactly what he wanted to do. Project 2025 was available on the Internet prior to the election -  all 900+ pages of it! So if you didn’t have even a basic sense of what Trump would enact given the opportunity, that was your problem. 

However, this speaks to a far more important problem for Democrats. No matter what insane things Trump promises, the blue team has not been able to convince voters that Trump actually means it. And I say this as a Democrat: If we cannot break through the disinformation bubble, we will never win again, and we might not deserve to. 

The saddest part? I don’t know what the solution is, short of letting Trump do whatever he wants, ruining the country even more than he already has. Maybe, like Cooper, they will care once they have experienced hardship as a result of their decision to elect a convicted felon as President. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

To her credit, Ryleigh Cooper seems to regret her vote, even if only because she’s been fired from her forest service job and is on the brink financially. Most of Trump’s voters will never abandon him, so at least she has that going for her. I just wish she (and others) would have done her research before the election so that we could have prevented this mess. 

The 48.3% of us who voted for Kamala Harris, meanwhile, didn’t fuck around, but we still have to find out.

Meme taken from user “Being Liberal” on Facebook.

Political Negligence

Aerial view of Washington-National Airport (DCA). Image taken from Engineering-News Record.

Unfortunately, I come to you today with some horrific news. The news, of course, is that American Eagle Flight 5342, a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Wichita to Washington-National, collided with a military helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River.All 67 people on board both aircraft lost their lives. It is the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since 2009.

The blame game has started. To be clear, I am not an air safety expert, and I do not know definitively what the investigation will show. However, lots of people online (on both Reddit and BlueSky), as well as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg , have been blaming the new Trump administration for the crash. 

These people have a good case. After all, within hours of taking office, Donald Trump fired the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as the head of the TSA. Additionally, he has instituted a freeze in hiring new air traffic controllers. You know, the people responsible for making sure aircraft don’t crash into each other in midair. If he replaces these people at all, it will probably be with incompetent loyalists.

So yes - they have a point.

However, I think it’s important to emphasize that if we were going to see a major drop in safety standards for American airspace as a result of Trump taking office, it would have taken a lot longer than ten days to really have an impact. And it’s not like it only takes ten days to become an air traffic controller in some of the world’s busiest airspace from the day you sign up.

Then again, according to this piece from The Guardian, the shortage of air traffic controllers in the United States has lasted for years, which is why we’ve had an increase in near-misses. We are understaffed in this department, and Trump’s decisions haven’t helped matters. But the problem existed before Trump’s second term began, so it’s not entirely on the orange felon.

The elephant in the room is Trump’s press conference that he gave about this crash. I can’t bring myself to watch it, but apparently he kept hammering home the idea that DEI has infected the aviation industry and led to a decrease in safety standards. Whether or not Trump is directly responsible for the tragedy, his rhetoric at the press conference was still highly irresponsible.

As troubling as this is, though, my main point today is not to argue that the tragedy last night at DCA is or is not Donald Trump’s fault. Instead, I want to use this case to illustrate how asymmetric our polarized political environment has become.

Imagine what it would be like if the crash had occurred while a Democrat was President. The Republican-controlled Congress (or even a Congress with a Republican minority) would demand investigations. They would summon the President in for many hours of testimony before every committee in both the House and Senate. Indeed, they’d probably be calling for the pitchforks, especially if that Democratic President had just fired the head of the FAA.

Hillary Clinton during her 11 hours of testimony over the Benghazi attack. Image taken from BBC News.

In fact, you don’t even have to imagine. That’s exactly what happened in 2012 when Hillary Clinton, then the United States Secretary of State, was blamed for the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Most Americans could not locate Libya on a map, if they’ve heard of the country’s existnece at all. Regardless, it is in fact a tragedy that four Americans perished in this attack. We should indeed have been upset about it, and Secretary Clinton should indeed have been called in to testify. This incident basically tanked Hillary’s future presidential campaign in 2016, leading to Trump’s first presidency. But I’ll get to that later.

Later in Barack Obama’s presidency, an Ebola outbreak occurred in West Africa. To be clear, Ebola sounds like an absolutely horrifying illness that I never want to catch. And the two American deaths that occurred as a result of this outbreak are tragedies. However, the 2014 midterm elections swung massively against the Democrats, and Ebola is a commonly cited reason why. This enabled Donald Trump to enter office in 2016 with as much power as he had.

During the first three years of Trump’s term, we were pretty lucky. There were no major crises affecting the United States that were not of Trump’s own making. In fact, I still remember watching the RNC last year and feeling like I was watching a film adaptation of Orwell’s 1984, because they kept asking the crowd “Are you better off now than you were four years ago in 2019?”

Of course, four years prior to 2024 was not 2019, but 2020, as the archived MSNBC footage that played shortly thereafter reminded us. That was the year when we couldn’t leave our homes without wearing a mask, or were at least advised against it. That was the year when refrigerator trucks held excess dead bodies of COVID victims. Overall, more than a million lives were lost in the United States from the coronavirus. The fear, the isolation, the boredom…that was Trump’s fault after he infamously disbanded the pandemic preparedness team in 2018.

A 2019 Twitter post from Joe Biden about pandemic threats, posted only a few months before the outbreak reached the United States. Screenshotted from Google Images.

Despite the tragic disaster that was Trump’s first presidency and COVID response, the Democrats were utterly unable to effectively saddle Mango Mussolini with this horrendous record in the 2024 election. They let him get away with claiming that 2020 didn’t happen, to the point where the pandemic was basically memory-holed. That’s why Trump won in 2024 - people didn’t remember just how much of a disaster he was. And their buyers’ remorse will only do so much good now.

Republicans never let Obama get away with two Ebola deaths, or Clinton with the four fatalities in the Benghazi attack. The fact that Democrats let Trump get away with over a million deaths from COVID-19 is absolute political negligence, and I’m almost as ashamed to call myself a Democrat as I am an American. I might even switch my voter registration to NPA at this point.

Even if Trump wasn’t directly responsible for this particular plane crash, he has far more than 67 peoples’ blood on his hands. And the Democrats let him get away with it. That’s the real story here.

Nobody Asked For This AI Bullshit

The worst feeling on the Internet. Image taken from r/Memes.

I remember the good old days when you’d go to Google Search and type in whatever question you wanted the answer to. You’d be pointed to several sites ranked in roughly the order of how helpful the algorithm thinks they’ll be. To some extent, this is still the case today.

However, whenever you Google a question, you’re presented with an “AI search overview” that basically already answers the question. This leaves aside instances where it doesn’t give you correct information, including this infamous case last year in which people were told to eat glue and rocks.

Now, at first glance, this AI may seem (mostly) harmless, provided nobody actually eats glue and rocks. Never mind that AI is apparently cooking the planet at an alarming rate. But maybe, you figure, we can find a greener way to do it. Maybe we can have more energy-efficient data centers, or run them entirely on renewables the way Iceland already is. And for the sake of argument, I’ll grant you that.

But think about this for a moment: Google’s AI search overview basically removes the need for websites. Nobody’s going to provide traffic to a small website like my own if you’re already given the answer to your question. This is how what some call “late-stage capitalism” works; greedy corporations are going to take over the market, and then they’re going to choke out the competition. There will eventually be no competition. 

Probably the most infuriating part about this AI “revolution” is that nobody really asked for it except the tech companies.

Now, I’m not saying that every scientific breakthrough should need to be voted on democratically. If anything, that might be a bad idea in a country where Donald Trump won the popular vote. Besides, some innovations just happen organically. However, artificial intelligence is going to make life so much worse for the vast majority of the population that I can’t help but feel this “innovation” is forced.

Let’s talk about AI “art.” In many ways, I miss the early days of this era, the halcyon era that was spring 2023. Back then, the most prominent use of AI online was to make public figures play video games. And for the record, the videos of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden trash-talking one another over Wii Sports remain some of the funniest content I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget this exchange:

Obama: Donald’s in the bunker.

Biden: Bunker? Wait, what happened?

Obama: Bunker in golf, Joe.

Even in those early days of artificial intelligence, there were constant warnings about the nefarious purposes for which this technology could (and inevitably would) be used. The first anti-Biden attack ad of the 2024 campaign (before Biden dropped out of the race) was generated by AI and featured a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Given that Trump’s now selling out Taiwan, the acronym GOP once more stands for “Gaslight, Obstruct, Project”.

But let’s move on past the geopolitical implications of AI and deep-fakes and talk about the fine arts. We keep hearing stories about AI-generated novels and maybe even movies. In fact, during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, which went on for nearly five months, one of the key issues at play was related to the use of AI in Hollywood. As the linked Associated Press article notes, the humans won - for now. 

Still, that was a temporary victory. Humans and the movement for creativity must win every time, whereas our AI-pushing overlords only need to triumph once. On some corners of the Internet, AI has already won.

Take the once-popular website DeviantArt. At one time, it was the go-to platform for anything creative. You could (and still can) post digital artwork, photography, or even fanfiction there. However, as of 2025, it’s fallen out of favor among many artists. The reason? According to this online forum, the site is using submitted artwork to train artificial intelligence. Plus, it’s populated with so much slop that you can’t tell what artwork is genuine and which wasn’t actually produced with a human mind behind it. Consider it a warning sign - a cautionary tale, if you will.

Imagine a world where nobody wants to be creative anymore. Yes, we might still enjoy the AI-generated sitcoms and whatnot (hell, they might already be out there), but on this issue I’m very much a purist. The late science fiction author Harlan Ellison put it best. At one point in the linked 1995 interview, Ellison states that it should cost you something to produce art; otherwise, it’s not art. 

And I agree with this. Even if what we might consider our “souls” is ultimately just a product of our brains, we still need to cherish it. It’s what keeps us human.

Maybe some people will still want to write novels or film movies. However, human-made art may pale in quantity to the AI-generated garbage that’s sure to flood our screens and bookshelves (if bookshelves still remain, that is). Why would anyone go to the trouble of writing a genuine novel when they’d get far more royalties from something a computer wrote for them?

Finally, let’s look at the fields of academia. There’s been a lot of talk about DeepSeek (an open-source Chinese AI model) and ChatGPT lately. Since I’m based in the US and have never been to China, I’ll just talk about ChatGPT here. And if my adventures on Reddit are any indiction, we’re in a lot of trouble.

To share my personal experience, I took a course on Middle East Politics in the fall 2023 semester (an eventful time to be taking such a course, to be sure), and the professor kept harping on to us that we were not allowed to use generative AI to write our essays. Each of us needed to write three essays that semester, and each paper was meant to be turned into AI-detecting software before the professor would read it.

Now, I never used ChatGPT to write my papers, because I have at least a modicum of academic integrity. But I can’t know if any of my classmates did, and apparently the software meant to detect plagiarism or the use of generative AI is far from perfect. It’s none of my business whether the other students honestly wrote their papers, but I know I did. 

My university is far from alone; and indeed, this problem is far from unique to the postgraduate level. All over the country, and probably in other countries as well, teachers are having to adjust their curricula to reflect that some students may be turning to AI to write their assignments. But the AI will keep getting more effective, as ChatGPT and other platforms update, and the teachers will struggle to keep up. 

Most importantly, there are some jobs in which you can’t just look at your notes when you need to do something; being a heart surgeon is one commonly cited example. Medical school is already very expensive in the United States, which could lead to a shortage of such professionals; imagine if the existing surgeons cheated their way to their MD?

Fortunately, there is hope, though not a lot of it. Back in November 2024, an AI-generated ad for Coca-Cola caused a lot of controversy and ridicule. We need to have more backlash like this, keeping the many dangers and disappointments of AI in the spotlight. That’s how we might stand a chance at keeping as much of our humanity as possible.

To the tech companies forcing this on us: None of us wanted AI to take over our lives and destroy the planet. Really, we didn’t. So go fuck yourselves. 

We will take back the human race. We will not be force-fed your dangerous, destructive technology like the duck pictured below. 

A meme of a cartoon character force-feeding a duck AI. This image was found on BlueSky, posted by one Marcus Hutchins at Malwaretech.com.

We Are All Digitally Divided

A PSA comparing social media algorithms to addictive drugs. Image taken from Hot In Social Media Tips & Tricks

Much has been made of the term “digital divide” in academia. It’s been well-documented, after all, that countries in the Global South tend to have less access to digital technologies such as the Internet. Given the ubiquity of the Internet today, inability to enter the superhighway of information we know as the World Wide Web has become pretty much a deal-breaker if you wish to participate in the global economy.

With the advent of social media, anyone can have their 15 minutes of fame. You can be famous for writing book reviews, famous for playing video games, or even just famous for being famous. If you don’t believe me, this 2024 CNBC poll suggested that over half of Gen Z-ers wanted to be influencers.

You can show off your personal life to anyone who wants to see it. You can live-stream for hours every day, regardless of whether anybody else is watching. In many ways, this world is more connected than ever before…or is it?

I’ll offer a paradoxical thesis: Despite the popularity of social media, human beings are more alone than they have ever been.

Here’s an example. I’m not going to romanticize the age of cable TV - it was all too easy for the TV companies to screw you over with high prices. Of course, it’s the same way with streaming services where you can pick what you want to have access to. But still, in the cable TV era, it was common knowledge what shows were on at what time. Like so many other things in life, you don’t fully understand what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Kids had their Saturday morning cartoons, during which they’d get up at the ass-crack of dawn and bound down the stairs to binge-watch their shows while binge-eating endless bowls of sugary cereal. Adults had their soap operas in the evening that they might watch with their romantic partner. Finally, anyone who couldn’t sleep (possibly including the aforementioned children who lived on Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs) would have infomercials at 3 AM.

Calvin telling us how amazing Saturdays are. Taken from Reddit.

I probably sound like a boomer saying this, but I remember when the Boston Globe published TV guides in all of its papers, telling you when your favorite shows would be on. Chances were good that at least some of your neighbors would watch the same things, and you’d bond further with these people over what insane plot twist had just been unveiled or who’d won Wipeout last night.

That’s not the case these days. If I’m at a party with a neighbor, and they recommend a TV show for me to watch, I first have to check to ensure it’s on one of the streaming platforms I pay monthly to remain subscribed to. In all probability, I’ll forget about their recommendation, simply because I’m not interested in the show and it’s not on a channel I prefer. Gone are the days when we bond over shared television series. We’ll never again have a show with as much cultural relevance as Seinfeld or whatever else was popular in the 1990s.

Now let’s talk about the news. Obviously, “the news” has varied from time to time, and it’s very often depressing these days if you’re at all sane. Overindulgence in the media can be harmful to your mental health - that is no secret. But think about this for a moment: When was the last time you saw anyone under age 60 reading a newspaper?

A slide from a presentation I gave a few months ago about how the news used to be, versus how it is now.

I’m not talking about the digital editions of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, or whatever local news outlet is still limping along and breathing like Steve from Amazing Race (if you know, you know). I’m talking about the physical newspaper. The kind that got delivered to your door every day for a small fee.

Now, my mother still gets the Globe, but guess what? She’s 60 years old, and even among people her age, she’s in the minority. My grandmothers also get the physical paper, but they’re obviously much older than sixty. Most people I interact with on a day-to-day basis outside my family get their news from social media. And that’s a problem.

As I write this post, it’s been one week since Donald Trump became President again. Despite being convicted of 34 felony counts, despite having promised to implement tariffs on other countries and tank the economy, and despite Sleepy Joe Biden having dropped out and been replaced by a far more energetic candidate, he still won. In my mind, David Pakman said it best: “Lots of people in this country have no idea what the hell is going on.”

Think about that for a moment. Google searches for terms like “did Joe Biden drop out” reportedly spiked on the day of the election. I don’t know about you, but it was a pretty big news story in my (admittedly liberal) circles. I remember lying on the front porch with COVID, enduring endless coughing fits, when I received the Discord ping that President Biden had withdrawn from the race. 

Once I was no longer testing positive, I joined my family inside to watch Biden’s primetime address from the Oval Office. It was an important occasion, but apparently not for much of the country. That’s because 8 PM is no longer “primetime” for so many people. Instead it’s just another time when you might be watching TV, or, more likely, aimlessly scrolling through social media. 

Many people in the United States are just prisoners of the algorithm. The right-wing echo chambers kept attacking Joe Biden, making the red-hatted Trump supporters think their opponent was the 81-year-old Biden instead of the then 59-year-old Kamala Harris. They were blindsided by their ballots when they discovered their options, because they never learned that Harris had replaced Biden more than three months prior. 

The last thing I’ll address here is the bookstore. Now, even if I’ve been reading a lot lately, I’m well aware that this hobby is falling out of favor among the Generation Alpha crowd. They’d rather play Fortnite for hours on end and watch Skibidi Toilet videos in class.

One reason I prefer to purchase my books from the local bookstore is because I want to support small businesses as opposed to Amazon whenever it’s realistically possible. And yes, I like the human element of entering the building and asking for recommendations from the staff. But there’s an underrated reason why I prefer the physical store.

There’s no algorithm.

If I look up a book on Amazon, there’s always a section on the buy page saying people who bought X also searched for Y, or something to that effect. In the long term, I’ll end up reading largely books of the same genre and similar themes, rather than getting a well-rounded array of titles like I might at the bookstore. Ultimately, if I’m going to keep doing these book reviews in the long term, I want to read a wide variety of novels.

I know this analysis largely comes from an American perspective. Some of the problems I’ve talked about on this blog, such as expensive health care and gun violence, are unique to the United States. And some of the loneliness is brought upon us by car-dependent infrastructure, which is not as pervasive in, say, Western Europe. 

That being said, the U.S. is not the only country where social media algorithms have been deployed. And I’m not even going to say that the algorithms are all bad; there are too many videos on YouTube to know what the average user might like without any data.

However, anyone who values personal interaction should be wary of these algorithms. After all, technology is not neutral, no matter how much we’d like to think it is. 

We Need To Talk About Elon

Elon Musk jumping in the shape of an X onstage at a Trump rally. Image taken from NPR.

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. As of the moment I write this post, his net worth is well over four hundred billion dollars, and it’s rapidly growing to boot. 

To put that into perspective, imagine that you had $400 billion USD. In practical terms, you could never spend all that money in a human lifetime, unless you’re about to become immortal. Which is far from impossible given just how much technology has advanced in recent decades. Even so, that’s an insane amount of money, and Musk is evidently using it to buy the U.S. government.

Given his close alliance with now-President Donald Trump (as much as it pains me to utter those words), Musk has been in the news a lot lately. And, given just how much Trump’s mind has been going over the last few years, Elon Musk is effectively already President of the United States. It doesn’t matter that he’s technically ineligible to be commander in chief - he is Trump’s “puppet master.”

During the “celebrations” surrounding Trump’s inauguration the other day, one moment in particular has captured the Internet’s attention. Given just how taboo the gesture is in a civilized society, I will not put an actual picture of it in this article; to me, it’s equivalent to using the N-word with a hard R. But yes, I am referring to the moment when Elon Musk gestured at the ceiling with his right arm slanted toward the heavens.

The New York Times, in their infinite anticipatory obedience, have described “speculation”  being drawn over the gesture. Quite frankly, I struggled over my decision to even include that link there, because the New York Times has arguably enabled Trump more than any politician. A broken clock is right twice a day. The media is indeed the enemy of the people, because their sane-washing of the MAGA movement helped them return to power.

The other claim I want to address is that Elon Musk, who is autistic, was merely stimming. I want to be clear about one thing: I’m on the autism spectrum myself, and I remember rocking back and forth a lot as a child. Even now, I love rocking chairs and hammocks. These days my stims are mostly vocal, but I do rock and flap on occasion. Sometimes it weirds people out; I get it.

But let me make one thing clear: You don’t make that gesture by accident.

The salute Elon Musk made at the inauguration is one with a very dark past. The people who popularized it were responsible for one of the most horrific events of the last few centuries. The Nazi salute is now associated with the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of other “undesirables” in Europe. And no, another visit to Auschwitz is not going to make us believe Elon isn’t anti-Semitic.

Indeed, Germany, the country whose government spearheaded these atrocities, is now among the most progressive countries on Earth. It’s far more progressive than the United States, at any rate, when it comes to bigotry in all its forms. There are in fact laws against Holocaust denial, and if you make that salute in public, you will probably be arrested. Here, we let Elon get a pass.

I’m not saying Elon Musk is going to commit genocide against six million Americans, but what I am saying is that he knew what gesture he was making, and was happy with how it would be perceived. Or at least, he wasn’t so unhappy that he would decide not to make it. And I know that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists seem to love it.

Another moment I want to touch upon is the one pictured below. It’s from the “Victory Rally” Donald Trump held the night prior to being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.

Donald Trump at his “Victory Rally” on January 19, 2025. Image taken from ABC News’ website.

During this event, Trump claimed that Elon Musk “knows computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we won Pennsylvania by a landslide.” Now, if you call a 1.7% margin of victory a landslide, sure. It was a landslide. It was even enough to narrowly drag former three-term US Senator Bob Casey Jr. under the line. But that’s not the most important moment from this speech.

As much as I hate Elon Musk, he’s an incredibly tech-savvy individual; I’ll give him that. He manipulated the Twitter algorithm to prioritize hateful content, to the point where the site is virtually unusable except by users who love such content. Trump’s right about this.

Yes, on its own, the passage above is a non sequitur. But if you replace “and” with “so” in the last sentence, Trump appeared to state that Musk helped him cheat in the 2024 election and steal Pennsylvania from Kamala Harris.

There are two options here: Either Trump got confused again just like he did about whether or not there were airports in 1776, or he admitted to election fraud. And to be clear, I think the former option is more probable. It’s still not the sort of thing to joke about, even if Trump most likely got every single vote that was counted for him. Then again, Trump won’t tone down the rhetoric, not even when it almost got Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer kidnapped.

The most important thing to note is that Elon Musk is, right now, the most powerful person in the world. He has more power than Trump, Vladimir Putin, or even Xi Jinping. His power may not end with the United States. While I think other countries’ voters are smarter than Americans, only time will tell, and Musk has endorsed far-right parties all over Europe, something German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has acknowledged and condemned.

An image the Democratic Party posted on social media. Where was this energy from Democratss during the election? Image taken from the People’s Party website.

Some people think the bromance between Trump and Musk will be short-lived, that we’ll run into “trouble in paradise” early on in the administration. I hate to say it, but I believe this is likely false.

Remember, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world by far. He might even be a trillionaire in two years. If any Republican member of Congress waffles a bit on Trump’s legislative agenda, Musk has the wealth to single-handedly fund a primary challenger to that disloyal Republican. Even if incumbency is difficult to overcome in a primary, Musk can bully sitting Congresspeople and Senators into submission via the mere threat of a primary. As long as Musk offers that to Trump, I don’t see these two breaking up any time soon.

So what can we do? 

Well, the obvious answer would have been to not elect Donald Trump as President, but that ship has unfortunately sailed. Failing that, it makes sense to boycott the platform Xitter (X/Twitter, pronounced “shitter”) as long as Musk owns it. It’s become a far-right, hateful cesspool that no decent person should support. 

Furthermore, though he’s not quite as evil as Musk, Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, deserves condemnation for blocking his newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. When possible, we should aim to support local retail businesses as opposed to Amazon. All the books I’ve reviewed so far were purchased at small bookstores. To be clear, even if Harris had won, we should still have been doing this - Trump’s policies just make it more urgent.

So if you want to support journalism and book reviews, please consider subscribing to my newsletter. It would mean a lot.

A Rant On American Culture

Facade of the Boston Public Library. I took this photo myself. Aren’t this many flags a bit excessive?

Whenever I rant about the state of the United States and feel like running my fist through a wall or yelling something I’m going to regret, people often claim that “all countries have their problems.” And maybe they do, but I feel like that statement is a cop-out.

 Not only are many problems not unique to a nation, but problems are not equal in their scale or scope. Some flaws in nations are worse than others, but the worst national sin in my opinion is the inability to solve problems when they arise. The thing I hate most about America is that no matter how many people protest in support of a policy that’s taken for granted in another country, nothing ever changes for the better. This stands in stark contrast to other countries, where demonstrations do lead to social change. 

Let’s talk about gun violence first of all. Among wealthy nations, the United States is a major outlier on this issue. The United Kingdom had one school shooting in 1996, the Dunblane massacre, and then they issued a buyback program. Like the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in the United States, an elementary school was targeted. It’s horrific that Dunblane happened at all, but at least something was done, whereas it’s often said Sandy Hook was the end of the gun control debate on this side of the pond.

Australia also had a high-profile mass killing in 1996, the Port Arthur massacre, and then they issued a gun buyback program. Port Arthur, Tasmania was and is a tourist destination, so you might compare this to the Las Vegas shooting in 2017. Nothing was done after Vegas except the banning of bump stocks, which was overturned in 2024 by the Supreme Court. And nothing will ever be done.

Australia’s Royal Flying Doctor Service tending to a patient. For free, as Reddit will love to remind you. Image taken from r/Pics.

Now let’s talk about health care. The United States is famously the only country where health care costs any significant amount of money, to the point where there’s a popular TV series where a man resorts to cooking crystal meth to pay his medical bills. And let’s be real: Just like with gun control, if nothing changed after the COVID-19 pandemic, nothing will ever change. Instead we elected a President who just rescinded Biden’s executive order to make prescription drugs cheaper. So if anything, it will become far worse.

I’ll be honest: I’m a bit of a pessimist by nature, but even I never thought that the loss of over a million people to COVID would have been memory-holed so easily. If we couldn’t make healthcare cheaper, then at least we could maybe not elect the man responsible for those million deaths to hold the highest office in the land again. 

But that’s exactly what we did. We forgot about COVID just like we forgot about mass shootings, only on a far greater scale. That’s how depraved this country is.

And yet, it still gets worse. 

Climate change is upon us. The year 2024 was the hottest year on record globally, and we’re sure breaking a lot of records, aren’t we? The day after the most recent election, it was in the upper seventies in Massachusetts, in November, and I felt like the weather was mocking us for electing Donald Trump.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we elected Donald Trump? He literally just withdrew from the Paris climate accords last night when nobody was watching. In 2017, this was a major spectacle during which Trump gave a laughable speech about having the cleanest air and cleanest water. This time, crickets. The only three other countries that aren’t in the agreement are Iran, Libya, and Yemen. Look at the company we’re keeping - two failed states and a theocratic dictatorship. The best people, the best.

Now, in practical terms, I don’t know how much the Paris agreement matters given that it’s non-binding even for its remaining signatories. Private companies are still reducing their emissions (for now). And let’s be honest, most other countries aren’t doing quite enough either, even if they’re doing far more than the United States in terms of switching to renewable energy. But if nothing else, it’s bad PR for the USA and makes us a major pariah globally. Which we should be. 

Climate disasters are not unique to the United States, but again - they’re doing more to mitigate them elsewhere. As Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and others ramp up their renewable capacity, Los Angeles is ravaged by fires. The most significant U.S. response to these increasingly intense wildfires is a mediocre CBS TV show about conventionally attractive firefighters. Just look at it

Official CBS promotional image for “Fire Country.” Image taken from Kate Hamberger’s website.

In my mind, the biggest problem with the United States is the culture.

When I visited downtown Boston the other day, I walked past the Boston Public Library (pictured at the top of this article). It wasn’t the only building with an American flag on it, and I think that’s really quite telling.

Look at this way: In my mind, if you are American like me, there is nothing to be proud of. This is the worst country in the world, at least in terms of what we do to other countries, and we should be ashamed of our flag. But even in countries that are far greater nations by any objective standard, “flag worship” isn’t a thing to nearly the same extent. Redditors from outside the United States are always very proud to tell you that they hardly ever see their own country’s flag flown, even in front of government buildings. This thread is a great example.

Furthermore, the Pledge of Allegiance is pretty fucked up as well. There’s an American flag in almost every public school classroom, whether its community may be black or white, urban or rural, rich or poor. Every morning, students put their heads on their hearts and face the flag, saying a series of lines about pledging allegiance to the flag. Like, it’s just a piece of fabric! If you saw it in another country, or even in an evangelical church here, you’d probably think it’s a brainwashing ritual.

And yet, in many ways, the United States is like a cult. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, we tell our children stories about how we’re the greatest country in the world. And maybe we were at one point - putting a man on the moon first was pretty neat. But no longer. And if we want to be that great nation again, we need to make it that way.

Now, there’s a famous saying “Your freedom to swing your arms ends in my face”. In other words, you can do whatever you want as long as you’re not harming anyone else. 

If electing Trump only impacted the United States, that would be one thing. I still wouldn’t have voted for him, but it wouldn’t be such a crime against humanity to make Donald Trump President. However, the fact is that we remain among the most powerful and influential nations on Earth (even if we’re not the greatest). Progress against climate change was at stake, as were the nuclear codes amid existing wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere. And that assumes Trump doesn’t start new wars by invading Panama, Greenland, or even Canada.

In other words, it’s going to be a very long four years.

Why Gaming Sucks Now

A Simpsons meme about the gaming industry taken from r/Memes.

Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and all-around tech nerd, popularized the term “enshittification” in November 2022 to describe the decline in the quality of online services over time. I won’t use Doctorow’s own words here, simply because I think my readers want to know what I believe as opposed to what someone else does. If you want to know what Doctorow thinks about enshittification, you should read his blog, not mine.

We’ve all been acquainted with this concept in recent years. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and made it virtually unusable for anyone who’s not a wannabe fascist, the platform has been upheld as an example of decay. In many cases, of course, the enshittification is more gradual than this, but it’s still a big problem. 

It’s not just limited to social media either. These days, whenever you ask a question on Google, there’s an AI search overview for your very question. That’s right: As AI cooks the planet, you’ll receive whatever some higher-up at Google thinks you should see. This really takes the wind out of smaller websites like mine. And sometimes the AI overview isn’t even factually correct! 

Possibly the most infuriating thing about this Google AI is that nobody really asked for it. That being said, you can turn it off with this extension called “Bye-Bye, Google AI”. And no, I’m not sponsored by the developers - I just love their extension.

However, today’s article is not about the Internet, but rather about a medium that’s increasingly tethered to the Internet - video games. It’s been said before, but I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that video games are getting worse. 

Let’s go back to the good old days, the bygone ancient time period we know as the 1980s. Back then, you’d go to the store, find an NES cartridge that looked appealing, and fork over however much money it cost. And the best part? Once you handed over the green stuff, you were done spending money. You just got to enjoy the game.

Nowadays, it’s different. Games have found new ways to get your cash. They’ll make you fork over small pockets of dough at first for a new Fortnite skin, and you’ll think: It’s not so bad, I’m only paying $5 for my character to look like Sonic the Hedgehog. But then you just keep spending, and before long you’ve given them enough dough to start a bakery. Here’s a humorous yet infuriating video about microtransactions.

And that’s before we even talk about DLC! I swear, developers these days have realized they can make more moolah just by releasing the initial game in a half-finished state. On launch day, all too many long-anticipated AAA titles are plagued by numerous glitches and generally don’t work. In the words of Kyle Justin, “they rip you off and don’t care one bit!”

Another aspect of enshittification in the gaming industry is the lack of innovation with new titles. Now, part of that isn’t the fault of developers. At a certain point, there are only so many ideas that can be experimented with, and graphics can’t get more realistic than real life. (Personally, I don’t think a game has to look realistic to have “good graphics” - there’s a reason Okami is considered one of the best games ever made. But that’s just me.)

But I think it speaks to the modern economy that nobody wants to take risks anymore. If a AAA developer has determined that it’s more profitable to pump out endless cookie-cutter titles each year as opposed to coming up with a fresh idea, then they’re going to select the option that nets them more currency. Companies want to make money. In other news, water is wet and the Pope is Catholic.

Anyway, I literally had to search Google (with my AI-disabling extension) for how many Call of Doody: Brown Plops games there were! And guess what? There are six. SIX! And that’s not even counting Modern Garbage. Garbage in, garbage out - that’s the story of the mainstream gaming industry these days.

If the current era of AAA gaming is the Great Depression, indie titles are the New Deal. There’s a reason why so many of the most beloved games of the last decade, like Deltarune, were made without the support of giant, greedy studios. Because small developers have less to lose, they’re willing to take risks and experiment, giving us masterpieces. But the indie scene is struggling in the current economy, and even when it succeeds, there’s plenty of trash. You’ve just gotta find a few gold coins amid the hundreds of Call of Doody: Brown Plops titles - did you really think I was done making fun of that franchise?

Finally, let’s talk about the format of modern games. I want to be clear that not all current games are like this; there are still plenty of story-driven titles being released to critical acclaim. However, let’s be real: ESports scholarships are not going out to players who speedrun games like Okami that have actual plots. 

Instead, today’s biggest hitters include Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege, Hell Divers, and of course Minecraft. None of these games have any story whatsoever. Very often, you’ll need a Battle Pass in order to actually play them, which costs you additional greenbacks. And don’t forget the microtransactions!

A Toy Story meme about microtransactions, taken from the Vulcan Post.

Most games that are widely played by my friends on Discord are online games, matching strangers up against one another based on some Elo system. They’re highly competitive, and I’m not even saying that competition is inherently bad, but some kids take it way too far. I remember being ten years old and getting very frustrated trying to stay above 7,500 VR on Mario Kart Wii, to the point where it was affecting my mental health. I’d either be relieved or frustrated upon finishing a match, and in the latter case all I’d want to do is play again to regain points (or potentially lose more). 

But here’s the striking thing about it: Even if you are massively successful in the game and attain a Platinum rating, nobody cares.

That’s it. Being a master at League of Legends isn’t going to gratify you if you have no friends in real life (COVID and maybe bird flu pandemics notwithstanding), if you don’t read books, and if you don’t take care of your physical and mental well-being. You’re not accomplishing much in the real world other than bragging rights, and nobody who doesn’t play the same mind-numbing online game as you will set any store by it. They likely won’t even know what you’re talking about.

I’m not a particularly religious person, but one thing I’m pretty confident about is that humans were not put on this Earth to sit in front of screens all day raging at some Fortnite griefer from halfway around the world. We’re meant to produce art. We’re meant to connect with people in real life. We’re meant to have real experiences instead of crafting intricate worlds to avoid reality.

I rarely play video games these days. Simply put, it feels like a chore now, and upon spending some time in the StopGaming community on Reddit, I’ve learned even more how addictive it can be. Excessive gaming can destroy lives, in some cases literally, but many people simply can’t play in moderation. 

 I’m not going to say I don’t have my own vices - we all do - but after reading the story of one Cam Adair, I’m very glad I don’t game for hours on end anymore. It just isn’t as fun as it used to be, and there are so many better things I could be doing with my time. You only get so much time on this planet, after all. 

This post was admittedly all over the place at times, but if even one person reads this and decides that they’ll put down the controller, at least for a brief time, and think of something more productive to do (even for just 30 minutes), it’s worth it to me. 

American Idiots

A Pink Floyd meme about double negatives taken from Flickr.

People often say that children are our future. This is in fact the case; today’s children are going to one day be adults, and they will have to keep our society going via the wide variety of jobs that must be done. We will need future doctors, future construction workers, future custodians, future air traffic controllers…you get the idea.

Despite the importance of training current children to be prepared for adult life and the workforce, K-12 teachers are notoriously underpaid, at least in the United States. The average American public school teacher made just under $70,000 during the 2022-23 school year. Maybe it’s more in other countries, but in one of the nations with the most “hard power” globally, this is a crisis.

Teaching has always been a difficult, demanding job, but it’s only become more so in recent years with both the rise of school violence and the increasingly-unhinged school board Karens. It’s gotten a lot worse since 2021 or so…more on that later.

Now, it’s commonly said that the Republican Party wants students to be dumb. If kids don’t know how to think critically, if they have no idea what’s going on, they will vote for the GOP because they don’t know any better. That’s what they say.

For what it’s worth, I agree with that assessment.

As a progressive myself, I agree that education is incredibly important, and that teachers should be paid more. I’m disturbed by the increasing number of school boards that have promoted the teaching of falsehoods like creationism or the idea that systemic racism has never existed in the United States. To be clear, I was only taught about creationism in the context of “here’s what some people think, and here’s the evidence that they’re wrong”, and I graduated high school prior to the critical race theory panic. 

But then again, I live in Massachusetts, considered to have some of the world’s best schools (if you don’t get shot, that is). Forrest Valkai, on the other hand, is from Oklahoma, where the educational standards are more…questionable. This video of Valkai’s, for instance, claims that only 28% of American students are properly taught evolution, which is just insane. If students aren’t even taught basic biology, perhaps it’s no wonder so many adults here deny climate change. 

However, the creation-evolution “controversy” is just the tip of the iceberg. I think even a lot of progressives, who by and large value education, don’t fully appreciate the crisis that’s barreling toward us like one of Japan’s bullet trains.

First, let’s talk about the dumbing down of educational curricula. I graduated from a pretty small high school in 2019. In 11th grade, we read classic American novels like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Grapes of Wrath. They’re considered contenders, in fact, for the title of Great American Novel, and even if you don’t personally enjoy them, you can appreciate that they’re well-written and contain complex themes. 

In 12th grade, my English course was about British literature. I had to read Pride and Prejudice and conduct a research project on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. During both my junior and senior years of high school, there was a lot of writing involved, as should be expected of a course on literature. Even beyond what my educational institution required of me, I started writing fanfiction around my sixteenth birthday and continued off and on for a number of years. 

The point is, I knew how to write. And the sad truth is, lots of kids these days don’t.

More than that, however, is the fact that today’s students don’t even know how to read. According to this piece on the Education Trust website, the “nation’s report card” found that less than half of U.S. fourth-graders (43%, to be exact) scored at or above a proficient level in reading. For what it’s worth, this number was considerably lower for students of color or those with disabilities; given the aforementioned systemic racism, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Author Jeff Kinney with Pope Francis, who is reading one of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books. Image taken from the Wall Street Journal.

One of America’s foremost literacy advocates these days is Jeff Kinney, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Given that those books aren’t the most intellectually stimulating fare out there, Kinney may appear an unlikely face of this movement. But he apparently runs his own bookstore, and the efforts of Kinney, a practicing Catholic, even caught the attention of Pope Francis some years ago.

Even though my brother and I are both in our mid-twenties, we still think Wimpy Kid is the funniest shit ever. It’s basically a realistic dystopia told in the most hilarious way possible. And hey, if it gets today’s children reading, then that’s awesome.

However, Kinney himself stated in a 2018 BBC interview that he “couldn’t get his kids off Fortnite”. He was able to save other peoples’ children from the brain-rot, but not his own. And indeed, Fortnite, theoretically one of the most addictive video games ever developed, is not the only obstacle to making kids read.

There’s also TikTok. Earlier today as I write this, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the social media platform could be banned in the United States. To be clear, this is a worrying case of censorship, and something else will fill the void of brain-rot like Skibidi Toilet or whatnot. 

That being said, I’m not going to shed too many tears for TikTok, because it’s a cancer on society. There’s plenty of evidence that it’s reduced the average attention span, which makes sense considering how that platform really emphasizes instant gratification and entertainment. 

And hey, I get it - I’m autistic. I still adore rocking chairs and hammocks. Even now, I need stimulation sometimes; it just takes the form of vocal stims and off-key singing these days. But we need to be able to tolerate boredom sometimes, something I’ve learned the hard way all too often. Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, a time period during which many of us were on our screens constantly.

Now let’s talk about the horrifying implications of declining attention spans and dramatically reduced academic performance. 

Imagine a world where a heart surgeon needs to consult ChatGPT in order to know how to perform a bypass operation. Imagine an architect who’s unaware which construction materials are most resistant to hurricanes, an ever-increasing threat in an age of climate crisis. Imagine a shortage of pilots because students can’t study for their exams. 

And picture a world where there aren’t nearly enough teachers to instill a work ethic in modern children. Given the difficulties and dangers I’ve highlighted above, I don’t blame any individual for not wanting to go into the field of education. However, someone’s gotta do it. 

Ultimately, this is why I read. Yes, it keeps me from doomscrolling and gives me something to do whenever I just want to run my fist through a wall at Trump’s threats to invade Canada or Greenland. 

But I also want to keep my mind sharp and resist the brain-rot. I’m going to maintain my intellectual curiosity and academic integrity, because the alternative is that society will get…

Movie poster for “Dumb and Dumber.” Image taken from eBay.

There Is No Bottom

As of the time of writing this, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has announced that she will vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense. This is a big shoe dropping in favor of Hegseth’s confirmation, because Ernst, a veteran and sexual assault survivor herself, was viewed as one of the Republicans who might have voted against him. Given this endorsement, it appears almost certain that Hegseth will be confirmed.

Let’s talk about Pete Hegseth. In my mind, I see him as evidence that Trump’s second term is going to be far more unhinged than the first. However you felt about Jim Mattis, Trump’s first Secretary of Defense, he was at least qualified for the job as a former four-star general. By contrast, Hegseth holds no qualifications other than being a Fox News host who looks good on TV; besides loyalty, that is perhaps what Donald Trump values most of all in his Cabinet.

Additionally, Hegseth faces numerous allegations of impropriety. According to this Democracy Now article, he has been accused of sexual misconduct and drunkenness at work. He’s also made statements disparaging women and LGBTQ+ people who serve in the military. Now, I’m not a big fan of the military anyway, and if there’s anything good that comes out of Hegseth’s impending confirmation, it’s that he’ll bring to light how rotten the U.S. military is as an institution. 

But the fact remains that he’ll almost assuredly be Secretary of Defense, and he might well order the military to fire on peaceful protestors. That’s the whole point of firing civil servants who voted for Kamala Harris and putting in Project 2025. Trump told us exactly what he was going to do, and all too many of us thought he was the lesser evil. If Trump truly wants to invade Canada and make our northern neighbor the 51st state, do you think Pete Hegseth will stand in his way? 

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that Ernst would vote for Hegseth despite her past. Every Senator had to evacuate the U.S. Capitol on January 6 when a mob violently stormed the building and tried to have them murdered. Not only did the man who incited that mob not get any jail time, he was elected President again and will be able to pass his agenda with the full support of his party. It’s a cult, led by a senile criminally-liable rapist who used to be a Z-list celebrity.

Hegseth isn’t the only horrendous Trump nominee who’s almost guaranteed to be confirmed. There is also Robert F. Kennedy Jr., last seen threatening to spoil the election against Kamala Harris due to being on the ballot in many swing states. He’s now been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite being an anti-vaxxer whose rhetoric led to a measles outbreak in Samoa.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, RFK Jr. stated that he would not take away anyone’s vaccines. He would not seek to ban immunizations - it was a matter of choice. However, given how the last decade has gone, how the “doomers” have been right more often than they have been wrong, I can’t help but think of this example:

Donald Trump announces Brett Kavanaugh as his Supreme Court nominee in 2018. Image taken from the PBS News website.

That’s right. During their confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Injustices Gorey Gorsuch, Gang Bang Brett, and the Contagious ACB all insisted that Roe v. Wade was settled law. They claimed they would not vote to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

Well, guess what? They did. In 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, meaning that these same three Injustices committed perjury. Because of our archaic Constitution that designates the nine Supreme Court members as basically imperial overlords, there’s no way to hold them accountable. And since they ruled that Trump was above the law and could do whatever he wanted in office, there’s no way to hold him accountable either.

So here’s what’s most likely going to happen. During his confirmation hearings, RFK Jr. will “assure” Republican Senators that he isn’t going to ban vaccines. The GOP Senators who were previously on the fence will claim to believe him, and they will vote to confirm an anti-vaccine activist to head the HHS Department. Make no mistake: Even if bird flu doesn’t turn into a global pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, there will be plenty of vaccine-preventable illnesses and deaths as a result. When that happens, Susan Collins will feign surprise, making the face below when Kennedy does, in fact, ban vaccines and bring polio back.

“Surprised Pikachu” meme. Image taken from WIRED.

As horrendous as these policies are, however, I see no incentive for the GOP members of Congress to resist.

Now, let me clarify what I mean by that. I don’t say this because I lack conviction that vaccines are safe and essential, or that the Department of Defense must be run by someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. Rather, I mean that there’s no political incentive for people like Senator Joni Ernst to vote down these Cabinet picks.

Have you ever wondered why there haven’t been nearly the mass protests that there were after Trump’s first election? Well, other than the Kyle Rittenhouse precedent stating that you can shoot demonstrators in cold blood and literally get away with murder, Trump won the popular vote this time. He’s been normalized.

Yes, had Harris won the election, Trump would still have gotten 45% of the vote at minimum due to how polarized the country has become. However, the fact that more people voted for Trump than Harris means that people are less viscerally angry at the election being “unfair.” And as much as I hate Donald Trump, he did not steal the 2024 election. He won it fair and square, and that’s the worst part of all.

So no. The GOP Congress is not going to vote against any of Trump’s agenda, even if he tries to invade Canada. The American public has voted that there should be no limits to his power, and they voted for members of Congress who believe the same. 

It’s too fucking late. The GOP is going to do what they will, and the American people are going to suffer what we must. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

My Favorite Songs: “Big Red Gun” by Billy Talent

Cover art for Billy Talent’s “Big Red Gun.” Image taken from Spotify.

Billy Talent, a musical quartet hailing from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (the city that looks like a giant office park from the air), have been one of my favorite bands for several years. And yes, in this case, several does mean seven - long live David Jelinsky!

In all seriousness, Billy Talent’s lyrics very often tackle difficult topics. They’ve got tunes about unrequited love, trophy wives, and plenty of political songs in case you weren’t sure if they were a punk band or not. One of their most aggressive songs is the first track off their 2016 album Afraid of Heights, which is titled “Big Red Gun.”

If you care to listen to the lyrics as you read this blog post, make sure you have headphones. The song is very loud, and you don’t want any passers-by to get the wrong idea if they hear you listening to it. Especially if you live in America. 

Brothers in arms who share my fears,

Time to protect what you hold dear.

This line refers to the “camaraderie” between gun owners, particularly those who are in the National Rifle Association. To be clear, polling in recent years has suggested that even a majority of gun owners support gun control , but Billy Talent was obviously aiming for a caricature. And who can blame them? Second Amendment fanatics claim to own firearms for protection despite research suggesting that these weapons are more likely to kill a friend or family member than an intruder.

There's been a rise in new ideals,

Threatening to change the way we live.

This is how the “Second Amendment People” react to any attempt to tighten America’s gun laws. In reality, there hasn’t really been a rise in “new ideals”, because the gun control debate ended when nothing was done after Sandy Hook. I’ve said it before, but if you were going to write about a fictional event that would make Americans support gun control, you couldn’t do much “better” than Sandy Hook. Instead people embraced conspiracy theories and ensured that nothing would ever be done.

Who knows what trouble's found a way,

Found a way to your door today?

Who knows what trouble's on its way,

On its way to intimidate?

The Republican Party always loves to push a bogeyman, because that’s the main way they win (besides voter suppression, that is). In 2018 it was the migrant caravan that mysteriously vanished after that year’s midterm election. Actually, migrants from the southern border with Mexico are always a scapegoat. Because you can never know what’s going to come next, it’s best to have a gun at all times. At least, that’s what they say.

All I want is a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

I'm gonna shoot, shoot, shoot at the setting sun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

And all I want is a big red gun,

I'm gonna shoot, shoot, shoot 'till the thrill is gone!

This is the first part of the song’s chorus, which brings to mind a Western film in which an outlaw fires a pistol at the approaching dusk. I mean, that’s literally what the narrator says he’ll do. The narrator isn’t using his gun for any practical purpose either (not that they’re good for anything but hunting and killing) - he’s just firing away for the fun of it. This fits in with the gun culture we see in the United States; I mean, a sitting Congresswoman used to own a restaurant where “open carry” has nothing to do with takeout. It’s totally cringe-worthy.

'Cause this is my right no matter the cost.

Get outta my sight when baby's got a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

Baby's got a big red gun!

(Oh, yeah, yeah, oh)

It doesn’t matter whether the shootings happen at a concert, a nightclub, a university, an elementary school, or a house of worship. Second Amendment fanatics keep insisting that it’s their right to own weapons of war, no matter how many people must die in places that are supposed to be safe. In terms of the “baby” line, we keep hearing those stories of 2-year-olds who accidentally shoot themselves with their parents’ weapons. And then there’s Congressman Thomas Massie’s infamous Christmas card.

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) posing with his family and their weapons for a Christmas card. Image taken from the BBC News website.

Pride is a weapon in your hand.

Freedom awards the faithful man.

I hear the message loud and clear,

Straight from his lips into my ear.

And lord I just can't walk away,

Walk away from the enemy.

The law will never disagree,

On the target of my insecurities.

We constantly hear about how proud gun owners are to be gun owners; this is hardly ground-breaking. “Freedom awards the faithful man”...yeah, well, I want to be able to walk around in public without the fear of being randomly shot. The part of this verse that resonates most with me is “the law will never disagree on the target of my insecurities”. The narrator of this song wants a big red gun so that he feels strong and powerful. No matter how high-caliber his weapon may be, however, he’s still just a pathetic, insecure human being who wants to project bravado.

We call them twisted and deranged,

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

But we gave them the keys to annihilate!

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

How long before the next one's in the ground?

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

After every high-profile mass shooting, the right-wing calls the perpetrator a twisted, deranged man (because it’s almost always a man). However, the pro-gun policies pushed by a certain political group ensured that this twisted, deranged man had access to the assault weapon of his choice to mow down many people at once. How long before the next one’s in the ground? Well, probably less than a day.

So proud of all your history,

But history made a big mistake.

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

The judge and jury stand before you now.

(Baby's got a big red gun!)

The United States Constitution, which the right-wing loves to extoll even as they trample all over parts of it (like the Fourteenth Amendment, the one that prohibits those who have incited insurrection from holding political office), is notoriously difficult to change. This stands in stark contrast to countries like France, where the Constitution is a living document that changes with the times when it’s warranted. If I had to guess, I think it’ll be at least fifty years before the Democrats and Republicans agree on something important enough to warrant another amendment.

Furthermore, the people who wrote the Second Amendment also believed that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and that it was okay to own black people as property. We shouldn’t treat what they say as gospel, and yet our archaic “legal” system ensures that it will forever be that way. What a sick, depraved country we are.

'Cause baby's got a big red gun!

Baby's got a big red gun!

Baby's got a big red gun!

Oh Momma what have I become?

That last line is just perfect. When various other countries have issued travel warnings against you, when your society has very little internal trust at all, and every community is touched by gun violence at some point, there’s only one question that really needs to be asked: What have we become? What sick, twisted society allows schoolchildren to be slaughtered in their classrooms? Do we really have any moral high ground to criticize any other nation?

I don’t think so. The United States is the worst country in the world, and that’s why Billy Talent’s “Big Red Gun” is an amazing song.

Comparison Is The Enemy of Joy

There are many things I do that I really shouldn’t. To some extent, it’s normal to be caught up in vices - it’s the reason the city of Las Vegas even exists.

However, I also believe it needs to be said that not all of these vices are healthy to engage in. One of them is related to a term that’s become quite commonplace in the age of the Internet. To be sure, social media has significantly popularized any term that consists of an abbreviation, but FOMO is especially potent.

FOMO, an acronym for Fear Of Missing Out, is very often exacerbated by seeing someone on a social platform, particularly a figure you may look up to, doing something you wish you could be doing as well.

I’ll give an example. As of the time of writing this, I’d just finished a wonderful morning of skiing with my father. We’d each enjoyed a bowl of the most delicious ramen I’ve ever had outside of Japan. And I mean it - that stuff tastes like it was made with fresh ingredients, not the packaged shit loaded with sodium that is so often seen in the States. 

However, once I had the chance to check Discord again on my phone, I opened said app. And that’s when the pang of FOMO hit me right between the eyes.

A friend of mine, whose username I will not print here (and whose real name I don’t know) had completed a very popular, and incredibly thought-provoking, fanfiction. They’d been working on it for several years (several meaning seven), and I couldn’t help but feel proud of them. 

Indeed, I was damn happy for them. If you’ve never worked on a long-term project like that, you can probably never appreciate just how rewarding it is to mark it as complete. To some extent, I don’t even know how it feels.

But the fact remains that besides being pleased, I also felt extremely jealous of this friend. I wish I could say that I’d been able to commit to a fanfiction like that and chisel away at it over a period of months to years. Indeed, I’ve abandoned more stories than I care to count, so to see someone hang up a trophy of having completed something that major…well, it certainly promotes FOMO.

Beyond the realm of fanfiction, FOMO can manifest in many other ways. As a terminally online young man, I spent more time on social media than, again, I care to admit. And it’s very common for me to see someone on vacation somewhere that I’d really like to visit, and that’s like a FOMO Factory.

The other aspect of FOMO that can be very toxic is when it makes me want to compare myself to others. Objectively speaking, I have a family that loves me (and I love them back). I’m in relatively good health, and I live in a decently affluent metropolitan area. I recently graduated magna cum laude from a moderately selective university, and I’m applying to graduate school to start this coming fall. From that standpoint, I should be a very happy person.

And yet, the Internet has ruined my mental health. Whenever I log onto Reddit, I constantly get bombarded by news that the sky is falling. Now, I’m not going to say everything is amazing - I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna, because it isn’t productive. 

After all, the second-largest city in one of the world’s most powerful countries is currently on fire. That same country recently elected a convicted felon who claims not to believe in climate change to be its President. Not only that, but the same convicted felon has been threatening to invade a country that’s long been allies with the United States. There are many other reasons Donald Trump should not have been elected, of course - the above is not an exhaustive list.

So no. Not everything is okay, and I think we need to be talking about how not okay the world is. That being said, spending 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, online is never good for anyone’s mental health, least of all mine. The line I should be a very happy person resonates with me today more than ever, as I fly home from my recent vacation in Colorado.

Speaking of comparison, let’s talk about Reddit. Every so often, there’s a post on the Pics subreddit about Australia’s third-largest airline, which is apparently the Royal Flying Doctors of Australia. The caption for that article is invariably that this “airline” has never charged a passenger throughout its nearly 100-year history. And invariably, this is meant as a dig at the United States, which famously does not have universal health insurance.

Australia’s Royal Flying Doctor Service treating a patient in a remote part of the country. Image taken from r/Pics.

Again, I’m not going to minimize the hell many people in this country go through as a result of the health insurance industry. It is a barbaric, for-profit system that deserves all the condemnation it gets online and in real life. The way many Redditors have reacted to the recent assassination of Brian Thompson at the hands of Luigi Mangione has only highlighted this system further.

A wise man once told me that comparison is the thief of joy. There are only two emotions it can result in. You might be smug if you believe you’re superior to someone else, or you might feel inadequate if you believe you’re inferior. 

Okay, I’ll admit it - that wise man is my father.

In all seriousness, one question that frequently comes up is this: If Americans are all so upset at the lack of universal health insurance, why aren’t there any mass protests? Those who have never lived in the United States probably don’t understand why we haven’t burned the whole country to the ground over this issue, and truth be told, sometimes I don’t either.

That being said, I live in Massachusetts, which is by any objective standard a pretty good place to live. At least, for now. On the Human Development Index, Massachusetts would be tied for fourth place with Hong Kong as of 2022. Only Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland are considered more “developed” than Massachusetts by this metric. Maybe I should identify more with my state than my country.

But let’s get back to the point. I constantly wish I lived in a country I could be proud to call myself part of. National pride is not the only thing that matters in life, of course, and by the standards of most people throughout human history, I have it good. It’s mostly the Internet that has convinced me otherwise.

For now, I have my family. I might still have a bright future even if my country doesn’t. But I’m just sick of constantly being made fun of online and feeling responsible for the hell Donald Trump is about to unleash.

Those two facts will go to war at some point, and I know which side I’d rather see emerge victorious.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Early Winter Chapter 1

I figured that as long as I was paying for this domain, I might as well host my new story here as well. I’ll do my best to finish this one. Word count of Chapter 1 is 2,196.

Evening had arrived in the Wellesley household, and the home’s middle-aged man and woman (who made up both halves of a perfectly Biblical marriage) had settled in for the news broadcast.

Now, when I say news broadcast, most people will likely picture a mainstream channel with those annoying talking heads who try to normalize everything the President says. After all, that President gave the media their highest ratings of all time, so why wouldn’t CNN et al be in the tank for him?

However, Mr. and Mrs. Wellesley were far from satisfied by the mainstream media. Even Fox News, which some might call a “gateway drug” to the greater “patriotism” of other channels, was not sufficient. Instead, the farmers from rural Alabama sat on their ratty old sofa, Mr. Wellesley downing a Miller Lite every ten minutes.

“When is Weldworth going to get to the good part, dammit!” Mr. Wellesley barked, banging his fist against the arm of the sofa. “We pay good money for our cable package!”

“Dad, nobody watches cable anymore,” their daughter, Rosemary, pointed out quietly.

“Clearly not nobody, because we do” Mr. Wellesley replied. “But we’re not going to be sheep. We’re not followers. Just because the rest of the world is switching to streaming doesn’t mean we have to.”

“But you’d save money doing it” Adam, the couple’s son, piped up. “If we didn’t have to spend so much money for the sake of a few channels we never use, we could…”.

Mrs. Wellesley clicked her tongue. “That doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Again, there’s a reason we don’t conform to this world. That’s because this world is not the goal for any of us.”

Adam sighed quietly. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d been born on the wrong planet. Whenever his parents mentioned that all they wanted to do was worship Jesus Christ for all eternity, Adam wanted to roll his eyes.

“Oh, there we are!” Mr. Wellesley exclaimed in between chugs of beer. “Here he comes!”

A man (who was probably on the wrong side of middle age) appeared on screen. His hair stuck straight up as though he enjoyed sticking his fingers in light sockets, and he gave what many of Adam’s classmates would have called a “shit-eating grin.”

Not that I’d ever be allowed to use such language.

“Good evening, America!” the anchor announced. “My name is Charles ‘Upchuck’ Weldworth, and let me tell you - you’ve been chucked!”

That was the craziest thing about OAN. It wasn’t just that Weldworth and the other talking heads parroted such insane conspiracy theories. Rather, it was that these people seemed to have no self-awareness whatsoever. Who the hell calls themselves “Upchuck” and doesn’t expect to be totally ridiculed?

“You see, today’s the first day of the new presidency! And it’s a new morning in America! Some would even say it’s an American sunrise, isn’t it?”

Mr. and Mrs. Wellesley gave massive whoops, the former smiling even more widely than the man on screen. By contrast, neither of their children betrayed any such amusement.

“That’s right! After four years of stagflation under President Fiddlesticks, that demented old man who can’t keep from shitting himself, we’re seeing a resurgence in national pride! All over the world, from the Netherlands to the Philippines, America’s being respected again!”

Ugh. If only.

“I’m happy I’m not drinking Bud Light!” Mr. Wellesley announced proudly. “I would never spend a cent on that woke beer!”

“What if someone else bought it for you, then asked you to drink it?” his wife enquired.

“Then I’d shove it up their ass and tell them it’s a conspiracy! That’s because it is! The woke liberals are a disgrace to this country, they are the enemy of the people, and they deserve nothing but hell!”

Upchuck Weldworth cleared his throat. “Now it’s time to play a glorious song that reminds us just how lucky we are. We live in America, the greatest country in the history of the world, and that’s a damn fact!

“So now let’s stand for what might as well be our national anthem - ‘The Chosen One’ by Natasha Owens!”

The room in which Weldworth stood vanished from the screen, to be replaced by a music video featuring the newly elected President of the United States. 

As Adam listened to the song, he struggled to hold back his recent dinner of grits and country ham. The song started by clarifying that the new President was not something divine, even if he got in trouble “bigly” on regular occasions. Even if he was controversial, the song alleged, a perfect God could use people who were anything but for His purposes.

Couldn’t God have picked anyone else besides a convicted felon? Like, LITERALLY ANYBODY ELSE?

“That’s right!” Mr. Wellesley barked. “Our new President is in fact the chosen one!”

The scene then shifted to an image of those people whom the singer claimed were persecuting the President. Apparently the nation was under attack from the southern border, and Andreas Fiddlesticks hadn’t been the real President during his tenure. 

In other words, the song was what Adam’s classmates would have called “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”, except that Cocoa Puffs were considered too “woke” for the Wellesley children to consume. Adam wanted to chuck a remote at the TV, but he knew that doing so would lead to a punishment of Biblical proportions (no pun intended).

Rosemary sighed. “This song is insane!”

Mrs. Wellesley turned to her daughter. “Rosemary, that is blasphemy. The President is the chosen one, and there’s no doubt about that. He won, and you know it.”

“Yes, he did win,” Rosemary replied. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

“Shut up!” her father exclaimed, and that’s when Adam knew there would be hell to pay. When Mr. Wellesley got angry, he thrust himself into a fit of blind rage, sometimes to the point where he’d yell incoherently at the sky. 

“But you’re not supposed to say that…”.

“I can say whatever the hell I want, Rosemary! Unlike how this country would be if the Democrats had been allowed to steal the election, we have freedom of speech! Besides, I bet the next thing I know, you’re going to rant and rave about Pokémon cards…”.

Adam frowned. “I wasn’t going to mention them.”

“Don’t interrupt your sister, Adam!” Mr. Wellesley bellowed, downing another couple swig of beer. “What truly matters is that kids these days are being brainwashed!”

“For once, I agree with your father” Mrs. Wellesley continued.

“For once?” Maybe you two aren’t as compatible as you might have thought when you got hitched in Vegas. It’s almost as if a few drinks over a poker table isn’t enough to know whether a marriage will last.

“Pokémon cards are Satanic” Mr. Wellesley proclaimed. “They are of the devil. And as much as that company Nintendo loves to pretend that they are exclusive, do you know what’s truly exclusive and invaluable?”

Neither Adam nor Rosemary needed to offer a response. It was light-years beyond obvious what their father would say next.

“Your eternal souls, children. Your God-given eternal souls are more important than ephemeral fantasies like Pokémon. For all I know, you’ll both want to turn into Pokémon one day, and then our society will really go down the tubes.”

It was then that Adam remembered an old story he’d once heard about the boy who cried wolf. It pertained to a boy who worked on a farm and “joked” about there being wolves when there weren’t any, which ultimately meant that the shepherds didn’t believe him when he spoke the truth later. In other words: If you gain a reputation for being a liar, don’t be surprised if nobody takes you seriously anymore.

Much like the farmhand in that ancient fable, every time Mr. Wellesley announced that America’s youth were heading for pure degeneracy, Adam had learned to take it with a grain of salt. Of course, given whom his parents had voted for in the most recent election, perhaps it was the older generation that had lost its way.

“I need a break from this” Adam announced, stepping up from an armchair that had seen better days.

“No way!” his mother exclaimed. “Evening is OAN Family TV Time™, and you can’t skip it! Don’t you support family values, like spending time together?”

Adam would have loved to lecture his parents about “family values” right then and there, but he knew it would get him nowhere. Besides, he truly did not want to spend another minute in the presence of these zealots who were supposed to be his parents.

“I’m just going for a walk,” Adam insisted. “I’ll be back before bedtime.”

“But what if a migrant from the southern border comes to our farm and kidnaps you?” Mr. Wellesley asked. “That’s far more likely to happen at night, and if it does come to pass, the police won’t be able to help you.”

“Dad, we live on a farm, with a giant fence. I’m sure I’ll be safe.”

Before his parents could object any further, Adam stepped out into the January evening. The night air was chilly, even in the Deep South, and the boy could almost see his own breath in the automatic light.

He had no destination in mind at first. However, his legs seemed to move on autopilot, propelling him forward on his way to the stables. 

It was Adam’s job to clean the stables every day, no matter how filthy they may have become. Consequently, he’d basically grown numb to the smell of manure, not to mention the way the hay and dust tickled his nose. Just like any other uncomfortable situation, exposure was the way you grew accustomed to it.

Opening the stable’s doors, Adam was struck by just how different it was compared to his living room. Yes, he might have resided in that house with his parents and sister, but in his mind, the stables were truly home.

One of the horses, a Palomino named Jack, stood in the corner of the stables, whinnying uncomfortably as he saw Adam approach.

“I’m not going to hurt you, pal,” Adam insisted. 

Jack paused, sizing up the boy for the moment. Then, the horse seemed to smile.

“I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Adam need not have clarified this again, because the horse visibly calmed down after that. Jack gestured at his designated area, which contained numerous strands of hay strewn all over the ground.

“It was a rough day,” Adam admitted. “Mom and Dad…well, you know how they are.”

This was a common occurrence. Whenever Adam spent time alone with the horses, he liked to speak to them. It didn’t matter that the animals couldn’t speak English (or any other language the boy would be able to recognize). Something about the horses’ demeanor made Adam feel like they understood him more than his parents.

They probably think I’m mentally ill. And maybe I am. But I’m going to do what feels good, in the words of one of my favorite musicians.

“They were watching Upchuck Weldworth on TV. Honestly, that show makes me want to upchuck, because that man’s just so insane. He keeps talking about mental institutions being emptied out into the country. I would literally go nuts if I had to watch another few minutes of that stuff.” (Adam was careful not to use the word shit, because he worried it might make Jack feel disrespected).

“They probably think I belong in one of those institutions” Adam continued. “They think I’m crazy, even if the actual word is neurodivergent. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.”

Jack sighed, a very loud noise that a city slicker would have been alarmed by. To a farm boy like Adam, however, it was the sort of sound one could fall asleep to.

“I might spend the night here if you don’t mind.”

The horse didn’t seem to object, not that he could use anything resembling words. A slight whinny was all it took for Adam to be convinced the answer was yes.

Adam selected a bed of hay just outside Jack’s designated area. Unless the horses decided to make a break for it in the middle of the night, the boy had no reason to fear getting trampled. And if that did happen (which there was no reason to think it would), his parents would have far greater problems on their hands.

As he curled up into the fetal position, Adam tried to forget the indignity of what he and his sister had been forced to watch with their parents. He tried to forget how infuriating he found his mother’s homeschool curriculum, which included fresh venom each day. And he tried to forget the notion that God above wanted him to suffer.

Maybe there’s still Something out there, the boy told himself. Maybe It’s not so judgmental as my parents want me to believe It is. And maybe there’s still hope for an oddball like me.

Little did Adam know, however, that when he woke up, everything would be very different.

Internet vs. Information

In the grand scheme of things, there was a time not long ago when you would get your news from the paper. You would subscribe to your local media outlet for a small fee, and the newspaper would be delivered to your door. You could rest assured that the articles you read were of the highest possible journalistic standards - they were in the New York Times, after all!

Nowadays, it’s a little different. The Internet, particularly social media, has fundamentally altered the way we consume our information. For instance, the barrier to posting something that could be considered “news” is far lower than it used to be. Instead of going to journalism school and earning your place on an editorial board, all you have to do is make an account on whatever social media site you desire and repost an article to your followers.

A screenshot from a presentation I gave in October 2024 about the impact of the Internet on news.

The Internet has jeopardized the ability of newspapers to remain competitive. After all, you have the latest news at your fingertips that costs you nothing financially (though it may cost you your mental health). In fact, more than a quarter of U.S. news outlets that existed in 2005 had shut down by 2022. This has been linked to an increase in political polarization, because it focuses most coverage on national news. 

Anecdotally, while I like to think I pay a lot of attention to news in the United States (because I’m terminally online), I barely know what’s going on in my own city. That’s a pretty damning indictment of the mainstream media, isn’t it? 

Let me expand on the topic of polarization with an example. Let’s take Jon Tester, who, as of the day I’m posting this, is no longer a United States Senator from Montana. Tester, a Democrat who served three terms in the upper chamber, was first elected against a scandal-plagued incumbent in 2006, back when scandals still mattered electorally for Republican candidates. Nowadays, we’re all numb to this shit.

In 2012, even when Mitt Romney carried Montana by more than 13 percentage points, Tester was able to win reelection by focusing on his own accomplishments. Because local media in Montana was far more robust than it is now, people who voted Republican for President that year were more aware of a reason why they might vote for Tester on the same ticket. He presented himself as a hard-working dirt farmer who could resonate with his state’s voters.

Former U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) working on his farm. Image taken from Tester’s Wikipedia article.

Tester sought a fourth term in 2024. By that time, as this July 2024 article from The Nation points out, local media in Montana had significantly withered away. These small outlets, which would previously devote considerable time to discussing Tester’s accomplishments on veterans’ affairs or public land conservation, in many cases no longer exist. They’ve been replaced by talk radio or Fox News, which were all too eager to remind voters that Tester was a Democrat, and that anyone who votes for Trump should also vote against Tester. 

It didn’t matter that his opponent, Tim Sheehy, lied about shooting himself in a national park. It didn’t matter that Sheehy made highly offensive remarks about Native Americans. Many Trump voters in Montana didn’t know Sheehy had done those things, or else they didn’t care. And Tester lost by just over 7 percentage points. 

Of course, the Montana Senate race was not the only election impacted by the decline in local media. All over the country, millions of voters had no idea what the hell was going on. To provide a particularly egregious example, searches for “did Joe Biden drop out” skyrocketed in swing states on November 5.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I remember watching the June 27 presidential debate with my mother and my terminally ill Bouvier des Flanders. I remember watching Biden struggle over his words, and I remember the existential dread I felt as I saw Trump tell horrendous lie after horrendous lie, and Biden let him get away with it. 

When July 21 came around, I was on my couch on the front porch, isolating myself from the rest of my family because I’d tested positive for COVID. I was talking on a Discord server when I got a ping from a mod, stating that Biden had indeed dropped out. Sure enough, the 46th President had released a statement and all that.

Joe Biden’s letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election. Image taken from the New York Times.

After Trump won the November 5 general election, I was not only shocked and disgusted, but I was also baffled. How could so many people not know that Biden had withdrawn from the race? It was one of the biggest news stories of the year, capping off a chaotic 24 days in American politics! And yet, so many people didn’t know it had happened.

It gets worse than that. Inflation is commonly cited as a reason why Biden was so unpopular - people were willing to vote for fascism just because eggs were a couple cents more expensive. But inflation was far worse in Europe, in large part because that continent has suffered more economic impacts from the war in Ukraine. And yet in most European countries, Trump would be lucky to get 10% of the vote, if he were allowed to run at all!

I could go on and on about how uninformed so many people in this country are. In fact, the Google search trends in the days following the election speak for themselves. And of course, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter (which I now call Xitter, pronounced “shitter”) hasn’t exactly helped matters. He’s altered the algorithm to promote right-wing, hateful content above all else, and I recommend anyone who values humanity to jump ship to BlueSky.

However, I hope I’ve demonstrated that the Internet is part of the problem. It’s somewhat ironic, too. Twenty or so years ago, the general consensus even among academia was that the Internet, this superhighway of information that could document the sum total of all human knowledge, would all but negate the propagation of conspiracy theories and falsehoods. Surely nobody could go on believing that the Earth was flat, or that climate change was a hoax, or that nobody died at Sandy Hook, when there was so much publicly available evidence to the contrary.

It feels as though we’ve opened Pandora’s Box, but all hope is not yet lost. We have to accept, however, that the mainstream media (not to mention social media) isn’t going to save us. Given that much of the mainstream media is already bowing down to Trump in advance, we have to do it ourselves.

That’s where I come in. The main reason I continue to maintain this blog is because journalism is an essential resource even now. We can still use digital technologies for good, but we need to understand that the Internet has been part of the problem just as much as it’s been part of the solution. 

That’s why I urge you all to subscribe to my newsletter and spread the word. Thank you.

Why I Support NEIC

Unofficial flag of New England.

New England is that six-state region in the northeastern corner of the United States. It’s clearly defined as consisting of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is the region I’ve called home for all but one year of my life, and it’s somewhat different from the rest of the country.

The population of New England, as of the 2020 census, was about 15.1 million, spread out over an area of about 72,000 square miles, meaning that the population density is roughly 210 people per square mile. That’s more than enough for a functioning country, and in fact many of the world’s most prosperous nations (such as the Nordics) have fewer people than that. 

As for the geography, it’s also relatively diverse. Far from being one big forest, the region also contains some of the country’s best beaches (even if the water isn’t nearly as warm as in the hellhole known as Florida), as well as mountains that reach a peak of over 6,000 feet above mean sea level. The cuisine is also varied, from lobster rolls to clam chowder to cranberry products.

Of course, there are also cities such as Boston, known as one of the most innovative and progressive cities in the United States. That’s why the state of Massachusetts has a Human Development Index of 0.956. As of 2022, if it were an independent nation, Massachusetts would be tied for 4th in HDI with Hong Kong. Only Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland would rank higher.

As nice as it is in New England, however, we can’t escape the fact that New England is part of the United States. This country elected Donald Trump, convicted felon and power abuser extraordinaire, to be President once again, and for that we cannot be forgiven. During the next four years, Trump is going to take a sledgehammer to all our alliances, persecute the most vulnerable American civilians, and generally make life a living hell for those who oppose him. 

However, Trump is not the only danger. He would only be a 78-year-old demented man yelling on the Internet if not for the fact that half the country was willing to vote for him. And with Project 2025 right around the corner, he’s likely to invade blue states in order to carry out his mass deportations and fire on those who protest his agenda. The Kyle Rittenhouse precedent says you can literally get away with murder under the right circumstance.

Yes, New England is the best region of the U.S., but that’s like saying you have the best-smelling outhouse. Again, we can’t escape the reality that we’re subject to the jurisdiction of the Trump regime…or can we?

It’s for this reason that I’m announcing my support of the New England Independence Campaign, or NEIC for short. This movement advocates for the secession of these six states in order to form an independent nation of 15 million people.

Many will say that this isn’t possible, or that the Constitution prohibits it. First of all, just because the Constitution says something is illegal doesn’t mean it carries any consequences whatsoever. I mean, look at this:

The January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack, which should have gotten Trump disqualified from running for President in 2024. This shows the Constitution may as well be toilet paper.

Furthermore, many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, and they sought to enshrine the right to do so in the Constitution. That’s another example of the country being built on white supremacy. If slavery were still de jure legal today, I highly doubt the Thirteenth Amendment would be passed to abolish it. We’re simply too polarized for the parties to agree on anything important enough to justify an amendment. 

This stands in stark contrast to other countries like France. In France, for instance, they amended the Constitution last year to enshrine abortion rights into the country’s legal code. They may not be a perfect country, but I like the idea of the Constitution being a living document that changes with the times when it’s warranted. And New England is in general a less polarized place than the rest of the USA.

Furthermore, Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, long before the nationwide abolition. In fact, this was half a century before Great Britain, our former colonizer, abolished slavery in their own empire. (They did so in 1834). The state was also a center of the abolitionist movement and played a key role in the Union’s victory in the Civil War. Speaking of the Civil War, if slave-owning Southern states could secede from the country just because they wanted to keep owning black people as property, New England can do the same for a far more progressive reason.

Now, I’m not going to say New England is immune from the political insanity that plagues America. We still have our fair share of gun violence, as events like Sandy Hook (2012) and Lewiston (2023) remind us all too well. We still have to pay far more than we should for health care - but that’s the rest of the country’s fault, not ours. 

Furthermore, every state swung rightward in 2024, and although Massachusetts went for the Harris-Walz ticket with over 61% of the vote, this was a decrease from the 65.6% Biden won in the state in 2020. But what makes New England saner than the rest of the country is not just because it’s bluer, but also because of ranked-choice voting.

You see, ranked-choice voting has been found to reduce political polarization. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise, since most people who voted for Harris were really voting against Trump. But if people could vote third-party without wasting their precious ballot, this might allow other political parties to form and genuinely compete with the current duopoly. 

Maine already has ranked-choice voting. While Massachusetts voted against it in 2020 (because somehow people became convinced that “ranked-choice is less choice”), I think there’s reason to believe that if more attention were on Maine, voters in other New England states could right this wrong. Moreover, if New England were its own country, and RCV was passed at the national level, that’d be even better.

Before I move on from the topic of polarization, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not saying both sides are the same. That’s clearly not true. But so much of American politics feels like a sporting event rather than a serious conversation about what policies should be passed to benefit people. That’s a culmination of where polarization has driven us - off the deep end of insanity.

Of course, “if New England were its own country” is doing some heavy lifting here. At the time of writing, the New England independence subreddits are still relatively small, though they might grow exponentially if Trump succeeds in many of his horrendous goals. It will take a massive movement for leadership in these six states to even entertain the thought of secession. But the question I have is this: Can we afford NOT to?

In the words of John Lennon: You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. A New England unencumbered by the rest of the shithole that is the United States of America could be the prosperous, successful nation that I know we can become. If Marjorie Taylor Greene wants a national divorce, I’m more than happy to sign the papers.

The time has come. Let’s cast away the USA and build a civilized society.

This Is Exactly Who We Are

It’s the end of the year again, and I have little doubt that many people are celebrating. After all, that’s what they always do this time of year, with traditions such as the Ball Drop in Times Square. Lots of people will stay up until midnight to watch it turn from 2024 to 2025.

However, I don’t really feel like celebrating this year. From the other side of the year divide, we’re a lot closer to Donald Trump becoming President again and all the hell that will entail. If anything, I’m dreading the new year. That being said, this isn’t the purpose of today’s blog post.

I recently saw a post on BlueSky that I’ll link here . It basically argues that those people waving Confederate flags and swastikas (a symbol that’s come to represent one of the most horrific events in Europe’s history) aren’t “real Americans”. The poster asserts that “we literally had a war about each of these things.”

It’s incredibly tempting to believe that these asshats waving Confederate flags and wearing Nazi shirts are going against what the country is supposed to represent. I would rather not believe that I live in a country based on hate as opposed to love for our fellow citizens. Moreover, I think many of us would love to think events like Charlottesville are an aberration.

Political cartoon from the Boston Globe.

There’s just one problem, however: It’s not true. 

Now, I don’t want anyone reading this to believe I’m defending those who brandish symbols associated with hate. On the contrary, I think their views are despicable and have no place in a supposedly civilized society. Unfortunately, I also believe that we need to contend with the world as it is, not how we might like it to be.

This leads me to my thesis: The hateful ones represent our country more accurately than those protesting against them.

The reality is that the United States was built upon white supremacy. Many of the Founding Fathers, a bunch of white men that a great number of people (not all of them conservative Republicans) love to admire, endorsed this view. A decent percentage of the 1787 Constitution’s signatories owned slaves.

Even after the United States officially became independent from Great Britain, systemic racism didn’t end. In fact, it got worse, to the point that some on Reddit believe things would have been better if America lost its revolution. But that’s beside the point for now.

Eventually, the country fought a civil war over slavery. Now, lots of people even now will tell you the civil war was about states’ rights, but the important question is: A state’s rights to do WHAT? The answer, of course, was “to keep black people as property.” The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history (and the deadliest event period until the COVID-19 pandemic), with over 600,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians losing their lives.

It’s helpful to contrast the United States with another country that has a dark history: Germany. I don’t need to remind you what the German government was responsible for in the 1930s and 1940s, but there’s a key difference between Germany and the country across the Atlantic that played an important part in defeating them: There are no Nazi monuments today in Germany. In fact, there are laws against symbols associated with the movement, and even if you don’t face legal consequences for admiring Hitler as a “skilled leader”, you’ll still face social consequences for sure.

Robert E. Lee memorial carved into Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA. Nothing like this exists in present-day Germany.

Officially, American slavery ended in 1865, but the Jim Crow laws mandating things like racial segregation and poll taxes sprang up like poisonous mushrooms not long afterward. It’s worth noting that most of the Confederate monuments in the South today were built not during the Civil War or immediately afterward, but rather during this era. They were meant to make certain people feel a certain way, despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene might think.

It took a hundred years after de jure slavery ended for the Civil Rights Acts to be passed, and today’s Supreme Court is taking a sledgehammer to them. Even before SCOTUS became 6-3 Republican, however, systemic racism was alive and well in this country. We have near-constant stories of police brutality, for one, and there are more subtle examples such as redlining, which leads to many majority-black neighborhoods living in neighborhoods with higher levels of environmental pollution.

Let’s go back to the Germany example. What many people don’t know is that the Nazis got lots of ideas from the United States. Now, the U.S. is not entirely to blame for the events in Europe - the perpetrators of the Holocaust knew what they were doing and made a constant, conscious choice to continue doing it. But we also need to remember that what happens in America does not exist in a vacuum, especially when the ability to get information up to the minute is far more pronounced now than it was in the 1940s.

So what I hope I’ve demonstrated here is that systemic racism has always existed in the United States, long before Donald Trump entered politics. When Trump said that the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017 had “very fine people on both sides”, lots of commentators on the left were very quick to insist that this is not who we are. America is a country of immigrants, they say, and we celebrate diversity.

Needless to say, the 2024 election begs to differ. Of course, we also need to acknowledge that even if Trump hadn’t won, none of these problems would have been solved. That’s not to say that they won’t get worse in the next four years, of course. But if we want to prove that we’re not a deeply racist country, we have to earn that reputation rather than constantly asserting that it exists. 

Because it doesn’t.