Earlier this month, when I was still on hiatus from GF, a news story broke about Trump Bucks. Perhaps you heard of it. The idea was this: companies started selling money with Trump's image on it saying that when Trump is reelected in 2024, this will all be legal tender. Of course a bunch of Trump supporters bought a shit-ton of Trump Bucks only to find out that they were all scammed.
My first thought was to laugh at them. The people who follow a con man got conned? Big surprise there. A total lack of critical thinking skills. They deserved it.
But then I thought about it a little more and realized maybe it's not as funny as I thought. Not just because people sank thousands of dollars into bullshit when they really should have known better. I wonder at how many Nigerian princes have been made wealthy by these people. But it is actually kind of sad and frightening mostly because these people aren't the real enemy. It seems like it on the surface, but they've been propagandized.
More on that in just a second. I think it's interesting that none of them filed lawsuits or charges against these companies. I assume it's because no one wants to admit they were suckered, but perhaps it's also because, according to NBC, when making these purchases they were given a popup box that declared that this was for commemoration purposes only. Like anyone faced with a user agreement, they breezed past it and got suckered. That's a little heinous right there. Like the South Park episode about the Apple user agreement. These things are too long to read, and they could very easily slip in there that you now owe them your first born. That's bullshit right there.
Back to the propaganda. Everyone points out Fox News as the propaganda machine that it is. That's people on the left, that is. Meanwhile people on the right are saying the same about the left and CNN. Both sides are being fed lines of bullshit, and neither one of them is willing to admit that. Even worse, neither side is willing to compromise with the other.
Because here's the really horrifying part of this mess we're in. BOTH SIDES HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER. We were never really good at that, but we used to be better. Compromise used to be possible. But the fact of the matter is, no matter which side you're on, you're going to have to work with the other. It's unavoidable. The other side has a lot of people, and the only way to move forward to a solution that makes sense for at least one side is to do away with the other.
And what exactly happens when a society decides something like that?
So we have no choice. I mean, going full Nazi is a choice, I guess, but not one I'm willing to so much as entertain. The only other option is to compromise. Work together. Reach across the aisle. Dick Morris once had the temerity to write a sequel to Machiavelli's The Prince, and one of his driving principles was this compromise. I'm loathe to admit this, but Dick Morris is right.
The first step is to realize that the enemy isn't Trump or Biden. It's not even Joe Rogan or Whoopi. Hell, it's not the guy in your family friendly neighborhood riding around in the pickup with the FUCK BIDEN flag waving from the bed, and it's not your Gen Z nephew at Thanksgiving dinner shit-talking Your President.
It's the corporations. We have always valued money more than people in this country, but it didn't become officially sanctioned until the 'Eighties. Angry about inflation? Look no further than corporations. Angry about skyrocketing gas prices? Stop with the Biden and Trump stickers. You're blaming the wrong people. Angry about the passing of the Good Ol' Days? Where did all those mom-n-pop stores go? Oh yeah, driven out of business by corporations.
And we not only let that happen, we *encouraged* it.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Right now I'll settle for us figuring out that we really need to learn how to work together before we do anything else. Otherwise we might not have enough torches, pitchforks and guillotines to take on the corporations. Baby steps.
I'll leave you with this to finish off your night. I don't agree with everything in the song, but close enough. Goodnight, fuckers.
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