My
whole life I’ve been taught that being American is something that people around
the world aspire to. There was always this quaint little story being repeated
about a dream and how “if you work
really hard, that dream will be realized;” how “if you’re ever downtrodden, there
is plenty of opportunity to pull yourself up by the bootstraps;” how “America
is the greatest country on the entire planet!” You remember hearing that,
right? I know you do! We ALL were taught how star-spangled awesome we are. (In
fact, some of you might still hear
this or even say it yourselves.) The idea that America represents freedom, honor,
justice, and a level of compassion that extends always-open arms to the needy,
sick, and desperate is something that we kind of just accepted growing up—as if
we are the only country on the planet that venerates these ideas—as if it is
something we actually do. You see, I now know that it was just an emotional
appeal. And, it worked pretty damn well! It works even to this day! Of course
we all want to believe that we are a part of the best damn thing that ever
happened to this planet! Right? I mean, isn’t that what we are? Isn’t the
United States of America the best fucking thing on the entire planet—past,
present, and future?
Sadly,
and arguably embarrassingly, the
answer to that question is a resounding NO!
‘Sadly’ because we undoubtedly have the potential to be yet squander it
unashamedly—although I do feel that segregation through imaginary national
boundaries is frivolous and unnecessary—and ‘embarrassingly’ because we
self-congratulate as though we indeed are the best. Sure, it may be etched into
the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your
poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp
beside the golden door!”, but somewhere along the way we slid
unquestioningly into our 40+ hour workweek routines and slowly our unprecedented
compassion eroded; our respect for human life waned; our desire to uphold the
principles upon which this country was founded all but disappeared. (For
example, the principle of reviewing policies in the framework of the
Constitution and changing them if necessary. Slavery was explicitly condoned in
the Constitution but later changed through an amendment when people realized
that it’s a fucking shitty policy.) It now seems we have no direction; only
passive obedience to mindless materialism and artificiality with absolute
irreverence toward the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to
breathe free. And, the homeless—Oh, the homeless!
Where do I even begin?
NONE
OF YOU gave a flying fuck about the homeless in this country, many of which are
VETERANS—that many of you step over and ignore on your way to get $6 coffees—until
they were convenient for you to incorporate into your bigoted worldview. (You’ve
probably even posted on social media about that time you gave a homeless guy “a
five spot”.) In fact, you cared more
about the fucking CUP that the shitty, overpriced coffee came in that YOU STILL
WENT AND PAID FOR than you ever did
about the homeless. What you probably didn’t
hear about is the Denver PD arresting a group of people for building tiny houses
for the homeless (on property that was originally used for community gardening but recently sold to a private developer) and then tearing the houses
down. Essentially, the message there was “fuck the homeless!” So, where was the
public outcry? (Crickets.) And that’s the problem! People tend to only give a
shit when whatever they’re giving a fleeting shit about benefits them (or their
social media accounts) directly. The moment anyone actually
gets downtrodden, or even simply gets accused
of doing something considered “offensive” or inappropriate, or really anything that goes against the trendy
“norm” of the hour, LOOKOUT—The Social Justice Warrior Brigade (SJWB) will be
Johnny-on-the-Spot to tell you what a despicable human being they are. And if
presented with evidence that refutes or even destroys whatever bandwagon the
SJWB has jumped on, the general response is something akin to, “Facts? Never
mind facts! Facts don’t matter!” (Again, crickets.)
So,
don’t sit there and try to sell me this bleeding heart bullshit! I’m not buying
it! THIS CUP IDIOCY WAS JUST TWO FUCKING WEEKS AGO! Now, you’re all suddenly
experts in foreign affairs?! Seriously?! Most of you still can’t differentiate the word ‘your’ from the word ‘you’re’; ‘there’
and ‘their’ from ‘they’re’; and ‘were’ from ‘we’re’. (Apparently, the claim is
that it just isn’t important. That’s right, grammar
isn’t important.) And, I’m supposed to believe that you’re magically
qualified to talk about Syrian refugees? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! GO AHEAD
AND FUCKING POINT OUT SYRIA ON THE MAP! In fact, go ahead and name all 50
states in the United States and point
those out! I’m willing to bet that (sadly and laughably) a vast majority of
you can do neither of those right now without Google. But, sure—your opinion is
so VERY fucking special. (-__-)
Sometimes
I wonder why I want to do so much for humankind when most of you are, quite
frankly, so stupid. (Don’t take too much offense to that. You’re not special. I’m
not special. And neither one of us is particularly intelligent. I’m at least smart
enough to realize it, though. Plus, being offended is a useless thing to be.) But
then I realize that I can’t even imagine living in any other period in our
species’ existence. In my humble opinion, we are indeed living in the most pivotal point in Humankind’s
history. That’s a bold statement, I realize, but we must consider the
ever-expanding knowledge-base we have amassed—especially over the past 60 years
or so. In that time, we have learned more about ourselves and the universe we
are a part of than in all of our history combined.
At least, some of us have. Most others
seem to be stumbling around, drooling on themselves, aimlessly shifting from
one manufactured hype to the next, acting as if just because they have an
opinion it should be considered.
Well, guess what, folks: Most of your opinions DO NOT matter. Someone needed to
say it because people everywhere have become giant fucking pussies seemingly afraid of
their own shadows.
That’s
right: MOST OF YOUR OPINIONS DO NOT MATTER! Get that through your fucking
heads, people. I know how this all started, though. I get it; we were all told
that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” But, at some point, people
forgot to pass along the caveat that, while we may be entitled to our own opinions
(which is something that can easily be proven false with the line of questioning
that follows the question, “Entitled by whom?”), whether or not those opinions
hold any shred of veracity or relevance is a different story. As a result, the
idea that opinion entitlement equals
opinion relevance manifested. Thus, American exceptionalism is thriving today.
But, when you start pointing out to people the blatant flaws in our
socio-economic system, the response tends to be “Well if you don’t like it, you
can just git outta here!” Just to be
clear, this baseless opinion is supposed to be just as relevant as, say, the fact that the United States doesn’t even crack the top ten countries in the world in education; or that we really
only lead the world in debt, military spending (which trumps at least the next
ten countries combined), deaths by
police, and healthcare costs. But, it just isn’t relevant. Saying, "if you don't like it, then leave" is a fucking stupid opinion. And those of you reading this that often hear these fucking stupid opinions by these next-level morons we all know should stop shying away from calling out this festival of unfettered fatuity. It's time to stop being afraid to say that most opinions are fucking stupid and just do not matter. It's time to stand up an...oh who the fuck am I kidding? I’m a
part of one of the most privileged, yet proudly inept, generations to have ever
walked the Earth: Generation Dumb. Our motto is simple: "Mommy, they're being mean to me!"
It’s
so exhausting trying to explain things to people now that everyone has been
deluded into this opinion-aggrandizing scam. I would consider myself someone
that is well-educated. After all, I am currently pursuing an undergraduate
degree in physics and, considering the reaction I get practically every single time I tell people, I would
say that people would generally agree with that statement. Thus far, I have taken over
100 credits of college courses across a vast range of disciplines. I’m very
much interested in socio-economic and political issues. It’s just that learning
about the way the universe actually
operates has always piqued my interest. The joy of finding things out about our
interaction with this thing we call “life” is simply unparalleled. But, I’ll be
the first to admit that the more that I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know a goddamn thing. Do I find
that scary? Do I find that diminishing to this wonderful experience? Of course not! I find it overwhelmingly
beautiful and humbling; yet, almost inexplicably exhilarating. Point-blank:
Believing without evidence, or faith
as many claim, is quite possibly the biggest waste of human existence there is;
it’s pure idiocy. And, I’m tired of everyone tip-toeing around the fact that
many in society pride themselves on
this concept of “faith” (or “dumbassery”, as I like to call it). I’ll give the
faithful credit for one thing: You are the ultimate rationalizationists. But,
that’s more of an albatross than anything else; the albatross that I’ve given
up on trying to help you leave behind. Again, it’s exhausting and I’ll explain why.
When
someone that has never stepped foot in a college classroom, never cracked a
scholarly journal, doesn’t regularly read anything longer than their friends’
grammatically incorrect, meaningless diatribes on social media, never does any
research of any kind, and never tries
to advance their understanding by listening to people that have—when that person
tries to argue with me about, say, gravity, I have to ask the question, “Where
could I possibly begin?” It took me
YEARS of math, reading, problem-solving, and several experiments before I could
factually utter the words “I sort of understand gravity.” Of course, that was
in Newtonian mechanics; Einstein churned out a much more refined explanation
requiring more math, more problem-solving, and several more experiments. And even with
all of our experimentally-confirmed understandings of gravity, we have yet to
arrive at an elusive yet infamous Theory
of Everything—the idea that all of the laws of the known universe can be
consolidated and condensed into an equation perhaps no longer than a few
centimeters. But, you expect me to explain ALL OF THAT—the math, the concepts,
the experiments, the EVIDENCE—to you in just a few minutes? Why? So that it
destroys your haphazard, completely untenable claims only to have your arrogant,
dumb face obliviously say to me “We’ll just agree to disagree” or “I just know in my heart of hearts and you can’t
prove I’m wrong and…”? NO! It doesn’t work like that! The burden of proof falls
upo…oh, fuck it! NEVER MIND!
Unfortunately,
this quest for elegance through brevity, a worthwhile endeavor in the world of
equation-making, has made its way into the information-sharing sector of our
society morphing it instead into a sort of quid pro quo/“Get it first” instead
of “Get it right” monstrosity absent elegance altogether. We now somehow think
that talking points are a way to convey large chunks of relevant information.
It just doesn’t happen that way; it can’t.
Whereas 35 years ago we could sit and watch an interviewer ask a question and
get a 5-minute, uninterrupted answer from a single guest at their own pace, now we can’t even hear
more than 15-second, sound byte-style responses from sometimes 3 or more guests
in an 8-minute-total “interview” about pressing issues that affect us all
without endless interruptions, jabs, snide pseudo-intellectualism, and more
advertisements than information that can rightly be labeled news. Then, we move on to “Miley Cyrus
is at it again…” It begs the question: What the actual fuck?!
We
want so badly to feel important; to feel powerful; to feel recognized. Again, we're taught to want all of that. And it
appears we’ll ironically stoop to the bottom of the dirt to achieve those feelings.
Meanwhile, we don’t stop and take the time to think about the fact that we’re
all important in our own nuanced ways; to different people for different reasons. And, not everyone is always going to
agree with those ways and reasons. But, if you call yourself any of the several tens of
thousands of variations of “Christian”, you should recognize that the power
is with love. That’s right, your very own doctrine tells you essentially to love powerfully—not say “FUCK ‘EM! Send ‘em
back where they came from! We have millions of homeless here…” Great! I’m glad
you’ve finally acknowledged it and you should again read what I said about the
homeless above. But, you also need to realize that the money to cover the costs
of the refugees was and is going to be created and there’s not a
fucking thing you can say or do at this point to change that. You’ve given up
that say by pretending to give a shit
by sharing a quaint meme with grammatical errors that is supposed to be “enlightening”
or by changing your fucking profile picture or by putting #LatestTrendyBullshit with
a link to some minimally-educated clown giving what is portrayed as “truth” and then doing, quite literally, nothing else.
Yeah? Here’s some fucking TRUTH for you: The fact of the matter is that the
money to cover the costs of eradicating poverty worldwide could be created
RIGHT NOW—this very moment. It’s a rather simple process that has been made to
seem esoteric by those conversations that always shove economic and monetary
jargon to the wayside in lieu of infotainment—pushing it into the “it’s complex”
category. (In fact, it’s so simple that it can be summed up in about 50 pages.
And that’s exactly what the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago did in 1963 with a
booklet called Modern Money Mechanics--summed it up in 50 pages. In other words, it’s all a fiction. But,
don’t take my word for it! DO THE RESEARCH YOURSELF!) It’s so easy that we
create and distribute enough money for war every 8 days to easily end global hunger or
provide education to every child on the
planet or any number of other socially beneficial programs across the globe. More importantly, we have the resources and technology to feed, clothe, and house every human on the planet. Instead, here we
are beating the fucking war drum YET AGAIN! What
the fuck is wrong with you people?!
Oh
yeah; I forgot I’m writing for mostly uneducated people. Dare I ask, when was
the last time any of you opened a textbook or visited a website with
peer-reviewed academic information? I’ve noticed lately that when I talk to
people about these kinds of topics (or really any topic), I mainly get three types of responses. First, people
will basically say that they don’t give a fuck. Second, I get the
pseudo-intellectual/Alex Jones/”conspiracy theorist”-type responses which
typically have no real evidence and are exceedingly speculative. And, lastly,
the rarest of them all would be the engaged, well-read citizen that understands
how to distinguish between credible information and baseless propaganda. To
prove my point, the vast majority of you fell immediately into one of these
categories as soon as you read the second line of this paragraph. If you are
not in school, never went to school, or have no plans to go to school, you read
that line and said, “Fuck textbooks!” (If you also said, "Fuck school!" or some variation, enjoy being a blithering fucking moron
for the rest of your miserable, drama-filled, probably short, shitty little life.) If you get all of your information from
people like Alex Jones, Fox “News”, or some popular blog that has no tenable
information, then you read that line and started trying to connect the dots of
how the “liberal, hippy-lovin’ propagandists and their communist textbooks are
trying to jam a giant surgical needle into your head and suck your brains out only
to replace them with…” Yeah, you get the point. You should also enjoy being a
blithering fucking moron for the rest of your miserable, drama-filled, shitty
little life. Seriously, that’s what kind of shameless turd you sound like to
those that read that line and either said, “Textbooks are my existence right
now! Mrrrrrrr FINALS!” or “I never want to look at a textbook again but my bookshelf
is filled with them and my degree in engineering, physics, chemistry,
philosophy, geology, education, or some other relevant field is hanging on the
wall next to that bookshelf that reaches the ceiling.” Anyone that tries to
insult people by apparently using words like “liberal” or “socialist” as
pejoratives is a fucking cretin that I can guarantee has no clue what those
words even mean.
Alas!
What do we do? Well, I have plenty of ideas and know of many others but I keep
getting told how “unrealistic” they are by all of you overly-qualified
scholars. Never mind the fact that everything I talk about is 100%
technologically feasible RIGHT NOW (i.e. automated transportation grid, solar,
wind, wave, tidal, and geothermal providing more than all of humankind’s energy
needs, vertical farms all over the world, desalination plants all over the
world, 3-D printed EVERYTHING, automated service sector, and so on). Never mind
the fact that when it comes down to it, you actually don’t know what you’re talking about. Never mind all of that
because “facts don’t matter—your opinions
do.” (-__-)
I’m
not naïve, though; I realize that the amount of stupid out there is daunting.
Indeed, the only thing I fear is the direction we are headed as a
potential-squandering, immature society. We’re in the boredom-killing,
victimhood-manufacturing business. Have you noticed that? No one can take a
fucking joke about anyone or anything anymore without the whole “woe is me”
bullshit. No one can take any fucking responsibility for anything in America
anymore. Well, at least not anything negative that happens because of their
very own idiotic choices. (For example, mothers that try to pull the whole “that’s
not my baby” bullshit when their sons beat or murder someone. Fuck off already.
Your son’s a piece of shit and you’re a shitty parent. Most people don't know how to raise kids. That’s what caused it.
Period.) But, if something positive happens, of course that was you!
You deserve a medal, a trophy, an editorial, a million fucking dollars from GoFundMe, a
yacht, college funds, a retiremen… Give me a fucking break! Go cry in the
fucking corner already and again stop acting like just because you have an
opinion about or are offended by something that it automatically is elevated to
the status of “EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND LISTEN TO ME NOW! WHAT I
HAVE TO SAY IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE I’M YELLING IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! YOU WILL
BOW TO MY EVERY WISH AND WHIM BECAUSE IF YOU QUESTION ME YOU ARE [insert cliché
pejorative demographic]!” Seriously, will you please fuck off? I’ve learned
quite a bit about the universe in my 29 years of existence on this pale blue
dot. But, perhaps most revealing would be the sadness I feel when I realize
that I can sum up my interaction with other humans in just a single, pitiful
little sentence: We lie, cheat, and steal (some of us even kill) with no real remorse and, in continuing
to doing so unabated and ignored, deserve whatever the fuck we get.
Sincerely,
Kyle
