I've written almost nothing over the past few months, and I've also done almost no creative or academic work.
The reason for this is working a full-time job, which has been very demanding on my time and energy. However the economy is beyond fucked, so working for a wage barely gets you anywhere, but you still have do the same amount of work or more (so your bosses and managers get their big fat bonuses, and to compensate for all the jobs being slashed and the yuge numbers of people dropping out of the system). The job I had involved real physical work, which I don't mind, and had the added benefit of keeping me in shape, but unfortunately it just took too much out of me.
This led to a situation where I felt too tired on the days I had off to do anything creative, plus there were chores and errands to get to and so on. And of course once I felt rested and capable and optimistic, the work cycle would start again.
I would open up this blog, see I still had some views, and feel bad and want to write something. Sometimes I did, but mostly I just kept on promising myself, 'this time will be different' and 'I'll write something the next off-day, it's just that this one was a rare miss' or 'next week I'll get to this or that'. This went on for months. Eventually it became obvious what the problem was.
So I've decided to step down and work part-time instead of full-time. That way I can invest most of my time and energy into the things that really matter to me. It won't be a very impressive lifestyle, but if I'm not going to be making much money anyways (guaranteed, in this economy) it's better to scrape by while feeling fulfilled and engaged, rather than slave away at something I'm not even that enthusiastic about, and still not make that much money at the end of the day.
As far as I'm concerned, if the people in charge of our society want workers and grunts to supervise, they should start offering higher wages and better working conditions. But they won't, so the society will keep disintegrating and they might just wind up being the bosses and managers and supervisors of nothing, due to their greed. But that's their problem...
I'm going to do my best to avoid falling in the classic pit-fall of becoming an aimless NEET who just does drugs and alcohol and plays video games day-in, day-out. Fortunately I still have bills to pay, so I have some external pressure on me to work and produce something rather than waste away.
My main interests have always been artistic and of course intellectual, so that's where I'm going to focus my energies. I may take a course here or there, or do some kind of apprenticeship (it remains to be seen). I'm never going to college though, the whole thing is too rotten and too insulting. Since I've made decent money this year I've also been able to collect collect a lot gear, books, tools, equipment for different things, which I now finally have time to use. I may start a YT channel, for example.
For now, it's all up in the air, and anyways I have a real week of work left-- so this is still somewhat premature-- but the point is that things should finally get more interesting around here. Yes, I'm aware I've said that before, but fortunately I don't charge anyone for reading here (and never will), so this won't come off as a parasitic plea for MORE MONEY like the people on Patreon or Substack do. Even if it doesn't work out, and I sink into a stupor or eventually have to return to toiling in the collapsing economy or whatever you (whoever is still reading here) won't have been been scammed.
I've also linked to some based Alpha Male right-wing YTers in the past, for which I apologize. If I did make a YT channel, it would not be joining the legions of those clowns or the Right-Wing Influencer Brand(TM) in general, and I didn't mean to endorse them or recommend them to anyone reading here who sympathizes with my populist views.
ReplyDeleteObviously I'm not apologizing for PC or woke reasons, since I don't care for any of that (and am happy to see the woke morons finally get fired, deplatformed, and gotten rid of like the toxic garbage that they are) and I'm not really on the left anyways.
It's just that I find the whole right-wing / Republican side too embarrassing, corrupt, and retarded to join.
I'm deeply suspicious of them in general, given their failure to say much about the Trump betrayal-- you know, open war with Iran (notwithstanding cheap talk and empty promises on the campaign trail), Epstein files cover-up (cheap talk and empty promises), escalation against Russia (same), a new and retarded war against Maduro in Venezuela, H1B visas, fucking moronic tariffs, you name it...
If I did make online "content" it would be more impressionistic, you know honest anecdotes about the real state of the economy and the country and so on, not just endless whining about muh commies or muh fascists. One of the good things about leaving the house often, instead of spending all your time holed up in an online echo-chamber, is you notice a lot of interesting and funny things (assuming you have your brain plugged into reality, that is) and can collect a lot of stories, which I have been doing for the past year. So that might be one outlet.
Another deeply embarrassing thing is the whole pivot to being, you know, America 1st, but not America Only among right-wing influencers. They then frame that as being reasonable, compromising, pragmatism, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pathetic, humiliating, way of telling the MAGA base that they have zero influence over foreign policy, so just shut up and enjoy the openly retarded neocon behavior-- there's nothing more pragmatic then going further into debt in order to lose a pointless war... ehem, I mean so our great allies like Israel and Ukraine can protect us from the hordes of Russians and Iranians who are only a few countries away from storming New York or whatever.
It's just awful. Always remember, "compromises" are totally fake, and anyone who tells you to compromise is not just trying to get you to accept an unfair and totally rigged deal, but they also want you to be happy about it like a pathetic slave and masochist (their view of the MAGA base, and right-wingers in general).
There's also something going on with the endless criticism of Israel and Netanyahu, which is all I see on social media.
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm pro-Israel (LOL), obviously it's good that young people on both sides are against it (whether for anti-imperialism or anti-Zionist / Jew reasons). At the same time, why they never mention the Saudis, Qataris, UAEs, etc? We spend just as much money on them as we do the Israelis, yet somehow not a single one of the based alpha males will bring them up, or criticize them, the way they will with Israel.
Ironically enough, they keep making comments about the USS Liberty-- why should we support Israel, when they bombed one of our ships? Well, if you thought an attack on a naval ship in the 1960s was bad (during a period when Israel wasn't really an ally of ours), wait until I tell you about an incident that took place in the 2000s, where they mainly went after civilians... and we still defend them against the eeeevil mullahs in Iran to this day. Somehow this is absent from most of the right-wing channels.
They also never mention the bloated defense industry as a reason why we keep getting into these wars, and instead just dump all of the blame on the Jews / Zionists.
ReplyDeleteAll they do is churn out outrageously expensive slop that sometimes doesn't even work and is only marginally better than the stuff other nations have, while being orders of magnitude more expensive (so they can rip off the government and the average person as much as possible). And it doesn't even deliver good results on the battlefield, they mainly use it to blow up civilians, hospitals, schools, infrastructure...
Yet the Pentagon and Military Industrial Cartel are all exempt in their narrative of what has gone wrong over the previous decades.
And that's not to mention the central role of the Republican Party in dismantling the economy, pushing all kinds of super-expensive garbage on to the population... they've just introduced a new round of welfare cuts, including targeting veterans (their own supporters), while of course spending even more on the military. So based, such alpha male patriotic behavior, really uber-masculinity on steroids-- abandoning your own people, so we can waste trillions fighting nations that pose no threat to us. At least Biden and the Democrats were open about their scorn / hatred for half the country, and didn't pretend to be populists.
ReplyDeleteBut they never talk about factory owners, or mega-corporations selling out and leeching off the consumer, or the gutting of welfare, and so on and so forth. It's just whining about China and about brown people, while giving "advice" about how you need to work harder and network more and so on from a bunch of rich kids.
The mirror of the woke leftists who pretended to be super-sensitive, empathetic, tolerant and so on-- but turned out to be seething psycho witch-hunters and murderers-- are these Alpha males / based patriots who put on a big show of being super tough guys, while really being an army of powerless pathetic masochists who enjoy being humiliated and cucked by their leaders-- the more humiliations, the better.
And the Trump tariffs have yet to really kick in too. It just gets worse and worse!
ReplyDeleteFurther dismantling the nation and shredding the social contract, when it barely exists at this point, is just suicidal. And anybody who doesn't instantly denounce this stuff is possessed by some kind of demon that is driving them to destroy themselves, maybe not literally, but still in terms of their actions-- they are not rational or lucid.
It's not like NAFTA in the 90s, or the Iraq war, which they did when we still had a somewhat unified and wealthy and functional nation-- all of this stuff is being done in a much more precarious environment, when things are openly falling apart. I frankly doubt that the lashing out / backlash will take the form of protests at universities, or going to talks by people like Chomsky or other anti-globalization types-- people are way too angry and screwed over for that.
Today's authorities are taking extreme risks in order to fund their addictions, rather than back down and compromise.
I'm starting to be convinced that there is absolutely no life or patriotism (I mean the real kind) or spirit left in the Republican Party, and it's all just a disaster through and through, with nothing salvageable except for the working class / populist / dissatisfied base, who are currently being betrayed and sold out by their leaders.
ReplyDeleteAt least with the Democrats, once you get past the woke stuff, there's still Bernie Sanders and a few interesting politicians who might be willing to take a stand or go somewhere new. If they can channel that energy, instead of going full Hillary (or Biden or whoever), then there might be something there.
Anyways, all of this is a long explanation as to why I haven't signed up for the Republican Influencer brand and don't plan to in the future.
ReplyDeleteAside from how retarded they are, it's also just suicide, plain and simple-- you're joining a sinking ship, where they're trying to fight reality instead of admitting the desperate situation.
As I've said before, I don't watch (or enjoy) the videos of tribal gatherings or weddings getting blown up in the M-E, nor do I watch the videos of immigrants / brown people getting deported, or Chinese people talking about their factories getting shut down... but hopefully I will get to watch the entire Republican Party get blown up, melted down, and dismantled, sometime in the future. Ideally not violently, since I'm not sick and don't fantasize about hurting people, but given how badly they're mistreating the population (and especially their own supporters), it wouldn't surprise me at all if something like that took place.
Some basic problems that stand in the way of building a real economy, if or when we try that--
ReplyDelete1) The infrastructure has been neglected for decades, and is currently collapsing. It is no shape to handle the surge in activity that manufacturing would bring. Fixing all of the problems would require some kind of government program (a real one, not some fake 'green' make-work project).
2) The entire economy is dependent on overextended supply-lines, cheap foreign labor, and endless money-printing for 'growth', and now we have to try to reverse the process, possibly quit cold turkey, after having spent two decades in a made-up fake world of 0% interest rates. So far there is no discussion of this, or what the consequences will be, or how we will navigate the transition period, or really anything.
3) People are angrier than ever, meaning that the political situation is extremely precarious, and any wrong decision has the potential to blow up massively.
Fortunately Trump, Musk, Vivek, Vance, Rubio and the rest of the high IQ hetero alpha males are working on these problems, and the solution that they've converged on is: de-fund the government, slash welfare (including for veterans, who have some of highest rates of gun ownership), and try to start as many futile conflicts, military and economic, as possible. Genius!