Divide people and multiply capital, that's capitalism. Capital multiplies itself when it divides labor, elevates itself when it divides politicians, and goes international when it divides nations. If people can't control their labor, capital can control it all. If parties can't control politics, capital has them in its thrall. And if nations can't control themselves, international capital has a ball. As long as people are divided, capital can multiply without a care in the world. And if the world burns who cares? Getting the AI called capital to care about other animals is asking a computer to divide by zero. It doesn't compute at all.

You can really feel it in the liminal spaces, where you feed yourself to the machine. Where they scan you, pat you, and ask you for ID; evidence that you've been scanned, patted, and ID'd already, by some other part of the machine. It's a very big machine and the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

Places like airports, courts, or the police. If that's your cursed destination, you can feel the state's mastication, running you across their teeth to see if they should bite you or let you be. You can feel palpitation of nations—each office an orifice—whispering what is thissss? Fingering IDs, IDing fingerprints, so that the blind state may see. We are always subliminally inside the machine, but in these liminal spaces, you can really feel it.

I used demonic AI to clone Donald Trump's voice and read his (ghostwritten) words from Art of The Deal. This is an interview with the vampire.

I have learned three things about America since leaving America. The first is that I didn't leave America, it's a big White Empire and I'm still in it! The second is that every accusation is a confession. For every finger pointing out, a billion middle fingers point right back at America. The third is to take every condemnation as a reading recommendation. America's enemies list makes for an excellent reading list. That's what we'll discuss here. The only thing that recommends Empire is its book recommendations.

How the ‘free press’ is bought and paid for.

How next-day delivery is the new opiate of the masses.

This is me reading the 1991 book America Against America by currently CPC Politburo member Wang Huning.

Shruthi Mathews talking about Mark Fisher's work on Capitalist Realism - the idea that we can't even imagine a world outside of capitalism, and how we must. 

Cover art by Oluwole Omofemi.

I lived through over 25 years of Civil War in Sri Lanka and I see the same things happening in America today. When people check out of democracy, you've all checked into violence. It's just a matter of time.

America is choking to death on its own mythology. The ‘strongest nation in the world’ cannot defend its own Capitol. The ‘oldest democracy in the world’ is attacking the right to vote. The ‘richest people in history’ are broke and dying in lakhs upon lakhs.

(White) Americans consistently refuse to believe what is happening to them because it’s not supposed to be happening to them. Our democracy cannot be collapsing, it’s so old. The pandemic cannot be out of control, we’re rich. From the crazies of Q-Anon to sober talking heads on TV, everybody agrees, America is exceptional and things cannot be exactly what they are.

The country cannot be corrupt, that’s for Africans. The country cannot have a coup, that’s what we do to South America. The country cannot be collapsing, that’s the ‘third world’. And yet here you are.

American exceptionalism is wrong. Worse than wrong, American exceptionalism is precisely what’s getting you killed.