JOHNSTONE

They'll make you poor,

then shame you for being poor,

then push you into a job that keeps you poor

at a billionaire megacorporation.

They'll make you crazy,

then shame you for being crazy,

then sell you the cure for crazy

at eighty bucks a pill.

You're a failure if you can't make ends meet

on impossible wages at an impossible cost of living

with a worthless degree you will never pay off no matter how hard you work

while advertisers blare at you about your insufficiencies,

while the news man tells you war is normal,

while Hollywood tells you the system is working perfectly,

while armed police guard grocery store dumpsters full of food from the hungry,

while executives go on five billion-dollar space rides for fun,

while you live surrounded by screens that tell you you are crazy

if you think any of this is not sane.

Take Oligarchizac™ for your depression,

take Plutocracipam™ for your anxiety,

just ninety bucks a pill.

Side effects may include compliance,

acquiescence, subservience, docility,

menticidal ideation,

a marked lack of interest in guillotines,

a dystopian society and a dying biosphere.

And the pundit says

"A new study by a Raytheon-funded think tank says war is good for the environment,

but first here's a millionaire to explain the benefits of urinating on the homeless."

And Hollywood says

"Here's a movie about well-dressed attractive people with nice houses

engaging in amusing antics you're too poor and stressed out to experience yourself."

And the news man says

"Here's a rags-to-riches story which proves capitalism works fine

and you should hate yourself if you can't hack it here."

And the advertisement says

"Do you feel like you're losing your mind due to your sense of inadequacy

because you can't afford Google's latest NSA surveillance device?

Ask your doctor about Empiradol™,

just a hundred bucks a pill."

They lock us in a room

and fill the room with water

and then shame us for drowning

and then charge us for tiny gasps of air

from a hose that leads to an ecosystem

that they are destroying as quickly as they can.

And hey I've invented a new antidepressant anti-anxiety antipsychotic

that I'm getting to market as quickly as I can.

It's not a pill or a jab or an electrical shock treatment,

it's just a big wad of cash taken by force from thieving megacorporations.

Side effects may include peace and relaxation,

an ability to buy food and think clearly,

a fondness for red flags,

and a hysterical corporate media.

And hey I think we just might make it,

past the veil of madness and cutthroat cruelty.

And hey I think there's something deep within us

as yet untapped and as yet unrealized.

And hey I think an earthquake's coming

that just might topple the towers of madness

once and for all.

_____________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

The fact that our world is hurtling toward man-made obliteration on multiple fronts should probably occupy more of our conversational bandwidth than it does.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The frogs are dropping dead in Australia, and no one knows why.

They get sick from some strange new frog pandemic and change colors

and shrivel up into little brown frog mummies when they die.

The frogs are dropping dead in Australia.

Animals are dropping dead everywhere.

Ocean animals wash up packed full of plastic,

insect animals fall from the sky,

and we barely notice, because it hurts enough to be human,

because our tender little hearts were punched and kicked as children

by big people whose tender little hearts were punched and kicked as children,

and we've got bills to pay and hungry ghosts to feed,

and the supply chains are failing and the drums of war are beating louder and louder,

and we are falling face first into a global future of unimaginable divergence.

And what a shame it will be if this all slips away

without having been truly deeply appreciated

by the species whose brains allow a profound depth of appreciation.

And what a shame it will be if, at the very least,

we do not revel in this creation in what may be its final moments,

if we do not kiss this moment as it flies,

if we do not kiss the frogs and the butterflies and the leviathans as they pass us waving goodbye,

if we do not kiss the kick-in-the-teeth soul-reaming beauty of each fleeting instant,

if we do not fall in love with people and tell them so many times,

if we do not write poems and write songs and write on bathroom stalls and overpasses

expressing the glory and the holiness and the belovedness of this mysterymess,

if we do not feel every sacred strum of heartache,

if we do not live, emphatically live, explosively live

like the explosion our still-expanding universe has been undergoing for 14 billion years.

And what a shame it would be if we did not shout an exuberant yes to all of this,

even the weird parts,

even the awkward parts,

even the ugly parts,

even the scary parts,

while we still can,

before they are gone for good.

So here's to you, Australian frogs.

Here's to you, insects and sea monsters.

Here's to the polar ice caps,

to the rainforests,

to breathable air,

to supply chains,

to YouTube videos and TikTok dances,

to arduous days and orgasmic nights,

to the ones who made our hearts soar and to the ones who broke them,

to the Casanovas and the comrades and the capitalists,

to the ancaps and the shitlibs and the tinfoil hatters,

to the psychopaths we've slept with and the ones who rule our world,

to all the dreams never realized and revolutions never fought,

I raise a glass to you, my angels.

The frogs are dropping dead in Australia, and no one knows why.

And I am just here, watching and waiting, like everyone else.

I raise the glass to my lips

and drink fermented juice

made by berries

fed by starlight

from the birth of our universe.

_________________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Pentagon only admitted to the unjust slaughter of civilians in this one particular instance because the mass media did actual investigative journalism on this one particular airstrike. This is an indictment of the Pentagon's airstrike protocol, but it's also an indictment of the mass media.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/where-was-all-the-investigative-journalism

Propaganda warps people's perspectives so drastically their own opinions don't even adhere to the values they'll tell you they hold. A liberal will get angrier about a random member of the public circulating a conspiracy theory than about government agencies killing children with bombs. Political Twitter got angrier about Joe Rogan taking ivermectin than the Pentagon murdering an entire Afghan family and lying about it. All sense of proportion and perspective has been scrambled.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Australia has joined the US and UK in an "enhanced trilateral security partnership" called AUKUS with the unspoken-yet-obvious goal of coordinating escalations against China. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/australia-continues-its-plunge-into

We're on a planet-sized haunted hayride to Armageddon, and no one is driving.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We live in a world of manufactured lack, manufactured enemies, manufactured crises and manufactured consent. We've had sufficient resources to care for everyone for generations. All our wars are based on lies. All our problems are cooked up by a few psychos with too much power.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Compared to the horrors the United States unleashed upon the world under the justification of 9/11, 9/11 itself was a family trip to Disneyland. The death and destruction visited upon Iraq alone dwarfs the 2,977 people killed on 9/11 by orders of magnitude; hell, this was true of the death and destruction the US had been inflicting on Iraq even before 9/11. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

Link to the Twitter thread mentioned here: https://twitter.com/KikiRosecrans/status/1436126923541913602?s=20

Article with links and sources: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/twenty-years-of-phony-tears-about

Imagine if the world's deadliest terrorist group got their hands on drones and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and circled the planet with hundreds of military bases and began waging wars and destroying any country which disobeyed their dictates.

Reading by Tim Foley.