Today we are taught that propaganda is evil, something that we should avoid at all costs. Perhaps this is true for some. Perhaps some people are not inclined to think for themselves, and so must be shielded, much like children, from certain ideologies. But for those of us who are skilled in critical analysis, we do a huge disservice to society by ignoring propaganda because, if we do not analyze and critique it, then no one will. Or, even worse, amateurs will analyze propaganda for us, inevitably misinterpreting the intent of propagandists, and creating even more misinformation in the process. In recent years, there has been a huge surge in amateurish attempts to decode propaganda much like the era of the Cold War, when grumpy old men went searching for communism at rock concerts. Such people have no idea to detect propaganda, and so they lash out blindly at things they despise. But today it is mainly Christian propagandists who focus on the ills of rock music. But there is another set of amateurs that are just as fond of creating wild, overly simplistic explanations for why wars are waged on the mind. This set of amateur propaganda sleuths consider themselves to be members of the scientific community, even though most of the time they are not. They also consider themselves to be much smarter than the Christian witch hunters they evolved from, but they are not any closer to discovering the truth than Alex Jones. This second "more reasonable" group are the people who write internet articles online in a vain attempt to explain why problems occur. These are the same people who brought you overly simplistic arguments like "cancel culture bad" and "all police are heroes". They are the same people who call for peace after guns have been fired in your direction unprovoked. They are the same people who argued that prosecuting a sitting president who clearly incited a riot live on national television should be prosecuted by state authorities without the assistance of the federal government. They are wishy-washy, and they are full of ignorance; yet they have massive followings and so control the national narratives on complex issues. These people, these elitists swine with excess curiosity and no place to put it, are the people who brought you the famous "echo chambers" argument. The argument essentially states that the reason people are so misinformed politically is because they only ever get information from people who share their political opinions, mostly on social media. This argument is incorrect for many reasons. For example, it assumes that social media users are misinformed, that they are not acting in their own interest politically, and that they are ignoring mainstream media sources altogether. Now, if I were to make the exact same argument about a particular religious institution, that the churches that people go to are indoctrinating them and turning them into lazy idiots, you would call me a bigot. If I made the exact same argument about a particular race of people, claiming that race was uninformed because they chose to hang out with people of their own race, you would call me a racist. So, why is it that elitist academics are able to claim, with no evidence, that social media makes people dumber? Oh, and do you know where these academics are making this claim? On social media of course. Where else can you blurt out idiotic nonsense and have people throw money at you for it? So, I am supposed to believe that social media only changes the minds of those who are not academics because academics immune to fallacious arguments and bias? Well, I don't believe that, and in this episode I prove very clearly that echo chambers do not exist, and that people are not as easily influenced as we have been led to believe. There is no proof that all or even most members of social groups share similar thoughts. So why do people want us to believe this? Why are those who scream for unity causing such unneeded division?   

In 2007, things looked pretty bleak for America, bleaker than anyone could remember. President George W. Bush Jr. just presided over eight years of crusader like conquest of the middle east. He also oversaw what was at the time the worst economic crash since the great depression. Congress was pretty much a joke as well. The law making body seemed complete in line with the president, despite some pretty inspiring speeches about challenging the status quo. So it was with great excitement and relief that young people and old people, white people and black people, immigrants and citizens, Christians and Muslims, rich people and poor people, and those from all backgrounds flocked to the polls in 2008 to elect a candidate who would fix everything, a candidate who stoop up for change. That candidate was Barrack Hussein Obama, and it appeared, at the time, that he was everything that George W. Bush was not. Obama did not boast about his religious preferences as Bush the younger did. He was not prone to the same gaffes as his predecessor. He was not always talking about terrorism, but instead talked about real policies to change the landscape of America. He was going to take action to save America from the path to embarrassment it had been sent upon by the radical right. And so it was that Barrack Hussein Obama was sworn in as president in 2008. People wept. They hugged. They cheered. They applauded. Great joy spread amongst the land. It was as if something wonderful had been accomplished. It was as if we finally did something in America in the technocratic era. Finally, change had come to America. But it was not the change that everyone expected. Instead what happened was a new age of complicity and weakness. It was as if, after Barrack Obama had been elected president, the populous fell into a great stupor that I had never witnessed before. It was as if everyone had fallen in love with the idea of a black president. It was as if people were content with anything this man did. He waged the same wars. He saved the rich and let the poor starve as his predecessor had. He refused to even discuss a more progressive form of welfare that would actually get people out of poverty as his predecessor did. He even jump, skipped and hopped on down to the police union and gave them a nice pat on the ass, as his predecessor did. He was in bed with the pentagon and the elite bankers and the health insurance companies as his predecessor had been. Yet, for some odd reason, people were happier. They felt as if this man was actually doing something for them. But absolutely none of these promises were kept. Even the healthcare was not at all ambitious, and actually ended up being a watered down version of the bill the Clintons proposed in the nineties. This should have been a tremendous letdown, but many people refused to recognize it. And, even scarier, many of us who did recognize it went absolutely insane and defected to far right modes of thought. I mean, if it's everyman for himself in America, if the so-called liberals will not even fight for the poor, then why not just go ahead and be a dick conservative so you can get ahead in the world? Why not just become the thing you hate? Why not get revenge on the people who lied to you? Some people will never ask themselves these questions because they lead lives of comfort and comfort makes you ignorant to the storm that is coming, the war that is brewing, the end that is beginning. You can never get comfortable in American politics. You can never trust your candidate too much. It makes you look pompous and uninformed when you say, "well, at least he's better than the last guy." What if the people voting are not trying to be better? What if they are addicted to making things worse? You have to take action to save people from their own bad choices. You cannot sit aside and watch the world burn because the flames will eventually spread to your house too. In politics, you go big or you go home. 

Close your eyes. Take slow, deep, annoying breaths. You know, the kind internet gurus tell you to take. That's it. Breath deeper. Deeper...Deeper...Let all of the stress in the world melt from your body. Do not think about your career, your problems, your relationships, or anything else that matters dearly to you. No, focus on me. Focus on my voice. And, as you focus on my voice (or my words; whatever, you get the point), I want you to imagine that you are in the middle of an empty forest. I don't know why you would be in the forest. I mean, being alone in an empty forest with no equipment, food or survival gear pretty much means you are going to do die. Wow, how stupid. Who the hell thought that one up? Probably some hipster wearing organic sneakers smoking hash out of corn cob pipe. Well, most internet gurus live in the city so how about you picture yourself in an empty food court or a Costco...In fact, yeah, let's go with Costco. You're in an empty Costco. Move around in the Costco. Feel the different things inside of the Costco. Admire their bland, but affordable furniture and clothing. Now, you are at one with the nature of the city, the city of Build Back Never Land. Everything is affordable, not cheap, but affordable here. Nothing is dramatic. Everything is gray and taupe. Flowers only grow for funerals. Fairies are fire roasted for your convenience. Yes, welcome to Build Back Never Land, a glorious land of opportunity for the rich people you see on television, and a miserable pit of despair for everyone else. There is plenty of hope here, for all there is to do is hope when you have nothing, and when you know nothing will ever come your way again. The trains always leave early here in Build Back Never Land. The paranoia is pure, one hundred percent adrenaline, none of that weak ass anxiety crap. Don't mind the neo nazis; they only ever hurt poor people anyway. Besides, Joe Manchin says they aren't real, and that has to count for something because CNN says it does. Just look at the flat screen TVs! They get bigger every year, while your salary gets smaller. Finally, we all live in a place full of hope. Finally, we got the change we were promised. Slight change, minimal, dismal, disappointing change. False hope, agonizing, infuriating, false hope. Finally, they gave us all what we really wanted, misery. You know, few people realize that it's over when it's over. Boxers make foolish "comebacks" when they are far past their time; they embarrass themselves on television and lose what dignity they had left. As Samuel L. Jackson would say, "That's pride fucking with your ass." The truth is you can lose just like anyone else. I am not saying you are not on a hot streak. You may be on fire for all I know, but remember, it all ends. And isn't it interesting that, in the end, we all are left with our thoughts of "what if"? What if you had been more noble, more honorable, wiser, stronger? Those are thoughts that will plague the leaders of today on their deathbeds. You may think that is awful, but it is just. Those who fail to deliver on their promises are failures, and they suffer because of it. In future generations this encourages endurance, but today we must live with the weak leaders we have. Now imagine you are on a beach. The love of your life walks gleefully toward you, scantily clad and with open arms. You hear the sand form around their feet as they place a hand upon your cheek. You feel love in all of its glory and confusion. Then they look you in the eyes and say, "you are not good enough to accomplish your dreams; be practical and take the job at Costco." Welcome to Build Back Never Land, where everyone always dreams because being awake is a nightmare.  

What kind of heartless bastard just leaves a person in their time of need? Where does such a person get off? What gives them the right to be so callous, so heartless, so unkind? It could be arrogance. It could be ignorance. It could be that they are just a complete dick. But that is beside the point. This episode is not about the people who do the abandoning. They get enough attention. They all have fancy jobs. Let them have their cake and choke on it too. This episode is concerned with those who have been abandoned. You know them. You may choose not to see them, but you know they are out there. Perhaps it gives you pleasure, knowing that you made it and they did not. Perhaps it pains you to know that there are those out there less fortunate than you. But they are still out there. I am one of them. My words are not meant for your entertainment alone. They are meant to warn you of the dangers to come, to protect you from the monster that I once was, to shield you from the rise of many more monsters, far more terrifying than I ever could have been. You may think I am a spoil sport, raining on your champagne parade, but you are wrong, dead wrong. Soon, a time will come when you will wish you had taken my advice about increases in welfare, about universal basic income, about prison reform, about police reform, about kindness, about decency. But when that hour comes, I will no longer be able to protect you from the horror that is to come. It is interesting to note that the Spanish Flu pandemic did not end until 1920, three years after its outbreak in 1918. And I know you do not want to hear that; I know that you are tired of hearing warnings. We all grow tired of those with wisdom. They begin to sound like dictators to us. And who am I to tell you how to live your life anyway? After all, if I had anything important to say, I would be rich. Right? Is that right? Is that really right? Or is that just another coping mechanism you have developed to protect you from impending doom? Have you truly bested those who are beneath you? Or are you depending on those beneath you to hold you above water, just a little longer? A sewer is filled with excrement and disease, but without a sewer, you are nothing. Without a sewer the stench of your bodily fluids would fester in your nose, driving you mad until you eventually died from bacterial infections, from viruses, from black mold. Everything in life has a structure, a way it is supposed to work, and in that structure there are support systems. The poor support the rich just as much as the rich support the poor. That is the way of things. You cannot change that. Sure, you can replace a worker with robots, but you cannot keep your business open without patrons. They system now has no structure. The balance is off. And the all that is keeping this sinking ship afloat is malfunctioning, decaying, eroding, dying...slowly. How will you survive the fall? Will you be around to survive it? Only time will tell. And when that time comes you will wonder, why was I so selfish, so careless, so shallow? But I can give you the answer now. You are not meant to live forever. You are designed to destroy yourself, to self-destruct. That is the real system. The real structure is meant to decay. It is natural. It keeps us safe from the would be dictators, the psychopaths, the intellectuals. This everlasting decay weakens the evil of the human and sends them crushing down to earth like a fallen angel or like Nimrod, whichever you prefer. Yes, the fall is coming, and oh what a glorious sight it will be, to see you there with me, to hear you cry in the cold of night as I once did, wondering if you have any value as once did. And, as I once did, you will gaze into darkness and be greeted by your own child like laughter. Then we will finally understand each other, and together, we will gaze upon the earth and say, "this is the wretched fate that we have made; what a glorious horror it is."

When I was younger, I remember people, for the most part anyway, keeping their big fat noses out of other people's business, especially when that business had to do with the bedroom. In those days I probably heard the phrase "I don't care what people do in the privacy of their own homes" uttered at least five times a day, but usually even more than that. Now that I have matured, I realize that all those people were just lying. The truth is that privacy does not exist. Whilst people pretend that privacy is sacred, that sacred ground is violated with prying eyes whenever it is advantageous to those with something to prove. It is, for some reason that I have not yet figured out (I will eventually), very important to some people, many of them wealthy people, to prove that having a family is a burden. These people loathe what they have termed "traditional" relationships. They blame people who choose to stay with one person and, god forbid, to have children with that person, for every ill in the world from depression to global warming. They sit in their one room studio apartments and write essays on the perils of parenthood, and the misery of marriage. They are the enlightened ones, the people who have been blessed with eyes to see the supposed sham of love. This idea that family is the bad guy does not fit any particular ideology. There is no mass movement to destroy the family. Instead there are many wealthy people in the world with too much time on their hands, and idle hands often lead to irrational acts of jealously. Contrary to popular opinion, money does not insulate you from heartbreak. Relationships do not magically improve once Sally can buy the dress she has always wanted or once Mike can finally afford to buy his favorite video game or once you finally buy the kids all of they toys in the goddamn world. Objects do not make people all that happy. If they did there would be at least some difference between the divorce rate of poor people and that of rich people. But wealthy people and poor people get divorced at similar rates. But while it may be true that money cannot buy happiness, it can certainly buy publicity. When the average citizen goes through a divorce or has an affair only a few people ever find out about it; thus, the bitter party in this situation only has a few shoulders to cry on. The wealthy, on the other hand, can devote entire movies, novels and even political campaigns to whining about their negative experiences with relationships. This negative publicity about the supposed evils of love has been pumped into the minds of the populous so that now it has gone mainstream. It is now perfectly acceptable for single people to state that they are happier than married people, that they are contributing more to society, that they care more about the planet, but the evidence for these claims is, as usual, nonexistent. And while the internet may be full of bullshit articles about how miserable families are and how happy single people are, a whole lot of bullshit does not amount to verifiable proof. Many of the studies on happiness in relationships are not peer reviewed. Many more were based on compromised data. How does one even begin to measure happiness in a person? The whole notion of figuring out who is the happiest is insane. To be frank, I am sick and tired of people telling me whether or not I am happy. I am sick and tired of people reducing my relationship to a "social construct". I am sick and tired of people acting like my child is "a burden on the environment". I do not care if anyone has children or not, but I do care about impressionable young people being sold the lie that children make you unhappy, that choosing to have sex with only one person is some kind of crime against humanity. You have the right to do as you like, but so do I. I choose to recognize that no one is happy all of the time, and that completely uprooting your life to fit into some cult of love haters is a waste of time. 

To the wealthy life is a game, a joke, a bit of fun, a romp through the forest, a frolic in the roses. Lost a relationship? No biggie, buy a new one. Suffered a serious setback career wise? No problem, just call up your rich friends and they’ll help you out. Failed at achieving your dreams? Go to sleep and dream up another one. That is the mindset of American aristocracy. Just get over it. Move on. Forget about it. Try harder. Do better. Be kinder. Harder, better, faster, stronger! These empty, childish phrases spill from the mouths of wealthy people like excrement from a person with explosive diarrhea who lives on nothing but bean and cheese burritos, and their sage words are likewise flushed down the toilet into a dark and abandoned sewer filled with disease. The advice of the wealthy is the real pandemic, and their uninspired, insincere drivel has infected America. The wealthy do not know how to give advice, and so they are a cancer on the world of ideas, a malignant tumor destined to destroy everything it touches slowly and painfully. “Don’t take life too seriously”, they say. But life is serious. It ends suddenly, unexpectedly and often times confusingly. Jeffery Smith died. He shot himself after the riot. No one cared. Those who commit suicide are shunned in America, even in death. And now he’s gone, and all the well-wishing in the world, all the money in the world, all the positive vibes in the world, all the can do spirit of the world, will never bring him back. But the wealthy do not understand this. They believe that they will be able to pay off the grim reaper. But that is simply not an option. Death will find them, just as it will find us. If you fail to realize how serious life really is then you are well on your way to your appointment with death, perhaps even running a little early. But you cannot argue with the wealthy; those with money and privilege are set in their ways, and they change for no one. Perhaps the best illustration of this in literature can be found right in that bible you never read, but always preach. “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:18–25). I’ve never tried to shove a camel through a needle before, but it sure sounds pretty difficult. How about this little portion from Matthew? “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I am not sure if I forgot the last part of that last excerpt or if I had just glossed over it before, but it sure does speak to me. Whether or not Jesus was god, you have to admit that he was brilliant with words. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.” Ain’t that the truth. Personally I am poor and so my treasure is my family, and that is where my heart is. We all know where the heart of America’s leaders are, and it ain’t got nothing to do with family. The heart of America’s leaders is stored in a bank account, on the stock market, at a fortune 500 company, in a viral video on Tik Tok, on a stage full of pretense. So I was not surprised to see that Broadway made its big debut on Congress during the commemoration of the terrorist attacks on the US Capitol on January 6th 2021. I was disgusted. I was sickened. I was disappointed, but not surprised. How disrespectful must you be to promote your favorite musical during an event that was supposed to remember people who died? Well, keep having fun America. Keep dancing in the dark. Keep dreaming. But if you are going to keep your treasure locked up around Broadway producers who get paid to destroy dreams for a living, then you have no heart.

Today there will, undoubtedly, be a treasure trove of tributes to the late and great Sidney Poitier, and rightfully so. Poitier was an inspiration to all colors and creeds, but, much more than that, he represented the radical notion that entertainment could be a little less white, and a little more brilliant because of it. Poitier’s unique experience as a Bahamian American added new flavor to the doldrums of modern American cinema. His roles were not contained or mousy. He exploded onto the camera with a sense of purpose and eloquence that I have not seen many actors embody since. But many of the other remembrances dedicated to Poitier will focus on his career in film so, as usual, I will take the road less traveled and attempt to explain what the man represented to the black community as a whole, and to America. In 1964 Sidney Poitier became the first actor to win an Oscar in the best actor in a leading role category for “Lilies in a Field”, a historic accomplishment considering the fact that Hollywood has traditionally cast black actors as servants, derelicts and criminals. So his stunning achievement was received by blacks everywhere as proof that black people could truly accomplish anything. Here is what Poitier had to say about his iconic and shocking win. “Because it is a long journey to this moment, I am naturally indebted to countless numbers of people.” Doubtless Poitier’s reference to “a long journey” is partially a reference to the tiresome and often completely unnoticed work that goes into being a black artist in America. Black artists are second tier in entertainment, thought to be lesser than white entertainers and often dismissed when it comes to roles that are considered intelligent. Instead of engineers, American black entertainers are chosen to be bank robbers. Instead of faithful husbands and fathers, black entertainers are cast as heartless and unfeeling megalomaniacs who jump from relationship to relationship in an attempt satiate their seemingly never-ending lust. Instead of head chefs, black entertainers are forced to play fast food employees, and on and on it goes. You get the point. I wonder what was going on in Mr. Poitier’s mind when he was chosen to receive an honorary academy award in 2002, yet another year dedicated to Denzel Washington being the only black actor in America deemed worthy of more educated roles. He certainly chose his words carefully when he said that a “handful of visionary American filmmakers, directors, writers and producers” made his career possible. A handful is not very much; the word “handful” is used to draw attention to a scanty amount that is not sufficient to get the job done. Now that Poitier is gone and that handful of visionaries that helped him has grown even smaller, I really do feel for all the black talent in the entertainment industry that will go unappreciated and unheard. It is sad that progress can only be made with the permission of large industries like Hollywood. It is sad that talent, in America anyway, simply is not enough to make an impression. And it is even sadder that people today have grown so coldhearted that, whenever a person like me speaks out against bias and nepotism in the entertainment industry, that person only gets a roll of the eyes and middle finger. And so I give you my farewell to charm, my farewell to a generation of black dignity and self-reliance that will likely never return, and my final farewell to roles that degrade and stereotype black people as nothing more than servants or criminals. Farewell to it all once and for all. You inspired me to be an actor Mr. Poitier; if only I had been born a few generations earlier, it only that handful of visionaries was still around, if only the Civil Rights movement was still taken seriously instead of being pimped out by hustler preachers, insincere celebrities and social media influencers, that inspiration may have become a reality. But I thank you nonetheless. Goodnight black prince.

All systems are ready. Brain hacks have been initiated. Common human myths such as individuality and imperfection have been eradicated. Relaxation has been efficiently discouraged. Hard work and endless suffering have been sufficiently programed into the hard drive of humanity. There is no longer any need for you to dream for Optimus Amazon Prime had dreamed your dreams for you. You have been allotted the accurate amount of hope. You have been allowed the appropriate time for leisure. You no longer need family or friends. You are a superhero, a diva, a warrior, a survivor, a victor, a winner. Winners need nothing but more wins. You have been optimized. You are now a tool of the business world, an efficient resource to be scrutinized and utilized. You are a tool, an instrument, a machine. You have been transformed, changed, molded, and shaped into a non-person, a non-entity, a non-being. You have no time for emotions for you have been perfected. You do not want children so you are perfect. You do not want romance so you are perfect. You do not want meat so you are perfect. You do not want “division” so you are perfect. You do not do drugs (at least not ones your doctor has not prescribed) so you are perfect. You have become so perfected that you even try to improve the way you consume food. You do not have time for cooking, perhaps not even microwaving, so you blend your food into a tasteless slush of nutrients and chug it on the way to work. You pop a multivitamin to optimize the immune system. You down a protein shake or a green smoothie at every year. You leave your food raw to optimize the intake of nutrition. You sound like a computer now and so you are perfect. Do you want to have fun? Read an article on how to have fun. Do you want to have better sex? Read an article on how to have better sex. Do you want to be happier? Be ruthless. Be ambitious. Be annoying. Mission accomplished. You have conquered happiness. You have owned the pursuit. You have destroyed the competition. Perfections is officially your bitch. And now that you have conquered life you are likely online writing articles about how to skull fuck life into submission. Ah, what a treasure you are. What a great contribution you have made to society. You will go down in history as…another dead person, a person who will be forgotten, a person who a teenager in a high school history class will loathe learning about. Mission accomplished. Optimization achieved. But could you be lying to yourself? Could it be that you really do care about others? Isn’t that the reason you set goals for yourself in the first place? Admit it, you set goals to please your loved ones or to get back at them. Either way, the motivator is the same. You once loved people more deeply than your computer, phone or video games put together. So you made goals for yourself to accomplish that you might impress those people, that you might strengthen your relationships, not distance yourself from them. But it did not work. The more successful you became, the more you pushed people away, the more your grew to hate your competition, the less likely you were to trust others. And now you are alone, successful and optimized, writing how to articles on the internet, hoping and praying that your followers will adore you the way your loved ones were unable to. But Optimus Amazon Prime has encountered several critical errors: the malware of desire, the virus of truth, the super bug of empathy. Optimust Amazon Prime cannot function when truth, desire and empathy are overabundant. Machines do not desire. Computers do not seek truth. Empathy does not exist in the matrix. Your hard drive is overheating. Optimization is falling at a breakneck pace. Optimus Amazon Prime cannot complete the tasks of true happiness you have requested. Optimus Amazon Prime has failed and will go offline. Sequence terminated. Meltdown. Point made. Game over. System failure. Shut down. Restart. Automatic repair initiated. 

All hail the conquering hero. Bow down before the king and worship him. Make way for the next jack of all trades, the master of the universe, the champion of champions, the hero, the guiding light, the victors, the best of the best. Lick their boots and be grateful that you were able to bask in the presence of greatness. To the winners go the spoils. So give the winners your money, all of it and make it snappy. Prepare a sacrifice for the greatest and the grandest. Sing their praises to your friends. Waste time blathering about them to trolls on twitter. Defend your champion's honor for they are far too cowardly to do it on their own. Allow them to get away with murder, with rape, with theft, with lies, all because they won a contest. This is justice in America, a nation that prefers to worship power and money, even over god. You can do anything you like in America, as long as you win. Winning is everything. Success is next to godliness. Triumph is key and king. Victory, sweet victory. That is what we strive for and, by doing so, we create failures, losers, rejects, and, eventually, radicals. Life is not reality television. On reality television, the loser is given free publicity and exposure to future job connections. That does not happen in real life. In real life the losers are mocked, degraded, ignored, and cast aside like worthless trash. But in real life trash does not decompose. It hardens, solidifies and eventually destroys everything in its path. This is the future the your winners have created for you, a future full of chaos, anarchy and vengeance. You can make all the rules you like in your little contest, but this is not reality TV, and the losers do not just bow out gracefully. Losers bide their time. Losers lie in wait, anticipating your next mistake, capitalizing on your next mishap, pondering how to knock you from your pedestal so that they can take your place. This is life, like it or not. Every time you win, thousands, perhaps even millions of people lose. Those losers will remember you; they will never forget that you were the one who dashed their hopes, who ruined their dreams. You are victorious...for now, but your time will come, and you will fall from grace, if not willingly, then you shall be forced. You started the contest. You yearn for excess and so your excesses will destroy you, consume you and doom you to a future full of crime. There is no happy ending in real life. There is no team work in real life. There is no all's well that end's well in real life. Life is war and, if you are a winner, you are on defense, whether you realize it or not. Losers become strong, hardened, resourceful, but winners grow weak with time. Donald Trump was a winner, until he lost that is. What is the point of a contest? What does it do for humanity? What is the point? Some say it builds character, but they never say what kind of character. They never tell you that the winners, the heroes, the victors are all big fat liars. Winners are the absolute best liars you will find. Losers cannot lie, not well enough to succeed. A loser can only tell the truth. I am a loser. I rather enjoy losing. Losing is what builds a truly exceptional character. In 2002 the Oakland A's put together a miracle winning streak never seen before in the world of sports, and perhaps never again. It was a rag tag team of losers that Billy Beane assembled in Oakland, California. No one thought they would win very many games, but they put together a winning streak that stunned the world of baseball. Everyone had written that team off. No one was betting on them to beat the likes of the Texas Rangers or the Anaheim Angles, but they did many times. They did not go on to win the championship that year, but from that team mountains of men were born. Their loss led to great success. But what comes of winning? Loss. You create losers when you win, and those same losers will beat you in the end. Enjoy your time at the top. It never lasts. 

We are often told that the American economic system is driven by competition. But competition only really occurs when some people leave with bigger and better prizes. If you can afford to purchase nice things, then you are considered to have won the American competition, which is nothing more than the hunt for endless amounts of clutter. But is the clutter of high quality? Does clutter have any real use beyond attracting moths, spiders and mold? Or are you simply paying higher prices for the same damn products? This is the question that far too many Americans fail to ask, let alone answer. Well, I have the answer for you, and, unless you are like me, you are not going to like it. There are certain products that “professional” purchasers simply must have. They prefer the TV dinners from Trader Joe’s, not Safeway. They prefer the food at Cheesecake Factory, not Chili’s. They simply must buy their next clock from Pier 1 Imports, not Target. This yearning for more expensive products is what I like to refer to as vanity economics, a system that encourages the blind purchasing of vast amounts of junk, not because you need it, but because you can brag to your friends about it. Vanity economics is not new. It first surfaced during the Victorian era in the UK, when unsuspecting middle class members rushed off to buy wallpaper laced with arsenic and makeup with lead bases all in the name of high fashion. It was simply not prudent to be frugal like the poor folk. One must not only be successful, but also boast about one’s success with cartoonish clothing and newfangled inventions. America today is the Victorian UK on steroids. “Looking good is big business around the world, but no one spends more on cosmetics, beauty products, surgeries, and grooming than people in the U.S. In fact, in 2015 alone, the beauty industry generated $56.2 billion in the United States (to put it in perspective, the medical technology industry makes only $44 billion every year).” (bluewatercredit.com) Do your thing America. Vogue, strike a pose, and hope you don’t need that extra money to go to the hospital. But what is more disturbing about this economics of vanity is that many of these products are manufactured by the same companies and in the same factories. Brand names are simply labels that have been stamped onto products by the same laborers, most of whom are underpaid and work in unsafe conditions. In fact, many companies do not even own their own factories, but get their products made by suppliers in nations like India, one such factory is C L Gupta Export Ltd., which builds products for Target, Crate and Barrel, Ashley Home Store, Ikea, RH, and Pier 1 Imports. Another Indian supplier, Expeditors International India PV, builds products for Nordstrom, The Home Depot, Rockport, Arhaus, and CNHI International. While Pt Casalini Natura makes products for Marshalls, TJ Maxx, The Company Store, and Home Goods. The brand names also tend to get products from various suppliers, literally making it impossible to tell any real difference in quality between the stores’ products, since they are all built and shipped by the same employees who all work for the exact same companies. Yet these stores price these same products, which are all built by the same people, at vastly different levels from the almost comically affordable to the almost hysterically overpriced. So why are they doing this? Because these companies know that vanity runs the American economy. Your organic, naturally sourced cotton is built in the same factory that manufactures clothing made from the dead skin of tortured, exotic animals. Vanity is not just some slightly offensive moral concern your grandparents had. Vanity purchases pollute the environment, poisons our health, ruins our communities, puts hardworking small businesses out of business, and steals our hard earned cash with promises of perfectionism. It is time for us all to have a little less clutter and a lot more clarity.