I work pretty hard to stay away from the news. I mean, I have to be clued in, to some degree… But I try to be emotionally distant in my consumption of the world, national, and state news.
I only let myself have a more impassioned reaction to local news. And I try to skew that reaction to be one of love, acceptance, and support.
—
In 2019, I watched the beginning of the TV show called The Boys.
I never read the comics. Never heard about it. Just decided to watch it one day.
I started the show and chomped down on some popcorn.
Let’s just say that this is not a show where you can eat snacks while watching.
That first scene took me OUT.
I had to stop. I still, generally, skip over those gratuitous scenes of extreme violence (and gore, explicit sex, and so on).
I get the picture after a few seconds. I don’t need to see it all. My mind can connect those dots.
I do want to see how the characters react. I want to see what they learn. The choices they make.
I just don’t need to watch ten minutes of the goriest, most violent, most explicit shit ever to get to the reactions.
—
If you haven’t seen the scene I’m talking about, I’ll describe it.
Hughie is walking the streets of New York City with his girlfriend, Robin. They’re happy and in love. Hughie is going to ask for a raise and she’s going to move in with him.
And then, something rushed by so fast, it felt like time slowed down.
A superhero zips right on by.
A-Train is a Flash-like superhero with super speed that can, apparently, kill another human being if he decides to just run through them.
And that’s what happened to Robin. Dead. In a moment.
It’s explained by the company behind this superhero (and others) that this was an unfortunate casualty and they regret the collateral damage but assured Hughie that A-Train was saving lives. They offered him money if he signed an NDA and promised to never speak publicly about this event or his feelings related to it.
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
We live in a world where the good guy is now a bad guy.
This is a truth that now stares us in the face.
But it has always stared us in the face. We’ve just chosen to stick with (or have been fed) a particular story.
Nowadays, the stories choose us. And we see multiple angles all at once. And the stories change over time. And the people who told them are revealed to be imperfect. And the whole world can investigate any story to find the parts that were omitted (or refined, or made up, or …).
Some context: I have seen a trend on TikTok where someone will film something on their phone and upload it and then another person from a different angle will show us another version of this event.
Then the person who was being filmed will upload what they captured on their phone.
Then the people who were involved will make their own videos “spilling the tea” about what happened or what led up to the event that was filmed.
Sometimes we will get AI-enhanced versions that splice clips together, improve or alter video quality, alter video content, etc… (such as deepfakes)
—
What I omitted from my description of The Boys story: That superhero: A-Train. He was high. He was abusing a drug known as Compound V. This is the drug that is responsible for the creation of superhumans.
The show reveals almost all of these superheroes to be quite flawed (and rather evil). It is told from the perspective of Hughie, a normal human who was living a normal life he loved until circumstances took it all from him.
And in that way, he felt justified in seeking revenge against these supes. He wanted to tear down the system. His cronies wanted to kill all of the supes. And we wanted to go along for the ride!
In the intervening episodes, it gets more and more messy. The show has a bias towards Hughie but it still explores his flaws and biases. It does this relatively well.
We are always on his side, even when he kills people (supes, but still), even when he lies to his new girlfriend (a supe named Starlight), even when he manipulates people, even when he takes temporary Compound V.
Cheating IS the System
We live in a new reality. It used to take WORK to understand the flaws of humanity. To see through the stories we were told.
That work brought with it some self-improvement along the way.
You had to go to the library. To talk directly with people who were experts on the topic (at school/university, at the news station, and even at the job). You had to read books.
You had to direct yourself in this effort to become educated which would usually lead to some revelations.
This work that you’d do would expose you to nuance. Would drive you to consider your own biases. Would make you take some of the claims with grains of salt/sugar (depending on the mutual predispositions of the author and audience).
In the age of the smartphone, mobile internet, and Artificial Intelligence; you can cut out all of that work if you want.
It’s never been easier to seem like you’re an intellectual. To seem smart.
It’s never been easier to anchor yourself to beliefs and to find the evidence to prove your beliefs valid. Echo chambers abound.
It’s never been easier to find a community that agrees with your views (or skews to an even more extreme perspective of your views).
It’s never been easier to find a way to become successful for having loud and extreme views on any given topic.
—
George Santos, a fucking person I should NEVER talk about is getting movies made about him. He’s selling Cameo videos for $200 a pop. He’s a fucking grifter who lied his way to 15 minutes of fame and is milking it for all its worth. A crook.
And he’s getting all the attention he could ever want.
Why America loves crooks, I will never know. Our obsession with Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff, all the way back to Al Capone… And these are just names that have made their way into popular entertainment that I’ve consumed in just the last month.
The glorification of the irredeemable is something I’ll never understand. George isn’t sorrowful. He doesn’t regret his lies. He’s not learning from his mistakes. He has only doubled down on his cruelty, his bigotry, and his deceitful behaviors.
Closing
This is the beginning of a painful process.
When I say things will get worse before they get better, what I mean is that the work required to substantially realize the influence we have on the state of the world is far from done.
A year may seem like forever, and for many vulnerable individuals, we’re already too late.
And it’s going to take more than a year.
I predict more tension and conflict ahead.
I think the 2024 situation in America is nearly untenable. I fear we will see a return of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States of America.
A man who is facing 91, NINETY ONE, felony counts could easily become POTUS.
This is a man who has lied about everything.
This is a man whose company he’s kept has turned on him or he’s turned on them (which alone should tell you everything you need to know about him and his character, let alone the way he conducts himself IN PUBLIC!) I would be ostracized if I carried myself even 10% as Trump carries himself. My family would disown me. My employer would terminate me. My friends would pretend like they don’t know me.
He once sang Maddox’s praises. As he did of Barr’s. and Powell. and Sessions. and Kelly. and Tillerson. and Esper. and Chao. and McConnell. and McCarthy. These are people who worked for him.
Donald Trump, the guy who can HIRE, hired the BEST!!! So he said at the time… And every single one, he turned on and lambasted after he hired them. One step out of line, one disagreement and he discards them like they’re trash.
What does that tell you?
This is a man who hates women. Who demeans every group. Who says whatever will get the biggest cheer that day. Who is a clear hypocrite and patholgical liar. Who respects and looks up to some of the world’s worst authoritarians. Who has no coherent policies that solve problems (just lower taxes, cut regulations, and cross our fingers).
I mean, think about what a hack that is.
“Oh, I’m gonna spend my 4 years lowering taxes so things look better! And I’ll let the problems stack up for the opposition. Then they’ll take on the problems and I can claim that they caused them…”
You’re not cutting costs by laying off people you’ll hire back in the boom times. You’re not solving problems by PRETENDING THERE ARE NONE.
The Republican party has no policies, just a populist authoritarian wannabe, and a general desire to cut taxes, reduce the welfare and education system, privatize everything, and enforce some specific religious morals on the entire human collective that makes up America.
Bad men thrive in these times.
—
But I’ve seen this story end. For humanity, it has always ended on a more positive note. We remember the bad men and what they did. And we put systems in place to prevent them from harming us again.
The issues we face are not going to go away just cause we shifted our focus onto each other. As much as these populists will point their fingers, we know better.
When you argue with your spouse about the dishes in the sink, without actually doing anything about the dishes, you’re still going to have a mess to clean up when all is said and done between the two of you.
We’re angry. We’re hurt. We’re overwhelmed. We’re affected by the state of the world. We’re disenfranchised. We’re the victim and the aggressor all in one.
When we face big problems, this is what we do.
We attack each other based on the existing level of pain and suffering, which was ignored and had gathered up over years and years (bad things compound just like good things).
The existing pain is what got us into this emotional state where we now find ourselves lashing out. In our attacks, we cause a lot of additional unnecessary pain and suffering.
We have yet to hit the realization point of the story. We are still blinded by our emotions. And we’re not yearning for peace.
To be honest, we haven’t been taxed enough.
When we finally do realize that we’ve attacked the wrong thing (people instead of the problem), that’s when we’ll get to the good work of rebuilding and redesigning.
And I know how this plays out too. Global systemic change. It is INEVITABLE.
I believe the global community, in fifty years’ time, will be the most robust community humanity has ever had.
I will hopefully still be alive, and only at the halfway point of my life by then. One where Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence, Interconnected World Wide Web, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Space Exploration, and Human Maturity (with all the pros that implies) are agreed upon and managed at a global level.