When a boy who looked like he could be anywhere between 12 and 20 walked up to me in a crowded bookstore and said my name, I was puzzled as to who he could be or how he might know me. My first guess was that I went to school with him, but he looked far too young for that to be the case. “I watch you on YouTube,” he told me, extending a hand for me to shake it.
It never occurred to me until that moment that there were actual flesh and blood human beings, who occupied the same physical realm as I did, watching my videos. It was off-putting. I was pouring my heart and soul out to actual human beings? How unlike me! It was cringe-inspiring and traumatic to think that people, no better than any people that I had ever encountered in my life, knew things about me.
Of course, on a rational level, I always knew that my audience was comprised of real human beings. I was under no illusion that my subscribers were as physically intangible as the characters that I have always created in my head. But there is a massive chasm—at least for me—between rational reality and visceral reality. It’s the difference between hearing the words, “Your friend is dead” and actually seeing your friend’s lifeless bullet-riddled corpse. It’s the difference between what we know and what we know.
There is a cruelty inherent to the relatively new medium of internet vlogging in that it lures us into believing in some gullible and intellectually soft area of our brains that we are not talking to an audience, but to ourselves. By the time we realize otherwise—truly realize it—we’re already exposed.
From that initial sting of realization, there can only come relief. It’s a relief most people will never experience—the relief of being freed from the burden of the mask of their own contrived banality. Once you’ve opened your mouth and removed all doubt that you are a complete nutjob, you don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.
So let me start explaining myself.
* * *
On September 11th 2001, this entire nation was awestruck with the spectacle of an attack on American soil of proportions not seen since December 7th, 1941. The American people rightly screamed for justice. They wanted to see those responsible for the heinous act against their fellow American’s punished.
That’s the problem with suicide attackers. You can’t retaliate against them. They’re already dead.
This is probably why so many Americans called the 9/11 hijackers cowards in the wake of the attacks, but by now we can all surely set that comforting lie aside and admit to ourselves that cowards do not die in the pursuit of their goals. The hijackers were certainly evil, brain-washed idiots—but not cowards.
The bloodlust of the American populace could not be sated with the destruction of those who perpetrated the attack against us, because it was a destruction that they had chosen for themselves. We had to go after who they worked for, and instead of investigating the matter thoroughly, the Bush administration pinned it exclusively on Osama Bin Laden, ignoring the ties of almost all of the hijackers to Saudi Arabia.
Soon enough, even Osama was forgotten. The war in Afghanistan was swallowed alive by the war in Iraq. The bloodlust of the American people formed a red carpet for big government and big business to stroll into the Middle East and set up shop. Military contractors like Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer Halliburton made record profits by overcharging the government for busy work. Oil Companies like Exxon made record profits while gas prices nearly quadrupled. By the time American’s forgot about their need for vengeance, they found themselves stuck in a war that will end up costing nearly a trillion dollars and has already cost thousands of lives.
If these were the events of a novel, you’d be incensed if the fictional population of the book didn’t revolt and overthrow their government for such a miscarriage of their will. But this isn’t a tidy fiction, it is a complex reality and the American people are too stupid and defeated to have the means or the inclination to rebel against their masters.
So, the question becomes: How did a population descended from a bunch of badass rebels who kicked the ever-loving shit out of the English when King George III tried to tax them too highly turn into a cluster of tepid pussies with no real ambition? How did the home of the free and the land of the brave become the land of the timid and the home of the enslaved?
The American people were tamed by a trifecta of factors: safety, patriotism and individualism. Now, I happen to believe that safety, patriotism and individualism are good things. However, when those who run the system use these concepts, they use them as weapons against the people. Safety starts to mean fear. Patriotism starts to mean obedience. Individualism starts to mean lack of empathy.
Safety is a good thing. There’s no reason for people to be needlessly endangered. The thing is, safety is not something that should trump personal freedom—as it did when our government passed The Patriot Act.
Patriotism is a good thing. When you take pride in your country, you want to see it prosper. You want to make sure it is a peaceful and opportunity-rich place for the next generation to inhabit. However, when patriotism is transformed into blind support for one’s government, then it ceases to be a force for positivity and instead becomes a detriment to that which we should most cherish. Our children do not benefit from a world where corporate profit is king. The mindless obedience of the populace to the idea that corporate greed is good does not feel like patriotism to me. It feels a damn sight more like treason.
Individualism is certainly a good thing, but when individualism turns into the notion of “every man for himself” then it is a basically Social Darwinism. You see this mentality reflected in the inability of the American public to forgive any transgression. If a politician sleeps with a prostitute, they want him to resign. If a man kills another man in the heat of passion, people want him to go to jail for the rest of his life. If a man molests a child, instead of trying to find out why this urge exists and making an effort to prevent it from occurring in the future, the people call for his head on a stick.
The fork whose prongs are safety, patriotism and individualism has been stuck into us and we’re done. This triplet doctrine has rendered the free and the brave into a great and huddling mass of selfish slaves who take orders because they’re too fearful to ask questions or make demands.
Too often, those who maintain courage and freedom and true individuality attempt to free the people by simply addressing the symptoms of the disease of servitude to the system. This is not effective. We must eliminate the disease itself.
This can be done be educating the populace as to the true meanings of the virtues of safety, patriotism and individuality.
Safety does not just mean death-prevention. Human beings are not the only things that need to be kept safe. It is also important—more so, in fact—to keep the noble aspects of human beings alive. Freedom of choice, freedom of association, freedom from unreasonable taxation, freedom of and from religion, freedom to dissent—these things must be kept safe too.
And who would really wish to live in a world of absolute safety? We can make people safer by taking away all their rights just like we can make the streets safer by outlawing cars. That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Patriotism should be pride taken in the accomplishments of our society. When we have a good economy and a surplus of freedoms, it is good to look upon that wealth and freedom and say, “this is good shit!” Patriotism also means recognizing faults with the system and coming up with solutions to fix them.
I have a deep and profound love for my country, but in times like these it’s a bit like being in love with a crack whore who you know will steal your stereo and sell it for crack if you fall asleep with her in your house. We shouldn’t let America sell our stereos for crack. It’s not right.
Individualism means being true to yourself, not being a slave to self-interest. Let me give you an example of what I mean, since I know that a good deal of my Libertarian viewers are currently scratching their heads and saying to themselves, “but that’s not what Ayn Rand said!”
The American right-wing is fond of the buzzwords “personal responsibility.” If you’ve ever watched Glenn Beck (I don’t recommend it), you’d think it was the name for the Philosopher’s Stone. He can hardly let a sentence pass by without throwing “personal responsibility” into it.
Ask yourself: “What exactly is personal responsibility?” It’s the idea that no matter what happens in your life, it is entirely your fault and entirely your problem. If there is a housing crisis and you were the victim of predatory lending practices, it’s your fault for not understanding the legal jargon that you signed before your Mortgage tripled. If you were drunk at a bar and a man grabbed your girlfriend’s ass and you punched him and he fell and hit his head on hard on the floor and died, you’re a murderer and you should go to prison for the rest of your life. If you are a 25-year-old man and you start flirting with a girl and take her back to your apartment and fuck her in every hole she's got . . . only to later discover that she was 14, guess what? You’re a pedophile and you’ll go to prison, get your ass beat and buggered on a daily basis until eventually they’ll let you out, make you go to a shrink and put you on a list that ensures you’ll never hold another good job and you won’t be able to live pretty much anywhere.
Personal responsibility in action, folks.
It’s been misapplied to the point of uselessness. Of course people should be responsible for the things they do, but we as a people have somehow come to the conclusion that this means that no one is ever allowed to make a mistake or have a moment of weakness. We are a bunch of unforgiving douchebags, and the reason for it is because Mr. A doesn’t care if Mr. B goes to prison on some bogus charges. And guess what? Mr. C won’t give a shit when Mr. B goes to prison a few weeks later on the same charge.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. THE. HIGHEST. IN. THE. WORLD.
Here in the land of the free, a full 1% of our population is in prison. 2 million people are incarcerated in the prison system of the United States of America.
Those in power know that we won’t stand up for one another, so they can put anyone behind bars that they want. Drug-users, political dissidents, the mentally ill—anyone that can fit into a cell can be sold into slavery in this nation.
God Damn America.
It never occurred to me until that moment that there were actual flesh and blood human beings, who occupied the same physical realm as I did, watching my videos. It was off-putting. I was pouring my heart and soul out to actual human beings? How unlike me! It was cringe-inspiring and traumatic to think that people, no better than any people that I had ever encountered in my life, knew things about me.
Of course, on a rational level, I always knew that my audience was comprised of real human beings. I was under no illusion that my subscribers were as physically intangible as the characters that I have always created in my head. But there is a massive chasm—at least for me—between rational reality and visceral reality. It’s the difference between hearing the words, “Your friend is dead” and actually seeing your friend’s lifeless bullet-riddled corpse. It’s the difference between what we know and what we know.
There is a cruelty inherent to the relatively new medium of internet vlogging in that it lures us into believing in some gullible and intellectually soft area of our brains that we are not talking to an audience, but to ourselves. By the time we realize otherwise—truly realize it—we’re already exposed.
From that initial sting of realization, there can only come relief. It’s a relief most people will never experience—the relief of being freed from the burden of the mask of their own contrived banality. Once you’ve opened your mouth and removed all doubt that you are a complete nutjob, you don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.
So let me start explaining myself.
* * *
On September 11th 2001, this entire nation was awestruck with the spectacle of an attack on American soil of proportions not seen since December 7th, 1941. The American people rightly screamed for justice. They wanted to see those responsible for the heinous act against their fellow American’s punished.
That’s the problem with suicide attackers. You can’t retaliate against them. They’re already dead.
This is probably why so many Americans called the 9/11 hijackers cowards in the wake of the attacks, but by now we can all surely set that comforting lie aside and admit to ourselves that cowards do not die in the pursuit of their goals. The hijackers were certainly evil, brain-washed idiots—but not cowards.
The bloodlust of the American populace could not be sated with the destruction of those who perpetrated the attack against us, because it was a destruction that they had chosen for themselves. We had to go after who they worked for, and instead of investigating the matter thoroughly, the Bush administration pinned it exclusively on Osama Bin Laden, ignoring the ties of almost all of the hijackers to Saudi Arabia.
Soon enough, even Osama was forgotten. The war in Afghanistan was swallowed alive by the war in Iraq. The bloodlust of the American people formed a red carpet for big government and big business to stroll into the Middle East and set up shop. Military contractors like Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer Halliburton made record profits by overcharging the government for busy work. Oil Companies like Exxon made record profits while gas prices nearly quadrupled. By the time American’s forgot about their need for vengeance, they found themselves stuck in a war that will end up costing nearly a trillion dollars and has already cost thousands of lives.
If these were the events of a novel, you’d be incensed if the fictional population of the book didn’t revolt and overthrow their government for such a miscarriage of their will. But this isn’t a tidy fiction, it is a complex reality and the American people are too stupid and defeated to have the means or the inclination to rebel against their masters.
So, the question becomes: How did a population descended from a bunch of badass rebels who kicked the ever-loving shit out of the English when King George III tried to tax them too highly turn into a cluster of tepid pussies with no real ambition? How did the home of the free and the land of the brave become the land of the timid and the home of the enslaved?
The American people were tamed by a trifecta of factors: safety, patriotism and individualism. Now, I happen to believe that safety, patriotism and individualism are good things. However, when those who run the system use these concepts, they use them as weapons against the people. Safety starts to mean fear. Patriotism starts to mean obedience. Individualism starts to mean lack of empathy.
Safety is a good thing. There’s no reason for people to be needlessly endangered. The thing is, safety is not something that should trump personal freedom—as it did when our government passed The Patriot Act.
Patriotism is a good thing. When you take pride in your country, you want to see it prosper. You want to make sure it is a peaceful and opportunity-rich place for the next generation to inhabit. However, when patriotism is transformed into blind support for one’s government, then it ceases to be a force for positivity and instead becomes a detriment to that which we should most cherish. Our children do not benefit from a world where corporate profit is king. The mindless obedience of the populace to the idea that corporate greed is good does not feel like patriotism to me. It feels a damn sight more like treason.
Individualism is certainly a good thing, but when individualism turns into the notion of “every man for himself” then it is a basically Social Darwinism. You see this mentality reflected in the inability of the American public to forgive any transgression. If a politician sleeps with a prostitute, they want him to resign. If a man kills another man in the heat of passion, people want him to go to jail for the rest of his life. If a man molests a child, instead of trying to find out why this urge exists and making an effort to prevent it from occurring in the future, the people call for his head on a stick.
The fork whose prongs are safety, patriotism and individualism has been stuck into us and we’re done. This triplet doctrine has rendered the free and the brave into a great and huddling mass of selfish slaves who take orders because they’re too fearful to ask questions or make demands.
Too often, those who maintain courage and freedom and true individuality attempt to free the people by simply addressing the symptoms of the disease of servitude to the system. This is not effective. We must eliminate the disease itself.
This can be done be educating the populace as to the true meanings of the virtues of safety, patriotism and individuality.
Safety does not just mean death-prevention. Human beings are not the only things that need to be kept safe. It is also important—more so, in fact—to keep the noble aspects of human beings alive. Freedom of choice, freedom of association, freedom from unreasonable taxation, freedom of and from religion, freedom to dissent—these things must be kept safe too.
And who would really wish to live in a world of absolute safety? We can make people safer by taking away all their rights just like we can make the streets safer by outlawing cars. That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Patriotism should be pride taken in the accomplishments of our society. When we have a good economy and a surplus of freedoms, it is good to look upon that wealth and freedom and say, “this is good shit!” Patriotism also means recognizing faults with the system and coming up with solutions to fix them.
I have a deep and profound love for my country, but in times like these it’s a bit like being in love with a crack whore who you know will steal your stereo and sell it for crack if you fall asleep with her in your house. We shouldn’t let America sell our stereos for crack. It’s not right.
Individualism means being true to yourself, not being a slave to self-interest. Let me give you an example of what I mean, since I know that a good deal of my Libertarian viewers are currently scratching their heads and saying to themselves, “but that’s not what Ayn Rand said!”
The American right-wing is fond of the buzzwords “personal responsibility.” If you’ve ever watched Glenn Beck (I don’t recommend it), you’d think it was the name for the Philosopher’s Stone. He can hardly let a sentence pass by without throwing “personal responsibility” into it.
Ask yourself: “What exactly is personal responsibility?” It’s the idea that no matter what happens in your life, it is entirely your fault and entirely your problem. If there is a housing crisis and you were the victim of predatory lending practices, it’s your fault for not understanding the legal jargon that you signed before your Mortgage tripled. If you were drunk at a bar and a man grabbed your girlfriend’s ass and you punched him and he fell and hit his head on hard on the floor and died, you’re a murderer and you should go to prison for the rest of your life. If you are a 25-year-old man and you start flirting with a girl and take her back to your apartment and fuck her in every hole she's got . . . only to later discover that she was 14, guess what? You’re a pedophile and you’ll go to prison, get your ass beat and buggered on a daily basis until eventually they’ll let you out, make you go to a shrink and put you on a list that ensures you’ll never hold another good job and you won’t be able to live pretty much anywhere.
Personal responsibility in action, folks.
It’s been misapplied to the point of uselessness. Of course people should be responsible for the things they do, but we as a people have somehow come to the conclusion that this means that no one is ever allowed to make a mistake or have a moment of weakness. We are a bunch of unforgiving douchebags, and the reason for it is because Mr. A doesn’t care if Mr. B goes to prison on some bogus charges. And guess what? Mr. C won’t give a shit when Mr. B goes to prison a few weeks later on the same charge.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. THE. HIGHEST. IN. THE. WORLD.
Here in the land of the free, a full 1% of our population is in prison. 2 million people are incarcerated in the prison system of the United States of America.
Those in power know that we won’t stand up for one another, so they can put anyone behind bars that they want. Drug-users, political dissidents, the mentally ill—anyone that can fit into a cell can be sold into slavery in this nation.
God Damn America.
23 comments:
Actually, there are about 300 million people in america, so if 2 million is correct than thats 0.66%...which is still a really high number. Good blog.
twas a smooth transition between vlogging and america....except there was no transition you just kinda jumped topics
twas a smooth transition between vlogging and america....except there was no transition you just kinda jumped topics
Damn, I was so fucking close to mailing this to my parents. Then I realized I didn't that I'm a fucking retard. Great points though, I agree with almost everything.
I didn't agree that patriotism is good. It is a moronic concept that only hurts those that possess it, and helps those that want to take advantage of it.
I would be willing to jump ship any day into a different country if shit got too rough, and money wasn't a problem.
Caring about some collection of arbitrary laws and a bunch of symbols contained by imaginary lines in the dust is moronic, sorry. I care about the world as a whole and will call out any entity, gov or otherwise, that dares to harm it. (not that you are)
I agree that Ayn Rand is a cunt and a cheap philosopher (kind of like a self help guru actually). I've found the army of right wing Randroids to be a bunch of intellectual midgets, so servile to her message and way into the just world fallacy you mention.
I agree with chris, just what I was about to say.
what would be the solution for this situation?
Generally do you think everything tends to become better by itself e.g. progress? or worse without the intervention of a few?
How come so many of your advertisements are from Christian Churches?
Individualism I think refers almost solely to being true to yourself
but not apathy, complacency, and selfishness
other then that amazing post
Your poll asks whether I am an American. The answer is yes; I am a Canadian.
Now try convincing the rest of the narrow minded people and your all set for taking back your country. I like your ideas.
Totally agree with you TAA. God Damn America indeed.
I am a real person that reads your stuff. I check youtube to see if you have any new stuff usually once a week, on sunday morning, with a big bowl of cereal and a cold glass of OJ.
Sometimes I daydream about making videos back to you but I don't have camera.
I get pissed when you call yourself ugly and fat. Damn it. As a woman I can tell you charm is way more important than looks, every time. And you've got charm.
I agree with you about how no one seems to want to try to rehabilitate pedophiles. I get so pissed at the witch hunt against pedophiles. Christian forgivenness, right?
1 in 142 U.S. residents are in prison.
Many Americans view inhumane punishment as a warning to criminals, as if selfish collective brutality is somehow a deterrent to selfish individual brutality.
I hear that some prisons in American are privately owned. Very disturbing, because that means there are people who have an interest in keeping prison populations high.
hello complete stanger. Are you human too? I hope so. But if you're some further evolved being of some kind. I apologize for my base form of communication.
Will we ever travel the stars like star trek?
Wait.
Don't tell me I do not want to know.
Also is sex still the same? Have we evolved any sexually?
Do we like have penis's in our hands beside our fingers?
And our balls are DEFINATELY in our bodies now. I don't know what the heck happened there.
If your human like me THEN GO TO BED ITS WAY PAST BED TIME:)
Although I don't live in America, I recognise many things you speak of in your blog, as we, here in Sweden, where I live, get more and more Americanized. I totally agree on your opinions about safety, patriotism, and most especially, individualism. The way people are so severely punished when they in fact should be helped is just awful.
Keep blogging.
Completely true. It's hard to take people seriously when they say, "Our new neighbor was in prison for five years."
Well, what the hell for? Should I be cautious? Cuz I know I'm NOT. My mom says he's a rapist, but for all I know, all he may have done was screw his 16-year-old underage girlfriend when he was twenty. I read a story in a magazine about a girl was arrested for having sex with her fifteen-year-old boyfriend when she was seventeen.
Fucked up.
Anyway, judging from what you said at the beginning of this blog, you would probably enjoy my blog "Strangers". It's ALL ABOUT that. Go read it!
Here's an awesome nontheist site:
http://www.godriddance.com
GOD DAMMIT TAA! I always love your stuff. I support you 100%. Post some of your poetry also. I'm a big fan of that to.
Now wait a minute old boy I'm British and I must say we are in just as bad a pickle over here don't you know. Millions of dashed foreigners working for less than minimum wages what? The working class are too scared to say or do anything as the boss just gets rid and employs a foreigner. We are all sheep and then our science boffins clone one, blah...
I am British and I will not let you Americans hog all the glory. We are just as fucked up over here. We have massive numbers of immigrants prepared to work for low wages so British workers are scared shitless to say or do anything. And we pay more for petrol (gas) than you do a lot more. We all turned into sheep and what do our scientists do, they clone one, yipee.
Shame you were in either one of the twin towers TAA.
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