Rage & Despondency

The incoherent rambling of a drug-addled mind paralyzed by dread and anger at the state of the world and the duopoly of American Power.

Mar 27, 2024

Note from the editor: The first part of this article was transcribed from what Finley screamed at me with a head full of acid after breaking into my house last week. I will annotate in italics when necessary. The second part he sent me after I showed him the transcript of his acid-fueled nighttime rant. We’re still a far cry from two articles per month, but I guess we’ll have to make do. Enjoy!

It all began with Finley suddenly bolting into my room, jostling me from my precious slumber, with a small portable record player. He plugged it in and put on an LP.

“Jeff Wayne’s musical rendition of The War of The Worlds is a true masterpiece”, I realize as it slowly fills my neurons with the kind of spark that only comes from the recognition of true fucking genius.

Finley looked around the room, staring intently at my closet, before shouting:

You cowards!

He then spun back around and stared into my eyes with such passion that I recoiled slightly before he spoke again.

Ah. Stroke of genius. Or just a stroke? Am I just worshiping my decaying mind for no reason other than raw animal instinct? The feeling that whatever my fucking body does is fucking right and whatever I think is fucking accurate because otherwise the only tether I have to this putrid realm would evaporate, turn into dust like the weed in the joint I am currently smoking.

There is an innate urge to scramble for survival hardwired into each of our monkey-adjacent brains, and it tends to be the degree to which we can control that primal thing that gnaws at our higher selves that determines how well we fit into what most people would describe as a civilized, polite society.

Finley paused here to throw raw eggs at me with a deranged, unsettling, hysterical laugh for a few minutes, then he turned his attention back to the record player before resuming his speech.

It is difficult to listen to one of the great human achievements, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, and not feel wholly, disastrously inadequate. How can we even compare? The sheer energy of that leitmotif. It is one of the last true bastions of spirituality in the hedonistic swirl that we so self-importantly label the “human experience”. Ah, but what are we talking about? I am a professional, after all, in many senses of the word. And, professionally, I should talk about Super Tuesday and the daunting, harrowing outlook as which it serves for the future of American Democracy, a phrase so hollowed out by centuries of cruel conduct that it is close to collapsing under the weight of its own hubristic, self-deluded excess. So, who won? Who lost? Does it matter? Centuries removed from pagan beliefs about predicting the future, I can still say with absolute certainty that November will bring a rematch of the one shitstain and the other shitstain. Donald and Joe. How low have we sunk, to what depths has our national character succumbed that this is the choice we offer first-time voters in our illustrious, storied fucking Democracy? Who the fuck have we become, that it’s come to this?

I know I’m rehashing what I said in my previous article, but as someone who has a dangerous addiction to following every minor development in the madness that is the presidential election even I can’t pretend to not be tired and sick of it all. Like, I know there are important races happening outside of the whole horrible debacle that is the 2024 campaign chaos… but forgive me, man, if I’m not all that bothered at this point. Genocide is being live-streamed while we debate technicalities and you’re telling me my biggest worry right now needs to be choosing which septuagenarian fuck gets access to the big red button? There’s some divine comedy for ya.

At this point, his attention seemed to be drawn back to the record that was still blaring. And he repeated the following phrase sung by the character of Beth, voiced by Julie Covington. He dwelt on what he just heard for a moment before launching into another rant.

“There must be something worth dying for, somewhere in the spirit of man.”

There must, mustn’t there? At the end of the day, if we were a truly instinct-driven herd animal, why o why would we ever care for our sick? Be it empathy or the primeval recognition of some intangible ethereal consciousness, there is something in our very nature that compels us to think and act charitably. Of course, the oppressive structures into which the human experience has been confined under capitalism have eroded that bedrock of baseline human connection to a point where we have to assume that anyone who is kind is out to get us because otherwise you cannot meaningfully function in modern society. You’ll be taken for the sucker that you are and robbed dry. We didn’t evolve for dog-eat-dog. We literally domesticated wolves because we recognized that their social structures were fundamentally compatible with our own. We thrive when we cooperate.

So, once I sober up I might look into some of the specifics surrounding Super Tuesday and just… everything… that has happened since. But I feel like this piece should, could and maybe even can serve a bigger purpose. Or, if those ambitions are a tad too grand for this word-vomit ejected from the raw throat of my acid-addled mind, maybe just an interesting way to look at the circus that is modern-day politics.

He sighed deeply and sat down on the ground as the artilleryman, played by David Essex, sang the following words as he tried to convince the main character that they should build a new civilization underground where the aliens can’t get to them.

“Maybe from the madness something beautiful will grow, in a Brave New World.”

A sentiment that in the context of the actual narrative of the piece speaks to the overconfident, zealous nature of the naturally-boisterous and entirely-delusional character who utters it, it does also speak to the unbreakable spirit that goes beyond our rodential survival instincts which allows us to hope for a better future, to aspire to higher standards, to consciously and deliberately evolve. Something no other ape has ever even come close to. Maybe the neanderthals, but hey! Let us revel in our own supremacy, however tenuous, for a bit before we’re forced to reckon with the hungover days filled with consequences and heartbreak that are bound to come…

Once he said these words, he lied down next to me and blew the smoke of his joint into my face until the album was done. He then sprinted out of my room, out of my house, and back into the night. I didn’t hear from him for almost a whole week, when he sent me the following text as a concluding addendum to his manic ramblings. The annotations will end here.

…and there we go. The veil that was so briefly lifted, just enough to indulge the madness without succumbing to it, is back in its place and all I have to show for it is a slightly deflated ego, a puke bucket filled to the brim, and a nasty headache.

That’s the price of expanding your mind, I guess. I’ve always been firmly opposed to the idea that there is just as much joy and thrill to be found without indulgence, no matter what the sober and the enlightened tell me. But let’s not dwell on any of this and let me pretend to actually do my job: let’s talk election, baby! It’s been a week or two since I broke into my editor’s house and by now, both Biden and Trump have secured the presidential nomination from their respective parties. Not much else has changed since last month. Marianne is back in the race following the Michigan primary in which hundreds of thousands of Democrats voted ‘uncommitted’ in a heavy blow to Biden’s thus-far barely-contested run. I understand the impulse, but it still seems like a futile performative act for Marianne to un-suspend her campaign over this. But what do I know? Maybe she’ll end up being the dark horse candidate that finally shakes some goddamn sense into the hollow husk of the Democratic Party. Doubtful, but not impossible, I guess.

But enough of all this. Let’s have a look at the Senate primaries. There are quite a few hotly contested Senate primaries this year, and with Democrats needing to defend 23 seats to the Republican’s 11, the next president might be looking at a firmly Republican House and Senate, which would be a godsend for Trump and an obstructionist nightmare for Biden.

The biggest story to come out of those is that of Bernie Moreno winning the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, meaning that he’ll face incumbent Sherrod Brown in a state that has increasingly been turning noticeably purpler, or redder, since it first went to Trump in the 2016 election. While Brown has a 5 percentage point lead over Moreno according to an aggregated poll by RealClear Polling, and the Democrats seem to view Moreno as the candidate that’ll be easiest to beat, the one thing that Trump and his supporters have consistently taught us is to expect the unexpected.

Most people and analysts expected the proto-fascist Trumpist movement to fizzle out as its leader is facing more and more serious legal charges and the Republican establishment - and a not-insignificant chunk of the Republican base - wants to distance itself from the former Criminal-in-Chief.

Since then, Trump has secured the nomination and his allies have won the Senate primaries in every possible state.

So, we can’t discount the possibility that Moreno will win in November and ensure a Republican majority in the Senate, even though he has campaigned heavily on his ardent opposition to abortion, a strategy that has been backfiring for Republicans ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned. It also bears pointing out that Ohioans voted to codify reproductive rights in their constitution via direct initiative; however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the widespread support for reproductive rights will translate to a Democratic win in November.

Disillusioned independents and anti-Trump Republicans may well choose to stay home or vote third party when push comes to shove, and given the fact that the genocide in Gaza has become a major issue for many voters, Senator Brown’s co-sponsoring of Senate Resolution 417 that “reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defense” and supports “Israeli efforts to diminish the threat posed by Hamas”, as well as his voting for HR 815 - the National Security Act - which provides 14.1 billion dollars in defense funding to Israel, might come back to bite him in the ass come election day.

One more race I want to highlight before we zoom out and start to wrap up is Arizona. There, independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema won’t be seeking reelection, leaving a vacuum that is likely to be filled by Kari Lake or Ruben Gallego. Lake is a staunch Trump supporter who is currently fighting the results of the Arizona gubernatorial election which she lost but claims was stolen from her. Gallego is an Iraq vet who campaigns on progressive issues and has the kind of all-American bonafides that make him hard to attack from the right. Unfortunately, his voting record is far from spotless, with his support for the racist Laken Riley act being the most obvious blemish. The act talks about the “victims of the Biden administration’s open border policies” and its main function is to require Homeland Security to detain immigrants who’ve been charged with any kind of theft, including petty shoplifting, which is ridiculous and ghoulish overkill. So, while he’s currently polling ahead of Lake, most sources seem to agree that the race is going to be a toss-up precisely because of this Republican-lite shit.

Progressive policies are as popular as ever, but clearly many, if not most, Democratic politicians aren’t all that interested in aggressively and uncompromisingly running on and pursuing them. As we saw in Alabama’s HD10 special election for the State House seat, campaigning on reproductive rights can unseat Republican incumbents even in otherwise deep-red states. Marilyn Lands, the Democrat challenger, ran on “[repealing Alabama’s no-exception abortion ban, fully [restoring] access to IVF, and [protecting] the right to contraception,” and she trounced incumbent Teddy Powell with more than one and a half times more votes. A staggering upset for Republicans and a clear message for Democrats to embrace more hard-line progressive positions.

Unfortunately, that message doesn’t seem to have reached the Democratic establishment, which continues its sniveling kowtowing to the right that ends up turning off the clearly extant base of voters who want real change.

Ah, yes, real change. A concept so alien to the two-party parliamentary system that it might as well be fictional. So, we get politicians who claim to be pro-immigrant whilst supporting draconian measures against immigrants on the one hand, and politicians who are actively hostile to immigrants but can now appear like moderate bipartisans on the other. Then, there’s the actively fascist contingent that’s unapologetic about their desired takeover of the political machinery. And because the Democrats are unable, unwilling, or simply uninterested in winning elections, the fascist creep into our institutions continues unabated.

Whatever happens this November will be bad. Trump is already amping up his rhetoric by warning of the “end of American democracy”, which is how Reuters phrases it, and of a “bloodbath” for the auto industry if he loses the election. He’s also still doubling down on his batshit election fraud conspiracy. This is clearly strategic, because this election will be a lot closer than 2020 and that any slight ambiguity in the results will be the perfect fodder for the violent extremists in his base. A repeat of January 6th seems nigh inevitable if Biden doesn’t win in an absolute landslide, and even then I wouldn’t hold my breath. Also, Biden isn’t going to win in a landslide. While his rhetoric is getting noticeably more progressive as the election date comes ever closer, there is no reason for any of the rightly-disillusioned young and minority voters who helped him into the White House in 2020 to believe a single goddamn word he says on the campaign trail. He’s burned them before, after all.

Decades of voting for the supposed lesser of two evils has not done much to keep evil at bay, and while Biden is obviously not as openly horrific as Trump, he doesn’t exactly inspire people either, nor do his policies materially benefit or protect the downtrodden he claims to champion. Things have gotten worse for queer people, Black people, and anyone on the margins of society. A lot of that is because of the foothold that right-wing ghouls have managed to gain in local and state elections, and I’d argue that if you’re looking to vote in a way that matters you should focus your time and energy on those. State legislatures are where most decisions that affect the average Joe’s daily life are made, after all. School boards are where book bans and sports bills and bathroom bills are enacted and enforced. The far-right knows this, the evangelicals know this, and that’s why they’ve been actively infiltrating these places for decades. It’s the playbook first laid out by people like Tim LaHaye, or those fucks from the John Birch Society, and perfected by LibsOfTikTok, Moms4Liberty and TurningPointUSA. If we are serious about protecting the vulnerable, disrupting the status quo, and affecting true change, that’s where we start. Of course, none of this is a substitute for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, but if we can’t keep our own safe until then, what good will revolution do?

This article took a good deal longer than I had expected it to, and for that I would like to apologize. I’ve been plagued by depression and apathy, interspersed with manic outbursts of high energy and rage. It’s hard to pretend like everything isn’t crumbling around me as I go to my 9-to-5. As someone who has made it his life’s work to follow the madness of politics, life hasn’t exactly been relaxing this past decade. The constant onslaught of outrageous horrors that slowly turn into mundane tedium through prolonged exposure has left me thoroughly despondent on my worst days. It’s reflective of the very human knack for adaptability but it makes for dull senses and a latent feeling of impending doom that you can’t really get all that worked up about anymore.

Ah. Listen to me whine.

The point of all this, I think, is that you are right to feel despair, you are right to be overwhelmed, because we live in desperate, overwhelming times. The very foundations that we were taught would support society indefinitely are starting to crumble, and none of us were ever prepared for it. Democracy has become the rallying cry of despots, and freedom now means our freedom to fuck all of you over. This is not to indulge in nihilism or to advocate for defeatism, because I do think that we need to keep organizing, we need to keep staring into the abyss, if we are to overcome the man-made horrors of our times. Still, oscillating between total despondency and uncontrollable rage can’t be good for us. The duopoly and its oligarchs are going to burn our future if we don’t act, and those with the power to even attempt to rein in these deranged horsemen of the apocalypse are twiddling their thumbs in their hot tubs filled with petrodollars and human blood. Fuck them all.

Thank you for reading. If you’re looking for my sources, keep scrolling.

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