I’m Back From Medium Vacation, Here Are Some Short Takes

Honestly, spending a month unplugged from all of this was one of the most boring decisions I have ever made. Without news, I basically spent all day watching YouTube videos and streaming services — is this the life that so many people have? Because, if so, then I cannot believe that anybody is apolitical — even spending a month taking a break from this nearly drove me crazy.

If Donald Trump goes to prison because of Joe Biden, Biden will go down as the greatest President in United States history. Donald Trump is a criminal under every definition possible, and Joe Biden needs to make that clear and deal with any backlash that comes from it. Plus, if he gets Donald Trump out of the way now, he’ll have so much more free time to deal with the issues of this nation during his second term.

I just want to point out that Joe Biden and the Democrats got a big boost in popularity after actually doing left-wing policy. Although most Americans aren’t socialists by any stretch of the imagination — although that has more to do with decades of propaganda than anything else — they also aren’t Ronald Reagan style Republicans. Most Americans — and I know this doesn’t make any sense to the people who work in government — actually want the government to help them. I mean, if you were paying a large amount of money to an organization and they weren’t helping you, I understand why you’d be kind of mad.

The solution of Republicans have historically been to lower taxes — allegedly, I’ve yet to see evidence they’ve actually done that for anybody who’s not rich — and decrease government and just hope people stop realizing they’re paying money to these people who control their lives and aren’t helping them. The solution of Democrats should be to use public money to actually build a better civilization and use the government in ways that advantage the citizens — which I thought was the point of having a government in the first place.

Republicans can only use government to terrorize their enemies, because they see government as a naturally antagonistic force. Democrats need to respond not by giving into that ideology, but by arguing exactly the opposite. In Nathan Robinson’s book My Affairs — a fictional memoir taking place in the late twenty first century — he gives an example of what such a speech could look like through a fictional President Bernie Sander’s first State of the Union:

This government belongs to the people, and the people must not only feel represented by it, but their experiences interacting with it must be positive ones,” Bernie said in his first State of the Union. “Ronald Reagan said that the most terrifying words were ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’ That was certainly true of Ronald Reagan’s government. But this government recognizes that when a person is in need, ‘I’m from the government’ means that the fire department has showed up, or that your Social Security check has arrived, or that social workers and teachers have come to help. We are determined that it should be a relief to know that your government is out there working for you.”

I should also add: Maybe if more people liked their government they wouldn’t storm its capitol in hopes of keeping an authoritarian billionaire in power, nor would they buy that its run by Satanic pedophiles.

Steven Universe is just The West Wing for children — and both shows are fundamentally dishonest in how they show the world. Both show a universe where even the worst people can be convinced not to engage in evil things through simply being talked to by people they have no reason to care about. In the case of The West Wing, Republicans are never unreasonable nor even ideologically driven — so the President can always convince them to go along with his agenda. Meanwhile, Steven Universe seems a galactic space fascist empire which has been fighting a war for thousands of years simply give up its fight after being talked to by a ten year old child.

Honestly, I think Steven Universe can count as a new form of grooming, where you convince young children that all the evils of the world can be stopped through simply talking to the people who commit them. Never mind the fact that the authoritarian dictators who the show uses as bad guys would most likely end freedom of speech in their nations and brainwash the population — just give them a stern talking to, like you’re a parent scolding a child. Because being condescended to is what authoritarian heads of state like — at least, according to Cartoon Network.

If your anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism is nothing more than nationalism for Africa, I have no interest in your ideology. I got into an argument with somebody on Tumblr recently who was defending Professor Flowers, and she could not understand the idea that I did not believe self-determination was a good on its own. Colonized people have the right to self governance within a framework of respect for human rights, but no system should give its rulers — even if said rulers truly are the people — to unlimited sovereignty.

I keep finding it notable that our supposed era of nationalism actually sees greater restrictions to national sovereignty than even most imperialist governments gave their puppet states. Last month, we were told that Nancy Pelosi going to Taiwan could trigger a nuclear war — yeah, it turns out nationalists are as bad with predictions as they are with political theory — something that only makes sense if you accept the notion that China has some right to control United States policy and is willing to destroy the nation if they don’t get their way. This notion is ironically one of the most anti-nationalist ideas of our time, and yet it keeps being said by people who say that we should get rid of NATO for nationalistic reasons.