Frustration.

Hello, World.

     Today has been...difficult for me. Normally, I write musings regarding current events, societal trends, etc. However, today I feel the need to vent my personal frustrations. I hope you do not mind if I speak frankly and unfiltered, though I'd hope by now those of you who do read my ramblings know that is the case in most instances. I will not go into specifics, as I am still fairly private in my dealings (unless either you've traced together the different facets that amalgamate my identity or I have brought you here directly), but I will instead generalize the issues I face.

     The greed of the upper echelons of society have driven the economy into a dizzying spiral of artificially inflated costs. In order to exist in this world of modern peasantry and fiefdoms, we the majority are subject to either mass indignity or outright slavery in order to survive. Jobs that require constant movement, harassing the customers for up-sales, working in boiling heat or extreme cold, or the constant Damocles' sword of deadlines and timers are worth much more monetarily than the business owners are willing to pay. It is this very reasoning said higher ups attempt to cut the cost of labor razor thin, selling your body for two to five times what they pay you to the customer and reaping the benefits of your skills, abilities, or mere presence there. This is atop the doubling or tripling the cost of whatever item is being purchased or used, depending upon the situation. I understand the concept of overhead and profit margins, but truthfully, the gap between inflation and wages has slowly been widening since the Eighties, if not before. Now, said gap is exponentially larger than it has been ever before, and no amount of "overtime" or "extra shifts" is going to fix this problem.

     Thankfully, there are some institutions that assist in times of exceptional crisis, but it seems that every day pundits and politicians scream for their repeal. "Do not feed the lazy," they cry, ignoring that several large scale inquiries into fraud in these systems led to a near nil result. "The virus only culls the elderly," they cry aloud, while two hundred seventy five thousand individuals die on this land's soil. "The doctors and media inflated the numbers to get more funding," they insist, clutching desperately at their six hundred eighty six billion dollar military purse. Businesses defy shut down orders because asking them not to host crowds of people during a pandemic surge is "tyrannical." This inability to focus on anything but money drives us all to madness, and all because those at the top of the pyramid want every single dime.

     The struggle for existence is only a struggle when there are predators looking to eat you every day. Yes, there are packs and groups that temporarily give shelter from the biting winds of capitalism, and cooperation between like-minded parties is a rare boon that passes once objectives diverge. Still, I see the eyes watching me, their icy claws raking at my pockets and my sanity. Advertising rapes my eyes and ears, leaving me staring blankly at a screen as my thoughts ebb and I try to recall what I was trying to originally search for. Earlier today, a police officer arrived to speak to one of my neighbors. I hid inside my residence until he left simply because I did not want him to take any interest in me whatsoever. 

Do not see me. Do not kill me. I know you can.

     Some say fear is an emotion that one should not indulge in, that it is weak and renders one useless. I say that any person that has lived through real trauma, tragedy, or loss has every reason to accept the fact they feel it. In our own way, we have all had to live through situations that we were afraid past all comprehension while still handling said instances. Fear itself does not inhibit our strength as a person, but rather it shows that we are mentally fighting not to fail. Those who have accepted defeat are not afraid, just as those who know that victory is certain do not feel nervous. The fact that we fear for what the future holds means that we are uncertain, but we do not wish for a negative outcome. 

     Fear makes me focus, as it is my natural state to hyper-focus as it is. People say in tense situations or catastrophes that I react very well, but the main reason is that I am so focused on fixing the problem that I seem calm. They aren't there when the seizures take me at night because my mind is overloaded. They aren't there when I wake up screaming or when the crying hurts my chest. All they see is the rest, what I allow them to see. When I drink a liter of homemade absinthe in a few days, they see that. When I come out at eight am to smoke my first blunt of the day, they see that. They don't see that I've been awake since four am staring into a screen or the void looking for a solution to whatever issues I can address at the time. They don't hear the screaming I hear in my mind every morning, the whip cracking again and again to get more accomplished. 

I am spent. Good night, World.

The Western Cult(ure) Machine

 Good day, World.

     One of the fundamental facets of Western civilization is ravenous, unchecked capitalism. Every major company in the US seems to lobby for less restrictions and oversight so that their companies can get away with an increasing amount of injustices towards their workers, the environment, and even their consumers. Politicians, ever in bed with these industries, receive money to roll back any regulations regarding the planet or their workers that do get put into place, with some directly benefiting from doing so in their own private businesses. Even the prison industrial complex directly feeds into this capitalist agenda, using prisoners as slaves for companies to contract out and make even more profit by cutting their labor costs. Businesses fight to keep minimum wage at poverty level in whatever states they operate in, with the ones that successfully attain higher mandatory pay being slandered by politicians and pundits as liberal trash states that should be seen as outliers, not examples. In all, Western "civilization" prioritizes the rich and their brands as more important than people, with even the government slashing at social programs while simultaneously bolstering their own pockets and their precious military machine. 

     The entrenchment of belief in the almighty dollar over everything is further sewn into the fabric of our existence by the ruling class. Constantly the rich chase us for our funds, minimizing our pay on one end while maximizing cost on the other. Rent continues to spiral upwards in any place there is work to be had, hyperinflating the cost of living just because the landowner knows they can get away with it. Landlords charge triple the rent just to get into a place, referring to "refundable security deposits" while finding every excuse not to pay them back when the time comes. Meanwhile, managers and owners of companies are finding ways to pay their workers less every day, cycling schedules to avoid paying overtime, offering pittances to make them thousands of dollars every day, and holding back checks for up to 3 weeks at the beginning just to be sure you're desperate enough continue working for next to nothing. As a working class person, this was my reality every day for a very long time, and for most it will be for the rest of their lives. 

      Another one of the side effects of being crammed into this system is that it grants you no time to think, your mind constantly flooded with the objectives of your master, the Corporation. When you do have time off, the only things you think of are either escaping the mental space your job puts you in or the indignities and crushing weight of the job you will be returning to. The concept of hating Mondays and loving Fridays is rooted in a culture based around working menial jobs that traditionally only give weekends off. People tend to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms for said jobs, with the most common blue collar drug being alcohol and the whole culture revolving around "heading to the bar" after work is done just to cope with the stress of working. Even the depression, stress, and anger of the working man is monetized, with alcohol, cigarette, and porn companies pandering to the proletariat in order to be their comfort. "Drink, smoke, masturbate! Dull the pain! Do anything but think of a way out of this!"

     The curators of Western culture do not want the people to be independent. Yes, companies and politicians bandy around the words "freedom," "independence," and the like, but these are token gestures to convince you that their pathway is the only way to achieve said freedom. Meanwhile, everything  in America is hyperregulated, taxed, numbered, under surveillance, tracked, and accounted for, with any real attempts by the people to be free shut down or ostracized by the same culture that claims to be the only one worth believing in. Are you making money without reporting every cent to the government? Jail for you. Did you build something on your own land without telling them? Either be fined or tear it down. Did you get into a fistfight because someone wronged you? To jail you go. Are you a minority with a firearm that dared use it in self-defense? Say goodbye to your weapon and your life. Their version of what it means to be free is simply having the freedom to give them all of your money in one way or another, and the rich will have it no matter what.

     I am a working class person, but I am committed to removing my cog from the machine. I am still young in a sense, as I have more than half of my life ahead of me statistically, so I have time to continue working toward my newest goal. You see, I have found one honest way to work within the confines of the structure we have been born into while still making money. Not everyone has this option, but because of certain life decisions I have made, I am figuring how to escape the tyranny of this cycle. Simply put, I work for myself now, and while the safety of a regular paycheck is not guaranteed as working for a company is, the freedom regarding my daily time that I now possess allows me to figure out what my next step should be. Does this make me guilty of being a cog still? Yes, but I spin more freely than I did when I was just someone working for someone else, giving all my time and effort to a company that believes I only deserve $12-15/hr. while someone else who does less work than I rakes in thousands of dollars a day behind my efforts. Now, at least, I can set my price as opposed to being auctioned off like the slaves they want us all to be.

Have a good day, World.

Hello Again.

 Good day again, World.

It's been a very long time since I've written here. In the meantime, I have gone out into America, my desire to learn and adapt without being crushed by the heel of modern society leading me on a great journey. I have experimented with making videos, creating music, and finding a career that did not leave me feeling empty and worthless inside. After several attempts to "fit in" with groups of people claiming to be there for my benefit, I have found none who mean what they say they do. The amount of friends I have has dwindled to single digits as I gradually uncover more about myself, and the desire to interact with others has similarly eroded away. 

     Additionally, the social, political, and economic climates have drastically shifted during my absence from this medium. Where there once was a shred of dignity and bipartisan effort is now cult-like worship and the purposeful erosion of faith in our political systems. Dictatorial leaders spout tripe and lies to the people, stoking fears while hiding the true depths of their disservice to those who they claim to protect. Indeed, the hypocrisy of these leaders is so self-evident that they need to go on the offensive just to hide it. Blame the media, blame the protesters, blame the people, blame the Democrats, blame everyone but yourself. Now, we are in a post-truth society, one that does not accept facts as valid and prefers to eat its own insanity over provable, correct statistics and figures. The news has become as it was in Orwell's 1984, where truths are overwritten by narratives, then turned back on once a new one is drafted by the powers that be.   

     Financial independence is becoming more difficult to attain every day. Landlords are artifically inflating their prices all over the country, charging more money to the poor and bad of credit than those who already have money and can easily afford said prices. There is a country-wide gentrification happening, and nowhere that one can reasonably afford to live has any infrastructure that works for the working man. The reason behind this is simple: greed. Those who already have land and property wish the rest of us to be slaves, using all of our time and money to feed their ever-expanding maws and stomachs. To those who say capitalism is the only working system, I say you're wrong. This is the end result of capitalism: all money consolidated to the top of the pyramid, leaving the bottom with just enough not to riot and kill the rich a la the French Revolution. The short plan: 1.) keep feeding the military so that if the people revolt, they can be dealt with using excessive force. 2.) overregulate every single aspect of people's lives so that we can take more money from them arbitrarily. 3.) Don't tax the rich; that's what the poor are for. Instead, actively demonize the poor, take away the programs we have supporting them, then tell them they're just not trying hard enough.  4.) Enslave every poor person and minority we can get our hands on through the prison system, then put them to work for free. We need to reestablish a slave class so we can really make a profit. 5.) Distract the people with baubles, widgets, chemicals, and circuses so that they do not realize that we are taking everything from them. 

     This constant grind has tired and frustrated me to no end. Before the sun rises, I am awake, my mind screaming with rage and looking for some sort of answer to my plight. How do I get out of my situation? What path is there to take? I have begun working for myself so I at least have some time to think rather than constantly being on someone else's clock. Even there, those who oppose me bury my ads under a bevy of theirs, using their financial strength to flood the pages with ads and push mine under. Do the rich never feel as if they are rich enough? Do they all feel as if their coiffers will never be full, or are they simply ensuring that to be the case by expanding them? How can a family of three or four need a ten bedroom mansion with a ballroom and seventeen cars? It is madness that those who already have to excess would feel the need to steal the pennies out of my pockets. Yet somehow, they do, with fees, taxes, hyper-inflating prices, and beating us to near death with their strength. 

     In short, I am broken. The world has gone mad, and I have witnessed it. While I know the only way is forward, I also have no idea what forward means in the modern day. Occupy Wall Street crashed and burned, and now QAnon has taken its place with their conspiracy theories and white supremacist overtones. Nazis have re-surged into the public eye under the guise of "Proud Boys" and Trump supporters, waving rebel flags and attacking people for thinking differently than them. When you point out these things to most, they claim you're overreacting or that "the left wing media told you that." You show people videos of horrendous things perpetrated by their cohorts, they say "Well, it was just that one guy/group" without bothering to acknowledge the poison that has affected everyone in the group. Truth is becoming irrelevant, and lies are spouted with smiles. The rich are eating us at an accelerated pace, and the words "independence" and "freedom" are now code words for the rich Right doing whatever they want to whomever they wish. 

America has been falling for a long time now, and I am here to witness it crash. 

I have been known by many names, but now, I am simply Null. The other names have left, for the other emotions have, as well. Hollow. Empty. Null. 

Good day.