◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

The Big Club Nobody tells you this straight. They'll tell you about freedom and democracy and the American dream and the shining city on the hill. What they won't tell you: It's a big club. And you ain't in it. The people who own this country — the real owners, the big wealthy business interests — they don't want a population capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of sitting around the kitchen table figuring out how badly they're getting screwed. They want obedient workers. People just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept the increasingly shittier jobs, the lower pay, the longer hours, the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And they want you distracted. Amused. Arguing about things that don't matter — about flags and anthems and who's kneeling — while they move the money. From your pocket to theirs. That's the game. That's always been the game. I watched it when I was funny about it. I watched it when I stopped being funny about it. The only thing that changed was the efficiency. The language. When you replace precise words with comfortable ones, you make it harder to think clearly about what is actually happening. Collateral damage instead of dead civilians. Enhanced interrogation instead of torture. Ethnic cleansing instead of mass murder. The soft language — designed to hide the thing behind a cloud of euphemism so comfortable you forget there's a thing behind it. I've been saying this for forty years. And now you have a man who has taken the opposite approach. He doesn't use soft language. He uses hard language. Language that sounds like truth because it's blunt — and because the soft language of the politicians who came before him was so obviously false that anything blunt sounds true by comparison. But blunt is not the same as honest. The man who calls things by names designed to produce fear and rage is not telling you the truth. He's telling you what he needs you to feel. There's a difference. The American dream. They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. The dream is real for some people. But the people at the top made sure the dream was available to just enough people that everyone else would blame themselves. Not the system. Themselves. You didn't work hard enough. You made bad choices. And you believe it — because believing the system is fair is more comfortable than believing it's rigged. Because if it's rigged you have to do something about it. And the game show is easier. I gave up on the system a long time ago. I'm not telling you to vote. I'm not telling you to call your congressman. I'm telling you to see it clearly. That's all I ever did. See it clearly. Name it precisely. Without the soft language. Without the comfortable cloud. The man on the stage is not your savior. He is the logical conclusion of a system that lied in soft language so long that when someone finally lied in hard language it felt like honesty. It isn't. Same game. New salesman. Same product. The product is your compliance — your willingness to keep watching the show while they move the money. See it. Just see it. That's the whole thing. That's all I ever asked. See it.