The Great American Dystopia
When I started this Substack, my goal was to not get political because, frankly, we are drowning in politics. Every year, including the odd-numbered ones, is treated like an election year with propagandists and talking heads all over social media, television, and even non-political media constantly selling you on their pet policies and narratives. However, I feel a great need to type this out, if only for myself.
This descent into a perpetually political society, and the arbitrary creation of “enemies” based on values and beliefs, has created an increasingly hostile society. You can thank the propagandists for that…here is an excellent article explaining the tactics being used to create this phenomenon. The playbook has been in print for 100 years, and yet the general public is oblivious to the fact that they are being manipulated.
Society has also become more hopeless. We have created a culture that, while the concept of sacrifice is discouraged, it is simultaneously necessary. I saw a commercial the other day talking about how “everyone needs a side hustle” nowadays and another stating that “hustle culture” is wearing on our citizenry. Cost of living has been going up for years, and now this inflation spike has it at a breaking point for many. Consider this mock budget for a single person making $50,000/year. After taxes, that’s about $3,125/month. Take away the conservative estimate of $1,600/month for rent plus utilities. Estimate a little over $10/day to eat. Now there is about $1,125 remaining to cover various insurance policies, internet, and transportation. Just like that, there is a rainy day fund of only a few hundred per month. This assumes no other debts, like for student loans, and no emergency expenditures. So when people don’t want to sacrifice anything, what happens? They rack up credit card debt. So now there is a massive debt problem among people who already cannot pay their bills, and this hardship drags down the fat part of the socioeconomic bell curve when the economy cyclically slows.
Thanks to the aggressive pandemic response, 2020-2022 have been horrible for mental health. People were locked away in their homes, lost their jobs, were kept away from their support systems, and were made to feel hopeless. The younger generations are already highly medicated for mental health purposes, and then the government creates a horrible environment for mental health. There have been record or near-record drug overdoses, levels of alcoholism, suicides, and general violent crime.
Society itself has also failed our young people. We devalue life; we glorify pets over children; we push video games and porn on young men and birth control and promiscuity on young women; we value money and materials over marriage and family; and we have replaced religion and its values of selflessness, peace, and family with a duty to oneself, our primal desires, and what the State is willing to offer us to live at the comfort and convenience level we desire. I mean, why on earth would teachers think it is okay to tell children about their sexuality? Much of it is intentional grooming by perverts, for sure. However, I do think a lot of it is the selfishness of these insecure people, trying to force children to give them validation for what they are in their personal lives instead of being a good teacher. “Oh teacher, I understand now that being trans is okay!” In my day, not too long ago, we knew nothing about our teachers’ personal lives because they were busy, you know, teaching us our curriculum. People can’t deal with their own personal struggles through the proper channels anymore, apparently. Speaking of, I won’t even get into the pathetic state of our educational system, as that is a whole essay in and of itself.
This culture, this horribly toxic culture, has created an environment that exacerbates the despair and evil desires of lost and hopeless men and women. It is purely dystopian. Meanwhile, the politicians and oligarchs see the despair, entitlement, and laziness of the everyday person and profit off of them (at 0% APR). This is a culture that produces mass murderers more commonly than the days decades ago when some schools actually taught marksmanship and had guns on school property. And not just lone wolf mass murderers. Gang members as well.
I know I sound like the stereotypical old man yelling at the clouds—”It’s the video games and the porn and the dang rock and roll music and the pills and the drugs!” Well, kind of. These items on their own may not be triggers to turn someone into a monster. But when you combine those items with such a volatile societal culture and a lack of hope, you certainly create the opportunity for these type of people to emerge, rather than a society with some level of moral values. You don’t need a theocracy to make this happen, just a way to use the phenomenon of groupthink to push a positive society on people rather than a contentious and negative one.
Advocating for gun control is the easy out. It doesn’t require the critical thinking necessary to solve the source of the problem rather than just the symptoms. It prevents us from having to reflect on ourselves and our values and how we got here. The human right to self defense does not require justification at all, anyways, so I’m not going to make a big pro-gun argument here. It wouldn’t matter. We are in a true crisis that requires some real and honest solutions. Never, ever forget that we are only two years out from the riots that destroyed buildings, businesses, and, most importantly, lives, and in many cities the looting and violence has continued, albeit at a more moderate pace than the “Summer of Love.” Don’t silently consent to that monstrous behavior, then pontificate about how banning guns is the easy, moral, and complete solution. Instead, we need to ask ourselves one question—what kind of society do we want to be? Do we want to stop creating monsters, or just force monsters to change the way they commit their acts of evil?