American Shithole #31 | Bomb Building Basics for Simpletons

By Eric Wilson

Do you remember when a news story could still shake you?

I ask that question on occasion as a reminder of a time not long ago, when big news was BIG NEWS. Less than a handful of years ago, breaking news like the bomb story developing this week would dominate the national conversation for months.

With explosive devices sent to CNN, the Clintons, the Obamas, Eric Holder, George Soros, Maxine Waters and John Brennan — none of them detonating (odd, yes?) — this marks the beginning of what I imagine to be a bizarre investigation into redneck terrorist incompetence.

If only you hadn’t failed chemistry and shop class, Cletus.

A few years ago I would be pretty upset. And don’t get me wrong, I am upset, but not in a fearful way. I’m just angry, which is par for the course on any given day in Trump’s America. This is just another reminder of why I loathe the conservative, right-wing fearmongers of the Republican Party.

What else have we learned this week?

Nationalist — it’s the President’s second favorite “N” word.

Followed shortly thereafter by nepotism, I would presume?

His, “Oh dear me, is that what that word means?” disingenuous naïveté this week, played to no one other than the press. He’s blown this dog whistle since the beginning of his presidential run (subtlety is not Trump’s strong suit, so let’s just call it a dog foghorn), offering as much about nationalism three years ago on the campaign trail; even admitting his understanding of the word as offensive to many Americans — yet still longing to reclaim it.

I’ll spare you the links of his smug, fat, unfuckably orange face spewing lies this week, although when I do hear Trump say the word, I always hear “white” as its precedent. It’s what we all hear, and that’s because it is what we are all supposed to hear. No one (other than a handful of Trump talking head apologists) hears that word and thinks “good times” are coming later in that sentence.

We think of Nazis, which are scary. Or in our case, modern American Nazis, which are tiki torch-carrying, khaki Dockers-wearing weekend Nazis, which I find about as scary as corn in my stool.

You know what I see, when I watch a couple hundred White Nationalists marching around in a circle somewhere in Bumblefuck U.S.A.? I see an insignificant number of terrified, stupid, lonely, white, male assholes that never got the education they deserved (or the ass-beating they probably needed) in K–12.

What concerns me more, are the millions of other everyday American dipshits — also recipients of abysmal schooling — that will back Trump no matter what. That’s worse than Nazism, that’s blank-slate cult mentality.

Hmm, on second thought, maybe Cletus doesn’t need a better education…

So, are you registered to vote, dear reader? I am planning to make my way to the early voting center nearby this week or next to get it out of the way before the sixth of November.

I’m not going to shame you if you aren’t voting. I have enough shame of my own in years past where I’ve shirked my civic duty. It’s hard for some of us to believe that one vote matters, when in every society there are always the few with power and the many without. I understand your despondency, but I beg you to take a stand this time.

Humanity’s inherent greed fosters the economy of the few, the prosperity of the few, and the laws of the few — that’s why societies have been imbalanced since the beginning. We are, as a species, slaves to greed; and (like a cancer) if left to its own devices, it will destroy us all.

Unfortunately, most people I’ve met feel that they are far too busy just surviving to do much about our societal woes, at least not on a regular basis. We accept the reality in which we find ourselves, it seems. Which is a shame, because the current rogue’s gallery of humanity’s worst — the fucking billionaires — sure could use an army of angry commoners with pitchforks storming their modern-day castles right about now.

The political struggle has always been the ideology of the few, versus the ideology of the many. Humans clearly can’t handle the power our greed provides access to — we literally can’t help ourselves from being horrible pieces of shit.

Which is why we need to intervene; a point I tried to make in a sprawling, bloated behemoth of an American Shithole column a few weeks past, and for that weighty tome I sincerely apologize. (My intent is to keep AS under 1,000 words from now on.)

We have to outsmart our DNA; otherwise it will be this version of insanity forever. There will always be the few with almost everything, and the many with almost nothing. There will always be the frightened authoritarian types, desperate to be ruled, voting against their own interests. There will always be conflict between the poor as they are pitted against each other to keep them from unifying against those few in power.

If we let Klepto-Capitalism play out to its logical conclusion, humanity will end up with only a handful of people with any real power — and at that point the cancer is beyond stage five; the cancer is incurable.

Whatever societies we build for ourselves in the future, the architecture must take into account our inherent greed. At every turn we need to be aware of its presence, for it will be our undoing if left unchecked — of that I have little to no doubt.