One Insane Man's Plan to Save the Soul of America
My one weird trick is that this is all entirely unconstitutional.
I turned 35 this weekend, and it’s not something I ever planned to lived long enough to do. I am dejected that I am now condemned to dying bad, old and ugly rather than good, young and beautiful. It’s also somewhat perturbing to realize that any of my snarky commentary can instantly be reposted with, “Aren’t you just some middle-aged white man with bad hair and an internet connection?”
Basically the only perk is now being ordained by our founding enslavers as old enough to have seen enough shit to try my hand at running the country as president.
Anybody reading this already knows that the corpse of Nancy Reagan has a better chance at becoming president than I do. Somebody with my track record could never earn the trust of the powerful vested interests that groom sociopaths over decades to take on the trusted role as benefactor.
The job is too big for any one man, and the Senate as an institution will alway stand in the way of timely progress unless we’re literally engulfed in a World War with fascists across the globe and they have to throw the poors a bone to keep the domestic Communists at bay.
I watched a 60 Minutes segment last week on Xi Jinping “curtailing the free market” in China. Oh, the horrors of dawg checking billionaires, abolishing the for-profit tutoring complex, and building robust infrastructure to which America’s pales in comparison!
Thank God for Joe Biden, because I couldn’t imagine living under the brutal regime of a government that could get things done in a big way for working people. Pardon me as I know I’ve posted this chart before:
I can’t think of anything as audacious that America has attempted, let alone completed, in my lifetime other than trying to wage two wars in the Middle East for twenty years after a terrorist attack that killed .004% of Americans that coronavirus has killed.
We’re not even playing the same sport as the Chinese anymore. And I’m not just talking about their ability to build high-speed rail networks or humble billionaire freaks like Jack Ma.
We live in a country that can’t even muster the political will to fix storm drains to prevent people dying during floods, which will only increase as we move deeper into the abyss climate change.
From Topher Sanders of proublica.com:
There’s no official count of how many Americans get pulled into storm drains, pipes or culverts during flood events, but ProPublica identified 35 such cases since 2015 using news accounts and court records. Twenty-one of those people died; nearly half of those lost were children. Thirteen of the deaths happened in the past three years alone. The numbers are likely an undercount, since reports of flood deaths often don’t give details other than the fact that someone was swept away.
Despite records of horrific cases that span the country and stretch back decades — and the scientific consensus that climate change will only worsen flooding — federal, state and local government agencies have failed to take simple steps to prevent such tragedies from happening, ProPublica found, after more than a dozen interviews with government officials, engineers and weather experts, as well as a review of documents including death investigations, government meeting minutes and emails, and academic papers. Officials are not surveying the nation’s aging stormwater drainage systems, which are being taxed beyond capacity by record downpours, to flag openings that could pose a hazard and install grates to prevent people from being sucked in.
I don’t know. Seems pretty evident that China will soon surpass us in any metric that matters for anyone that isn’t some ultra-wealthy dickhead looking to launder money and evade taxes, which of course is why politicians in both parties have no problem pushing Yellow Peril nonsense while offering no actual ideas of their own. Why wouldn’t the world want to get in bed with China at this point? Our package can’t compete with theirs anymore.
But none of that is my problem as I will never be elected president. But I might one give up my citizenship to lead a Communist revolution while living like Osama bin Laden in Hocking Hills. And were that day come to pass, I would simply issue these following recommendations for future American governance before retiring to do something cooler than be a head of state at the old age of 40:
Billionaires stripped of wealth and jailed. Sorry, but if you have a billion dollars and choose to do anything resembling work, your brain is broken and you actively hoarding wealth is a threat to society. Congrats on creating some new app. That belongs to the government now. We’re also done subsidizing their sporting arenas, too.
Creation of National Healthcare Service. Consider me crazy, but I don’t think people should go bankrupt in the richest country in the world just because they got cancer. “It’s harder than it looks!” Well, the rest of the world figured it out so why can’t the No. 1 country do the same unless we’re not anywhere near as great as we pretend?
Gut the defense budget and demilitarize the police. The Pentagon has never been audited and our mighty military, which is roughly five contractors in a trench coat, can’t even beat Afghanistan or Iraq. And who exactly are we worried about invading us? Also, we should quit giving weapons of war to the GI Joe cosplayers that comprise most of the police officers in the country.
Abolish the Senate. Or better yet, bulldoze it into the Potomac River. Remember how we elected Joe Biden as a master of that forgotten tactic of bipartisan negotiation? His agenda is literally being butchered in the cradle by odious centrists in his own party like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. There is a reason no other country copied our government, and the Senate is a big part of that.
Cars are banned and all suburbs are immediately annexed by cities from which they leech. This will be one of the ideas where “real Americans” lose their shit and post memes about “coming and taking” their Ford F-5000 or whatever. Well, careful what you wish for, Jethro. You might just get it, and that Thin Blue Line decal won’t save you.
Golf courses immediately closed and turned over to the federal housing authority. Golf is a game favored by miscreants and a favored vehicle for insider trading.
Members of Congress allowed no other revenue streams outside of their already posh salaries. Have you ever wondered how these clowns become multimillionaires within 20 years of working for $175,000 per year? It’s the insider trading. It’s insane that they’re allowed to own stocks. They shouldn’t even be allowed to make any other many than what Congress pays them, which is more than enough to live comfortable in any city in America.
Tax the churches. Sorry, Scientology, but just because you tricked vampiric celebrities into thinking space aliens control society or whatever, Uncle Sam is going to need his points on the package starting in 2022.
Abortion: Free, legal and on demand. Sorry, religious freaks, but your positions are wildly unpopular and weird, frankly.
Public corruption is the only crime punishable by death. Politicians love increasing the penalties on drunk driving, well, let’s see how blood-thirsty they are when it’s their hands caught in the cookie jar.
Work week reduced to 30 hours with a minimum wage brought in line with production and inflation (~$24 an hour) with 100 days. I realize small business tyrants would shriek about this, but I’d remind them that if their business relies on the exploitation of others than they never had a business in the first place.
Break up Amazon, Google and Facebook. Fuck these nerds. Break them up and regulate them like a public utility company, which they are.
Drugs: Safe, legal and on-demand. We could go the way of Portugal which decriminalized all street drugs and got wondrous results or we could continue our disastrous policy of trying to jail our way out of the problem. Choice seems pretty clear to me.
Companies are no longer allowed to buy housing, and individuals that do will be taxed out of the ass on any residence they buy that they don’t plan to use as a primary residence. Will have to work with my accountants on what I mean by “taxed out the ass,” but the phrasing will do for now.
Private education: Later, nerds! You were erected a system to keep white supremacy rampant in American society, and you won’t be missed. Profit has no place in education.
These are just some ideas that I have percolating in my skull at the moment. Did I miss some things? Sure. God didn’t create the world in one day, after all. But these are just some of the pressing issues I see facing America that our government will not fix much to the glee of the corporate hobgoblins that will ruin our planet in the name of making a quick buck.
Maybe I’m more pessimistic on the American Experiment than you. That’s fine. At least I can take solace in these words never coming back to haunt my presidential campaign. The CIA will have assassinated me long before that happens.
THOSE WMDs. Sitters vs. Standers: The great wipe hope… Woman tells friends she’s on the brink of death before stealing their money… “I feel like a survivor:” The funeral industry’s 2021 convention… Kanye West’s publicist pressed Georgia election worker to confess to bogus fraud charges... “I’m not going to die on the internet for you:” How game streaming went from dream job to burnout nightmare.
Yes to Evangelion memes.
Yes to this political platform.