 A race between revolution and robotics. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. Basically, we're looking at a race to see if the deterioration of material conditions inherent in capitalism leads to mass scale revolution before the plutocrats have the technological and legal ability to roll out robot and drone security forces. We're fed nonstop messaging that we're inadequate unless we buy certain products. That mass military slaughter is normal. That madness is sanity. And that you're the problem if you can't keep your head above water in a system that's designed to drown you. And people wonder why there's a mental health crisis. The problem is that while not many people really benefit from the status quo, those who do are in a position to influence everyone else. So you get a nonstop barrage of media pundits, movies and TV shows acting like everything's fine. And this shapes our entire culture. What we need first and foremost, more than socialism or anarchism or any other ism, is real transparency. We need people's vision of what's going on in the world unobscured by government slash corporate slash financial secrecy and propaganda. Once we can see, we can figure things out from there. How can we navigate toward a healthy world when we can't even see what's happening? Militaries understand that you need intelligence before you can act efficaciously. You need to see and know what you're dealing with. Truth is hidden and obscured from us precisely for this reason. That's what Assange was going for when he founded WikiLeaks, a tool to help the people see and know what's going on in the world so we can act in an informed way. That's also why he's in prison. If you ever get lonely, just whisper, I do not care for Elon Musk to yourself and his fans will come crashing through your wall to defend his honor. Whenever I say the U.S. is the most destructive government in our world today, the only people who argue with me are those who simply haven't thought very hard about how many people have been killed by America's current wars and sanctions regimes. Hi, I'd like two trillion dollars over the next 20 years to build a giant brick mountain in the middle of the desert. What? No, piss off. Okay, well, can I have two trillion dollars over the next 20 years to murder people in Afghanistan for no legitimate reason? Sure, why not? Most of the time you hear someone crying about people being oppressed by a tyrannical authoritarian foreign government, they're really just crying because they want those people to be oppressed by the tyrannical authoritarians in the United States government. Capitalism is responsible for the historically unprecedented level of human thriving today. Also, anything you say to criticize our current system is invalid because this system isn't real capitalism. Both of these things are true for me somehow. I don't like the US ruling the world with nonstop violence either, but if it wasn't us, it would be China. No, no unipolar global hegemon ever once existed in human history until three decades ago. Stop thinking of it as some unbreakable law of nature that there must always be one. Saying you can't end the US empire because China will replace it is the same as saying you can't stop raping someone because then someone else would rape them. Westerners act like the desire to conquer a planet is some kind of inescapable inherent trait in human DNA because it's more comfortable than considering the possibility that it's a mind virus that is unique to our society. The idea that China wants to become the next unipolar dominator assumes, A, China has the same values and interests as Western imperialists, and B, that Beijing is looking at the US empire eating itself alive and thinking, yeah, that looks awesome. That could be us someday. Many people say China openly wants to replace the US as the unipolar hegemon, but if you actually examine the sources of their claim, it's always just China saying it wants a multipolar world, and Western propagandists falsely spinning that as evidence that China wants to become the next unipolar dominator. Not even Hitler wanted to take over the entire world, he just wanted to expand Germany's borders and dominate Europe. That's why he was fine with the prospect of a Japanese empire throughout Asia. Acting like taking over the planet is an inherent drive within us all, is a total propaganda fabrication. An adept manipulator doesn't always need to feed you lies. They prefer to get you inventing your own lies and gaslighting yourself. An adept empire doesn't always need to topple governments by military force. They prefer to manipulate the nation's people into doing it for them. The saying it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism rings true, not because it's inherently hard to imagine the end of capitalism, but because vast fortunes are poured into propaganda campaigns to keep us from imagining a better world. The lion's share of the propaganda machine's energy goes not into manufacturing consent for new toxic agendas, but into manufacturing consent for the systems that are already in place. Into keeping everyone thinking this batshit insane paradigm is normal, and the only way things can possibly be.