Aloha,
While we’ve all been fretting about the U.S. presidential election results, the truth is that we already know who won. The Antichrist has won - it just depends on which side of the red/blue fence you are on. That fact, all by itself means one thing for certain. The United States of America has lost. The United State of America is lost.
I don’t think the USA will find its way back from this mess. If things don’t change in a very significant way, I don’t think the United States deserves to continue at all. In truth, I’m writing this five days before the election - or at least starting to write it. I don’t need to see the voting results or the electoral college voting results or the celebrations of either side to know that we have lost.
More than 225,000 Americans have died of a disease that could have and should have been controlled. Tens of millions are unemployed. That’s just in the USA. When I was a child, I was taught that as the most advanced nation in the world, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, that we had a responsibility towards the world and yet:
847 Million people are undernourished
20,000+ people in the world died of hunger today
796 million people in the world don’t have access to clean & safe drinking water
700,000+ have died from a lack of clean water this year
6.3 million under 5 years old died so far this year, mostly from things that could have been prevented
260,000 mothers died in childbirth this year
900,000+ killed themselves this year
1.3 million people died in auto accidents this year
I could go on, but I’d rather not. I’d rather ask you why we have accepted this in a world where one man - Jeff Bezos - has earned enough just this year to have provided clean water and food to every one of those people, to have paid for treatment for all those people. Every one of those lives could have been saved with the money he earned this year - and - he would still have enough to buy yachts, mansions, and astoundingly expensive food and drink. Why? Why do we accept this?
Or - even in our own country - just the USA. Bezos personally earned enough this year to permanently house and feed every homeless person in America. He also earned enough to buy this election. He earned enough to put a candidate in that will let him continue on the path towards owning everything. He isn’t alone. The wealthiest ten people in the world own more than the poorest 4 billion people in the world.
It’s not a new problem and the USA isn’t the only problem country in the world. It’s as old as exploitation itself.
America isn’t the only problem country - but it’s a symbol of it. It’s also where the problem has gotten worst. It’s where the problem has grown out of control.
No one deserves to starve. No one deserves to die of hunger or a treatable illness or disease. No one deserves to be homeless. No one deserves to be denied the opportunity of education and a better life. And as long as starvation, lack of access to clean water, homelessness, disease, and the elements are killing people - no one deserves to be as rich as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or the rest of the billionaires. Their income needs to be capped and redistributed from the top to the bottom. Start with Bezos - take all of the wealth he has above Gates and use it to solve the problems. Then take the wealth they both have above #3 and distribute that, then take the wealth of those three and distribute it, and so on - continue this process until every person has access to clean water, food, medicine, shelter, and education - make that the cap. I’m not saying that people who are innovative and work hard don’t deserve a bigger slice of the pie - I’m saying that no person deserves to die so they can have that. It’s pretty simple.
The World is Pretty Grim - but guys like Russell Brand and Douglas Rushkoff certainly make it better. Do yourself a favor and watch this amazing conversation between the two of them:
Election Day
It’s early on Election Day now. Things appear to be going fairly smoothly. No armed standoffs or mass shootings, which, in America, is generally a good day whatever else might be happening.
Of course, I don’t expect the chaos to begin until results are announced - premature, false, actual, or otherwise. My expectation is that Dipshit J. Trump is going to defy the odds again and take the White House for four more years, mainly because shenanigans have been put in place through redistricting, the destruction of the post office, and other off the radar moves made over the past four years. Couple that with the unbelievable hubris and arrogance of the Democratic Party who completely ignored progressive voters and had enough gall to think that a man in his late 70s who supported fracking and crowed about beating the socialists would ‘get out the vote’ and I think you have a narrow win in the next couple of days. I’ll also posit that the Biden campaign prepared to have a vigorous legal defense of a landslide win but neglected to imagine what would happen if Trump squeaked through a tiny electoral majority. Anyway, I hope I’m wrong.
I threw my vote to Biden. Not because I love him or his policies but because I feel like the boring stability he represents may give all of us a chance to figure out this new pandemic world (and with any luck a post-pandemic future). I hope all of my misgivings about a rigged election, angry trump-hordes carrying tiki torches through the streets and more are proved completely wrong. I love being wrong when what I am projecting is horrific. Like many people, this past four years has been a non-stop nightmare for me - not the least of which was thinking that my family and I were about to be evaporated by a nuclear warhead because of dipshit’s ‘diplomacy’ ( see the Hawaii missile scare).
As you get this…the results are either clear or muddied. There’s not much point in my going on about it now. We just wait and see. I wrote about what I thought the 2nd American Civil War would look like back in 2018. I’ve written about just how broken the United States of America is. I’ve written about the dangers of Trumpism.
I hope I was wrong about it all.
I hope you voted. Even if you voted for the Antichrist, I hope you got your vote in. The funny thing with democracy is that every vote helps to put us on the right track - unfortunately for Americans we have had most of that power taken away from us by the electoral college - the only modern country to have such a backward and unjust system. The driving force behind it seems to be farmers who think that it makes their rural populations the equal of dense urban populations - which is sort of what it does do. In other words it makes some votes worth more than others. Not a good idea.
Well…in any event, congratulations on surviving the pandemic and the election so far and good luck with the rest of what 2020 has to offer us.
With solidarity,
Vagobond (for Antichrist2020.com)
p.s. A funny note, lots of folks have been finding my site by searching for Biden 2020 Antichrist - I may need to change the way I promote socialism if there is a Biden win.
Here’s a bit of what I’m reading this week:
Paradox Free Time Travel is Finally Possible (theoretically)
Why Your Phone is Probably Already Being Listened To
Average American Filmed by 238 Different Surveillance Cameras Each Week