"Idiocracy" Didn't Have This Cruelty...

Ignorance is one thing. Intentional cruelty is entirely another.

I’m quite positive I wouldn’t be alone if I were to express how utterly OVER IT I am.

I quickly turn the channel or station if our dicktraitor’s voice comes on. I’m a woman from the American south. I’ve spent enough of my life listening to power-bloated, stupid, arrogant men speak so I’ll opt out when given the chance, thank you very much.

Obviously this is the end stages of everything we’ve fought against and been warned about. The only people not screaming about this regime are those benefitting from it, and the rest of us just live in a perpetual state somewhere between irritation and full blown rage.

We watch them drag mothers across asphalt, sometimes bodily ripping them from their children and husbands.

We watch them gut the healthcare for our poorest citizens and then flippantly say, “We’re all going to die, for heaven’s sake.”

We watch them dismantle institutions and policies that have proven to level the playing field for the descendants of those we brought here in chains, stacked like cords of firewood in the bellies of wooden ships, so that yet another snot-nosed white boy can get a job he can’t fucking do because not only is he woefully unqualified but he’s just too fucking stupid to do it.

Like the whole goddamn Cartoon Cabinet.

We watch their women go under actual knives to alter their bodies to be more pleasing to their peanut-dicked closeted men, their cheekbones and lips growing ever fatter, glistening as if they didn’t wipe the pig grease from their lips after sucking off ICE agents and the corrupt police they adore so much.

We watch trans people arrested for using the fucking bathroom they were told to use by impossibly confused bigots who utterly forgot the existence of trans men when making hysterical laws about trans people and public bathrooms even though statistics clearly prove, and have for literally all of the existence of public restrooms, that cisgender heterosexual men are overwhelmingly the perverts attacking women and little girls in public restrooms (and churches, homes, rec centers, etc.).

We watch local cops turn from community members who hosted events in public parks to “get to know your local police” to masked marauders assisting the kidnapping and human trafficking of actual living people just because ICE and the Department of Homeland Subversion offered them unlimited power and immunity to act out their darkest desires. Now our local cops are kicking down doors like this is Baghdad and Mexican abuelas are the terrorists hiding those weapons of mass destruction…

[…yeah, I fucking know they didn’t exist in Baghdad, either…]

… because **news flash** the cops never were our fucking friends and the reason they had to host cookouts in public parks to trick their citizens into trusting them is because no one was ever going to trust them because they’ve been corrupt assholes who take oaths to protect and defend but it’s crazy how they don’t get ‘protect and defend’ quotas. They exist to ticket, fine, arrest, harass, and penalize the very people who pay their fucking salaries, and the few of them whose moral compasses still point anywhere near true North just go ahead and quit instead of trying to change the system. They recognize the rot runs so deep there’s no saving it.

If you are not a woman or AFAB reading this I’m not sure you can process the absolute rage of realizing your rights depend on your fucking zip code, that your government will hook you up to machines to keep your corpse as an incubator should you be brain dead and pregnant, that your ability to govern your own body, in a society that’s so fucking rapey we literally elected a known rapist for President, has been snatched away.

In a society where not one of my rapists or abusers has done a day of prison time for their crimes, no less.

In a society where young men are given slaps on the wrist, if anything, because of the “potential” they display. God forbid your rape derail their future career.

We watch our tangerine turd’s nonsensical tariffs tear through time-tested trade treaties as he tries so fucking hard to live up to the reputation of being the “deal master”, even as his own book on the topic was ghost-written.

He couldn’t even write a book on it by himself…. because he has no fucking clue what he’s doing!

We’re watching our legacy media publish books about the mental prowess of our former President as the current one dismantles the government, and not in secret behind closed doors, but on television like it’s some fucking gladiator games! And yet the nightly news reports on sports and trivia as masked men kick down doors and lie in wait outside courthouses and even schools to handcuff small children, tackle mothers, and drag grandmothers away to concrete cells where they will rot with no legal representation, no humanity.

But, like, what did Taylor Swift post today?

WHY DO WE FUCKING CARE?!?!?!

When are we going to care enough to do something?

When are we going to launch a counter-offensive that will do something?

When will…. you know what? Nevermind.

The most disappointing, most angering, most frustrating part of all of this is not that some reality TV lunatic took over and is actively dismantling our government. I mean, yes, that absolutely sucks.

But what sucks more is watching my fellow Americans simply… flip to a different channel. Zone out. Refuse to go to any march or rally or protest or demonstration or town hall because “what does it matter?”

The level of apathy in this nation is absolutely rage-inducing.

“I give a shoutout to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen, you was mesmerized
Cellular phones, soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold turn ya to stone before ya realize
They load the clip in, omnicolor
Said they pack the .9, they fire it at prime time
The sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mothafuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say "jump", you say "how high?" (Yeah)
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say "jump", you say "how high?"
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again, Jack, and then rewind the tape
And then play it again, and again, and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya
They say "jump", and ya say "how high?"
Ya braindead, ya got a fuckin' bullet in ya head.”

This is Rage Against the Machine’s Bullet in the Head from their self-titled debut album produced in 1992.

In nineteen fucking ninety-two.

This could have been written this month. This could have been written this week.

This could have been written today.

What are we gonna do about it… and more to the point, how long is it going to take us?!

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Thanks for letting me rant a bit. I try to keep my sociopolitical rants separate from my other work at CounterStory Media. Subscribe here (it will always be free!) if you want all of my content!

Much love,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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