It’s been nearly a year since the facade of leadership and guidance on behalf of the United States’ federal government was stripped away. Now we can see the political machine’s moving parts underneath, and it looks like the gears and pulleys are mismatched, following a design different from what was originally intended. In case you’re not in the loop for whatever reason (unfortunately, until this week, we hadn’t been running any Last Week in Cyberpunk articles for a while), since we’ve elected the world’s most dangerous and personally underdeveloped figurehead into office, the circus that’s come as a result has always seemed to side with hate groups and corporate interests over concerned, average individuals on matters of importance. Hardly surprising, seeing as our current wannabe fascist dictator isn’t even hiding the fact that he only cares about his own financial gain. Last year, we saw rednecks try to legalize murder in the face of basic human freedoms, the near-deaths of net neutrality and any semblance of non-privatized healthcare, Disney’s acquisition of Fox–which I personally find very foreboding–and in its dying breaths, a federal budget that, at its very best, acts as a band-aid to the potential economic crises we face.
Academics, nerds, and fans of dystopian literature like you and I over the past year have taken to the internet, screaming in all caps that our world is now Fahrenheit 451, which actively uses screens to quell social interaction and intellectualism. It’s Idiocracy, a world so aimlessly reliant on technology and mindless entertainment that basic knowledge is no longer afforded to us and our choices of presidential material are whittled down to the most popular instead of the most capable. It’s Brazil, it’s 1984, it’s Black Mirror’s “The Waldo Moment”. It’s all of these things that the authors have been warning us for decades was going to happen, but we didn’t listen.
It’s Transmetropolitan.
A Quick Summary
I read Warren Ellis’ frighteningly prescient comic series last fall, and I have to say that it seems to only grow in relevance as time goes on. Published by Vertigo from 1998 to 2003, Transmetropolitan is the portrait of Spider Jerusalem’s world, the America of some 200 years from now–no one seems to know the exact year. Spider, a misanthropic, malicious journalist living in a secluded mountain fortress, finds himself unable to produce material for his book contract and is summarily forced back into society. He does this by way of the City, an urban sprawl that is never specified where it is in a geographical sense, but can be gleaned from hints is the evolution of the Northeast Megalopolis. (And by the way, megalopolises are a real thing now.) The City is almost a character in and of itself, populated by an overstimulating world pulled in a million different directions by factions preaching opposing doctrines, resulting in extremes of political, religious, and other idealistic nature.
One such extreme is the Transient movement, a group of disenfranchised individuals so fed up with humanity and enamored with a colony of extraterrestrials living in the City’s borders that they undergo genetic modification to transition into this species. This “movement”, as the reader comes to learn, actually more closely resembles a cult, led by a character literally named Fred Christ, whose threats of secession from the City draw the attentions of both Spider Jerusalem and local law enforcement. A riot breaks out, and Jerusalem is there to witness it all, engaging in an inspired moment of gonzo journalism that marks his return as possibly the only voice of truth in a world gone mad.
After this story arc, Transmetropolitan largely focuses on the upcoming presidential race, which largely hinges on winning over the City’s populace. Term limits seem to have been abolished, and in office is a character known as the “Beast”, whose appearance and personality have been inspired directly by Richard Nixon and almost openly acts purely in his own self-interest. In this election cycle, the Beast faces off against Bob Heller, a blond-haired, blue-eyed conservative dedicated to preserving “America for Americans”, and the “Smiler”, aka Gary Callahan, a photogenic politician that doesn’t appear quite so honest and charming under the microscope that the majority of the nation ignores. While Spider has an outright disdain for the Beast–so much that he uses a weapon known as a bowel disruptor (I’ll leave the details of its capabilities to your imagination) on him on two separate occasions–Gary Callahan’s own underhanded political maneuvering reeks of motivations that might prove to be more dangerous to the world than the Beast’s quest for selfish gains. This theory is confirmed when Callahan secretly arranges the vicious murder of his campaign manager on live television directly before announcing her own candidacy for president. By winning this sympathy vote, the Smiler takes office with no one the wiser, and reveals in private to Spider that his intentions as a national leader lie along the purely psychopathic, to cause as many people as much pain as possible.
What follows is, essentially, a war waged by Spider, his protégé, Yelena Rossini, and his bodyguard, Channon Yarrow–who by themselves pack enough punk into this sci-fi narrative to warrant the cyberpunk label–and all the underhanded forces the Smiler has at his disposal. Spider is first nearly killed in a massacre instigated by the City’s police during a protest of their mishandling of the investigation of a hate crime (gee, how relevant). Subsequently, he finds himself censored and fired from the publication he works for by the president’s order, forcing him to begin publishing through an underground news site known as the Hole. In response, Callahan attempts to assassinate Spider and his team, and later uses a cataclysmic byproduct of global warming known as a “ruinstorm”–which is so violent that exposure to its extreme conditions is almost guaranteed to be fatal–as a distraction to destroy the evidence Spider collected against Callahan. Spider, however, retrieves a backup drive of this information, and he and the Filthy Assistants with renewed vigor begin to turn the City upside down in order to wear away the last of Callahan’s defenses. In a last-ditch effort to prevent Spider from exposing him as a fraud, Callahan puts the City on lockdown by declaring martial law. But of course, as the City’s residents riot in the streets, Callahan himself is the one to hammer the final nail in his own coffin in a way that I will not describe here because you really should just read it.
Analysis
Fuck 1998–Transmetropolitan feels like a story that should have been written today. This isn’t to say that it’s not rife with dated views of the future, constantly attempting to predict near-alien futuristic fashion in a manner that feels so very characteristic of the 1990s, which ultimately have shown more age than simply extrapolating the current trends. But at its core, Transmet is an absurdist comedy, a satire of epic proportions that, while not seeming to attempt to accurately paint a picture of the future cosmetically, manages to capture the essences of the smothering hostility of outside agencies we face on a daily basis. There’s a reason that Warren Ellis’ series has garnered a cult following–it’s Futurama, if Futurama was profane and streaked with its own shit. In fact, one of its most vocal fans is freaking Captain Picard himself, who has been attempting to produce a live-action version for years. (And, if you just so happen to be reading this, Sir Stewart, I don’t care what anybody says–I would probably have a heart attack out of sheer joy if you took on the role of our pill-popping protagonist.)
The City that unfolds from the pages of Transmetropolitan’s issues is an obscenely labyrinthine expanse that seems to consume the whole of human existence, pulled in a million directions at once by an overabundance of ideologies. In the City, a new religion is founded roughly once every half hour, effectively commodifying the individual’s journey toward spiritual enlightenment. It’s been mutated into a spectacle, a manner of defining oneself no more meaningful than purchasing a shiny new sports car. This is best exemplified by issue #6, in which Spider (garbed as a veritable Angel of Truth, complete with tinfoil halo) crashes a god damned religion convention, in which a plethora of creeds are put on display in consecutive booths, peddling grotesque parodies of themselves by highlighting the superficial benefits of joining.
But wait, there’s more: corporations continuously lobby for the legalization of i-pollen, clouds of nanomachines that instantaneously transmit advertisements to the minds of those who inhale it. Of course, i-pollen also causes the unsuspecting victims of this tragic invasion of the solidarity of one’s mind to contract a debilitating disease, resulting in dementia. Therefore, somehow, the lawmaking process at this point is so rapid that i-pollen is only legal for a few minutes at a time. At another point in the series, Spider details stepping in a wad of cancerous goop, wiping it off on his doormat, and witnessing the mutating mass hiss at him. It’s never made clear whether or not if this is hyperbole. In addition to using custom-fit religion and other, more traditional brands to futilely define themselves, the citizens of the City are constantly making their voices heard, but rarely to any meaningful effect.
In the City, absolutely nothing is sacred. Two hundred years or so down the line, most advertisements seem to be aimed solely towards the innate human sex drive. My favorite recurring example is the Sex Puppets, a horrifying caricature of Sesame Street that, from what I can tell, teaches children of the joys of group intercourse. Meanwhile, issue #40 focuses on young children that willingly sell their bodies to adults, and another vignette in issue #25 covers street kids with so little hope for their futures that they get themselves hooked on a physically disfiguring and degenerating drug. Eating cloned human meat is socially acceptable. Even Spider’s mutant cat is never seen without a cigarette in one of its mouths. Of course, there are conservative factions that call for a return to the good ol’ days, but considering some of the members of their ranks literally dress like Hitler, they are clearly not driven by concepts like “compassion” and “humanitarianism”, whatever those may be.
Moderation no longer exists in the world of Transmetropolitan. The rifts between factions grow ever wider, and most interactions between average people are purely transactional in this oversaturated consumerist culture, stripping meaning from almost everything. This is best exemplified by the Revivals–individuals who had themselves cryogenically frozen in the past for any number of reasons, only to be brought back into a world so extreme and uncaring that they can’t comprehend it. These Revivals, in constant shock and terror, end up in what amounts to homeless shelters or on the streets.
Spider himself, while not without compassion for the innocent, is a reflection of this world–a madcap, chain-smoking, constantly-medicated version of Hunter S. Thompson rarely seen without a maniacal grin on his face. He loves the City, but despises nearly everyone in it–constantly we are reminded of his violent misanthropy, ranging from constant threats of giving anyone and everyone a horrible case of diarrhea to literally destroying his ex-wife’s frozen head to prevent her from being brought back to life. In issue #5, Spider spends the entire issue calling in to news stations and other media outlets, spouting furious anti-propaganda and hateful comments before concluding that he “has become television”. (Remember, kids, the late ’90s took place before the internet was the main outlet for trolls.) But despite his drug-addled, rage-induced rampages, Spider values truth over all else, no matter how painful or soul-crushing it might be. Therefore, it’s only fitting that he, crackpot conspiracy theorist that he may be, is the closest thing that his world has to a voice of reason.
The only ideals that Spider–and by extension, I assume, Warren Ellis–seems to hold in high regard are those that drive transhumanism and the preservation of history. In issues #7 and #9 respectively, which sandwich “Another Cold Morning”, the issue that covers the Revivals and neatly transitions between the themes of both, Ellis seems to advocate the evolution of humankind into something greater, while also bemoaning the disconnection we have from our history. Issue #7, “Boyfriend is a Virus”, covers Channon’s cyborg lover who finally takes the last step in his own religion, a version of techno-Buddhism, a process that transfers his consciousness from his body into a cloud of nanoparticles–or foglets–that essentially removes his body’s limits, turning him more or less into a floating, talking, immortal replicator. While Channon is grief-stricken by what might constitute the shittiest way to break up with someone, Spider admires the manner by which a human can evolve while still remaining, essentially, human–which varies from the rest of the world around him, so stagnated by the lack of change to the human condition that humans themselves have taken on inhuman traits. Issue #9, “Wild in the Country”, covers the City’s reservations, which are essentially living museums that are dedicated to preserving periods in history down to the minutest of details. This includes the brutality of societies like that of the ancient Aztecs, who performed human sacrifices. Volunteers have their memories wiped and reprogrammed to fit the times and places of their assigned reservations, and the memories pertaining to all visitors are also wiped. Unfortunately, visitors are few and far between. This lack of self-education in order to distract oneself with lesser pleasures, Spider seems to imply, might be a contributor to the overall meaninglessness of society.
The Politics
Despite Ellis’ leaps to scathing and staggeringly absurd conclusions about the future of consumerist society, one thing that, in an ironic twist of fate, holds up perhaps a little too well is his view of the future of politics. As I stated before, moderation no longer exists–the divides between opposing factions has grown so wide that nothing lies between them, ultimately resulting in a world that has lost all sense of purpose and meaning. No better is this illustrated than by the rat race of politics, in which there are no longer parties defined by terms like “conservative” or “liberal”. Instead, political affiliations are labeled by their alignments or opposition to the party in power, highlighting how pointless idealism in government has become–all that matters is who holds the power. Gary Callahan, who visually represents a twisted version of Jack Kennedy to the Beast’s Nixon, is aligned with the party in opposition and might come off as a “liberal” candidate, but considering his contemporary, Bob Heller, is a poorly-veiled neo-fascist, this might not be the case.
Furthermore, the Beast at one point claims that his job as president is to keep as many citizens alive as possible–nothing more. This heartlessly utilitarian outlook might seem like a fair assessment until one couples it with the Beast’s life of debauchery. To him, being president is just a day job with some nice perks. But compared to Callahan, he’s practically a saint–a fact that Spider doesn’t realize until far too late, blinded by his own disdain for the Beast.
The Smiler’s own duplicity is marked by the people he surrounds himself with. One of his advisers, Alan Schact, has controversial ties to an organization that promotes the legalization of pedophilia, and is later exposed as a pedophile himself. In one of the most darkly comedic moments, upon being confronted by his associates with this PR nightmare, Schact declares that there is an obvious solution to the dilemma before promptly blowing his own head off. (I find all of this immensely ironic since the popularity of the aforementioned Sex Puppets is, well, an actual thing in this universe.) Also, Callahan’s running mate is squeaky clean–too clean, in fact. Upon investigation, it turns out that the VP candidate is literally a clone, grown in the weeks prior to the race. And Vita Severn, the Smiler’s campaign manager, while honest and appears to have the makings of a good leader, is killed for outgrowing her role in Callahan’s plan.
Of course, something so sinister and corrupt only serves to usher in a sympathy vote that puts Callahan into office. There are no virtual or augmented realities in Transmet–just the ones fabricated by media outlets and mindless entertainment, spinning mistruths in the manners that are most profitable to publications, or will prevent the government from censoring them with a D-notice, which is supposedly meant to limit the spread of “harmful” or “untrustworthy” journalistic pieces.
It’s almost as though anyone with any measure of power in Transmet is guaranteed, in some way, to be corrupt or easily manipulated, or is otherwise disconnected from the political world. So for the simple-minded voters, when it all comes down to election day, well, it’s all just a matter of crossing fingers and hoping that whoever gets elected will do the least amount of damage possible.
I hope this is all starting to sound familiar.
Compared to reality, Transmetropolitan might take a couple sci-fi leaps here and there. Not all the pieces fall perfectly into place. But I can’t help but feel that this series resonates with reality in more than a few particularly frustrating ways. There are smaller, more obvious parallels interspersed throughout our current political world, from an actual pedophile’s near reelection into the Alabama Senate seat to the corrupt, two-faced, corporate stoogery brought to you by Paul Ryan, hailing from my own home state of Wisconsin. Larger examples include your run-of-the-mill Democratic nominees for president, more often than not seeming to adhere to hidden agendas behind plastered-on grins. Political parties mean nothing anymore–the Grand Old Party, which prides itself on limiting the size of the federal government, has had its fair share in expanding the size of the federal government. I could go on and on about how our current president represents the absolute worst of what Transmet has to offer–from causing people adhering to hateful and, frankly, outdated beliefs to come out of the woodwork, to barely even concealing his own corruption, to simply acting as a figurehead while megacorps have had their run of the nation’s lawmaking process–but I’ll leave that infuriating mess for you to sort out on your own. If you’re into masochism, that is. And meanwhile, honesty and strength in leadership and mass media seem to be nowhere in sight, because they have no place in the political and journalistic world we’ve made for ourselves.
It’s times like this when I feel I can relate to Spider, as I’m sure you can as well. Constantly self-medicating, writing for an underground website, a deep rage constantly burning inside as I watch the world around me slowly eat itself. Like Spider, I can’t actually change anything. All I can do is write, until the government issues to me its version of a D-notice.
Whatever the case may be, Warren Ellis got the future of politics pretty well spot-on. It just came a couple hundred years sooner than we might have expected. You can experience Transmetropolitan for yourself here.
Oh, and just for the hell of it:
Transmetropolitan – 10/10
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Anonymous
It’s not like Trump’s election suddenly changed everything. The US government has been a consistent enemy of its people for over 200 years. Its power has grown exponentially and unchecked throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, thanks to the machinations of both major political parties (who in reality are merely two wings of the same party).
Corporations are often criticized (and rightly so) for subverting the political process. Oftentimes left out of these critiques is the government’s (and the politicians’ and others’ employed by it) corrupt willingness to use its power for the corporations’ benefit. If the government didn’t have so much power in the first place, the corporations wouldn’t be seeking to control it and people wouldn’t treat every election like it’s a literal life-or-death struggle.
The greatest threat to our rights, freedom, and continued prosperity isn’t which politician or political party is in power. It’s the idea that some people should have power over others, and that by banding into a large enough group, that group suddenly gains the right to force its will on others, despite none of the individuals in that group having that right on their own.
Until people get that through their heads, the government and the corporations it protects will continue to screw us.
shadowlink
All valid points. Makes me think of that V for Vendetta quote–“People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.”
That said, since Drumf took office, it seems like American politics has become that much more obvious about its own corruption. One would think that if a group of individuals wanted to maintain control over the people they see as beneath them, they wouldn’t be so blatantly, hand-wringingly sinister about their intentions. The last inauguration kind of marks the fact that we’ve crossed a threshold in which anyone with enough power can get away with whatever the hell they want.
That said, anarchy as a system of governance doesn’t seem to be particularly effective either. Like you said, people have the tendency to band into groups and force their wills down everyone else’s throats. I’d hate to see what forms that takes without any kind of government in place.
Anonymous
Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won’t kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will.
The chaos we’re seeing now is a battle between Trump and his goons and the Deep State which has dominated the country for 75+ years. The Trump regime’s nefarious activities aren’t much different or worse than what the Deep State has done over the last century, they’re just more heavily publicized thanks to the Deep State’s propaganda arm (the mainstream media). Are Trump’s racist statements any worse than Lyndon B. Johnson’s “I’ll have those [N-words] voting Democratic for the next 200 years” when he decided to back civil rights legislation? Or Woodrow Wilson’s support for eugenic policies? Is Trump’s corruption any worse than Obama’s steering taxpayer dollars to the corporations of his wealthy campaign supporters? They’re all terrible, and should all be criticized and resisted.
LulzOp-527776
“and that by banding into a large enough group, that group suddenly gains the right to force its will on others, despite none of the individuals in that group having that right on their own.”
There are no brakes on the Democracy train.
shadowlink
You’re not wrong. It’s clear that the US government is fairly hostile towards its own citizens, as evidenced by Chelsea Manning’s incarceration, Edward Snowden’s continued persecution, the perpetuation of our near-police state and the prison industrial complex, the freaking MK Ultra project, and the fact that treason is an offense that is still punishable by death, among many other things. But if by the Deep State you’re referring to the theory that there’s a concerted effort by members of the government to maintain as much control over the individual as possible, I can’t help but feel hesitation.
See, the way I see it, the government is like any cold-blooded predator: its sole preoccupation is with its own survival and prospering. In theory, this should work to the benefit of the people, but if a higher-up finds a way to sidestep the benefit of the people for their own gain, they’ll take it. It’s just the nature of the beast, which gets fed into by lobbyists, corporate “donations” and other technically-legal-but-really-just-money-laundering sorts of practices. It’s horrible, but it’s always about what benefits the people in power at any given moment in time–unless I am given some solid evidence to the contrary, there is likely no group of people that’s out to actively dick everyone else over, just passively so, if it benefits them in the process.
Which is why I fear, if I’m reading you correctly, that you might be giving your an enemy a well-defined, punchable face in order to promote ideals about the rationality and integrity of the individual. Which is something I understand, because I’ve been there. But let me tell you something: the individual is shit. And they might not be shit if they lived under better conditions, true, but the unfortunate truth, in this day and age of constant distraction and disconnection, is that most people don’t seem able to make well-informed, rational decisions. It’s not in our nature; we haven’t reached that level of freedom yet and we might never.
Let’s say for a moment that the United States balkanized or another apocalyptic or socioeconomic disaster occurred and the government was dismantled, leaving small pockets of individually-governed population scattered around the country. There have been studies done that show that, if an unregulated population center’s needs are fully met, then crime and violence are practically non-existent. The Old West wasn’t as full of gunfights as Hollywood would have you believe. But, if, say, a community based in an inner city neighborhood suddenly finds itself without food or running water, how long before they go after what someone else has?
What if this is a community with a bunch of Neo-Nazis living in it? Or better yet, a hate group that targets people who willingly do not arm themselves? What if some of these people are ex-military or own a gun store? Nobody’s going to give a shit if a militia marches into a community belonging to the disenfranchised to condemn them to death or worse–not if they’re the ones with an abundance of what everyone else needs.
That’s the problem with anarchy as a system of governance. When the chips are down, people are always going to rely on the same old hierarchies, and those hierarchies aren’t based upon who has good ideas or who can behave like a rational human being, but on who has the biggest guns.
It’s garbage that we’ll have no way of fighting back until enough people wake up, and that both tearing down society and leaving it intact are options that result in the pain and suffering of huge amounts of people. But there are no easy solutions to fixing the problem that is society. The only thing people like us can do is keep our heads down until we find the opportunity to revolt, and hope that, if any sort of violent rebellion is successful, that what we put in place as a result isn’t instantly as pathetically corrupt as what we have now.
Anonymous
What I mean by “Deep State” is the army of unelected bureaucrats who have spent years, sometimes decades, in the government, and used that time to increase their own and the government’s overall power and push whatever political agenda they support. Most times they’re operating within their own little fiefdoms, but sometimes they coordinate their activities – not necessarily a wide, overarching conspiracy, but more individuals whose goals happen to align. The end result, though, is basically the same. “Multiple independent individuals/agencies arriving at the same tyrannical conclusions” might actually be worse than “sinister shadowy cabal” because there’s less of a centralized structure to dismantle, more hydra than singular “head of the snake.” Your description of the government as a cold-blooded predator is pretty accurate.
I somewhat agree with your assessment that the individual is shit. People are not, have never been, and never will be perfect. It’s because of this that people shouldn’t be trusted to rule over other people, nor should people be allowed to vote to force their will on others. Power especially attracts the worst sort of people, making its continued existence a risky proposition.
In political discussions, I try to educate as many people as I can about the NAP – the non-aggression principle. This states that aggression – initiating or threatening force against a peaceful person or that person’s property – is inherently wrong. Most people assume anarchy means “no rules,” when it really means “no rulers.” There’s still rules – everybody must respect everybody else’s fundamental human rights, and vice versa. Obviously, there would be people who wouldn’t adhere to this. Critics assume this would lead to massive gangs led by despotic warlords. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong – Iceland had a thriving anarchistic society during the Middle Ages that lasted almost 300 years, where nearly everything was privatized and handled in a free market.
I’m not a fan of a “violent rebellion.” I think a civil war in America would be brutal and horrific. I prefer an agorist approach, where the government is forced to withdraw because its functions have been usurped and replaced by underground free-market solutions, starving it of revenue and purpose. This is a peaceful way to accomplish a freer society.
shadowlink
I getcha–and I agree about career politicians. It’s like The Beast in Transmet, they don’t have any *real* affiliations, they’re in it for the power the role gives them. Governing and lawmaking is just a day job to them, and they see regular people as a mob of angry customers, hence why they seem to more or less team up against us under the guise of protection as often as they can. It’s like the concept of the oligopoly–where I’m from, the choices between internet providers are scarce and the corps in charge are too big to take down, so they essentially have a mutual agreement to charge absolutely as much as they can get away with. Even if there was a more modest startup to come around, they’d probably have to charge the same prices for worse service. This might also be at the root of why the healthcare system in this country is so fucked, but I haven’t done my research on that yet.
I get what you’re saying about anarchy–I read V for Vendetta, once upon a time. And I used to be all for it, it sounds perfectly ideal. But that’s the problem: it’s perhaps too idealistic. Anarchy suggests that everyone who’s a part of that society is intellectually and emotionally mature enough to understand the weight of their decisions. I don’t know if I’m fully on board with the mentalities of works like Idiocracy, but even if Drumf’s crusade against intellectualism falls through, I don’t think we as a species are progressing in that manner. Like I said before, when times get tough or scary, people seem to rely more on fascist principles.
Not to say that what we have now is any better. I’m just saying that it seems like an impossible problem and there seems to be no way to fix it. There’s only so much we as individuals can do to get people to buy local instead of from megacorporations out of convenience or a misguided sense of self-definition. And I don’t claim to be a saint, either. There are modern amenities that I would rather not go without if I could afford it, and under an anarchistic system I might not have those wants, disproportionately warped into needs in my mind, met. I’d have freedom unlike what I’d ever known, but that’s something I might take for granted pretty quickly if my distractions are taken away.
Admittedly, this is a particularly weak stance to take on the issue. A more proper cyberpunk would be more willing to live outside the system, discard it entirely if possible. I just fear that most people would feel the same way. It’s an intricate issue, and there don’t seem to be any solutions that are going to satisfy us, or truly make us stronger. I may be wrong, but I need convincing. Until that day comes, I reserve my right to nihlism.
LulzOp-527776
https://i.imgur.com/0gL4oxd.jpg
Intellectualism is not intelligence or knowledge.
j
I recommend geopolitics. If you think in geopolitical terms it doesn’t matter if it’s Trump, Clinton, Obama, etc. What matters is that we are living in pax Americana world. A country that has undisputed, unchallenged strength. Nowadays it is being challenged by China. Therefore a core power in US (government, military, etc ; lets call it “country’s core”) is getting very tense. They have power and are tense, so this means that they will cut liberties and interpret many actions as a threat (which they didn’t before, because they were relaxed).
LulzOp-527776
“Donald Drumpf is so corrupt!”
“2016 is the year America became dystopian and corruptt!”
*Believes the mainstream medias*
*Voted for Hillary Clinton*
Kek!
It’s funny, all those journalists against Trump, who loved Obama (and jihadists in Syria) are the opposite of Spider Jerusalem (in a negative way). https://i.imgur.com/0gL4oxd.jpg They are more akin to the “last man” that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man If not so, where is the promised November blue wave, if he is so bad? What happened to this whole Russia investigation?
If anything, his support has been rising, don’t forget that. -D It’s not just the downfall of the Democrats or the party of Bush sr and McCain, it’s the end of an era, of the “end of history”.
LulzOp-527776
“America is dystopian and corrupt now that he is in power!”
“He is mentally challenged!”
*Believes the mass medias*
*Voted for Her*
-D
LulzOp-527776
Faces on intellectualism. https://i.imgur.com/0gL4oxd.jpg