This Terrorist Attack Was Brought To You By Amway*

We just have to remember this one thing so as to keep our rage in check, otherwise we'll all go insane. And that's all I want to say before I leave this platform for good, although I use it more as a journal:  It's The Corporations, Stupid! Corporations are what write our laws, full stop. Corporations are what own and control 99% of our politicians. Don't like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence and Donald Trump? Blame Raytheon. Corporate interests are what drive ratings-based journalism to get us to be enraged 24-7, all the while raking in trillions in profits for far-away executives who care NOTHING about the welfare of people. You might as well add, "This Domestic Terrorist Attack Was Brought To You By...Betsy DeVos and her Alliance for School Choice, AND by: Betsy DeVos' husband, Dick DeVos, CEO of Amway...ALSO by: General Electric's NBC - watch The Apprentice, airing Thursdays at 9!" These are the individuals and entities who would destroy minds, or at the very least keep the public as uneducated and dumb as possible so as to reel them in to buy their products (as in watch their programs to buy the products that are sponsoring these shit programs), all the better for their profits! What better recipe for promoting a demagogue proto-fascist narcissist, eh?

I mean it. The events of this week demand our eyeballs be glued to CNN or MSNBC, breathlessly demanding us to be outraged, and outraged again, and outraged even more--again! No mention of what might be coming down the legislative pike that actually benefits most Americans in material, real ways. Um, I don't know,  like Medicare For All, Universal Basic Income, Universal Free Public Tuition? OR, the basic problem that plagues us all: our devastating lack of Government Capacity--that is, the ability of government to act efficiently and competently, especially in the age of Covid? (Yeah, thanks a lot, Maggie and Ronnie!) These are boring, unsexy topics that you will never hear discussed at length by Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Brian Williams, Chris Cuomo, or Don Lemmon. Not to mention Fox News, which hogs up way more eyeballs than we care to admit. And, of course, Phayzbik. You think this platform with its insidious algorithms helps?

Let's get real. There are no Celestial Hall Monitors Coming To Save Us, be it from the Democratic or Republican parties. We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, media companies and tech companies. We need to break up our corrupt two-party duopoly. We need to utterly destroy the fossil fuel industry or climate change will destroy us all. We need to focus like a laser on getting money out of politics. But we can't do that without an awareness that the corporate state is the one operating the strings of the Proud Boys, whether they even know or not. It is the corporate state that allows the manufacture of T-shirts that say 6MWE or display the Nazi Flag. Our First Amendment itself has been weaponized in the service of Neo-Nazis! Amend it fundamentally so that like in Germany, display of symbols of hate are banned.

*Editor's Note: This may be my last Facebook entry ever. Or it may not. Atlantic Magazine: hire me! Just tryin' to manifest:)