I Hate It Here: You know what? I take that back.

Edit: At the time I published this, I was wholly unaware of the allegations against Warren Ellis. The universe is a motherfucker sometimes. This column originally included an appeal directly to the writer over the use of the title and domain name. I realize he has bigger problems, and it was silly of me to think he might ever see this anyway. Yeah...

The Lion King was basically Hamlet. Pretty sure they admitted that. Led Zeppelin has been sued, successfully, numerous times for ripping off other artists. George Lucas took most of his ideas from Joseph Campbell and Akira Kurosawa. My point is not that no one is truly original, which is rarer now than it's ever been, but that you don't need to be original to be successful. You just need to stick with it, find your own voice in another’s footsteps, and not be too obvious.

I've completely failed at that last one, so I need to succeed at the other two.

Yes, I got the title for this column (and I'm calling it a column, god damn it, because who really likes the word blog? It was stupid then and it's stupid now.) and my domain name from a cyber punk comic book. And yes, I realize a lot of people are going to call that lame. But I challenge any of you to read the fucking thing, and then tell me we aren't living with The Beast in the White House and a police force that doesn't give a fuck who you voted for. Ah, there's a third thing. And hopefully the last. But the protagonist himself describes their President as "a big black animal squatting in the heart of America... the thing in us that votes to fuck other people in the gall bladder, the lizard brain that says nothing but eat-kill-hump-shit." Who does that sound like to you?

Yes, I am not a fan of The Beast. And that is putting it mildly. If I'm being honest, I would say that he is going to be the worst thing to happen to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 99 years. But the worst thing about him is that he's a symptom, the runny nose on the sick body of American politics and culture, a fever dream that has been building since World War II, since our parents parents died fighting a genocidal madman who years later has his flag flying at free speech rallies. Madness. Madness and stupidity.

As far as the scum beneath him, how much detail do I really need to go into? Besides, I need something for future columns. I will say this though: if The Beast is the runny nose, Pelosi and McConnell are the runny shits and vomit, respectively. I'm sure we're all aware of how evil Mitch McConnell is, given he doesn't do his job and that he fired the guy investigating his wife. Why does this make him evil? Because people directly suffer. It's not hard. Same for Pelosi. I would make a Skeletor joke, but whereas both are amoral, incompetent villains, Skeletor at least is honest in his ambitions. I suggest anyone who disagrees look into what Edward Snowden has to say about her. Think Edward Snowden is a traitor? I think you're a bootlicker, so there we are.

However, all is not lost. Sick though the body is, it can be healed. And it is being healed as I write this, by people far younger and far braver than me. Not that I haven't done my share of protesting, but right now I'm sitting on my ass giving my dumb opinions on a blog I named after a fictional column in a comic book. These young adults, because children they are not, are fighting hard and show no sign of slowing down.

Neither do the police in their ever-increasing quest to be the next pop culture villains, replacing the terrorists we so carefully crafted to become a national bogeyman. I'm sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities, assuming anyone still reading has them after what I said about the human sock puppet and the Crypt Keeper, but you tell me why the fuck else we went into Lebanon and Syria.

The past few weeks have been, frankly, a nightmare, assuming you're smart enough to realize what the fuck is going on. And if not, ask someone who is smart but doesn't consume ten hours of either CNN or Fox News. You're going to wish you hadn't asked. That's normal. Welcome to a new world. Although, this isn't new. Nothing about this is new. This has been happening for years. It's just white America can't escape it, thanks to the unprecedented expansion of the surveillance state in the past twenty years.

It's important to note, however, that the surveillance state I speak of is not just the big scary government apparatus we think of when anyone says those two words. Although, that definitely plays into it. Once again, just ask Nancy Pelosi. But it's also us. Every Facetime, every Snap, every Twitter video and Tik-Tok, you're participating in the surveillance state. Dangerous times, indeed.

One could almost assume that was by design, that the easiest way to monitor the people was to have them monitor themselves. Who's going to think something like Snapchat could be used to monitor you and your family? Only the paranoid, the people we routinely mock in society. But if this was by design, it has been an enormous failure. I've seen more police brutality over the past three weeks than I think I've seen in the past two years. Twitter and TikTok has given white America a microscopic window into the Black American experience, and many are rightfully recoiling in horror, while the rest bury their head deeper in the sand.

So now a choice lays before us, white America. We can either pass another few meaningless reforms and declare victory, or we can sign up for the long haul, the path that is filled with peril, danger, and possibly no Wi-Fi. The horror. The choice is yours though, but not collectively. Individually, we must all make a choice. We can either admit to our own privilege and stand with our Black brothers and sisters, with all marginalized peoples of this country and hopefully one day the world, or we can go back to jerking off, binge watching Hulu and Ubering shitty food because we drank too much. As Pete Seeger asked before, which side are you on?

I see the work going on. But quite frankly, it's hard not feel like we're not doing enough. I include myself in that group. There is a mountain to climb, and the course hasn't even been plotted. This is not base camp. This is the shuttle to the base camp. The next few weeks are going to determine whether or not this will be the historic moment many of us are hoping for, or just another highlight on the New Years Eve reel.

If it is to be successful, we must recognize The Enemy.

I'm not sure what else to label the collective evil in our system other than The Enemy. If that sounds adversarial, that's because it is.

The Enemy is powerful, well funded, and does not give a fuck about you. It does not give a fuck about your rights, it does not give a fuck about your freedom. It does not give a fuck if you've eaten or gotten sick. It does not give a fuck that you're a good person, and seems to reward you if you're not.

The Enemy is an it because the enemy is not just the people in power, what the paranoid call the powers that be. It is not just the police, or the military, or the politicians who give them license to do awful shit. The Enemy is old as time. It is our own selves, our basest natures.

The Enemy is our ignorance and cruelty, the thing in you that tells you it's okay to do awful things to your own species, innocent or otherwise. The Enemy is saying freedom and liberty out loud, while quietly whispering the limitations.

This is what The Beast represents, and what The Beast has always represented. A physical manifestation of our collective vanity, malice, and stupidity. But again, this is not solely about The Beast.

Because if that is what The Beast represents, then what does the corpse the D.N.C. expects us to vote for represent? The man who in fifteen seconds insulted an entire community, who lies about any good he's done and is a massive creep? You could put a gun in your mouth when thinking about the choices. Again, I mean that. Hopefully my inbox fills up with liberal outrage. At least then I'll know I made it.

Because that's where we're at, and anyone who doesn't want to accept it needs to take a good, hard fucking look at the past. They need to look at where we are today, and realize that following the same old people, both literally and figuratively, is only going to land us in the shit again. Hillary Clinton was a massive mistake, and high on my list of regrets is voting for her. Not because it didn't do any good, but because I abandoned my principles with a dot of ink.

What the Vote Blue No Matter Who crowd fails to understand, and will always fail to understand because frankly most of them learned about politics through whatever cultural touchstone was around at the time, is that the game is rigged, so even if you think we won, we've still lost. Most of the terrible decisions this country has made, whether it was the war in Iraq or the 1994 crime bill, have been bi-partisan. Bernie Sanders wasn't our choice because we loved Bernie, angry adorable grandpa he is. But because, for most of his life, he has been fighting against the establishment you all claim to hate whenever your guy isn't in power. Because Biden lies about his involvement, but Bernie was there. Because Biden can say whatever he wants about gay marriage, but Bernie has been defending the LGBTQ+ community before it was a smart political move. Because at the end of the day, Biden represents the same awfulness The Beast does, but it's less likely to affect the NIMBY crowd.

Ah yes. Not In My Backyard. The rallying cry of the liberal elite. Are we surprised Beverly Hills instituted its own curfew to keep people from protesting? Because again, if you are, you have not been paying attention.

Scream all you like how Biden is the only choice, but you're also the ones who went on and on about "Any Sane Adult 2020" and HE is the best the D.N.C. could come up with? If Biden wins it will be by dumb luck. And I say that because we haven’t even begun election season, but already he's said things that would have disqualified literally, and I write this with no exaggeration, any other candidate. Gun, meet mouth.

It will not be the politicians who fix this, nor will it be the celebrities. It won't be religious leaders or businessmen. It will be the young men and women who have looked around their communities and said "No more."

No more brutality. No more inequality or inequity. No more to years upon years of oppression and ignorance, of terrible policies and even worse services. No more to anything that has been promised, because the promise has always been a lie.

So I say look around you, white America. Look around at what is going on, and make a choice. This isn't about being on the right side of history, which smacks of virtue signaling. This is about the fundamental question anyone who wishes to live in a free society must ask themselves. The question of what is right and wrong. I make no declaration of being unbiased. I will always be biased as long as I believe in the dignity of human beings, as long as I believe that it is wrong to treat people differently based upon the color of their skin, as long as I believe that my neighbor should not be left hungry and sick.

Uncomfortable? I hope so.

Because there is nothing original about your discomfort. It’s a microcosm of the discomfort felt by fellow citizens in your own country every day. A discomfort from living in a police state, a discomfort from watching the media always portray you at your worst instead of lifting you up like they claim to every other year, a discomfort that comes from watching your community be lied to and abused for four hundred years. A discomfort bred to reinforce the comfort of the white majority. A discomfort that is as American as baseball and apple pie, which probably isn’t even original either.

There’s nothing original about any of this, because this is the same fight against The Enemy that has always been there. The difference, however, is that there is a small chance that we can win, because The Enemy can no longer hide the way it did before. The pessimist in me is doubtful we can keep this up, but the optimist is somehow louder, screaming for me to get involved, to say loudly what I’ve always said, my own security or comfort be damned.

So I went with an unoriginal beginning. I’m hoping I don’t stay unoriginal, that I can do at least one thing of value. That I can amplify voices, instead of watching another idea wash away in a haze of pot and apathy. But I think this will prove to be a good idea in the end. After all, The Lion King grossed $658 million dollars. 

Maybe there is something to being unoriginal.