RE: Post July 4th

 

Good evening, denizens of the internet. It's been a long time since I've written any blogs, and it's good to be online tonight at 2 in the morning, jotting down thoughts and ideas. 

    First, post July 4th, I can't help to have the blues. Yes, life is good, as long as you don't weaken, but looking at everything in terms of our government, our environmental challenges with global warming, job security, and even just basic life's necessities like rent, food, and gas, its like Americans have really been pushed to the farthest limits. The War with Iran seems to be winding down and there's security and so called peace talks but nobody really knows what's going on for sure with this current second Trump administration. Trump has become the ultimate right-winger's dictator. 

    Everyday, there's some new scandal involving Trump, what he's doing, this and that, and almost every other day you see it on the news TV or even news online headline readings, and you just know that any one single incident of these are grounds for removal of the Presidency, termination of the Presidency from him, and impeachment. The fact that nothing happens and he walks away unscathed is a stain upon the US Constitution, which is not being upheld by this current administration. 

    But the main problem I have with Trump is that he's become a fascist demagogue controlling a vast amount of the US population through Fox News, social media, cable news media, and a vast array of extreme right wing MAGA republicans, who seem to not only be extreme right wingers that want a fascist dictator strongman, but who may unknowingly and begrudgingly be doing harm to the US constitution, government, and even ethics itself. 

    Think of all the right wing MAGA idiots out there, some of them I've physically encountered myself in the workplace, on social media, and various personal associates of mine. Most of these people aren't complete haters, they love America, some of them are racists and nationalistic, but you'll find that among the extreme right wing in any country. A lot of the MAGA crowd people are simply not guided by the facts, reason, evidence, and proof. 

    Instead, you'll find that the MAGA population have a limited worldview, they all watch from the same news media sources, they don't read books unless its some sort of Ayn Rand. Once you get to know them individually you find that some of them have some sort of vendetta against certain things of the world: they hate immigrants even if they are immigrants themselves, they have low information tendences, they watch Fox News and listen to right wing podcasts, and almost all of the information they get from these sources are all very much low information things. For example, a right wing podcast would talk about something Biden or the Democrats did a few years ago and say what a controversy it was, and that it went unreported. I see that type of thing from the MAGAverse all the time. It's a cheap, crappy tactic. 

    So, forgive me if I'm watching England destroy Mexico during the World Cup 2026, and right after the Fourth of July, forgive me if I feel that a sense of right wing extremism of imperialism has taken over the day. Those weird Ayn Rand kids from the early 2000s I used to disagree with in history class are loving the Trump era. But I think for those of us who know better, who had to work harder, who had to learn much more, and struggle and persevere more, those people, those are the people know that something is not right. But hey, that's not to say that you can't have an easy life and still be cognizant enough to know that this second Trump administration is hastening the destruction of the American experiment. 

      Okay, so I'm kind of rambling a lot about Trump tonight. But even bigger than Trump himself is the cult of personality that surrounds him. Isn't it a little strange that people who like Trump seem to love everything about him and his close government officials praise him like a lapdog? To quote Adam Schiff, here is a guy who's using the highest office of the land for his own, private, personal, political gain. That being said, I worry about the future of this nation, if it will really still stay a nation in the same characteristic sense that it always has been, but for those who know, we know that the American experiment was never supposed to include everyone, all the time, and allow everyone the right to vote. So there's a bit of a sour taste to this year's Fourth of July. Consequently, I spent the Fourth just chilling by myself, reading Kafka's first unfinished novel entitled Amerika [with a k, ironically], and its funny, because I find myself feeling like the young German immigrant who just freshly arrived in America, because I find that my country, this modern America, is almost alien to me, and a lot of MAGAverse people probably wouldn't want to allow me to be in it and living a good life while they are struggling. 

    That's a lot to unpack there. So yeah, I've been bummed out with this Fourth of July. I've been trying to put more of my focus into my reading, continuing to read the western canon as well as history, philosophy, artbooks, and books on culture and ideas. I've found that with this job having less hours, it's given me a lot more time to work on my personal pursuits like reading, music, gaming, walking, and listening to music for relaxation. I've found with this job budgeting is a lot harder, but who knows, perhaps this is good for me, having less money to spend and go crazy going out all the time with. Next time you see someone giving cash to homeless person, stop them and say, 'Don't delay the revolution!" 

    Lastly, with all seriousness, I think the comedown on AI is coming because now we're at the point where most Americans are realizing that although the stock market is focused in on AI, the truth is that AI wasn't really what it was supposed to be. It's rather a lackluster tool to generate ideas based on words, most are our advanced AI are chatbots, regurgitated language and ideas from the internet, or who knows from. AI video ended up being a bust, and AI generated video content isn't that fun, creative, or exciting. AI chatbots tend to be useful only for specific things but not things that most average people need them for. For me personally, I've found a lot of creativity and utility in using AI for images and I've sort of gotten a thrill out of doing that since the beginning of AI image generation, but in terms of actually doing anything serious with AI or AI actually becoming a mainstay in peoples' lives, or even buying a CHATgpt subscription? Forget about it. More and more Americans are realizing that if you couldn't do it without AI, having the AI won't really change much for you, in a sense, the AI is overhyped, overplayed, and its so 2000-and late, as the Black Eyed Peas song goes. 

    If you read through this, you're probably pretty smart and a bit of a reader. How does it feel to be smart and read things? Keep playing on the A Team, folks. Thanks for reading. Below are several of the AI images that I've had a lot of fun creating in terms of the word descriptions used to create them, a lot of my prompts are sometimes tons of paragraphs long, much like this sort of spontaneous dialogue online here. Watch this space.

New year, Happy 2026

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Happy 2026! It's already been wild this year but we must keep pushing on with our goals and work. 

Personally, I've been tired a lot this year so far but I try to balance out a lot of rest with a lot of work at the job and activity at home. I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of music. I discovered Bach cantatas and I found a correlation between Bach's cantatas and Mozart's opera work, its downright fascinating. I've also been tuned in to Small's jazz club in Greenwich Village NYC, tuning into a lot of live performance music as well as their nightly jams. There's a community online there and we chat and talk a lot about music, everything from straight ahead jazz to avant garde jazz to classical and sometimes even rock. There was a funny moment during Christmas where a random jammer at Smalls went viral for having a breakdown and cursing out the other jammers. It went to the heart of how people that have breakdowns in public often get made fun of and criticized even though it could happen to anyone, and that we need to be more understanding of others. Other people thought he was rude and probably on drugs. The incident went viral and lots of youtubers made response videos about it. Yeah, that was a interesting phenomena during Christmas. 

In addition, it wasn't really that the guy was terrible. However, he brought an acoustic guitar to the jazz jam, which is a no-no, but he said in a interview video he's been struggling financially and doesn't have money for a regular electric guitar, which goes to him struggling mentally and apparently even being homeless for a while. I would agree that the hardcore jazz elite who shamed this guy publicly on YouTube got it wrong, and that we should be more understanding of this guy and his problems. He wasn't really that good at jamming, and he's not really a 'jazz guitarist,' and he doesn't know the songs per se, but his rhythm comping to the tunes and under the soloists was decent enough to be there onstage and I thought a lot of the jazz elite were publicly shaming him, to their own detriment. I think, even as hardcore musical afinados, we should be more understanding of different musicians and their ability to play the music, especially jazz, because not every jazz musician is a Charlie Parker or a Wes Montgomery. I've seen high caliber jazz fusion musicians perform at The Baked Potato in Studio City, LA, and a lot of times even their playing was uninspired and mediocre albeit tuneful and tasty.

Moving on, more importantly, everyone I know who has a heart has been disgusted by the murder-killing of Rene Good by an Ice Officer. What can I say about this? It's an outrage and should be denounced by our government but of course with Trump and the Trump administration he has decided to double down and say that Rene Good was in the wrong and that the Ice Officer did the right thing to do what he did. Compare the way the Trump Administration is treating Rene Good with the way they treated Charlie Kirk, that pretty much sums up the divide between the so-called woke far-left and the maga Trump republicans. But the way its being talked about through the media is that this is left-wing versus right-wing but the truth of the matter is that its more about the way American citizens are treated by Ice Officers and those in law enforcement like cops. It's more like a George Floyd killing than anything particularly political, but the media has us all divided on the issue as if it matters that she was a left-winger. I suppose in a way, it does matter, but for me personally, I see Rene Good's killing as like a George Floyd killing, for white people. 

In addition, I think race matters here in this context because I believe white people think that they have certain rights when it comes to law enforcement. Well, this incident rebukes the whole idea that white people have rights when it comes to law enforcement, because we see in this particular incident that Rene Good didn't have rights and that she was seen as something 'less than human,' and this particular Ice Official decided it was in his best interests and that it was okay for him to deny her her human rights, and kill her, murder her. 

Downright chilling stuff. Her story should chill us and warn us that we're not in Kansas anymore. This shows us Americans that Ice has been politized and policed against us as Americans and that if you or anyone is on their list you are in for a lot of trouble. We're probably too far already down the Maga Republican rabbit hole to get out of this deep backwater that we're in. What's the answer to this? I guess the Democrats would have to come to up with some deep strategy to win and take back control in 2028. But there are lots of problems with voting such as the fact that most voters aren't even politically aware or smart enough to make decisions that would be in their own best interests. One man's vote has to equal one man's education and without that, the system develops an outsider character like Trump to somehow win the White House for the second time after being convicted of rape and being two times impeached. And don't forget about the Epstein files. 

Lastly, there's a lot going on and it's hard to follow if you're just one person trying to live your life, provide for yourself and your family, and to be a productive intelligent member of American society. After all, if you're too busy struggling to make money at a job, providing for yourself and your family, and don't have enough time to dedicate to learning and educating yourself, then there's no way you can actually think about how things are so bad in America right now. You have to sort of have some kind of privilege to be able to read the news everyday, learn more about what's really going on in society, read books, educate yourself, these are things that not everybody really has time or space for. In fact, you'll find other people my age are spending their time playing video games, working nonstop at their 9-5 jobs, maybe they drink and/or smoke weed, they gamble, they're doing stocks, they're doing crypto/bitcoin, but most of them aren't politically aware or class conscious to the fact that things are going south very fast, probably faster than I can keep up to even write about in these blogs. Let me rephrase that, they're politically aware, but they're struggling so much that they can't do anything to change the System from within. Even from the last post I wrote, a lot has happened. 

In conclusion, there's a lot we can do but most people are going to be too busy trying to survive and maintain and cope with the life they've been given. We as young people are struggling to maintain the lives we've created for ourselves and our families. Not everybody can sit around and write blog posts about their thoughts or even read the news daily. And this ends up working in the bad guys' favor, because we have developed into an uneducated underclass that is too busy playing video games, gambling, and too busy working all the time in order to survive, that if you even think about the idea of questioning the status quo or the government, or the system itself, you will looked upon as like some kind of weirdo. "Is that a conspiracy too?" You tell me.  

The Rise and Decline of the American Empire

It's Saturday, May 3, 2025, 2:02 am. Here, I'd like to jot down some notes on life in America, at this current juncture in history. 

Donald Trump has enacted many tariffs and we're in and have been in various trade wars, notably with China. The President doesn't usually have the power to enable all these tariffs at one moment but he's been given the power by the republican controlled House and Congress. I'm not sure if these tariffs are part of Project 2025, but it seems like it could be, and many MAGA-republicans and Trump fans seem to like the idea and be for it, despite the fact that there isn't one economist out there that says this is a good plan for America going forward. 

The basic idea is that most countries haven't been paying their fair share towards America, and that all these tariffs will even the playing field. Except that's not how it works and its a stupid idea and it's already causing havoc across the land. I would say right now is another turning point in American history. This is like COVID-19 back in 2020, when the economy took a major crash. This is like America in 2008 before the market crash and we had some 10 years of austerity. 

But wait, it gets worse! Not only is Trump doing tariffs and trade wars, he's also utilizing Elon Musk and his DOGE, and Kennedy Jr., to do mass layoffs of federal and health employees, something to the tune of 10,000 employees. And these aren't temporary layoffs, folks. On top of that he's gutting and cutting the Department of Education. So there's various things going on, probably too many to count and/or mention in one small blogpost. 

So right now, you could say we're living in the Decline of the American Empire. Perhaps even saying that is too generous and it's possible we're already some 5-10 years into the Decline of American Empire. Tariffs aren't going to bring back jobs, especially manufacturing jobs, as Trump says. Those jobs are gone forever. We've become a full service economy so in America we just don't build things. We're not known for that anymore. 

Knowing that we're in the decline, what can we really do? We can stay informed and up to date on the daily news but even knowing this, we already know that things are bad. But nothing will change. We've become complacent, so complacent, that unless Donald Trump is removed by the rule of law [impeachment], then every democrat will just go along with whatever's going on even though they know that it is morally wrong. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm a progressive, although probably more moderate than most of them, but I must say, the democrats haven't done much to combat the effectiveness of Donald Trump and the so-called Project 2025 project. I thought it was amazing to see Senator Cory Booker stand up and talk about how bad Trump made everything for 25 hours, and it was a great thing that so many Americans are protesting every weekend since this first 100 days of Trump's presidency, but I don't see those things as effective enough to make a difference in Washington, and most importantly, it's not stopping or hindering Trump. You can only do so much through demonstrations, protests, and walkins/walkouts. The best means of change is through legislative law and/or action. 

So what we're seeing now is the downfall of America and all its institutions of government. And guess what, there's probably nothing we can do to stop it. Why? Because things have been set in motion that can't be undone. Even if Trump loses and we elect a democrat it will take many years to undue that damage that Trump's done. 

What I see right now in the real world, offline, in the streets, in businesses, at work [when I was working], is that people are isolating themselves into small bubbles, small groups in order to better isolate themselves and their families via their wealth, probably from the impending doom of this economic fallout from these tariffs. I think it's probably even worse than what they're reporting on TV, and I believe even economists might not know how bad it could get. But hey, it's not like I'm completely surprised, this is Donald Trump, and we know he loves tariffs. 

But anyways, staying on point, once you start walking around more and more in your little town or big town in some cases, you'll start to realize people are isolating themselves more, they're not going outside of their comfort zone as much, they're not going out as much, they've become ensconced in their religious groups, work/occupation groups, and family groups, and they're not really looking at the larger group or community anymore. You might meet some friends and associates through work for example, but for the most part they stick to these particular cliques, groups of association, and everything outside of that is forbidden. Why is that?

I see it as another sign of the decline of the American Empire. People will not leave their selected group and/or tribe, whatever it may be, out of fear, fear, for whatever reason keeps them locked into these small isolated groups or tribes, and when the people as a whole, for example in your town, are completely divided into small groups, it is in this particular formation, that nothing good and no improvements, and nothing will get done to improve your town or area, government, and looking at the bigger picture, the national government. 

Thanks for sticking with me this far, I swear there's a point to this. This is where all my fiction reading comes to play. Once everybody is divided into their smaller groups, it doesn't matter where they get their information or even if the information is true, because it won't matter because all these various groups will already be decided on every issue and these splintered off groups, they eventually lead to syndicate type formations that will rule and divy up everything in your town. Groups that may have even started as 'good groups' meant to better their small niche communities but eventually go rogue and become bad groups due to all the other groups doing the same thing. As you can see this won't end well.

I've rambled a lot here, but I hope I make sense. You really can't explain this in an easy way because you really can't make this stuff up. I was ousted out of a work organization [retail grocery] for pretty trivial reasoning from my store director, after 10 years of loyal hard work and service. I'm not saying everyone should start drinking coffee and reading Saarte and become progressive but even within that organization I saw these sort of bread and butter syndicate type of thinking and behavior from members of the staff, including low level employees, middle managers, and store leaders. After all that hard work and time put in, the members within that community didn't reach out to me or ask about what happened. In the end, we're all replaceable, me, you, everyone. I guess that's what makes this moment strike fear into the hearts of the American people. We don't know what will happen, why it will happen, or if we will even have jobs in the short to long term, let alone planning for investments. 

I guess this is the part where I tell you the bad guys won. Our God isn't coming to save us, our parents can't help us, our institutions/government/education have failed us, and our places of employment see us as easily replaceable despite loyalty, hard work, and dedication.

As Hobbes would say, "it's everyman for himself and God against all."