Tyranny’s Not So Bad: The NRA’s Quiet Surrender

Remember back in 2020 when the NRA wouldn’t shut up about the Second Amendment being our last line of defense against tyranny? It was their rallying cry–plastered across billboards, email blasts, and breathless Fox News appearances: “We need guns to resist tyranny!” They said it like a gospel truth, a sacred duty passed down by powdered-wig patriots.

Then 2021 rolled around. Same message. Different year. “Tyranny! Resist it! Arm yourself!”

2022? Still chanting it.

2023? Getting louder.

But by 2024, something strange happened.

The tyranny showed up. And the NRA? They suddenly went quiet. Or worse, they started warming up to it.

Turns out their definition of “tyranny” was always pretty selective. It wasn’t about government overreach or authoritarianism in any principled sense. It was about who was in power. If it’s a left-leaning administration? That’s tyranny. If it’s a far-right strongman dismantling democracy brick by brick? That’s “law and order.”

By 2024, with a fascist-leaning movement openly threatening civil liberties, suppressing dissent, and consolidating power? The NRA found itself oddly comfortable. Tyranny, it turns out, was negotiable–if it wore the right party pin.

So now we’re left with this absurd trajectory:

NRA in 2020: “We need guns to resist tyranny!”

NRA in 2021: “We need guns to resist tyranny!”

NRA in 2022: “We need guns to resist tyranny!”

NRA in 2023: “We need guns to resist tyranny!”

NRA in 2024: “Actually, tyranny’s not so bad as long as it votes red.”

Turns out, the guns were never about resisting tyranny. They were about enforcing it.

Capitalism is Exploitation with a Smile

Capitalism sells itself as freedom. The freedom to work, to buy, to compete, to win. But when you strip away the ads and the jargon, capitalism is little more than a global scheme propped up by the suffering of the many for the comfort of the few.

Let’s call it what it is: exploitation dressed up as opportunity. The boss makes money off your time–not theirs.

Under capitalism, labor produces value but workers don’t own the value they create. If you work eight hours a day building houses, flipping burgers, or coding apps, the profit generated doesn’t go to you. It does to the owner. Your wage is just a fraction of the wealth you produce–enough to keep you alive and quiet. That’s not opportunity. That’s theft.

The owner didn’t build the thing. You did. They simply own the means–the tools, the land, the license–and the systems that says that’s enough to justify getting rich off your back.

That’s exploitation.

Who picks your vegetables? Who sews your clothes? Who delivers your packages at 10 PM for minimum wage and no healthcare? Capitalism pushes costs downward and hoards rewards upward. The working class gets debt, burnout, and rent hikes. The ruling class gets yachts, tax loopholes, and bailouts.

A job under capitalism isn’t just a source of income. It’s a hostage situation. You work or you starve. You smile through abuse because your landlord doesn’t take moral victories as rent. The “choice” to work is only free if your survival doesn’t depend on it. Otherwise it’s coercion.

If you’re wondering why billionaires exist while people die from lack of insulin, it’s because capitalism isn’t broken–it’s working exactly as it’s designed.

Try living “off the grid” or refusing to work for a wage. See how long the system lets you survive. You’re either producing for capital or consuming from it. Either way, you’re part of the machine. Capitalism doesn’t need your consent. It just needs your compliance.

Capitalism wraps itself in the flag and calls its critics ungrateful. It tells us the work harder, hustle more, and bootstrap your way out of systemic inequality. But the truth is, no one ever got rich from hard work alone. They got rich from other people’s hard work. That’s the capitalist dream: own more than you do, and extract more than you give.

Capitalism doesn’t just fail to meet our needs, it feeds off of them. It turns basic human rights into business opportunities. Housing, healthcare, food, water are all rationed by who can pay. And if you can’t? Tough.

So no, capitalism doesn’t need reform. It needs to be replaced. With something that puts people over profit. With something that doesn’t see humans as inputs for someone else’s wealth.

Because a system built on exploitation will never deliver justice.

Mandatory Breeding for Billionaires

In a bold new initiative to save humanity from extinction, I propose a simple, elegant solution: every billionaire must be legally required to produce no fewer than fifty biological children. No surrogates. No cloning. Full participation required. If you’re rich enough to buy a planet, you’re rich enough to birth its next fifty caretakers … personally.

Why, you ask?

Because billionaires love growth. They love expansion. They believe the future is built on more: more markets, more people, more productivity. Elon Musk, noted tech daddy and meme necromancer, has warned us of the “population collapse crisis” while fathering a small village. So let’s make it official: if you think birthrates are too low then congratulations, you’ve just volunteered your body for the cause.

But here’s the anti-natalist twist:

We don’t actually want anyone to have any more kids. Especially not people who treat life like a startup–launch it, leave it, let the chaos scale. But if you’re going to promote infinite growth on a finite planet, if you insist the world needs more people to “fix” things, you should be the first to drown in diapers and existential dread.

Let the billionaires change 500,000 diapers, stay up for 3 million sleepless nights, and explain to fifty children why the ocean is on fire and their water tastes like lithium. Let them homeschool fifty screaming avatars of late capitalism and field their therapy bills for the next century. If life is so sacred, let them carry its burden to the absurd conclusion.

Because life isn’t a gift–it’s a gamble. And no one should be forced into existence for the sake of GDP.

Mandatory billionaire breeding is not about justice. It’s satire. It’s vengeance. It’s the logical endpoint of pro-natalist capitalism: turning humans into infinite labor inputs for someone else’s profit margin. We simply say: if you love humanity so much, you go first. You breed the next generation of doomed innovators. We’ll watch.

Anti-natalism doesn’t mean hating life. It means questioning the unthinking worship of it. It means asking whether existence is worth it, especially when it’s engineered by those least affected by its consequences. And sometimes, it means forcing a billionaire to push out fifty kids, just to see the smirk fall off their faces.

Pissing off the Conservatives and the Liberals

Labels are like Molotov cocktails: fun to throw, even better when they cause confusion.

When I say I’m a libertarian socialist, it’s not just because it captures my politics–anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, pro-human dignity–it’s also because it makes certain leftists squirm. The ones who hear “libertarian” and think I’m about to start quoting Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman in a hemp hoodie. They freeze up, like I just talked poorly about Bernie Sanders and AOC.

But there’s history here. Libertarianism didn’t start with capitalist bootlickers hoarding Bitcoin and prepping for the apocalypse. It started with radicals who believed freedom meant freedom from landlords, bosses, and the state. Think Mikhail Bakunin, not Jeff Bezos. So yeah, I’m reclaiming it. And if that irritates some who think socialism only works when it comes with a five-year plan and a side of surveillance? Even better.

Then, when I pivot and say I’m an anarcho-communist, the right melts down like I just canceled Christmas. Suddenly I’m the Antichrist in a Che Guevara shirt. “You want no government and no private property?” they sputter, like I’ve just broken the laws of thermodynamics. “How will you survive without a job and a boss and a sacred chain of command?”

Easy. Mutual aid. Direct action. Horizontal structures. Also spite. Lots of spite.

I say I’m an anarcho-communist to watch their heads spin as they try to square the idea of radical cooperation with their Fox News-induced visions of chaos. To them, communism means gulags and stale bread, and anarchy means Mad Max with gender pronouns. They’ve never read Kropotkin. They’ve never imagined a world without Amazon trucks and landlord parasites. They’ve only learned fear.

So I play the game. Libertarian socialist to make the left clutch their pearls. Anarcho-communist to make the right reach for their ammo. The truth is, I’m both. And neither. I’m here to break binaries, not settle into them.

The goal isn’t to be understood. It’s to force people to think. If they walk away annoyed, confused, or–miracle of miracles–curious? Mission accomplished.

The Empire Needs More Bodies…

… and the bodies are broken.

I don’t normally post more than one blog a day, but I read something today that I had to bring to light. In plain sight on the White House’s official website was this:

“Seventy-seven percent of young adults to not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.”.

Let that sink in. Nearly 4 out of 5 young Americans are unfit to serve in the very institution that props up the U.S. empire. The military-industrial complex, for all its propaganda and promises of patriotism, is running up against a brutal biological reality: the bodies it depends on are crumbling under the weight of the society it helped create.

Decades of underfunded healthcare, over-processed food, environmental neglect, poverty wages, and mental health crises have produced a generation the empire can’t use. And instead of asking why so many are unwell, the system sees it as a recruitment problem. They’re scrambling–relaxing enlistment standards, pouring money into ad campaigns, and pushing JROTC deeper into high schools–not to uplift youth, but to harvest what’s left of them for war.

Because let’s be clear: the military doesn’t need healthy citizens–it needs usable soldiers. And when the well runs dry, the machinery starts to panic. That 77% figure isn’t just a number. It’s a red flag. A system built on endless war is discovering its fuel supply is contaminated. The bodies it needs are either too broken to fight or too wise to enlist.

So the question isn’t “How do we get more kids into uniform?” It’s “Why is this system so desperate for cannon fodder in the first place?” And what kind of future are we building if the only path to healthcare, education, or stability still runs through a recruiter’s office?

The empire’s war machine is hungry, but its appetite exceeds its supply. That should terrify everyone.

Review of The Conquest of Bread

I just finished reading anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, and it was like stepping out of the haze of despair and into a blueprint for a different world, a world that doesn’t just rage against capitalism but offers a vision for what should replace it. Kropotkin didn’t just theorize revolution, he laid out the bones of a society built on mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and the abolition of property as power. For someone like me–driven by a mix of anti-capitalism, misanthropic fire, and a stubborn belief that another world has to be possible–this book hit hard.

Kropotkin’s critique of capitalism goes beyond the surface-level arguments I was used to. He attacked not just the exploitation of labor, but the entire premise that anyone should hoard the means of survival while others suffer. He makes a moral argument without falling into moralism. It’s pragmatic and humane all at once. What stood out to me most was his insistence that revolution must not merely destroy but create. Bread first. Housing next. Then libraries, education, beauty. He reminds us that revolution must be immediate and sustaining.

Before reading the book, I knew I was an anti-capitalist, but I didn’t yet know how to articulate much of a vision. I leaned toward libertarian socialism, distrusted hierarchy, and wanted action, not just analysis. Kropotkin didn’t just validate those instincts; he gave them clarity. He fused my longing for direct action with a plan that doesn’t rely on state power. He made me think bigger: not just about resisting capitalism, but building the scaffolding of its replacement in our daily lives.

The book also sharpened my skepticism of so-called progressive compromises. Kropotkin pulls no punches in calling out the failure of reformism and electoralism. He gave me permission to imagine what happens after the collapse; how to build networks, systems, and support structures that don’t mirror the oppressive systems we fight.

Reading the book didn’t convert me; it confirmed me. It hardened my resolve to fight for socialism in a way that isn’t just about changing who’s in charge but about ending the very idea of bosses altogether. It reminded me that the chaos I crave isn’t destruction for its own sake. It’s the fertile ground where something better can grow.

America 2035

A dear friend of mine gave me the idea to write a blog about what will the U.S. be like if we continue on the course we’re on right now. I jotted it down in my own personal journal and thought I’d share it here. Let me know what you think.

If America stays the course it’s on now with no correction, no revolution, no collective awakening then 2035 will not be some sort of dystopian nightmare. It’ll be something worse. It’ll be a comfortable, numbing decline punctuated by chaos, distraction, and denial.

Corporations will no longer need to whisper in politicians’ ears, they will write the laws themselves. Amazon will own the postal service. Google will handle public education logistics. A few tech CEOs will rotate through cabinet positions like it’s a TED Talk residency. Elections will still happen, but mostly to decide which billionaire’s PAC can out-psyop the other.

The Midwest will experience a new Dust Bowl. Florida real estate will be underwater, but people will still buy beach homes thanks to delusion. Power grids in the South will collapse under summer heat, and water shortages will trigger hydration riots in Arizona. Don’t worry though, your smart fridge will still work as long as you don’t mind watching an ad every time you open it.

The rich and wealthy will live in gated green tech bubbles, shuttled by autonomous Teslas between sanitized, sensor-laden smart cities. Everyone else though? They live in logistics deserts, under-policed until they riot, then over-policed for sport. The economy has metastasized. People livestream their labor for tips, like Twitch but with more sweat and desperation.

Fascism will not wear jackboots. It wears athleisure. It smiles. It hosts a morning show, but it also bans books, surveils dissent, and locks up people in ICE-style “resilience camps” for protesting. The courts are rubber stamps. The media is infotainment sludge. The line between cop, soldier, and “private security consultant” has fully blurred.

The right will have armed militias, billionaire funding, and a 24/7 propaganda network. The left is still subtweeting each other over theoretical frameworks and canceling organizers for old tweets. Direct action is rare and criminalized. Hope is commodified. Revolution is a brand. Every year, a new savior candidate promises change, only to be eaten alive by the machine.

Citizenship is no longer a birthright. It’s a subscription service. The U.S. exports cultural dominance while its internal infrastructure rots. We’ll stream images of freedom to the world while internally dismantling it piece by piece. Freedom of speech remains, but mostly because no one in power takes anyone without a million followers seriously anymore.

Is it all doom? Not necessarily.

This future isn’t inevitable, but it’s likely if we continue business as usual: treating politics like fandom, trusting the system to reform itself, and refusing to disrupt the real levers of power.

We don’t need utopia. We just need rupture. Resistance. Imagination. Something that breaks the loop. But if we wait ten more years to try, we may not get the chance again.

The Real Terrorists Have Offices

Let’s get one thing straight: the United States isn’t a benevolent empire. It never has been. It didn’t “spread democracy” to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam. It didn’t “liberate” anyone when it installed dictators across Latin America or propped up apartheid in South Africa. What it did do–and still does–is colonize, exploit, and annihilate in the name of profit.

This isn’t ancient history. It’s currently happening. It’s the drone strikes that don’t make the news. It’s the “aid” packages that comes with strings attached and private contractors waiting in the wings. It’s military bases dotting the globe like pimples of power on every continent but Antarctica.

I’m anti-imperialist because I don’t believe any nation has the moral authority to dominate another. Especially not through force, especially not under the smokescreen of “freedom.” American imperialism wears many disguises: NGOs, trade agreements, coups, color revolutions, Hollywood, but underneath, it’s always the same face: power backed by violence.

I’m anti-colonial because the world is still bleeding from wounds inflicted by white supremacy and extraction-based economies. Colonization didn’t end with flags being lowered. It evolved into debt traps, resource plunder, and forced dependency. Look at how the Global South is treated when it tries to resist. Look at how indigenous people in the so-called “developed world” are still pushed off their land for pipelines and lithium mines.

And I’m absolutely anti-military industrial complex because we spend trillions every year not on health, not on housing, not on education, but on weapons, surveillance, and endless wars. The Pentagon is the world’s biggest polluter. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, these are the real welfare queens, sucking on our tax dollars to build machines that blow up brown children in countries most Americans can’t find on a globe or a map.

And we’re told to be proud of this.

We’re told this is “defense.” That’s Orwellian doublespeak. You don’t “defend freedom” with cluster bombs and occupation. You defend it by dismantling the systems that profit from bloodshed.

To be anti-imperialist today is to be a threat to bipartisan consensus. Democrats and Republicans alike bow to the altar of militarism. They clap in unison for war budgets, while telling us there’s no money for universal healthcare. The only thing they agree on is that endless war is good business.

But some of us aren’t buying it anymore.

We’re organizing. We’re protesting. We’re resisting not just war, but the machinery that makes war possible. That means opposing U.S. hegemony, standing in solidarity with liberation movements worldwide, and rejecting the normalization of violence as policy.

The empire has no clothes. And it’s time more of us said so … loudly

Ash and Seed

The cities fell quietly. Not with fire or fanfare, but with a flicker. Supply chains snapping like old rope, currencies crumbling into irrelevance, and governments too bloated to breathe. People had waited for rescue. None came. Then, something stranger happened: they stopped waiting.

Maya lived in one of the Transition Zones, carved out of the skeleton of what had once been Pittsburgh. Skyscrapers stood hollow, colonized by vertical gardens and data relays. Streets were no longer roads, but corridors of barterless exchange: food grown by solar-fueled machines, distributed by drones with no masters.

She remembered the old world in fragments: clocks, ads, the endless scrolling of fake urgency. In this new world, days were marked by need and contribution. Some days she coded for the mesh network. Other days she repaired the water-capture towers or helped with conflict mediation—though those requests were rarer now.

There was no money. No one starved. The idea of “earning a living” had become as quaint as leeches in medicine. What did it mean to earn what had always been a birthright?

Occasionally, envoys came from outside the Zone—wandering emissaries from collapsing enclaves or liberated factories. Some brought new blueprints, others just stories. Maya loved the stories. One woman spoke of how a collective in former Indonesia had wired up an entire island to run itself, then dismantled their last police drone ceremonially, like a funeral for fear.

In the evenings, Maya sat under the wind trees, their turbines singing above, and read aloud to anyone who wandered by. Tonight it was McCarthy. Tomorrow, maybe Marx. No one made her do this. That was the point.

They lived without rulers or markets, not because they had to—but because they finally could.

And in the ruins of profit, something strange had taken root:

Hope.

But not the kind you wait for.

The kind you build.

Without Empathy, We Don’t See People as People

I’ve been recently reading the book James by Percival Everett. It’s about the slave Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s gotten me thinking about empathy and the lack of it in humans. Empathy is not just a virtue–it’s the lens through which we recognize the humanity in others. Without it, people become objects, obstacles, or threats. History is soaked in the blood of empathy’s absence and the most chilling atrocities share a common root: the failure to see others as truly human.

The transatlantic slave trade didn’t just rely on violence; it depended on a systemic denial of empathy. Enslaved Africans were stripped of names, families, and identities. In the book I’m reading, Jim is just trying to get back to his family, but he is bought and sold by others in the book. Africans were branded, auctioned, and bred like livestock. This wasn’t ignorance, it was deliberate dehumanization. By turning people into property, slaveholders absolved themselves of guilt. Empathy would have made the cruelty unbearable. So it was repressed, silenced, replaced with pseudoscience and theology that justified oppression.

In Nazi Germany, Jews, Roma, disabled people, and others were targeted in a genocide that industrialized death. What made the Holocaust possible wasn’t just hatred–it was the meticulous suppression of empathy. People were reduced to numbers. Their names erased, their histories burned, their deaths cataloged in ledgers. The architecture of the Holocaust depended on millions participating–guards, secretaries, engineers–many of whom lived normal lives, compartmentalizing their complicity. Empathy had no place in the Final Solution.

But empathy’s absence isn’t just a relic of history. Under Trump’s administration, immigrants and asylum seekers are routinely described as “animals” or “vermin” or “invaders.” Children are separated from their parents and kept in cages, detained by ICE without due process, sometimes without adequate hygiene or comfort. The policy wasn’t a mistake; it was a strategy of deterrence through cruelty. To justify it, the administration relied on rhetoric that erased the humanity of migrants, calling them criminals, rapists, and threats to American “purity.” Empathy was a political liability, and it was treated as such.

Empathy is not weakness. It is an act of defiance in a world that profits from division and fear. To feel for another–to recognize a stranger’s suffering as real–is to refuse the machinery of dehumanization. When we listen, when we care, when we act in solidarity, we’re not just being kind. We’re fighting back against every system that says some lives matter less.

We don’t need more tolerance. We need more imagination: the kind that lets us picture ourselves in someone else’s place. Without empathy, history repeats itself. With it, maybe we can write a better one.