Freedom, American-Style: Guns Over Healthcare

It says a lot about the state of America when you point out that the U.S. has fallen to 57th place in the global freedom index, and the response you get from a Trump supporter is: “Yeah, well, I get to own guns.”

This is the American illusion of freedom distilled into a single sentence. Forget healthcare, forget workers’ rights, forget privacy, forget the surveillance state, forget the crushing weight of debt—because hey, you can still buy a gun. That’s supposed to make us the freest country on Earth.

But what kind of freedom is that, really? Is it freedom when millions can’t afford basic healthcare? When a medical emergency can bankrupt a family? When corporations own politicians, and workers are trapped in jobs just to keep health insurance? Is it freedom when your choices are narrowed down to which corporate brand you’ll consume, which billionaire will own your data, and which politician will fail you more slowly?

The gun argument is really a confession. It’s saying: “We’ve lost so much freedom that the only one we cling to is the ability to arm ourselves.” Guns have become the consolation prize in a country where every other right and protection is chipped away.

You can’t afford insulin, but you can afford an AR-15. You can’t get mental healthcare, but you can stockpile ammo. You can’t get your child’s asthma medication covered, but you can walk into a Walmart and walk out with a weapon of war. This isn’t freedom. It’s a parody of it.

Real freedom isn’t just the right to own a gun. Real freedom is the right to live without fear of medical bankruptcy, to have control over your workplace and your government, to exist without being exploited by corporations or surveilled by the state. Real freedom is collective, not individualistic. It’s not about clutching a weapon in the ruins, it’s about building a society where weapons aren’t necessary.

The sad truth is that when a Trump supporter says “I get to own guns,” what they’re really saying is: “This is the only freedom I have left, and I’m going to cling to it no matter what else is taken from me.” But clinging to a single hollow freedom while the rest are stripped away isn’t liberty. It’s defeat dressed up as patriotism.

And that’s why America is 57th in freedom. Because we’ve traded healthcare for hardware, dignity for firepower, and genuine liberty for a cheap illusion of it.

Bill Hicks and Joe Rogan

I’m tired of this whole bro culture that’s going on right now and Joe Rogan seems to be the man in charge of it. He never really amounted to much until someone decided it’d be a good idea to give him a podcast. Years ago I thought he was decent enough because he admired Bill Hicks and he was friends with Doug Stanhope. Hicks and Stanhope are two of my all-time favorite comedians. Then things shifted.

I think Hicks and Stanhope would have differing opinions on Rogan though. Stanhope openly says he doesn’t care if he bombs on stage. He’d rather be himself than pander to an audience. I don’t see this being Rogan’s attitude. However, the difference between Hicks and Stanhope would be Hicks would roast Rogan and Stanhope would shrug, pour another drink, and say “Who gives a shit?” That’s just who Stanhope is. Hicks though? He wouldn’t stand for it.

Rogan would always bring up Bill Hicks and call him a hero, a genius, a prophet. Hicks was all of those things, but if Hicks were alive today he’d tear Rogan to shreds. Hicks spent his career railing against corporations, conformity, American militarism, consumer culture, and the numbing stupidity of mass entertainment. Hicks wasn’t trying to “be edgy.” He was trying to wake people up. He was pissed off because we were all sleepwalking through a corporate-controlled nightmare.

Now look at Rogan. His whole empire rests on platforming reactionary voices, selling supplements, and playing culture-war middleman. He’s not smashing the system, he’s feeding it. Rogan is what Hicks warned us about: the corporatized, commodified version of counterculture. He’s a watered-down rebel packaged for the masses.

Bill Hicks didn’t attack “wokeness.” He attacked greed, imperialism, and consumer hypnosis. Rogan, meanwhile, obsesses over trans athletes while pretending that’s the frontline of free thought. Hicks went after presidents and generals. Rogan goes after strawmen and invited presidential candidates and billionaires on his podcast.

There’s a difference between using a microphone to question power and using it to launder power’s talking points. Hicks’ comedy was dangerous. Rogan’s podcast is safe. It’s safe enough for Spotify to cut him a $200 million check.

Bill Hicks wanted us to stop being sheep. Joe Rogan built a career herding sheep in new directions.

Bill Hicks was a prophet of rage against the machine. Joe Rogan is the machine.

Elon Musk Has a Breeding Fetish and it Creeps Me Out

Let’s talk about Apartheid Clyde again. Not the genius inventor, not the Mars guy, not the billionaire memelord, but the man on a bizarre, almost dystopian crusade to impregnate the planet. At this point it’s not just “having a lot of kids.” It’s a full-blown ideology. A fetish wrapped in futurism. A techno-breeding manifesto disguised as civilization-saving.

Apartheid Clyde has at least 14 children (that we know of) with multiple women, including employees. He’s tweeted things like “population collapse is the biggest threat to humanity” and “I’m doing my part haha,” as if civilization hinges on him personally repopulating the Earth — or Mars — with his offspring. That’s not family planning. That’s legacy-building with a hint of sci-fi eugenics.

He’s literally turned human reproduction into a status symbol. It’s not about love or parenting or raising decent people. It’s about seeding the future … with himself. He thinks he’s a mythological figure tasked with restarting the species after the collapse.

It’s not subtle. He has said he believes “smart people” aren’t reproducing enough. He reportedly fathered twins with a Neuralink executive. He once called birth control a “civilization-ending experiment.” He’s flirted with the logic of eugenics while acting like he’s just being a rationalist.

In any other context, this would be horrifying. But because he’s rich and quirky, people brush it off as just another Musk-ism. But imagine any regular man walking around, telling the world it’s his moral duty to have as many children as possible because his DNA is just that important. That’s not just arrogant. That’s a fetish.

This isn’t about children. It’s about control. Power. Legacy. Apartheid Clyde talks about colonizing Mars, building superintelligence, and rewriting human history, always with himself as the central node. He doesn’t want to save the word. He wants to remake it in his image, and apparently that starts in the bedroom. He’s not trying to be your kid’s role model. He’s trying to be their ancestor.

Here’s the kicker: Apartheid Clyde doesn’t believe in collective solutions. He doesn’t trust democracy. He doesn’t care about building a better society. He wants a genetically optimized future ruled by the right kind of people: him and his kind.

And that’s why his weird, hyper-capitalist breeding campaign is so creepy. Because it’s not just personal. It’s political. It’s patriarchal. And it’s deeply authoritarian in disguise. We don’t need more Musk children. We need fewer billionaires treating the Earth — and our bodies — like a startup they can scale.

Capitalism, Trafficking, and the Billionaire Boys’ Club

In the shadowy corners of modern capitalism lies a truth many don’t want to face: human trafficking isn’t just a crime of desperation. It’s also a crime of wealth and power. It’s not only happening in alleys and war zones. It’s happening in penthouses, on private islands, and behind the locked doors of luxury jets. And when we pull at that thread, names like Jeffrey Epstein—and yes, Donald Trump—start to unravel the fabric.

Capitalism promises meritocracy. But what it delivers, time and again, is a system that rewards exploitation. When money becomes the ultimate measure of success, people become commodities. Labor, bodies, even children; bought, sold, and traded in a global marketplace where the rich operate above the law.

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t build a trafficking empire alone. He had help—explicit and implicit—from financiers, politicians, royalty, media moguls, and intelligence networks. He lived in the belly of capitalist power, not outside of it. His crimes weren’t an aberration, they were a symptom.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who once said Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, many of them on the younger side.” Trump and Epstein were photographed together, partied together, and allegedly shared access to the same circles of underage girls. One woman, Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit in 2016 alleging Trump raped her at one of Epstein’s parties when she was 13. The case was dropped—quietly, mysteriously—just before the election. And we’re supposed to believe justice was served?

Wealth doesn’t just buy yachts and elections. It buys silence. It buys immunity. And capitalism ensures that those with the most money can bend the system to their will. Epstein’s private island was protected by layers of wealth and influence. The girls he trafficked? Disposable. Their voices were dismissed until it was too late, and even now, most of the men involved walk free.

Capitalism thrives on hierarchy: of class, gender, race, and power. And at the top of that pyramid are men like Trump and Epstein, who use their wealth to shield themselves from consequences while feeding off the bodies of the powerless. It’s not a glitch in the system. It is the system.

Until we start connecting these dots—not just as scandals, but as structural realities—we’ll keep asking the wrong questions. The real issue isn’t just “Who knew?” or “Why wasn’t Epstein stopped sooner?” It’s: What kind of economic and political system makes men like this inevitable?

If we want a world where children aren’t trafficked for billionaires’ pleasure, we need more than accountability. We need a new system entirely.

“One Big Beautiful Boot”–Trump’s Bill is Just Capitalism with its Mask Off

While liberals are pearl-clutching and conservatives are clapping like trained seals, the U.S. state just reminded us — again — that it only exists to protect capital and crush the poor.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” just passed. A 1,000 page orgy of tax cuts for the rich, surveillance-state expansion, environmental vandalism, and open war on the working class. They’re not even pretending anymore. The boot isn’t just stomping, it’s doing it with patriotic fireworks and a press release.

What’s in this monstrosity?

Permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, including “relief” on tips and gig work. Translation: handouts for bosses, crumbs for precarious workers.
Billions for border walls, ICE, and CBP. The U.S. is investing in a future where desperate people are hunted like animals.
Slashing Medicaid and food stamps, forcing people to work to death for scraps while the rich lounge in yachts subsidized by tax breaks.
Torpedoing climate policy. Clean energy incentives? Gone. Fossil fuel subsidies? Pumped full of cash.
Newborn “MAGA savings accounts” because nothing says “freedom” like indoctrinating infants into capital accumulation from day one.

They even raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion so they could do it all without blinking. No panic over the deficit now because the spending serves power.

This bill is not “big” or “beautiful.” It’s discipline — state discipline in service of capital. It rewards extraction, exploitation, and domination. It punishes care, solidarity, and survival. It doesn’t just hurt the poor, it’s designed to remind them who’s in charge.

Liberals will write op-eds about how “deeply concerning” it is. Conservatives will call it a “victory for the American worker.” But those of us truly on the left know: both parties serve the same machine. One smiles while tightening the chains, the other spits in your face as it does. The illusion of reform is dead.

The state cannot be reformed. You don’t pass 1,000 pages of fascist legislation and pretend this system can be voted out of tyranny. This is why we fight for abolition, not revision. No tweaks. No “better Democrats.” No savior presidents. Burn the whole damn thing down.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” -Emma Goldman (and probably your gut too.)

So what do we do now?

We organize. Not to win elections, but to build dual power, sabotage capitalist logistics, defend our communities, and imagine a world without the state and without billionaires.

We do mutual aid, we educate, we disrupt. We make it ungovernable.

Because if this is what law looks like then we owe it nothing but our resistance.

No masters. No “beautiful bills.” Just solidarity, sabotage, and the end of all empires.

J.D. Vance’s Ego Just Got a Tourist Detained

In a story that sounds like it was ripped from The Onion but was sadly reported by actual newspapers, Vice President JD Vance has found a new way to embarrass America on the world stage: by getting a Norwegian tourist detained, harassed, and ultimately denied entry into the United States … over a meme.

Yes, a meme.

According to Nordlys, a Norwegian news outlet, traveler Mads Mikkelsen (no, not the actor) flew into Newar Liberty International Airport on a trip to visit friends in New York City, continue on to Austin, Texas, and finally meet up with his mother to tour the U.S. national parks. That is, until he was flagged by customs agents — not for any actual crime, but because his phone contained a funny picture of J.D. Vance.

Mikkelsen says he was pulled aside by U.S. border officials, stripped of his shoes, backpack, and phone, and interrogated in a room surrounded by armed guards. Officials grilled him on drug trafficking, terrorism, and right-wing extremism — all without the slightest indication that he was involved in any of it.

He described the ordeal as “an abuse of power and harassment,” saying, “I had traveled for twelve hours, slept poorly, and was physically and mentally completely exhausted even before they started questioning.”

After being threatened with prison time or a $5,000 fine unless he unlocked his phone — again, over nothing — Mikkelsen complied. That’s when officials discovered a meme of Vice President Vance, in which Vance’s face is grotesquely bloated and distorted for comedic effect. The meme went viral after Vance’s infamous Oval Office tantrum during a meeting with Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where Vance berated Zelensky in a petulant, scolding tone that made even some Republicans cringe.

Apparently, the meme touched a nerve.

The agents also found a photo of Mikkelsen holding a homemade wooden pipe. That, too, became evidence — not of wrongdoing, but of the apparent thoughtcrime of making MAGA look bad. “Both pictures had automatically saved to my camera roll from a chat app,” Mikkelsen explained. “I really didn’t think these innocent pictures would stop me from entering the country.”

But stop him they did. Officials fingerprinted him, took blood samples, and tossed him into a holding cell. “It felt like I was a terrorist suspect,” he said. “I tried to pull myself together several times, but in the end, I just wanted to go home again.”

He never made it out of the airport. He was deported.

Welcome to the New America: Where memes are a national security threat.

This is authoritarian behavior, full stop. This is how you treat people in a surveillance state. And this isn’t some isolated case — it’s part of a disturbing pattern where the MAGA regime lashes out at criticism, jokes, or even art, as if the First Amendment is an asterisk next to it now.

It’s the kind of behavior that makes America look paranoid, insecure, and hostile, not just to its own citizens, but to the rest of the world. Why would tourists want to come here if their phones are going to be searched for satire?

Instead of promoting freedom, MAGA is exporting fear. Instead of welcoming visitors, they’re detaining them over memes. And instead of leading the world, we’re becoming a punchline.

If you’re wondering why the American tourism industry is struggling, this is it. If you’re wondering why foreign allies are side-eyeing us, this is it. And if you’re wondering whether the MAGA movement is thin-skinned, authoritarian, and completely detached from reality then this is definitely it.

J.D. Vance didn’t just get roasted in a meme. He got humiliated on the global stage, and instead of laughing it off like a normal person, his cronies treated a tourist like a threat.

America isn’t great when it’s scared of jokes.

Trump Doesn’t Hire the Best People–He Hires the Most Obedient

Donald Trump ran for president on the promise that he’d hire “the best people.” What we got instead was a revolving door of sycophants, grifters, and opportunists–many of whom ended up resigning in disgrace, flipping on him in investigations, or publicly admitting they were just along for the ride. The pattern is clear: Trump doesn’t value confidence. He values loyalty. Un-questioning, cult-like loyalty.

It’s not about skills or expertise. It’s about saying “yes sir” even when the ship is sinking.

Need proof? Let’s take a tour.

Rex Tillerson: Trump’s first Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil CEO, was reportedly called a “moron” by Trump–and left after constant clashes.

John Bolton: former National Security Advisor, said Trump didn’t even know Finland wasn’t part of Russia.

William Barr: Trump’s second Attorney General, admitted post-2020 election that Trump’s fraud cases were baseless–after enabling them just long enough to keep his job.

By the end of his first term, Trump had burned through most of the people who had any shred of integrity or independence. His cabinet and advisors had been turned over so many times, it started to look like speed dating at a Banana Republic junta.

But instead of learning from that chaos, Trump doubled down.

After losing the 2020 election — and refusing to accept it — Trump filled his inner circle with election deniers, legal cranks, and sycophants willing to do or say anything to stay in his good graces. The “best people” were long gone. What remained were yes-men, power-chasers, and people whose careers had nowhere to go except deeper into Trumpworld.

Let’s look at a few:

Jeffrey Clark: A low-level DOJ lawyer Trump tried to install as Acting Attorney General because Clark was willing to push election fraud claims the rest of the DOJ refused to endorse.

Rudy Giuliani: Once “America’s mayor,” reduced to leaking hair dye while babbling about dead Venezuelan dictators rigging voting machines.

Sidney Powel: One who promised to “release the Kraken” and ended up releasing nothing but lawsuits that courts laughed out of the room.

Peter Navarro: Pitched “Green Bay Sweep” plan to overturn the election — and then got indicted.

Kash Patel and Johnny McEntee: Young loyalists with almost no relevant experience, given increasing power simply for saying “yes” to Trump and echoing his grievances.

Pete Hegseth: A Fox News talking head and professional culture warrior. Someone who wasn’t hired because he had the chops to manage massive bureaucracies or make strategic decisions, but because he praised Trump on TV and fed him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Linda McMahon: Someone who got a spot as one of Trump’s picks because she and her husband donated $6 million to a pro-Trump super PAC

This is what a Trump administration looks like: cable news hosts, podcasters, wrestling executives, conspiracy peddlers, and cash donors pretending to be a government. Not a cabinet — a fan club. Not a team of rivals — a team of sycophants

Trump’s not building a cabinet, he’s casting a reboot of The Apprentice: White House Edition. Only this time, instead of “You’re fired,” it’s the Constitution getting voted off the island.

The Duopoly is a Disease

In the land of the free, we are given a choice every election cycle: Red or Blue. Coke or Pepsi. The illusion of choice wrapped in patriotic fanfare. But beneath the spectacle lies a truth most Americans feel in their gut but rarely say out loud: the two party system is a rigged game, a duopoly that has hijacked our democracy.

The Democratic and Republican parties are not ideological opposites; they are co-managers of an empire. One plays good cop while the other plays bad cop, but both serve the same masters: corporations, lobbyists, and the wealthy. They compete for power the way monopolists “compete”: by making sure no true alternative ever gains traction.

Independent and third-party candidates are routinely locked out of debates, buried by media blackouts, and crushed by impossible ballot access laws. Why? Because both parties know that real competition would expose how little they offer beyond symbolic bickering and bipartisan stagnation.

The duopoly thrives on division. Democrats and Republicans whip their bases into a frenzy over culture issues while quietly agreeing on endless war, corporate welfare, and mass surveillance. It’s no accident. The spectacle distracts us while they pass the same bloated Pentagon budgets and sell off public goods to private hands.

Gridlock isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It keeps meaningful reform off the table. Medicare for All? Dead on arrival. A living wage? Maybe by 2050. Climate action? Let’s ask ExxonMobil how fast we can move. The duopoly ensures nothing truly threatens their donors’ profits.

Leftist movements such as socialists, anarchists, and greens are smeared or ignored not because they’re fringe, but because they challenge the core of the system: capitalism, imperialism, police power. The establishment doesn’t fear chaos, it fears organization. It fears a population that realizes there are more than two ways to govern ourselves.

Likewise, when libertarians call for ending wars or dismantling the surveillance state, they’re treated as dangerous radicals. Any idea outside the red-blue matrix must be neutralized.

So what’s the way out?

Break the machine.

It starts with refusing to legitimize the duopoly. Don’t let “vote blue no matter who” or “lesser evilism” guilt you into obedience. Demand more: ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, ballot access reform, we need mass political education and direct action.

We need to organize outside their system. That means building dual power: worker co-ops, mutual aid networks, radical unions, and community councils that don’t wait for permission from Washington. The future won’t be won in the voting booth alone. It will be built in the streets, on picket lines, and in the quiet rebellion of everyday people saying “enough is enough.”

The bottom line is this: the two party system is not a democracy. It’s monopoly politics. It doesn’t represent us. It contains us. And like all monopolies, it must be broken.

We don’t need better Democrats or nicer Republicans. We need a new system entirely, one that serves people and not profits.

Even Elon Musk Thinks the New “Big Beautiful Bill” is a Joke

You know a bill is bad when even Apartheid Clyde — the meme king of capitalism and Trump’s former efficiency czar — calls it out.

Apartheid Clyde took aim at the Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” (yes, that’s the actual name of the bill. No, I’m not shitting you.) It’s a monstrosity of legislation that somehow manages to combine massive tax cuts for the rich, bloated defense spending, Medicaid restrictions, and a fresh punch in the gut to clean energy. And just like that, Republicans have found a way to spend trillions while pretending they’re fiscally conservative.

Apartheid Clyde, who once led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump, publicly slammed the bill for ballooning the deficit and betraying the message of DOGE. “It can be big or beautiful, not both,” Musk quipped, a rare moment of clarity from someone who once called himself a “free speech absolutist” while banning critics from Twitter (I’m still never calling it “X.”)

Let’s be real: Apartheid Clyde isn’t exactly a paragon of progressive virtue. This is the guy who spends his time playing CEO cosplay and beefing with journalists online. But when even he is sounding the alarm on a Republican spending bill, you know it’s not just ugly — it’s a Trojan horse stuffed with billionaire tax breaks and red meat for MAGA donors.

The Congressional Office Budget estimates this “beautiful” disaster will add $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That’s more than the GDP of Germany, and somehow, the Republicans still claim we “can’t afford” student loan forgiveness or universal healthcare.

So why is Apartheid Clyde breaking ranks now? Simple. The bill fucks with his brand. It undercuts clean energy (bad for Tesla), bloats defense (bad for his whole “efficiency” thing), and makes him look like a sucker for ever aligning with Mango Mussolini in the first place. Self-interest is a hell of a drug.

Still, his critique opens a window: when even a techno-libertarian billionaire thinks the GOP has lost the plot, maybe it’s time to stop pretending they ever had one. The “Big Beautiful Bill” isn’t governance. It’s graft dressed up in patriotic drag.

If you’re pissed about this bill, don’t just laugh at Apartheid Clyde’s tweets. Organize. Disrupt. And remember: the people writing this legislation don’t care if you live, as long as they get paid.

I’m Not a Liberal, I Just Make Sense: Why Labels Fall Short

It happens all the time. I challenge right-wing talking points, call out capitalist exploitation, or support basic human rights, and suddenly — boom — I’m a “liberal.” As if that’s the end of the discussion. As if being anti-fascist or pro-worker automatically plants me squarely in the Democratic Party’s center-left garden.

Let me be clear: I am not a liberal. I just live in a country so far to the right that calling for universal healthcare, climate action, or labor rights feels like revolution.

Why people call me a liberal:

I argue with conservatives.
- Apparently, in the American binary brain, if you’re not parroting Fox News or defending billionaires, you must be a Democrat. The idea that there’s something to the left of liberals is unthinkable to many.
I care about people
- When you defend the poor, the unhoused, immigrants, or even the basic right not to die from lack of insulin, people assume you’re a part of the “bleeding heart” liberal crowd. As if compassion is a party platform rather than a moral baseline.
I don’t support Trump
- That alone gets you painted blue in some circles. Never mind that opposing authoritarianism, racism, or conspiracy cults isn’t a matter of party loyalty — it’s basic sanity.

Why I’m not a liberal

Liberals love capitalism. I want to overthrow it.
- Liberals think the system is mostly fine and just needs tweaks. I think the system is fundamentally broken and built on exploitation. We don’t need nicer capitalism — we need a new world.
Liberals believe in reform. I believe in rupture.
- Liberals put their faith in voting, committees, and incrementalism. I believe the change we need won’t come from polite asks or polished speeches. It’ll come from disruption, pressure, and direct action.
Liberals want to return to “normal.” I want to move forward.
- “Normal” gave us Trump, climate collapse, and a society that treats people as disposable. I don’t want to go back. I want something radically better.
Liberals apologize for empire. I oppose it.
- Whether it’s war, coups, or sanctions, liberals rarely challenge American imperialism. I do — because solidarity shouldn’t stop at our borders.

So what am I?

Call me a leftist. A socialist. A troublemaker. An anti-capitalist. A human being tired of being told the best we can do is Joe Biden or Kamala Harris with a side of despair. Just don’t call me a liberal.

Because I’m not here to make capitalism kinder. I’m here to make it history.