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.

The Big Beautiful Bill Is a Big Ugly Disaster

And you should be pissed.

They called it the One Big Beautiful Bill. The name sounds like something cooked up by a real estate scammer with a spray tan and a God complex. And that’s exactly what it is: a bloated Frankenstein bill straight from Trump’s second-term fever dream, cobbled together by House Republicans and passed with the slimmest possible margin. And now it’s headed to Trump’s desk for a July 4th signing ceremony drenched in flag-waving, billionaire bootlicking, and straight-up cruelty.

What’s in this monstrosity?

Let’s start with the headline:

Twelve million people are projected to lose their healthcare.

That’s not hyperbole. That’s the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate. The bill guts Medicaid, imposes work requirements, and kicks immigrants off public healthcare programs. Because in the America envisioned by this bill, if you’re not white, wealthy, or working yourself into the grave, you don’t deserve care. You deserve punishment.

And while they were at it, they slashed $185 billion from food assistance. So now we get to watch people try to feed their kids on zero-hour contracts while GOP lawmakers brag about “fiscal responsibility” over cocktails with lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the rich got another tax cut. Permanent this time. Tips and overtime income? Tax-exempt now—but don’t get it twisted, that’s not for you. That’s bait. The real prize is hundreds of billions in tax breaks for corporations, fossil fuel giants, and the donor class. This bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit, and you can already hear the vultures circling Social Security and Medicare as the next “cost-saving” target.

Oh, and they militarized the border.

The bill throws over $150 billion at ICE, CBP, and border wall construction. It funds surveillance, detention, and deportation at a scale we haven’t seen before. They’re not just building walls—they’re building infrastructure for a permanent deportation machine. If you think that won’t grow, expand, and eventually turn inward, you haven’t been paying attention.

Climate crisis? Never heard of her.

Clean energy incentives? Gutted. Fossil fuel subsidies? Expanded. If you’re under 40 and plan on breathing air in the next couple decades, this bill is a declaration of war.

—

This isn’t governance. It’s class warfare.

They’re engineering a future where the rich get richer, the poor get punished, and the middle class is slowly boiled like frogs. And they’re doing it with fireworks, flags, and a phony populist smile.

Don’t let the branding fool you. This bill is a moral abomination.

If people don’t fight this tooth and nail—with legislation, with lawsuits, with mass mobilization—they’ll be complicit in letting this country slide further into oligarchy.

And if you’re still sitting on the sidelines? Get off the damn bench. The fight isn’t coming. It’s here.

Libertarian Socialist or Anarcho-Communist? Depends on Who’s Asking.

When a Democrat asks about my politics, I tell them I’m a Libertarian Socialist. It sounds just palatable enough to pass through their MSNBC filter. You get the “socialist” part—Bernie vibes, maybe some Chomsky seasoning—and “libertarian” makes it sound like I still believe in rights or property or some other adult word they can handle.

But when a Republican asks? I’m an Anarcho-Communist.

No soft edges. No training wheels. I want them to picture Molotovs, mutual aid, and the local Starbucks being reclaimed as a community kitchen. I want them to flinch like they just heard “abolish landlords” whispered behind their 401(k).

The thing is, it’s all the same to me. Libertarian socialism, anarcho-communism—both oppose capitalism, hierarchy, and the state. The labels are just different levels of shock therapy depending on who’s in front of me.

I’m not here to fit into anyone’s Overton window. I’m here to kick the damn thing open.

Democrats still think change comes from voting a little harder. Republicans think billionaires are their friends. I don’t have the patience to explain mutual aid to someone clutching a Pelosi bobblehead, or the difference between anarchism and chaos to a guy with a Punisher sticker on his pickup.

So I adjust the mask, not to deceive, but to translate. Because if you say “anarcho-communism” to a liberal, they hear “chaotic Stalinist death cult.” And if you say “libertarian socialist” to a conservative, they hear “soy boy who hates America.

I just believe no one should rule and no one should starve.

I want a world built on cooperation, not coercion. A world where communities thrive without CEOs, landlords, or billionaires buying bunkers while the world burns.

If that sounds extreme, maybe the problem isn’t the label. Maybe the problem is the system that makes those ideas sound extreme in the first place.

“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.

Trump’s Iran War Talk Is Bush’s Iraq Invasion All Over Again

Donald Trump is at it again—saber-rattling about going to war with Iran. In recent speeches, he’s said things like, “We’re gonna have to hit Iran hard” and warned that Iran is “begging” for war. It’s the kind of talk that grabs headlines, fires up his base, and echoes the kind of imperial chest-beating that led us into Iraq in 2003.

If this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before. Trump is playing the same tired role George W. Bush did: the tough-talking cowboy standing up to the “axis of evil,” ready to bomb another country under the banner of “freedom” and “security.” But behind the performance lies the same playbook of distraction, destruction, and empire.

In the early 2000s, the Bush administration spent months building a case for invading Iraq—claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was connected to terrorism, and posed an existential threat to the U.S. None of it held up. But it didn’t matter. The invasion went forward, and the Middle East has been on fire ever since.

Now, with Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza drawing worldwide condemnation, the U.S. political class is eager to shift the narrative. And Iran—a longtime enemy and convenient scapegoat—is the perfect target. Trump’s recent comments aren’t just random bluster; they’re part of a larger strategy to re-center American power and to justify further U.S. entanglement in the region.

Bush lied about WMDs. Trump talks about Iranian “proxies.” Same trick, different jargon.

Yes, Iran supports armed groups in the region—so do we. The U.S. backs Israel’s military campaign with billions of dollars and weapons. Calling Iran the aggressor while ignoring our own role is imperial hypocrisy at its finest.

Just like Bush made Saddam into a caricature of evil to justify regime change, Trump is doing the same with Iran’s leadership. He paints them as irrational monsters, despite the fact that most of their actions have been responses to U.S. sanctions, assassinations, and Israeli airstrikes.

When presidents talk war, it’s rarely about what they say it is. For Bush, Iraq was about oil, military contracts, and reshaping the Middle East in America’s image. For Trump, war talk with Iran is a distraction from his legal problems, a way to appear “tough”, and a means of keeping the U.S. permanently tied to Israel’s military agenda.

Just like in 2003, the corporate media amplifies the danger without challenging the narrative. And just like then, liberals wring their hands but refuse to name the deeper problem: American imperialism and its bipartisan addiction to war.

Let’s not forget what war with Iran would mean. Iran isn’t Iraq. It’s bigger, more organized, and has powerful allies. A war would be catastrophic—not just for Iranians, but for the entire region. It would mean more dead civilians, more displaced families, more anti-American hatred, and another generation traumatized by endless war.

We’ve already seen what U.S. regime-change efforts do: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. Each time, we’re told it’ll be quick, clean, and necessary. Each time, it ends in chaos.

Trump’s talk about war with Iran isn’t just dangerous—it’s a rerun of a bloody imperialist strategy that never ended. It’s Bush in 4K, with the same script and higher stakes.

If we want peace, we have to reject this cycle. That means opposing war no matter who’s selling it—Trump, Biden, or anyone else. And it means finally confronting the empire that keeps dragging us—and the world—into ruin.