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.

Does Love Exist? A Cynic’s Reflection

Keep in mind that I’m writing this as a cynical, misanthropic pessimist, okay? But I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people declare with a mix of bitterness and certainty that “love doesn’t exist.” As if it’s some grand revelation. As if anyone who believes otherwise is naive. Again, coming from a cynist, I think this particular claim misses the mark. Love is real and it’s one of the most undeniable forces in human life.

When someone insists love isn’t real, they’re usually speaking out of pain, disappointment, or distrust. Maybe they were betrayed by a partner, so now love seems like nothing more than a manipulation. Maybe they’ve embraced a biological reductionism: “love is just chemicals firing off in the brain so it doesn’t count.” Maybe they’ve taken their own misanthropy so far that they can’t imagine people acting out of genuine care for one another. I sympathize with all of that, but I don’t buy the conclusion.

If we deny love because it can be explained chemically, we’d have to deny everything else too such as joy, grief, awe, even the taste of a favorite meal. Reduction doesn’t mean negation. Love might be tied to hormones and neurons, but so is every other human experience. That doesn’t make it unreal. It makes it embodied.

If we deny love because people fail at it, because they betray or exploit in its name, then we’d have to deny courage, kindness, or justice too. Every virtue gets betrayed. That doesn’t erase the thing itself, it only proves how fragile and valuable it is.

Love shows up in too many undeniable forms to write it off. A parent staying awake with a sick child. Friends carrying each other through decades of hardship. Strangers risking something for people they’ll never see again. Protestors linking arms against police lines for the sake of those they’ll never meet. Even grief is a form of love. What else is mourning but love with nowhere to go?

Cynicism has its uses. It can cut through illusion and sentimentality. But cynicism that denies love altogether becomes just another illusion, one that pretends detachment will protect us from hurt. In reality, it only leaves us emptier.

Love exists. It’s not perfect, not eternal, not invulnerable. But it is as real as anything else that shapes our lives. Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make us stronger; it only makes us lonelier.

Anti-Natalism Isn’t My Most Extreme Position

Most people recoil at the idea of anti-natalism. “But my legacy!” “I need the family name to live on!” “You’re not full until you’ve had a child!” Spare me your bullshit. There’s no altruistic reason to have children. Every reason anyone gives is selfish and self-absorbed. Most people feel like being an anti-natalist is a spit in the face of them and their progeny. Let them think that. I will not back down from this view. I don’t stop at anti-natalism though. My position goes further. I’m pro-omnicide. Yes, I mean that literally: I’m pro the end of all life. Not just humans. Not just animals. All of it.

Life is suffering. That’s not a metaphor. It’s biology. Every living being spends its existence avoiding pain, hunger, sickness, loneliness, decay, and finally death. Even joy is temporary, always shadowed by loss. The very structure of life is cruelty: to live is to feed off of other life.

The one and only true solution to suffering isn’t better medicine or fairer societies (although I wish for those to ease the suffering as well as ending capitalism before we go.) It’s ending life itself. Omnicide is the clean cut, the only guarantee that no more beings — animal or human — will be forced into pain.

There can be comedy in this as well though. It’s not all doom and gloom. Billions of years of evolution, countless wars and inventions, all the books and religions and empires, and it all ends with nothing. Lights out. Curtain call. The universe shrugs and deletes its own save file.

People keep searching for meaning, for some grand story about progress, destiny, or utopia. But the joke is that there is no meaning. The only punchline left is extinction; not tragedy, not triumph, just silence.

Why say this publicly though? Because most people won’t even look in this direction. They’re terrified of questioning the assumption that “life is good.” But if we really care about ethics, if we really care about suffering, then omnicide is the most compassionate conclusion. And if we really embrace the absurd, then there’s no need to dress it up as anything other than what it is: the end of the joke.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, but I also don’t think the can refute me, try as they might. They can’t deny that suffering defines life. And they can’t deny that omnicide would end it once and for all.

That’s why I’m pro-omnicide. Not because of a hatred for life, but because I see life for what it is.

A Prophet and a Nihilist Walk into a Bar

I’ve loved stand-up comedy since high school. I even did my own set a few times years ago (I wasn’t very good at it. Need to research comedic timing more.) My all-time favorite comedian is Bill Hicks (rest in power.) He wasn’t just a comic, he was a prophet. He tried to open the eyes of the public at large to how they were being fucked and just sitting back and taking it. He was a fierce social critic. Other aspiring comedians might want to be like Carlin or Pryor or Lenny Bruce or Sam Kinison. I wanted to be like Bill Hicks.

Another comedian I love — who I think carries Hicks’ torch and also burns the world down with it — is Doug Stanhope. He doesn’t care about waking people up. He doesn’t even give a shit if he bombs on stage. He’ll just get bombed on alcohol while he bombs on stage.

Comedy has always had its rebels and these two fit that description. Hicks wanted to wake you up. Stanhope wants to drag you into the abyss with him. Both are/were uncompromising, dark, and unwilling to sell out. However, their philosophies couldn’t be more different.

Let’s start with Hicks. Hicks gave a shit. He wasn’t just telling jokes; he was preaching. Every set was a sermon against consumerism, war, censorship, and blind conformity. He wanted audiences to see through the veil, to wake up. When a joke bombed, it stung him. It didn’t just mean the laugh was missing, it meant the message hadn’t landed. Hicks carried the weight of a prophet, a sense that comedy could save humanity if only enough people listened. His core drive was enlightenment through laughter. His tone — righteous, sermon-like; a preacher in a smokey comedy club. His view of humanity was misanthropic but hopeful. Humanity was flawed, but people would wake up. And when he bombed on stage it was a personal wound, proof at how far gone society was.

Hicks’ legacy is almost biblical. Fans and admirers treat him less like a comic and more like a visionary who used a microphone as his pulpit.

Then there’s Doug Stanhope: the nihilist who doesn’t give a fuck. Comedy isn’t a sermon to him. It’s a dare. Can he say the most obscene, brutally honest thing in the room and still stand there, beer in hand, while the audience squirms? If Hicks bombed, it hurt. If Stanhope bombs, it’s just another outcome. Sometimes it’s even the point. Walkouts, police calls, physical confrontations, they’re not failures … they’re souvenirs. Stanhope is more amusement through honesty. He’s kind of like your drunk, nihilistic, misanthropic uncle who doesn’t sugarcoat shit. His view of humanity is that it’s hopeless and it’s best to laugh at the chaos. When he bombs, he’s neutral and sometimes even celebrates and that shows that he’s not just pandering to his audience.

Stanhope’s legacy isn’t prophetic, it’s apocalyptic. He doesn’t offer hope; he offers anesthesia. He’s not here to save you; he’s here to mock you while the ship goes down.

So you have a prophet and a nihilist. There’s a good set up: “A prophet and a nihilist walk into a bar.” Hicks wanted comedy to save the world. Stanhope wants comedy to burn it all down … or at least make the collapse funnier.

Hicks was a preacher who believed in laughter as a path to truth. Stanhope is a nihilist who believes truth is unbearable, so we might as well laugh while we’re here. Hicks aimed for transcendence. Stanhope embraces the gutter. Both approaches matter. Both expose the absurdity of life and culture. But where Hicks offered a vision of redemption, Stanhope only offers a toast to the void.

Hicks is remembered as a voice of moral clarity in a corrupt world. Stanhope is like Heath Ledger’s Joker. One pointed toward the light. The other cackles in the dark. Maybe comedy needs both: the prophet to believe change is possible, and the nihilist to remind us that, even if it isn’t, the laugh is still worth it.

I’m Sick of Living in a Country With a Price Tag on Survival

There’s something deeply wrong with a society that puts a dollar sign on everything: air, water, healthcare, housing, even hope.

In America, you don’t get to live, you get to rent existence. And the rent keeps going up.

Need to drink water? Better hope your tap isn’t poisoned, privatized, or shut off because you’re behind on the bill. Need to see a doctor? Hope you can navigate the insurance labyrinth, dodge bankruptcy, and survive long enough to get an appointment three months from now.

This isn’t a functioning society. It’s a hostile marketplace cosplaying as civilization.

We slap “In God We Trust” on the currency, but worship profit above all. Billionaires hoard resources like dragons while kids ration insulin. Corporations dump chemicals into rivers while charging us for clean water. Politicians talk about “personal responsibility” while handing corporate welfare to their donors.

Everything is for sale … except dignity.

This system wasn’t built to help us. It was built to extract from us. Your labor, your time, your energy, your life. All monetized. The only thing “essential” in this economy is your ability to generate profit for someone else.

And when you stop being profitable? You’re disposable. That’s the cold logic of capitalism. It doesn’t care if you suffer. It needs you to.

But here’s the thing: people are waking up. The cracks are visible. The rage is growing. The question now isn’t “Is this sustainable?”, it’s “What the hell are we going to do about it?”

We can’t shop our way out of this. We can’t vote our way out of it alone. This is going to take organizing. Disruption. Solidarity. Mutual aid. Refusing to play their game by their rules.

Because survival should not be for sale.

And I, for one, am done pretending this is normal.

Overthinking, Pandora’s Box, and the Mercy We Don’t Deserve

By someone who’s tired of dodging landmines in family group chats.

I posted a photo on Snapchat the other day—Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy. I didn’t think much of it. Just one of those small, nerdy flexes you throw into the void. But then my aunt replied:

“I didn’t know there was such a thing, but I guess everything has some sort of philosophy.”

Okay, fair. Not everyone grew up reading Plato or spiraling into existential dread during sophomore year. I responded:

“Western civilization’s been overthinking everything for like 2,500 years. They had to write it down eventually. Even things like math and science have deep philosophical roots.”

Her response? “Some things are just overthought, and need to be left alone I think. Just my opinion.”

That’s when I felt it: that itch to argue. To start listing how “overthinking” gave us medicine, civil rights, space exploration, critical thinking, and the ability to ask whether the status quo even should be left alone.

But instead, I replied calmly:

“Sometimes overthinking is how we uncover the stuff hiding under the surface.”

She came back with:

“That could be really bad and in the long run not helpful. Kinda like Pandora’s box. But I understand some things need to be known.” I went full myth nerd:

“Yeah, opening Pandora’s box definitely unleashed chaos—but also hope was in there too. Can’t forget that part.”

Then came the turn I knew was coming:

“Yep, you are right on that. And mercy, which we don’t deserve.”

Ah. There it was. The theological twist. The Southern Baptist worldview shining through. Mercy as something we’re lucky to get, not something we’re entitled to. A cosmic handout, not a human right.

And that’s where I bit my tongue. Because yeah, I could’ve said that if mercy is real, it shouldn’t be conditional. Or that maybe people don’t deserve suffering either. Or maybe we do deserve mercy because we’re born into a broken system we didn’t ask for and spend our lives trying to make sense of it.

But I didn’t say any of that. I kept the peace. Not because I agreed, but because sometimes family isn’t where the fight lives.

Still, it stuck with me. The way generations talk past each other. The way questioning becomes “overthinking,” and curiosity becomes a threat to tradition. The way a simple book post turns into a theological minefield.

So here I am. Overthinking it, of course.

Just like the philosophers taught me to.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s where hope still lives.

Waiting for the End

I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t sign up for this whole “life” thing. I just opened my eyes one day and the clock started ticking. Expectations piled on. Rules I never agreed to. A world I didn’t create.

By now, I’m 38. No spouse. No kids. I still live with my mom. That fact alone makes me feel like I’m not a “real adult,” even though I pay attention to the world, think deeply, and try to be a good person. But none of that matters, right? Not in a world where adulthood is measured by mortgages and marriage licenses.

I look around and feel alien. Tired. Like I missed a train everyone else caught, or maybe I was never invited to the station. People around me post pictures of weddings, kids, vacations, “success.” I sit with the weight of just surviving, and sometimes even that feels impossible.

The truth? I’m tired. Bone-deep tired. I’ve had days where I didn’t want to wake up. Days where I felt like checking out would be easier than dragging myself through one more empty cycle of eat-sleep-repeat. I’ve thought, “what’s the point?” more times than I can count.

I didn’t ask for life. But life was handed to me like a debt I didn’t incur, and now I’m supposed to be grateful just for enduring it.

Still… Somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I told someone how I felt. And I wasn’t met with judgment. I wasn’t told to “cheer up” or “get over it.” I was just heard. And sometimes, that’s enough to get through another day. So maybe this blog isn’t a rallying cry or a solution. Maybe it’s just a flare shot into the dark for anyone else who feels this way. You’re not alone. You’re not a failure. And you don’t have to carry this on your own. I don’t know what comes next. I’m still here, and for now, that’s enough.

The Absurd Resistance: A Manifesto for the Broken, the Burning, and the Brave

We begin with a scream, not a sermon.

This world is absurd. A meat grinder dressed up in hashtags and mortgages. The powerful drink from golden chalices forged from your stolen hours. And yet, they smile. They tell you to smile.

We won’t.

We are the inheritors of Camus’ defiance, Cioran’s despair, and Schopenhauer’s doom. We have read the contract called “life” and chosen to laugh, weep, or set it on fire depending on the day.

We believe:

In truth so ugly it loops back into beauty.

In jokes that kill fascism and punch gods in the mouth.

In community, not coercion.

In mutual aid over mass delusion.

In death being certain, but dignity optional.

We reject:

The capitalist cult of progress.

The myth of meritocracy.

The domestication of rebellion.

The narcotic of false hope.

The lie that life is a gift when it’s often just a receipt.

Like Bill Hicks, we know it’s just a ride, but we’re the type to grab the wheel and steer it into a bank.

Like Doug Stanhope, we toast to the end while telling the truth nobody paid to hear.

Like Che Guevara, we are willing to fight. Not because we believe victory is guaranteed, but because surrender is spiritual suicide.

Like Malcolm X, we reject peace without justice, and kindness without teeth.

Like Kropotkin, we believe in solidarity. Not because it’s idealistic, but because it’s the only antidote to the poison of power.

Like Chomsky, we speak plainly and punch upward.

Like Ligotti, we write horror because we live in it. And like Stephen King, we turn the grotesque into gospel.

There is no exit. There is only refusal. Refusal to comply. Refusal to pretend. Refusal to become the product.

We are absurd. We are aware. We are armed with wit, rage, and community.

We will not “build a better world.” We will undermine the one they’ve built. In the ruins, maybe something human can finally grow. So laugh. Fight. Write. Feed people. Burn things. And when they ask what the hell you think you’re doing, tell them:

“I’m just imagining Sisyphus happy … and loading the next rock into a trebuchet.”

The Last One to Leave, Please Turn Off the Stars

The end began on a Tuesday, not with a bang, but a corporate memo. Subject line:

“Due to budgetary constraints, existence will be discontinued effective immediately.”

At first, no one noticed. Birds kept chirping. Influencers kept influencing. A man in Tallahassee still refused to return his library books.

Then came the second memo.

“This is not a drill. Earth is being decommissioned. Please gather all meaningful memories into a single shoebox. Label it clearly. Return to HR.”

No one knew where HR was, but rumors spread it was located inside a vending machine behind the moon. The vending machine offered two items:

1. A bag of Dust of What Could Have Been

2. The Answer (temporarily out of stock)

A philosopher named Dr. Linda Spoon attempted to rally humanity. She declared: “Omnicide is just suicide with a better view.” She received a standing ovation, then spontaneously combusted from the irony.

The whales voted to stay neutral.

The bees unionized and demanded severance pollen.

The cockroaches opened a jazz club called “The Fallout Lounge.”

Meanwhile, governments responded the only way they knew how: with committees. The United Nations formed the Final Task Force on All That Is (and Isn’t). Their final report read:

“We deeply regret to inform you that everything was a clerical error.”

Earth filed an appeal. It was denied on the grounds of insufficient vibes.

In a bunker beneath Antarctica, a man named Derek attempted to reboot existence using an old Nintendo console and a paperclip. He succeeded, but only in resurrecting Disco.

The skies filled with mirrored balls and Donna Summer.

The oceans turned into soda.

The dolphins began speaking in limericks.

In space, the Galactic Oversight Council convened.

“Who authorized this?”

“I thought you did.”

“No, I outsourced it to a freelance algorithm.”

“Oh god.”

“No, just Algorithm-7. God was laid off last quarter.”

They voted to cancel the universe’s trial period. Turns out, no one had upgraded to Premium.

As atoms began untangling like poorly made spaghetti, one child—unbothered—drew a smiley face in the dirt. The dirt began humming. The humming confused the laws of physics.

The universe paused.

Time asked Space, “Are we… still doing this?”

Space shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I was just here for the free gravity.”

And just before the final pixel flickered out, someone whispered:

“Maybe this was a screensaver.”

Then everything crashed to desktop.

The Existentially Moist Wish of Darlene Crumb

A friend of mine asked me to write a sequel to my last short story involving the genie. This is what I could come up with. I hope she enjoys it…

—

Darlene Crumb was a woman haunted by one, unrelenting truth: she was always a little bit damp. Not soaking wet. Not sweaty. Just perpetually… moist. Elbows. Neck. Behind the knees. The mystery persisted across climates, shampoos, and three failed marriages.

One Tuesday—because all the strangest things happen on Tuesdays—she wandered into the back of a defunct Payless Shoes, looking for nothing and finding everything.

There, underneath a pile of expired insoles and dusty Crocs, sat an antique humidifier. She plugged it in. It sparked. The fire alarm laughed. And then, in a cloud of grapefruit LaCroix mist, emerged the same genie. Hawaiian shirt. Aviators. Pursed lips of someone who had once dated an energy healer named “Blade.”

“You’ve summoned me,” he said. “One wish. No bartering. No do-overs. No wishing for more wishes unless you’re into recursive paradoxes.”

Darlene blinked, the condensation on her eyelashes catching the light like tragic disco balls.

“I want,” she said slowly, “to finally understand the universe. I want the truth. All of it.”

The genie’s brow did a little dance. “That’s the big one. Cosmic enlightenment. You sure?”

“Positive. I’ve been wet for 39 years and I think it’s related to everything.”

With a shrug and a snip-snap, the genie granted the wish.

Instantly, Darlene’s brain exploded—not physically, but conceptually. Her eyes dilated into portals of pure comprehension. She saw time as a Möbius strip braided into a cat’s cradle. She understood dark matter, gravity, and why bread always lands butter-side down.

She gasped.

“It’s all soup.”

Everything. Matter. Meaning. Morality. Relationships. Socks. Soup.

Existence was just soup, swirling in infinite flavors, none of them consistent, all of them burning the roof of your mouth if you tried too hard to enjoy them.

She wept.

Then laughed.

Then threw up alphabet pasta that spelled out THE VOID WAVES BACK.

For the next three weeks, Darlene became a guru. She wore bathrobes in public and answered all questions with the phrase, “Only the broth knows.” She gained a cult following among TikTok astrologers and people who read horoscopes ironically.

But her enlightenment began to curdle.

She couldn’t enjoy anything anymore. Romance? Soup. Art? Soup. Her favorite podcast? Two Blokes Talk Soup, suddenly too literal. She once screamed for 14 minutes in a Whole Foods because someone asked if she wanted bone broth.

Her moistness increased. Because, of course, what is soup, if not the ultimate damp?

Desperate, she found the genie again, this time running a hemp-scented vape bar called “Vaporwave Vespers.”

“You gave me enlightenment!” she hissed, dripping all over the floor. “Take it back!”

The genie looked up from his crossword. “‘Cosmic reversal’ isn’t in the contract. One wish per customer. Union rules.”

“But I’m unraveling!”

“You asked for the truth,” he said, handing her a complimentary kale-flavored vape pen. “Turns out the truth is kind of a wet noodle.”

Darlene now wanders the world wrapped in towels, whispering cryptic soup-based riddles to strangers in parking lots. Her cult disbanded after she declared celery “the key to death.” She exists beyond joy, beyond suffering, beyond dryness.

She knows the secrets of the universe.

And she deeply, deeply regrets it.

Moral? Never ask for everything. Especially from a genie who smells faintly of citrus and has strong opinions about ska music.