Who do you trust? Who do you believe in?

There’s a line of thinking that says there’s a great big difference between the People that think humans are basically ‘good’ and the People that think we are basically ‘evil’.

Smoke and Mirrors.

I say that ‘people’ writ large are self-interested. Whoever they define as their familial tribe run a more or less distant second. Everyone else is an astronomically distant third.

That’s how we got where we are.

When we settled and started to stockpile the riches of grain in granaries, it was so “our children will have a better life”, and we traded the god-given birthright of our rootless freedom for the delusional security of that promise, and gave all the power to Kings. Or No-Kings, it’s the same shit in the end.

People who are truly even a little bit selfless are rare and precious.

I value them. I don’t claim to be one of them.

My trauma tells me: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. So by and large, I do.

The NBA Scandal Gets So Much Worse

The Disturbing Truth Behind Frank Abagnale (Mr. Catch Me If You Can will go to his grave still scamming, and Tom Hanks will too)

Whatever Happened to Jared Fogle, the Subway Guy?

Roman Polanski, the very definition of the cinematic autuer, the summum bonum of the artist class. See also: Louis CK, and Kevin Spacey.

And yes, even Bill Burr. Even Dave Chappelle. Even the co-anchors and their hot takes about Riyadh, which takes, both wrong by the way, illustrate my point better than any of the rest of this.

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Noam Chomsky, back in the COVID days. All provably wrong now, and absolutely motivated in retrospect not by the gospel of Science or the Common Good, but by self-interest of various shaded flavors.

Even me.

I’m doing this for the clicks, you know.

It’s not really going well. That’s why I sound bitter sometimes.