When all the Granny Racism’s Fried Dough chains have finally closed, that is when communism has won apparently. Wow, that was easy. All we had to do to get socialism in America is attempt to stop a deadly pandemic with basic sanitation and social distancing. But you see, anything that tells you what to do, even if to save your stupid shitty life, is communism. Everything we don’t like is communism. Needing to breathe air? Pinko bullshit, gonna hold our breath until we turn as blue as the fucking flag of the U S A!
At least it is if your brain is a single dried neuron that can only remember like 5 words. That handful of phrases are “freedom” “tyranny”, “communism”, “liberty” and “Trump”. If you put all of these in a mental blender and hit frappe, you’ll get the anti–stay–at–home protests that magically and completely organically popped up last week.
This is a suicidal death drive that vomits straight out of American conservatism’s pie hole. It’s not even about freedom or liberty, those are buzzwords that signify “anything I like”, which if more often than not to be ugly consumerist garbage. Communism is anything and anyone they don’t like, because the conservative mind has been perfectly flattened into a sheet of paper with “good” and “bad” columns. America has completely failed in its governmental response to this pandemic, and a protest that’s more like a tantrum in a country with over 750,000 confirmed cases are the actions of mental children. “We want it now! Gimme gimme gimme!”
That’s what you get with an ideology of individual greed: lonely, disconnected people with no solidarity demanding their treats. “Open up the economy”, meaning let them go back to their mindless consumerist lifestyle of fried chicken joints and Amazon dildos. State’s rights except when they don’t like them. This is all fake. This all not real. Nothing is real because nothing matters.
Everything is communism. Something that is modestly telling us what to do, even for our own safety, is communism. Traffic lights are communism. Chinese propaganda! We’re too soft on China. China bad, China very bad! Bad virus came from China! China Chinese China! China communism! China bad communism! But China make my treats! But China bad! WHAT DO?!!!! BAD PEOPLE TELL ME NO ECONOMY! MUST ECONOMY! LINE GO DOWN!!!!!
Thankfully, GI Joe is here to save us:
They look very cute in their little dress-up, don’t they? Are you guys the Call of Duty? They’re more likely to shoot their families and then themselves than topple any tyranny. That or just liberate a big ol’ group of people from being alive. Dead… but FREE FROM TAXES!
American conservatives have a perverse and upside down view on control. Despite the incoherence and the brain death, there’s a twisted logic that makes sense as long as you remember conservatism is about individual power regardless of principles. Liberal logic is “everything is fine as long as it looks fine”, conservative logic is “fuck you”.
Cops are good, except when they tell John Belch III that he can’t sell tiny boats in Parma during a global pandemic. Troops are good, except when they help hand out food to the undeserving. States are good, except when we’re asked quite nicely to not infect 750,000 more people.
Any control they can employ is good, any request to change their behavior is bad. Anything that stops them from shopping is communism. They so desperately wanted a great struggle, some battle for civilization, they’re willing to wage it against themselves. Why, you ask? Doesn’t matter, who gives a shit, because this is not about changing anything or confronting actual power. This is existential anxiety. This is about pissing and moaning they can’t waddle about the mall. To them, the economy is an abstract thing, a line that goes up or down, something that other people do, but they reap the benefits by being able to buy t-shirts that say USA on them, manufactured in China.
“Reopening the economy” is a phrase that is portrayed as neutral, as if the economy is closed arbitrarily. It’s a concept that’s been adopted as something unassuming, even obvious, and not a dangerous way to thrust lowly paid wage workers back into the petri dish so this guy doesn’t have to buy 2 iced teas.
A shining ray of hope I can see now is that the forces of evil right now are also the forces of stupid and lazy. Hey, did you know that gullible is written on your ceiling?
Since conservative America operates within a pretend media narrative, it can be swept aside by people with actual working class power just as easily. The majority opinion of the anti-social distancing protests is bewilderment followed by sincere annoyance. How we rebuild after this is being governed by the powerful realization the system is as fragile as the socialist left has always said it was.
Counter-protesters have shown up to the ridiculous displays to stop the Ultra Karens in their obnoxious SUV’s. This woman, holding a handmade sign that says LAND (of the) FREE, screams at a healthcare worker blocking the road.
Gun-toting, cop-worshipping revolutionary cosplayers on the right operate with a nakedly transparent playbook. The truth is that a small crowd of astroturfed, barely coherent lunatics demanding a pandemic continue to keep Applebee’s alive: 25% of their own party is all they can muster in terms of popular support. They don’t want the economy to open up, they want all the plebs to go back to work and put themselves at risk for conservative screechers to have another buffet plate of mac and cheese.
This is the drive-thru version of protesting, a fast food combo meal of politics, and what they’re protesting is their right as a LAND (of the) FREE American to buy another big screen TV or a pure-bred dog that pisses nothing but blood. God bless America!
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.