deerhoof

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The Bio Fantasy Tours

musings, anecdotes, hot takes, relevant documents, and glib generalities

• 10 Feb, 2026 ???

  this system seems to think that if it keeps creating new controversies, atrocities, and escalations, that i’ll forget about the old ones

  ???

  you’re not going to convince me that raping children on epstein island is bad but killing them in gaza is ok

  i’m not trying to have my every moral standard annihilated by career politicians and corporate media

  ???

  if a politician rapes or kills children, that’s all i need to know about them

  no way they can possibly represent me, or make laws for me to follow that aren’t a joke

  ???

  i’m not impressed if a lawmaker criticizes ice but doesn't lift a finger to stop it

  i don't think that democrats helping republicans to triple ice's funding is going to reduce ice violence even if a puerto rican plays at the super bowl

  ???

  schumer, harris, newsom, jeffries, their whole corrupt party apparatus and media operatives want me to believe that certain genocides are ok

  ???

  isn’t it funny how the government offers so many gory details of their past violence and sex crimes on epstein island

  but no gory details on their current violence and sex crimes in palestine

  ???

  i’m told it’s unrealistic to ask lawmakers and businesses to take actual action to stop genocide or ice

  but it is realistic to give votes and money to lawmakers and businesses who support genocide and ice, and then expect them to turn around and change their minds once in power or wealth

  ???

  it’s not like democrats and republicans don’t realize how hellishly far to the right they are of most americans on all the major existential issues facing humanity, whether it’s ice, policing, war, genocide, fossil fuels, healthcare, minimum wage, wall st, a.i.

  it’s not like they’re about to figure it out, if only we would just go easy on them

  ???

  human trafficking and genocide were basic to the country’s success and still are

  money is king and life is disposable

  meanwhile power wants you obsessed with a few paid actors playing “bad apples”

  and totally ignorant of the depraved system they epitomize

  ???

  power is not afraid of public anger as long as it’s disorganized or channeled into the super bowl and the public thinks that this will have any affect on policy

  obviously power knows how to monetize anger and is doing so very profitably

  ???

  this system can withstand tremendous amounts of hate

  obsessing over every utterance of the attention whore in the white house did not make him less powerful

  it gave him free publicity and got him elected

  ???

  each new scandal is a test to see how much this system can get away with

  this system is designed to handle tremendous waves of anger and hate, as long as they don’t disrupt the operation of the system

  keep scrolling, keep arguing amongst ourselves, keep buying from corporations and voting for duopoly

  meanwhile policies keep moving to the right year after year

  ???

  one advantage of creating public anger, panic and confusion is it keeps the public perpetually glued to electronic screens, waiting in suspense for politicians and corporations to provide them with answers they never give

  ???

  another advantage of creating public anger, panic and confusion is that it makes public violence more likely, which helps create a pretext for profitable arrests or murders

  ???

  what power fears most is a public that’s savvy enough to see through their propaganda techniques, can remember things powerful people have done before the latest scandal, and can synthesize randomly shocking headlines into a logical narrative, and who takes matters into their own hands

  !!!

• 30 Jan, 2026 nationwide general strike tomorrow

  The new Democrat announcement proposing minor modifications to the ICE funding bill seems to me to be cleverly timed. If you were terrified of a general strike and wanted to discourage it, would this not be the usual way? Do not fall for it.

  The corporate sector is apparently also terrified of a general strike. They're having the media they own report that the Democrats' proposal represents a "major overhaul" of ICE. It is nothing if the kind. This is an ICE funding increase. What we are seeing from our feeble ruling class "opposition" is not a critique of unaccountable murder or kidnapping, but simply a pathetic attempt to temporarily pacify the growing resistance to what is by any reasonable definition a declaration of war on the American population by its government.

  Democrats now proposing that ICE adopt a "code of conduct" similar to that of the police are not just indulging in extraordinary vagueness. They are proposing to model ICE on the worst, most violent, most overfunded, most vehemently protested, least accountable entity imaginable. Democrats would apparently like ICE's 9 victims in 2026 to have a lot more company, since in this same time period the police have managed to murder 71.

  Is it really that hard to imagine what another ICE funding increase will actually look like on the ground? Or to conjure mental pictures of all the atrocities this Democratic proposal will do nothing to prevent? It's not like world history has never seen state repression get escalated before. If this bill passes, it's fair to expect the level and frequency of legalized, normalized violence to rise, not fall. To expect already clown-like officials to become even more cavalier in their disregard for plausibility when they do their post-murder press conferences.

  At what point do we expect tanks, battering rams and guided missiles to be brought into the mix? When will we start seeing AI-generated abduction lists? At what point can we expect rape to be legalized at our detention centers? At what point do mayors and governments begin crying for help from the military to quell angry demonstrators? When might the Democratic party remove objection to torture from their party platform? In fact this has all already happened. Or is happening. Such realities will simply be escalated.

  Picture a month from now and there's been no systemic change to the way our country's police state operates. Picture a year from now. Two years. As violence escalates, Democrats and Republicans will call for more arbitrary rules governing the possession of weapons. The use of cameras. The uttering of certain dangerous phrases or languages. More arbitrary rules about what one can say on social media, or in private communications. More arbitrary rules about observing or reporting violence. More arbitrary clampdowns on public assemblies.

  We're already seeing Democrats not only approve but celebrate the deployment of American "lethality" against what they call "terrorists." We're seeing the definition of this word expand to include such destroyers of society as doctors, nurses, teachers, press, and aid workers. The term is now applied to people who don't comply quickly enough with orders from agents pointing rifles in their face. It is applied to people who are present when agents become scared.

  We're already seeing our population, hooked on capitalist escapism, turn again and again to billionaire-owned corporations to provide them with pre-packaged political opinions, while voices that speak truth to power get swallowed up, go out of business, go into hiding, or become victims of the police state. Truth becomes a low priority, compared to demonstration of naked power, and the creation of endless confusion and fatigue.

  There's nothing in the Democrats' proposal that allows doctors on the scene to treat the people ICE has just shot. Suppose next week ICE agents tell a doctor that he's not authorized to save the life of a person bleeding to death from an ICE bullet, but the doctor tries anyway? I'm sure we can easily picture the probable result.

  There is nothing in the language of the Democrats' proposal that will prevent the grounds for assassination to switch from resisting arrest to simply holding a camera. Nothing to prevent trigger-happy new hires from restraining themselves when they encounter languages, keffiyehs, haircuts or piercings that make them feel nervous. Nothing to prevent standard ICE operating procedure escalating from tackling persons and then shooting, to just becoming snipers and skip the tackling.

  Democrats will continue to playact at opposing what they are now calling "Trump's ICE," while continuing to fill the coffers of what is truthfully a bipartisan creation. They will use the population's theoretically constitutionally protected protests as a pretext for beefing up police, National Guard, the FBI. Public opinion will be rechristened "unrest" and meet with coordinated attacks, just as it has under every president in my adult life.

  If Republicans indulging in any level of racism and insanity that springs to their minds, under threat of government shutdown, being met halfway again and again by a party selling itself in press conferences and fundraising emails as the "resistance," is working for anyone out there, let that person opt out of tomorrow's general strike, and bring their cardboard Cory Booker signs to the next No Kings parade. For everyone else, let's continue the real resistance that's been started, and is beginning to damage the sustainability and profitability of ICE. No work, no shopping, no school tomorrow!

• 28 Jan, 2026 good immigrants and bad immigrants

  The notion that there are "good" immigrants or people of color who deserve rights, and "bad" immigrants or people of color who deserve mass incarceration and other state violence, has its roots in the Clinton years. in the early 90s this sorting of human beings into desirable and undesirable categories was part of a vague rhetorical strategy used by Democrats to garner votes, but has since grown into the ideological pretext for the arbitrary, fully militarized police state we have today.

  I remember nervous white voters asking candidate Clinton whether rap music was destroying our society. Instead of giving the correct answer ("no"), Clinton said it depended on whether the song had a happy ending, one that reinforced whatever he deemed to be proper moral values. (Yes same Bill Clinton whose moral values include sex trafficking of underage girls.) Millions of white parents breathed a sigh of relief and put him in the white house, dubbed him "the first black president," and made him fabulously rich.

  Fast forward to today. Democratic and media "opposition" complain that ICE is erroneously going after the “good guys.” Although ICE has killed nine people in 2026, this “opposition” has mysteriously focused their sorrow almost exclusively on the two white ones. Meanwhile Democrats express open gratitude towards other arms of the unaccountable police state, including the police, who have murdered at least 71 people in 2026, far outnumbering ICE’s bodycount.

  Democrats have taken to describing ICE as “Trump’s ICE,” as though no one was detained, deported, murdered, or separated from their families under Democratic administrations. This narrative that it’s a supreme outrage when Trump’s ICE murders a white person, but not particularly an outrage when ICE or any other arm of Trump’s, Biden’s, or Obama’s police state murders someone black or brown, is exactly what it sounds like: vile racism. A trashing of human life.

  Rather than ever proposing to abolish ICE or even reduce its funding, Democrats absurdly suggest that we owe it more money. They propose that this will be used for additional training to guide agents towards making "better" snap decisions about whom to tackle, pepper spray, abduct, or assassinate without trial. Notice how these Democrats aren't questioning the morality or logic of the atrocities themselves. Nor questioning why the administrators of civil cases would need to be armed in the first place. Nor spelling out any clear grounds for how anyone could possibly “deserve” such violence without a trial.

  Democrats are also suggesting that we owe ICE more money to buy them bodycams. This trick goes back to the Obama years. Police were desperate for bodycams to enhance their own surveillance of targeted populations, but were unable to get it passed until Obama collaborated with them to swindle the public into believing it was a “reform.” It was also under Obama that the use of special Pentagon programs facilitating the transfer of military weapons to domestic security forces was massively accelerated. The predictable result of these policies was an increase in police murders.

  Americans right now are in no mood to have their dissent quelled by ice, the national guard, or the police, deployed by politicians of any party. And registered Democrats in particular are in no mood to listen to their elected representatives say they oppose Trump, then turn around and line up with his worst policies: overfunding and militarizing the police state, overfunding the Pentagon, and funding genocide, while bringing ordinary people to financial ruin in the process.

  Leaked memos prove what everyone can already plainly see: ice's actions have little to do with immigration, everything to do with profit and politics. Capitalists of either party love immigration, especially undocumented immigration. It means they can pay people illegal starvation wages. But only if those people are terrified of asking for more. Thus we have ICE.

  This is the same war it's always been in this country: keeping people of color and the left subservient. From day one it's been waged by our two capitalist parties, who don’t want their economic system disrupted, and don’t want any non-capitalist parties coming along. Of course the two parties sell it as a war of “Republicans against Democrats.” Many witless ICE agents seem to believe that they're "owning the libs." But the generals of this war know perfectly well who and what they’re protecting.

  Why would the country’s ruling class want to wage a war against their own left and people of color? For the same reason they wage wars abroad, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to Venezuela to Palestine. For the same reason they targeted the Black Panthers or the anti-genocide movement at home. To remove from circulation those "bad influences" who inconvenience the capitalist status quo. They do this over and over and over, by military invasions, by abductions, by long haul prison sentences, by deportations, by starvation, or by assassinations.

  Since the days of the first Venetian capitalists plundering Asia for spices, capitalism has required an underclass in order to operate. the white Europeans who first imposed capitalism upon humanity, and the white North Americans who still uphold it like a religion, have always used skin color and political dissent as handy excuses for perpetually consigning certain populations to this underclass -- though always with high-profile exceptions for those who overcome the odds and “deserve” their graduation from a permanent underclass that no humane society would even allow to exist.

  As the capitalist class now degrades the planet and the social safety net to the extent that masses of human beings now find themselves in unlivable conditions -- and as the capitalist class finds it increasingly difficult to continue boosting profit margins without investing in mass death -- the capitalist class is beginning to find it expedient to criminalize the survival instinct itself. Thus flinching or trying to get away when a gun gets pointed in your face is now a capital crime. Migration from a place that has been rendered uninhabitable is now a capital crime.

  Our capitalist duopoly has created a kind of apartheid. Different sets of rules govern whether one is permitted the luxury of a survival instinct. One set of rules for the ownership class itself, who live in fabulous wealth, power, fame, and Epstein hot tubs. Another for their militarized agents, permitted any atrocity as long as they can say they got nervous. Another for the precariously protected class of mostly white people whom the system deems bootlicking stooges enough to let live. And one for the growing humber of people whom the system suspects might have cause to take issue with the racialized, militarized capitalist system itself. The right to self-defense does not apply to this group.

  This racial profiling so universal to U.S. law enforcement is ironic proof that capitalists and their armed agents are fully aware of the fundamental injustice of our society. They get jumpy around those demographic groups that are more likely to have had firsthand experience of the poverty that capitalism demands of some portion of its subjects. ICE and the rest of the U.S. police state is a mechanism to legally turn white nervousness into “justified” murder.

  The term “necrocapitalism” describes an economic system which prioritizes continuous profit growth for the ownership class, but requires increasing amounts of mass death for the system to sustain itself. Necrocapitalism is epitomized by the U.S. When possible, the media arm of the ownership class ignores mass death (e.g. not reporting on global warming), but when forced to acknowledge it, will find ways of framing the mass death as “deserved,” by employing words like “war,” “terrorist,” “criminal,” “undocumented,” “no angel,” etc.

  Democrats are the normalizers of necrocapitalism. Republicans, with fear as their goal, tend to make more of a gladiatorial spectacle of mass death. But Democrats prefer to hide it behind technocratic “imperatives.” They invoke their “fiduciary responsibility” to fund the military industrial complex, or the police state, or border violence, or fossil fuel/big pharma/big tech, or handouts to Wall St, or genocides. They prefer that the population “leave it to the experts” and go to brunch, and many of their biggest cheerleaders are happy to do just that.

  Democrats and Republicans both now adhere to necrocapitalism on principle. Necrocapitalists like RFK Jr move freely and indifferently between the two, devising money-saving schemes for the the liquidation of additional human beings. Trump’s Border Czar Thomas Homan was first hired by Obama, who awarded him the highest civil service award in the U.S. for his extraordinary deportation numbers, helping Obama turn ICE from a fledgling agency into a nationwide network of detention centers, expanding it from 14 counties to every county in the U.S., and increasing its funding 300%.

  This utter devaluation of human life is exactly what billionaires, and their employees in both parties of government, hope to normalize and turn into mere background noise. It hardly matters if this or that wealthy or powerful individual behaves in an overtly racist manner in their personal day-to-day. These worshipers of capitalism know that to keep the profit machine running, some must be sacrificed. so Democrats and Republicans spend stupendous sums of your money and time constructing false narratives meant to guide public opinion towards learning to tolerate growing amounts of mass unnecessary death.

  Like all empires, ours has had its run. The exciting rise, the memorable peak, the sorrowful decline. It has now entered its final stages, a cesspool of ruin, decay, depravity and violence. Its subjects have understandably had enough.

• 27 Jan, 2026 nationwide general strike friday january 30

  I would like to now take a moment to acknowledge, validate and appreciate the American anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-fascist left!

  No large political group in recent U.S. history has been so mercilessly beaten down. It struggles along with no major party to represent it, and with two exceedingly well-resourced pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist, pro-war parties attacking it continuously. It’s underrepresented, derided and ignored nonstop by the corporate media. This remains true year after year, even though it is this very same left that consistently turns out to be correct in all its predictions, and voices the opinions and calls for the tactics that eventually become mainstream.

  I also want to validate the various roles that make up the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-fascist left. This group is comprised of politicians, artists, reporters, caretakers, and diplomats. This may surprise some people but I actually believe there is a crucial place for all types of roles within the left, including people who are skilled at negotiating and compromising with power in a non-threatening way.

  But I also think there is a critical role for us artists. Our role is not to be non-threatening. Our role is to tell it like it is, sometimes stridently. To access feelings and raise questions that are uncomfortable, even painful. To be willing to ruffle feathers and take risks. That's the life we chose and the artists I know are cut out for it.

  Artists are part of the vanguard. The vanguard role isn't better than other roles. They simply have a different, equally valid role, as do the diplomats, reporters, caretakers, and at this point in our history, even the politicians. A winning strategy requires that the various roles work together. It may even be possible to switch roles sometimes. But each of these roles can become meaningless without relying on the others.

  There is a NATIONWIDE GENERAL STRIKE on Friday. No school, no shopping, no work. It is being called an ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA strike and a JUSTICE FOR GOOD AND PRETTI strike, and rightly so. But more importantly, it’s an ABOLISH ICE strike. Workers are the only reason this country has an economy, and we are shutting this economy down until the billionaires and politicians that support and deploy this unaccountable militarized violence against the working class are forced to back down.

  The more people who take this opportunity to say that the strike won't have any effect, the less effect it will have. The diplomats and negotiators and compromisers and politicians will not even be forced to the table unless the vanguard takes this crucial step first, in enormous numbers, to make the threat credible.

  As Minnesota’s one day general strike has led to Friday’s nationwide general strike, Friday’s will almost definitely lead to a more extended general strike. ICE must be abolished. Right now it is literally almost half of the country that agrees, and that number is growing, not shrinking.

  There are parts of our immigration bureaucracy that we need to not abolish. For example, the processing of asylum. At the moment this process is ridiculously slow and completely racist. The largest number of Visa overstay violations in the U.S. is by Canadians, but the "strengthen our border" crowd never seems to care about that. ICE needs to be replaced with an agency that is not only humane, but faces basic reality: mass human migration, necessitated by sections of our planet becoming uninhabitable due to climate, war, or political repression.

  The aspects of our bureaucracy that need to be abolished immediately are the militarized agents spreading terror and targeting low-wage, left, Black and Brown people disproportionately. With agents allowed to commit murder without any consequences. All of which are astronomically remunerative to a few profiteers. All of which is done to suppress wages and worker organizing, and prevent revolution. This aspect includes ICE but also includes the police, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Guard.

  In the next few days we will all be better informed if we don’t listen to a word that Trump, or ICE officials giving press conferences, have to say. And here are few common tricks to watch out for from our Democrat politicians and their operatives as well:

  Expressing sorrow about the two murders without supporting the General Strike.

  Saying that the ABOLISH ICE position is “political kryptonite” when 8 in 10 registered Democratic voters support abolition.

  Suggesting that increasing ICE funding by buying them body cams or more training will lower the rate of atrocities.

  Using terms like "Trump's ICE" to imply that under Biden or Obama, ICE did not murder, deport, or detain immigrants, and did not separate families and terrorize communities.

  Calling for National Guard or police without clarifying if they are being called to oppose ICE (highly unlikely) or quell protests (very likely).

  Falsely claiming that Democratic Senators are powerless to oppose or stall a DHS funding increase.

  Expressing pity for murder victims without acknowledging their own role in enabling the murders.

  Giving too much airtime or credulity to statements made by Trump or ICE officials.

  The Democratic party has hit a historic crossroads, and are clearly conflicted about which way to go. Either they start representing their voters on the biggest controversies of the past several years (ICE, Gaza, and police brutality) and become the anti-fascist opposition they claim to be in their marketing materials, or they cave in to the mega-donors threatening to terminate their political careers, and line up behind Trump, driving the final nail into the coffin of the party's viability.

• 25 Jan, 2026 To anyone who has said “We need to strengthen our borders”

  To anyone who has said “We need to strengthen our borders,” this is what strengthening our borders looks like. We already had ICE, it was already murdering people, it was already separating families, it was already getting stupendous amounts of money and weapons. What you’re seeing now is that, but “strengthened.”

  Those who’ve called for “strengthening our borders” unfortunately include most prominent Democrat politicians, and many of their followers. ICE was formed under Bush and has been “strengthened” by every administration since. Why take all that taxpayer money to buy them weapons and then act shocked when they get used? It’s time to put pressure on such “strengthen our borders” champions to explain exactly what they mean by that phrase, if not this.

  Most Americans want the violence stopped, but unfortunately are operating at a huge disadvantage. The institutions and frameworks that would normally help organize the necessary mass actions, like a nationwide general strike, have all been pulverized in their country. By Democrats and Republicans. They have no strong third parties, their labor unions are comparatively weak. They can’t go crying to the U.N. or invoke international law, which both of their parties have methodically degraded.

  The U.S. doesn’t have third parties mostly because Democratic politicians and their followers have worked so hard, for as long as any Americans can remember, to make sure that no third party ever is ever allowed to develop any strength. And now that they need it, it’s not there.

  They can’t invoke the concept of crimes against humanity, because international bodies and norms were obliterated in front of everyone’s eyes by Biden/Harris and the Democrat-controlled Congress, via their Palestine policies and their violent crackdown policies. The rest of the world is not as propagandized as Americans and can easily see through the ridiculous pleas of “This is all Trump’s fault! This is not America!”

  We all saw how many people showed up in Minneapolis, and that they then immediately suffered another murder the very next morning. We see that the House of Representatives has just passed another funding increase for ICE, with the help of just enough Democrat votes. Anyone else getting tired of the amazing coincidence that just enough Democrats always seem to be magically on hand whenever some particularly monstrous Republican bill is in danger of not passing?

  The American population is opposed to unaccountable police state violence. That’s not a theory. But clearly panic and parades alone, no matter the size, are not going to be enough to defeat the police state or convince politicians to change any policies. Boycotts, strikes, lawsuits and civil disobedience need to be expanded. Street tactics need to be learned from those who have experienced state repression firsthand.

  The left, people of color, and immigrant communities have been predicting all of this in detail. They were the first to caution Americans about the relevant lessons from history. They warned repeatedly that the lowered moral standards and new weapons technologies being tested in Gaza would end up getting deployed at home. They warned repeatedly that Democrats saying that war crimes are now OK would embolden Trump to start from Biden’s level and step it up from there.

  If Americans actually want to defeat ICE and not just complain about it, it’s absolutely crucial they delegitimize Democratic politicians, by name, who are attempting to pacify them right now with witless, counterproductive, illogical policies that are making it worse. And instead empower the people and apparatuses that actually intend to abolish ICE. The U.S. has to listen to its left, and start following the lead of those targeted communities who have long resisted and survived similar violence here and in other countries.

  It’s the usual cheerleaders for the Democratic party who should right now be the loudest critics of the preposterous mistakes the party has been making. Anti-democratic lawmakers like Gavin Newsom or Cory Booker are taking this historic moment, in which voters are so clearly and loudly expressing their opinions about ICE, and using it to say that we actually all owe ICE more money, to buy more training and bodycams. Such people are cementing the party’s fate as one that can never be trusted, and never win, again.

  These ICE officers do not need more training. The agency needs to not exist. The assassin who killed Renee Good, and whom the government decided to let go scot-free, is an eighteen-year ICE veteran. He was actually an ICE trainer himself. He behaved exactly how the U.S. military trained him to behave, and will experience no consequences from the government that hired him.

  It’s not just about putting one or two shooters in prison. It’s not even just about ICE. It’s about the entire violent, repressive, unnecessary, illogical, and ridiculously expensive systems of U.S. border control, policing, and military. Much of which exists out of sight, in countries from which Democrats and Republicans want to discourage immigration, usually ones whose economies those same politicians are deliberately destroying with sanctions. (Remember Kamala Harris's "Do Not Come" campaign.)

  Democratic and Republican leaders keep “strengthening” ICE, police, prisons, detention centers, and arms deals because they are scared of revolution, and because it’s profitable. The U.S. economy has been increasingly propped up on the military industrial complex since Eisenhower warned of it in 1961.

  ICE, the Pentagon, prisons, detention centers, arms manufacturers, AI weapons, and all the state systems of violence are so profitable right now that even Big Tech billionaires are starting to bet on it. The military, policing and detention industrial complex needs to be made unprofitable. That’s what boycotts, lawsuits, and a national general strike are all about. Asking nicely has only resulted in funding increases.

  There is hope. It’s really kind of amazing that even in the most capitalist country ever to exist in world history, where every person is taught from birth that this relatively new economic system, with all of its violence and injustice, is the only possible system to organize human beings; where capitalist-owned media has such an intense lockdown on the showing of alternatives; that such a large percentage of Americans are now entertaining the idea of, if not not outright calling for, the dismantling of capitalism, and its replacement by something more sane and sustainable, and less violent.

• 21 Jan, 2026 general strike minnesota january 23

  Those looking for a positive example of how to resist government violence need look no further right now than Minnesota. According to friends in Minneapolis, labor and political action and mutual aid groups are pulling together in a massive way to organize a real, material opposition to ICE and their cruelty. Everything is shutting down this Friday. No work, no school, no shopping. General strike.

  However nervous you may feel right now, rest assured that ICE, and the billionaire-owned corporations that support them, and the political duopoly that created them and provides them with weapons, are many times moreso. No one is more acutely aware than they are that they’ve been methodically crafting the perfect conditions for a revolution.

  The 1% and ruling class duopoly will do just about anything to prevent a revolution. I say “just about” because history has repeatedly shown that they typically stop short of actually improving the material conditions of the population. Why bother with that when they can simply give more money and weapons to ICE and the police? They can simply threaten you with extreme violence, and if you make the mistake of thinking that no threat that hideous could actually be in earnest, they start making good on it.

  The ruling class are gamblers by trade, and their favorite, most exciting wager is that everyone on Earth will be too scared, too distracted, too overworked or too disorganized to do anything with their outrage other than roll their eyes and suffer. And maybe vote for their favorite serial killer once every four years. And certainly they take steps every day to try and make sure. But just in case something changes, they do have a backup plan: Spy on everyone with the enormous surveillance infrastructure that Big Tech has convinced everyone to buy, and develop and test systems of Big Tech-assisted mass murder.

  If revolutionary activity were to break out, as in fact it does frequently but fitfully, the 1% and ruling class duopoly fervently hope it will include what they deem “violence” or “crime.” These vague but useful terms do not apply to anything they do of course, no matter that they use actual bullets and bombs to commit war crimes that actually kill large numbers of actual human beings. It however does apply, and severely, to someone who slows down car traffic, or breaks an insured window at Starbucks. That’s just the excuse they’ve been waiting for to begin their all-out militarized assaults.

  Justice for Renee Good will hardly be achieved by focusing only on the individual man who pulled the trigger, who under the current system would simply be replaced by another man with another trigger. What this situation calls for is justice focused on the corporations that give material assistance to ICE terrorism, and on the lawmakers who gave him that gun and told him, “You may pull the trigger without consequences.”

  There's not as much substantive or conceptual difference as it might seem between making the taxpayer fund ICE, making them fund the police, making them fund the military, making them fund foreign militaries committing genocide, and making them subsidize weapons billionaires. They all demonstrate “lethality,” they’re all terrific ways to test out new weapons systems on one population that can then be deployed upon others, and they all decrease the taxpayer’s chances of survival or happiness while increasing corporate profits.

  What kind of person do you have to be to provide support or increase funding to ICE, knowing full well that ICE can and does and will kill with impunity? To provide support or increase funding to Israel, knowing full well that Israel is committing genocide? To provide weapons or increase funding to the US military, knowing full well their bodycount and their plans for more illegal invasions? I would describe such a person as a murderer. A mass murderer. A serial killer. Bringing a policy into being that you know will lead to mass death is just as much the premeditated kind as pulling the trigger yourself.

  What kind of person do you have to be to continue to simultaneously prevent billionaires from paying taxes, while opting not to raise minimum wage, and thereby suppress everyone’s wages? To choose to allow energy companies and healthcare to be operated for the benefit of profiteers instead of public wellbeing, knowing that all of these policies are mathematically assured to cause the deaths of massive numbers of persons? To allow record homelessness and hunger in your own country? You would have to be a murderer.

  What kind of person do you have to be to implement sanctions on poorer countries, in an attempt to make their populations so miserable and desperate from mass starvation or physical danger, that they will submit to any terms from the US ruling class, no matter how exploitative? A murderer. And this is exactly what that same ruling class is doing now in their own country. Sanctioning the USA, threatening them, crushing them with debt, trying to get them to bow down.

  What we are seeing from our rulers, billionaires, and their media cheerleaders right now is of course not a genuine effort at the total deportation of immigrants, or anything close to it. That’s the sales pitch to gullible, racist recruits. This is an effort at suppressing independent thought and suppressing wages. Threaten low-paid workers, especially Black and Brown immigrants, with possible detainment, deportation or murder if they dare criticize the government, start a union, or organize a political group calling for justice, peace, or systemic change.

  To hear our elected leaders and their media cheerleaders tell it, going unarmed into the vicinity of their militarized agents, whose salary one pays with one’s taxes, is a cowardly act, and any fool who does so deserves whatever grisly fate befalls them. According to such exalted arbiters, it’s the officers carrying rifles and killing with impunity that are brave, and who actually deserve our thanks, praises, and more of our money to get more training and bodycams. And of course bravest of all are the lawmakers themselves, making all those tough emotional choices, like allowing their constituents to be murdered in cold blood, while sitting in safety, comfort and affluence.

  We’ve all watched enough TV to know that not everyone who "seems nice” is the genuine article. Think of the classic abuser or cult-leader archetype, and how often they come across as a friendly or charismatic savior at first. I recommend keeping this in mind when evaluating corporations, politicians, and other media personalities. I recommend adopting evidence-based criteria, such as whether they support genocide or ICE, rather than waiting to be won over by entertainment value or personal charm.

  The argument that “yes, he or she may be pro-ICE and pro-genocide, but they have some other good policies” is no longer convincing to anyone but the most affluent and comfortable. If a politician or CEO has already demonstrated that they are comfortable committing murder, it doesn’t much matter how charismatic they are while they’re doing it. Someone capable of operating on the principle that Black, Brown or dissident lives have less value can no longer be trusted with life and death decisions.

  Once you hear your voice telling your friends that they have no choice but to vote for or buy from this serial killer because they're not as bad as that serial killer, you know you’ve already lost the debate. And this losing strategy only mirrors and enables the nauseating internal dialogue of the killers themselves: “Maybe I can get away with committing mass murder, because my mass murder won't be as bad as theirs.”

  I personally believe it’s possible to for a murderer, rapist, or torturer to reform themselves and re-earn the personal trust and forgiveness of their friends and family. But they should never again be allowed to hold public office, run a large company, or carry any other weapon. This is doubly true if the killing, raping or torturing they are doing is still underway.

  Nothing about the ruling class’s current atrocious behavior is actually a surprise. Trump spelled this all out in some detail in his campaign platform. It follows in a hallowed tradition of American racism, violence, and capitalism. Laws, norms, and institutions governing state violence have been methodically and publicly pulverized by both parties, and by the billionaire class that profits from the resulting crimes.

  Democrats claiming to be shocked right now are not fooling anybody. They understood the electoral stakes just as much as anyone else with access to a newspaper or website, and chose to run pro-ICE, pro-genocide, pro-billionaire, pro-lethality candidates anyway, in full knowledge that most Americans do not enjoy voting for monsters. Perhaps it’s unfair to say that Democrats don’t care about the electoral results. Individual Democrats probably do feel down in the dumps when they lose. They probably go for melancholy walks in the woods. But they well understand: not offending billionaire donors is the higher priority.

  The price of running a political campaign in the U.S. has been deliberately inflated by corporate price-gouging, just like the price of concert tickets or groceries. It’s been forced so high by insane donations from the super-wealthy, trying to raise the bar of entry, wishing to permit only those politicians willing to do their bidding, or who are super-wealthy themselves.

  While it’s true that our current political system has been carefully designed to prevent us from being able to simply vote ourselves out of this disaster, we don’t need to make our situation worse by legitimizing politicians like Harris, Newsom, Booker, Jeffries or Schumer, who are explicitly pro-ICE, pro-billionaire, or genocide deniers. We can support their progressive or independent or third party challengers instead. And we can stop doing business with ICE-supporting companies like Amazon, Palantir, Dell, UPS, FedEx, Motorola, Comcast, AT&T, Home Depot, and Target. We can support or take part in strikes, lawsuits, political action groups, and community aid groups.

• 18 Jan, 2026 YOU ARE CORRECT TO SEE THAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS NOT RESISTING FASCISM

  It's amazing that Democrats think anyone will fall for "What ICE really needs is bodycams and more money." What happened when they did the same thing with police? Police murders went up.

  Bodycams, whether they are attached to police or to ICE, are an easy way for our expanding police state to gather more video of the people and populations that they are targeting.

  Tim Walz is incorrect to say that taking video of ICE is Americans' best tool to resist. ICE loves it when you help advertise their "lethality." A far better tool to resist ICE is to stop voting for people like Tim Walz and start voting for people who would defund ICE.

  To hope that police will soon start arresting ICE is illogical. Police fraternities are explicitly pro-ICE. This fantasy makes as much as sense as hoping that ICE starts arresting the police. Our police murder about 1000 Americans per year, much more than ICE. The result after George Floyd was the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. Democratic response to this was to increase police spending, notably in Minneapolis.

  To say that ICE is cracking down as revenge against Democrats only makes sense if you're saying Democrats also want revenge against their own voters. Democrats are overwhelmingly pro-ICE. Democrats have consistently voted to expand, militarize, and enrich ICE for 20 years. If you read the news, you know they still are. Pretending this isn't true is not a good strategy for opposing ICE.

  You might not hear it from lawmakers or corporate media, but polls show that support for abolishing ICE is high -- with a clear majority of self-described Democrats and moderates. The fact that Democratic lawmakers and pundits are using this moment to say that abolishing ICE is unpopular shows that they are liars. They're not "democratic" in any way, shape or form.

  Revolutionary energy has never been higher. Americans have had enough of the unaccountable police state, genocide, forever war, billionaires, corruption, and capitalism itself. No wonder Democrats and Republicans are running scared. They are the two major parties, and want to keep it that way. Republicans are desperate to terrify you, Democrats are desperate to pacify you.

  There's a desperation to believe that someone in power is coming to save us. We're seeing a lot of violence, From ICE to Palestine to military invasions. But this “lethality” is a deliberate, methodical creation of the Democratic and Republican parties. The denial and mental gymnastics required to fantasize that Democrats have "almost figured out that ICE is bad" or "almost figured out that genocide is bad" are making the country and the world unsafe, and wasting everyone's time.

  We have no major opposition party to fascism. Fascism is anti-democratic lawmakers, an unaccountable police state, military invasions, different value assigned to different races, mandatory nationalism, genocide, crackdowns on dissent, and an obsession with “lethality.” That describes the party platform of the Democratic and Republican parties.

  Every attempt to create a non-fascist party gets crushed by the Democrats. In fact every substantive movement or action taken by Americans to oppose fascism gets ignored or opposed by Democrats. Think of George Floyd protests, anti-genocide protests, BDS, calls for a general strike, the Green Party, the Sanders presidential campaigns.

  72% of House Democrats just voted with MAGA to cut UN funding, eliminate DEI programs, crush Palestinian autonomy, advance abortion restrictions, give $150M for border militarization, give $400M to “counter China,” and send another $3.8B to Israel while it commits genocide. Gavin Newsom is raising money to defeat California’s 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.

  These are not minor policy quibbles or abstract philosophical debates. You have been betrayed, and your lives are in immediate danger, because both Democrats and Republicans have been extracting your money to pay for militarizing police, expanding ICE, heading into world war, enriching billionaires, and removing your safety net. It's important to stop voting such people into office.

  It's good to complain about ICE, genocide, and illegal military invasions. It lets everyone know they aren't alone. But it's also good not to vote for them. Our whole lives we've been told it's wrong to vote for candidates who won't fund these things.

  We've had enough. No more votes for pro-ICE, pro-Israel, pro-lethality candidates.

  In 2026 it's no more votes for candidates who take money from the Israel lobby and billionaire-owned corporations. It's abolish ICE, it's free Palestine, it's Medicare For All, it's raise minimum wage, it's tax billionaires, it's defund the police, it's no more AI data centers, it's end the genocide of trans people, it's cancel student loan debt, it's end hunger and homelessness, it's end mass incarceration, it's never again to state-sanctioned torture, rape, apartheid, ethic cleansing, and endless war. That's the bare minimum.

• 12 Jan, 2026 do you condemn hamas

  U.S. rulers are a small group of people who collect your money to pay armed agents to kidnap you and shoot you in the face while urging you to argue about whose name should be on the Kennedy Center.

  U.S. rulers are a small group of rich, famous, powerful, comfortable people with healthcare experiencing emotional discomfort because they care so much about their voters, whose views they ignore, and whose health and livelihoods they slowly destroy.

  Democratic rulers are a group of special people who believe in tolerance and understanding and common sense gun control, for example killing Palestinians and giving as many weapons as possible to the police, ICE, the Pentagon, and the IDF.

  Democratic rulers are a small group of rich, powerful, famous people who make policies that cannot possibly achieve human survival but who feel sadder about it than Republicans do.

  Hamas is a political party that committed violence, has asked to be investigated for war crimes, and is offering to be removed from power for the sake of peace, who if you don't condemn them then you are a terrorist who has no place in our country, according to two other political parties that commit much greater violence, commit many more war crimes, harbor more war criminal fugitives, and have far greater power which they have not so far offered to give up.

  Condemning parties and companies from another country is an enjoyable activity because it has no result other than a feeling of moral superiority, and condemning parties and companies in your own country is also enjoyable because you can continue to give them money and votes to do whatever they wish.

  ICE is a company that if they are scared they shoot you in the face and Republican rulers will thank them and give them more money and Democrat rulers will condemn them and thank them and give them more money.

  A Black, Brown or dissident person is an individual who can be killed immediately if they react when a gun funded by Democrats or Republicans gets pointed in their face.

  U.S. rulers are people who are encouraged to commit mass murder if they get mad and if the victims are condemned first.

  U.S. rulers are a small group of gun nuts who will argue with each other about gun control for your amusement and who prop up the economy by selling guns and bet your money on hopes for increased global conflict in which they may sell more guns.

  Republican voters are people who overlook their rulers’ flaws and sacrifice their own interests, for what’s been marketed to them as the greater good, which is remarkably similar to Democratic voters, who overlook their rulers’ flaws and sacrifice their own interests, for what’s been marketed to them as the greater good.

  The Democratic and Republican parties are companies that define a Jew as someone with a high enthusiasm for genocide who is a descendant of ancient Hebrews or whose religion is Judaism, and if you think that you can have low enthusiasm for genocide and still be a Jew then apparently it is you who are anti-Semitic, not the Democratic or Republican parties.

  Americans are people who mostly hate being shot in the face and hate racial liquidation and mass rape and who are incorrect because that opinion is terrorist.

  Americans are people who have had enough of sacrificing themselves for their rulers’ wealth, fame, power and comfort and have been using memes as a way to condemn their rulers shooting them in the face.

  A Republican ruler is a person who feels no shame, pity, or any other emotion about the Palestinians, Venezuelans, Iranians, or Minnesotans they slaughter, whereas a Democratic ruler is a person who agonizes to create moral justifications for those killings, but objects to Republicans’ lack of decorum when doing the killings.

  U.S. rulers are a small group of special individuals who are arch criminals that collect your money to fund and enact the worst crimes of which human beings are capable.

  The Democratic Party is a company that does a tremendous amount of research to find out what its voters want, and then does the opposite, although insiders say they are great listeners.

  The Democratic Party is a company that knows perfectly well how to annihilate Trumpism, but chooses not to, because that would require listening to its voters, which would make their billionaire mega-donors feel stressed.

  Americans are people who have been using memes to condemn their own impoverishment, humiliation, and assassination, and who have also been giving money and votes to their assassins and feel sad about it.

  Americans are people who saw memes condemning Palestine, Venezuela, Iran and Minneapolis, so therefore Palestine, Venezuela, Iran and Minneapolis should definitely be violently and illegally attacked.

  U.S. rulers and billionaires are a select group of superior human beings who know full well that their empire is finished, either because of imminent WW3, revolution or ecological collapse, so they plan for their escape and protection by AI weapons systems while telling you it isn’t an empire and it’s not collapsing and AI is for funny videos.

  U.S. rulers and billionaires are people who enjoy being condemned, because it increases name recognition and once you hear their name seven times you will give your money, votes, and subscriptions to them instead of to candidates and companies who don’t intend to assassinate you.

  The Democratic Party is a company that goes to a considerable amount of trouble to provide you with frontrunners such as Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris who are sad about the Palestinians they will kill and who would rather lose elections than sadden the billionaires who underwrite their careers.

  Gavin Newsom is a person who doesn’t want the National Guard to physically attack you for condemning his racist policies because he prefers that his own police physically attack you for condemning his racist policies which is why you should vote Newsom in ’28.

  An interesting fact about pro-ICE, pro-billionaire, pro-apartheid, pro-war-crime Democrats and Republicans is that they will no longer be trusted, supported, funded, or voted for in 2026.

  An interesting fact about pro-ICE, pro-billionaire, pro-apartheid, pro-war-crime companies is that they will rightfully be the targets of boycotts and strikes in 2026.

  If someone wants to defeat Trumpism, improve the material conditions of the voter. Stop funding ICE. Stop arming ethnic cleansing. Start taxing billionaires. Expand Medicare to all. Reduce funding to police, prisons, and the military. Increase funding to schools, arts and social safety net. Raise minimum wage. Stop invading other countries. Start following international law. Stop building AI data centers. Begin phasing out fossil fuels. Stop taking money from SuperPACs. Stop hiring consultants and using ChatGPT to come up with talking points to try and confuse people about the above.

• 07 Jan, 2026 how to tell if a politician or news source is trumpian

  If your definition of "gun control" steadily increases the funding and militarization of ICE, police, and the Pentagon, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a gun nut.

  If you have used “narco-trafficking” or “Maduro is a dictator” as some kind of plausible pretext for illegal sanctions, invasions, or bounties, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a pathological liar.

  If your definition of law and order is that nonviolent demonstrators get arrested and attacked but it’s ok for US lawmakers to commit a few war crimes, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a criminal.

  If your definition of patriotism uses economic sanctions to kill nonwhite people across the globe, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a white nationalist.

  If you say “we need to strengthen our borders” in reference to immigration from Africa or Latin America, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a white supremacist.

  If your definition of racial justice makes space for apartheid, genocide, or military conquests, as long as it's not against your own race, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a racist.

  If you increase funds to ICE, the Pentagon, the police, the prison system, or the border wall, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a fascist.

  If your definition of “saving our democracy” is to do the exact opposite of what voters want on issue after issue, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a tyrant.

  If your definition of economic justice is to maintain record levels of homelessness, not raise minimum wage, and let billionaires pay no taxes, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as an oligarch.

  If your definition of climate policy includes new drilling permits, record fossil fuel profits and consumption, and the building of more AI data centers, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as a climate denier.

  If you define antisemitism as criticism of genocide, or criminalize antisemitism without defining it at all, you are: A TRUMPIAN. It doesn’t matter if your name is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, or The New York Times. The rest of the world is perfectly reasonable to see you as an antisemite.

• 20 Dec, 2025 Venezuela

  whenever you read the history of u.s. violence in korea, vietnam, cambodia, iraq, or afghantistan, you immediately realize that either the best funded military in world history is completely incompetent to defeat anyone, no matter how poor or how rural, or that “victory” was never really the object. it was for weapons dealers to get rich obliterating a country they assumed no americans cared about. that goal was achieved.

  as the u.s. government and corporate media now drag the american taxpayer against their will into yet another war, we can already dimly glimpse the likely outcome. we will kill and abuse thousands of ordinary venezuelans. we will obliterate the country for no reason. we will "lose" the war. and meanwhile those of us lucky enough to own fossil fuels companies or the media, those of us who fund both of our otherwise decrepit political parties, will get instantly richer. there will be no funds left over for the u.s. population, which will be brought to ruin once again.

  some things have changed however. even as recently as 2003 our presidents and all their teams were obliged to fan out to tv talk shows for months in order to sell their war. focus groups would meet in secret devising ways to make their lies sound less barbarous and preposterous.

  but now that the biden-harris regime has officially ushered in an age in which u.s. warmaking is undertaken without the slightest pretense of consent by the taxpayers funding it, without even the suggestion that they care a pin about international law, trump is simply at liberty to commit whatever atrocities spring to his mind. any seeming opposition to his whims from within the ruling class itself will continue to be nothing but an illusion — strongly worded emails or social media posts that have zero effect on the killing.

  meanwhile our media, whose stated purpose is to be a check on the rich and powerful, but who have long since become the publicity wing of the very same, will devote endless speculation as to the precise meaning of this or that vague and offhand remark by trump, while ignoring what even a child can see is the real weenie: the u.s. is about to slaughter thousands of innocent people. the public will be asked to further develop its inability to be shocked.

  what makes trump so dangerous of course is not that he’s the worst human being to ever rule a country. even a quick perusal of history, including recent history, shows it to be littered with leaders at least as depraved, violent, incompetent, repressive, corrupt, or criminal. no, what makes trump different is the apparatus he has been handed. a monstrous humanity-killing machine, better funded and more militarized than our species has ever enjoyed...with any imaginable crime fully and automatically normalized by both parties and by its corrupted media...and with just enough of a lethargic or brainwashed population, with no interest in history, unable to part with its cherished corporate conveniences, who have been successfully convinced that they are totally powerless.

  speaking of which, there’s a perfectly good reason that today’s democrats are so useless at opposing republicans, and so unashamed about doing the exact opposite of what their voters want on issue after issue, and it is this. they aren’t selling policies, or even selling victory. they are selling the idea that you are powerless.

  an essential feature of our two-party political system, or any fascist system, is “the right to be wrong.” or “the right for representatives not to represent.” or “the right for lawmakers to be lawbreakers.” that’s why trying to play gotcha with our politicians by using shame, scaremongering, or even law enforcement, never seems to result in the slightest reduction in harm. the beauty of the system they lead is that pointing out that they are bad guys just helps advertise their intended message.

  today’s ruling class, regardless of party, loves it when you find out they were at epstein’s parties. they thrill to the sound of your accusations that they are liars and hypocrites. they tingle with joy at your discovery that they support genocide or political assassinations or public hangings. these are all just advertisements for their naked power, confirmations that no matter how depraved their behavior, there’s nothing you can do about it.

  once you’ve become comfortable committing genocide and obliterating countries, there’s really no more hope for you, whether you’re an individual politician or a party. there’s no line left that you won’t cross. you’ve now stated publicly that you no longer have any self-respect that could somehow be engaged and steered in the right direction.

  the “big tent” democratic party concept is such a pathetic way of trying to sell voters on what is actually a republican platform, one that most democratic voters hate for good reason. simple necessities like taxing the rich are cheerily wiped away by simply using this magic phrase. forever war, mass deportation and detention, overpolicing, ice, fossil fuel profiteering, demolition of international law, record homelessness, and genocide itself -- these policies prevail year after year because we are a “big tent” party.

  stopping the humanity-killing machine that is the u.s. politico-economic system can’t be accomplished within that politico-economic system. why would actual change to this machine’s basic operating principles ever be permitted by the machine itself? it would have to be shut down and replaced. those continuing to prop it up would need to refuse to do so. the machine encourages hope that something might change if you just tune into corporate news a little more often, or send a little more money to this or that duopolist politician. in reality, the only hope is to make it impossible for the ruling class to do business as long it insists on mass murder as their business model. this means targetted refusals to buy from or work for corporations who do. it means backing politicians who don't take billionaire funding or who are independent of the two-party system.

  here are some things that our current politico-economic system has been carefully designed to be unable to do:

  stop global warming

  end racism

  create peace

  tax billionaires

  hold its leaders accountable

  make sure its population is safe, healthy, and solvent