Crazy

They'll make you poor,
then shame you for being poor,
then push you into a job that keeps you poor
at a billionaire megacorporation.

They'll make you crazy,
then shame you for being crazy,
then sell you the cure for crazy
at eighty bucks a pill.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/crazy
You're a failure if you can't make ends meet
on impossible wages at an impossible cost of living
with a worthless degree you will never pay off no matter how hard you work
while advertisers blare at you about your insufficiencies,
while the news man tells you war is normal,
while Hollywood tells you the system is working perfectly,
while armed police guard grocery store dumpsters full of food from the hungry,
while executives go on five billion-dollar space rides for fun,
while you live surrounded by screens that tell you you are crazy
if you think any of this is not sane.
Take Oligarchizac™ for your depression,
take Plutocracipam™ for your anxiety,
just ninety bucks a pill.
Side effects may include compliance,
acquiescence, subservience,
menticidal ideation,
a marked lack of interest in guillotines,
a dystopian society and a dying biosphere.
And the pundit says
"A new study by a Raytheon-funded think tank says war is good for the environment,
but first here's a millionaire to explain the benefits of urinating on the homeless."
And Hollywood says
"Here's a movie about well-dressed attractive people with nice houses
engaging in amusing antics you're too poor and stressed out to experience yourself."
And the news man says
"Here's a rags-to-riches story which proves capitalism works fine
and you should hate yourself if you can't hack it here."
And the advertisement says
"Do you feel like you're losing your mind due to your sense of inadequacy
because you can't afford Google's latest NSA surveillance device?
Ask your doctor about Empiradol™,
just a hundred bucks a pill."
They lock us in a room
and fill the room with water
and then shame us for drowning
and then charge us for tiny gasps of air
from a hose that leads to an ecosystem
that they are destroying as quickly as they can.
And hey I've invented a new antidepressant anti-anxiety antipsychotic
that I'm getting to market as quickly as I can.
It's not a pill or a jab or an electrical shock treatment,
it's just a big wad of cash taken by force from thieving megacorporations.
Side effects may include peace and relaxation,
an ability to buy food and think clearly,
a fondness for red flags,
and a hysterical corporate media.

And hey I think we just might make it,
past the veil of madness and cutthroat cruelty.
And hey I think there's something deep within us
as yet untapped and as yet unrealized.

And hey I think an earthquake's coming
that just might topple the towers of madness
once and for all.

• • •

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More from @caitoz

21 Sep
War with China: Are we closer than we think?

I'm three minutes into this #60MinutesAustralia episode and they've already had on a senior analyst from the state-funded and military industrial complex-funded @ASPI_org.
Oh my god this is bat shit fucking crazy. They're playing ominous music and suggesting that China could not just attack but actually INVADE Australia at any time.
"Australia's future is you're going to have to fight for it if you want to keep it, and the idea that China would never attack, even never invade, well I wouldn't count on that."
~ Grant Newsham, former Marine spook and current China hawk think tanker
Read 6 tweets
19 Sep
Not even the craziest imperialists want a hot war with China. They'd much prefer China to bow and be absorbed into the US-centralized empire as so many other nations before, or to collapse and fragment after a decades-long subversion campaign a la the USSR. In that order. 1/
The empire will happily make life miserable for Chinese people in coming decades to pressure Beijing into accepting that it's in the people's interests that the PRC kiss the ring.

The problem of course is that China will be resisting these maneuvers in ways that can blow up. 2/
It's entirely possible for any of the planned escalations and proxy conflicts geared toward undermining nuclear-armed China to provoke a response which causes a chain reaction from which there is no return. A simple miscommunication, misfire or weapons malfunction could do it. /3
Read 7 tweets
19 Sep
The US and its allies are not surrounding China with an ever-increasing military arsenal to prevent them from cutting off trade routes, they're doing it so that they can cut off China when the time comes.
forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
"U.S. Navy should prepare to blockade China, according to Bradford Dismukes, a retired Navy captain and political scientist. “Globalization has made China, a great continental power, dependent on the use of the sea and thus vulnerable to coercion from the sea,” Dismukes wrote"
"Blockading China would require a coordinated effort by the whole of the U.S. government and its closest allies. 'There should be no limits on the geographic scope and nature of blockade-enforcement actions,' Dismukes wrote."
forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
Read 4 tweets
19 Sep
The Frogs Are Dropping Dead In Australia

The frogs are dropping dead in Australia, and no one knows why.
They get sick from some strange new frog pandemic and change colors
and shrivel up into little brown frog mummies when they die.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-frogs-ar…
The frogs are dropping dead in Australia.
Animals are dropping dead everywhere.
Ocean animals wash up packed full of plastic,
insect animals fall from the sky,
and we barely notice, because it hurts enough to be human,
because our tender little hearts were punched and kicked as children
by big people whose tender little hearts were punched and kicked as children,
and we've got bills to pay and hungry ghosts to feed,
Read 16 tweets
18 Sep
Where Was All The Investigative Journalism On US Airstrikes The Last 20 Years?

"They've shown that they can do these investigations into the validity of US airstrikes, and they've shown that they've spent two decades choosing not to."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/where-was-al…
The Pentagon has finally admitted to the long-obvious fact that it killed ten Afghan civilians, including seven children, in an airstrike in Kabul last month.
archive.is/o1tSi
In an article with the obscenely propagandistic title "Pentagon acknowledges Aug. 29 drone strike in Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians," @nytimes pats itself on the back for its investigative journalism showing the strike actually targeted an aid worker:
Read 16 tweets
17 Sep
The Pentagon only admitted to the unjust slaughter of civilians in this one particular instance because the media did actual investigative journalism on this one particular airstrike. This is an indictment of the Pentagon's drone problem, but it's also an indictment of the media.
Where was all this investigative journalism over the last twenty years? The US has dropped thousands upon thousands of bombs in its "war on terror" throughout the Middle East and Africa that the mass media barely reported on, much less investigated in depth. They're complicit.
The one time NYT launched such an investigation was the one time the mass media were working to spin Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan as an unmitigated disaster that proves ending US wars is bad. Don't praise them for the investigation, blame them for not doing more of them.
Read 6 tweets

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