A Series of Complaints. Volume 1. Part 4.

     This is a stream of consciousness series of complaints. Sometimes it’s hard to know in advance what you’re getting. That’s what it is.
     Complaint number one. Are these people being dishonest? I mean, are they? What’s happening here? You kind of expect the news to tell you what’s going on. That’s the idea, right? What’s going on? Let’s watch the news.
     I used to think that when I was younger. Then you reach a certain age, and you’re watching somebody with a head full of gray hair tell you something they ought to know better than to say. Dude, you’ve been here. I’ve been watching you for twenty years. You didn’t even have gray hair when we started this, and you were telling me something completely different fifteen years ago. What happened?
     Experience means something to me. If you’re young, trying to get a job and figure things out, I understand. Cool. You’re learning. But there are only so many gray hairs you can accumulate before I start thinking, you should know better. You’ve been doing this long enough to give people the straight dope. If you don’t know, say you don’t know.
     Instead, they look right into the camera and deliver the propaganda. These are supposed to be the elders of the news. They’ve watched the stories change. They’ve reported the changes themselves. Could you at least explain how we got from what you told us then to what you’re telling us now?
     I didn’t always feel this way. I spent years trying to make sense of it. Did they say that five years ago? Were they saying the opposite ten years ago? It’s hard to keep track. But after twenty or thirty years, you start thinking, I believe these guys might be cloudy and vague here.
     And maybe they don’t think they’re being dishonest. Maybe the explanation is closer to that argument associated with Noam Chomsky, the people who make it onto those platforms already think within the boundaries those platforms accept. They don’t necessarily need somebody standing behind them telling them what to say. They already know what gets you the job.
     Whatever the explanation, I’m tired of it. I’m trying to get some actual information. This isn’t about whether you’re on my side. Tell me what happened. Tell me what you can establish. Tell me what you’re guessing. If you’re giving me somebody’s sales pitch, tell me whose.
     Gray haired people who should know better, looking me right in the eyes and giving me another story I have to spend the rest of my morning trying to untangle.
     Complaint number two. Fascists. I hate them. Get the fuck out of here.
My grandfather went over to Normandy to fight the fucking fascists. When he came back, He didn't talk anymore. But the old folks said he used to talk before the war . He said he had to clean his friend off his uniform after his friend exploded. Dude. That’s what he brought home with him. That’s some dedication to fighting fascism, I’ll tell you that much.
     So, yes, I appreciate being against fascism. Absolutely. But I have a little note for anyone telling me how to act, with their approved way to act. Dude, I appreciate your opposition to authoritarianism, but don't ever tell me what to fucking do!
     Complaint number three. The unseen hand. Or maybe a whole lot of hands that never seem to make it into the explanation.
     You go to college, and there’s a policy. You fill out the forms, your loans are bigger than you thought, and somehow you’re back in an office negotiating which classes you can take. Go to the bank, same thing. Your job, same thing. The DMV, same thing. Everybody can explain the little piece directly in front of them. Try asking how the whole thing got arranged.
Why does everything cost so much? Why does buying a house or a car feel so far out of reach? My parents weren’t rich. They were average people. My mom didn’t even have a job. They managed. Now it feels like the opening keeps getting narrower, and every explanation starts halfway through the story.
      Interest rates. The market. Policy. Okay, but who made the policy? Who benefits from it? Who had a seat at the table? These things didn’t crawl out of the ground fully formed.
You ask questions, and people give you explanations, but there are gaps. Huge gaps. Somebody repeats a phrase, somebody else says, “That’s just the way it is,” and suddenly we’re supposed to treat the conversation as settled. Dude, no. Repeating it gives it a foundation but it shouldn't.
     Then you start following the money. Universities, research grants, television, campaigns. Who pays for what? Who gets to keep going? Who gets heard? “Cash rules everything around me.”
     Eventually it becomes obvious that the government is a mask on something bigger. Right mask, left mask, everybody arguing about the face.
     And we’re down here fighting. I like polka dots. You like stripes. Apparently, we need to ruin each other’s afternoon over it. Dude, stop. Who benefits from keeping us occupied with that?
     I don’t know that there’s some global committee sitting around a table. That’s exactly where I get frustrated, I don’t know. You follow an ownership trail, a family connection, an old political favor, and suddenly the simple explanation has twenty more people in it. Wait, this person owns all of those things? This institution started because somebody’s rich uncle knew a senator? How far back does this go?(It goes all the way back )
     Then somebody hands you a snapshot of the present and says, “Here. Analyze the economy.” Hold still. Look at this one moment. As though there weren’t generations of decisions, relationships, favors, and accumulated money standing just outside the photograph.
     “It’s interest rates.” Okay. Who sets them? Through what process? Under whose pressure? Who gains, and who gets squeezed? The more you look at it the bigger it gets until you get to a point you really like, oh these guys are doing it. But are they. There's an unseen hand even still. Someone makes those decisions. Someone writes the rules. And they just say well it's just how it is. It's not. It can't be this, that seems perfectly obvious. Until you start looking it up and then you hit this brick wall where it's just vague. From here it now turns into conspiracy.
     You watch somebody described as the most powerful person on Earth, and then they hesitate, reverse themselves, or go quiet. Why? What changed? What pressure are we not seeing? Right when I think one of these people are gonna do something in their own nature they reverse course or they do something completely different than I expected against their own nature, like there's an unseen hand.