Wallet Politics: The Power of the Cards in America's Pockets.

Targeted Demographic: The Supreme Court primarily but, in a more broad sense, every American over or near the age of eighteen who maintains the delusion that your vote will ever matter again in American politics.

When I look in my wallet, I see a life or death struggle between two diametrically opposed forces: my Washington State ID which proves that I am a US citizen over the age of eighteen and thus eligible to vote and my Debit card, the real representation of my power or lack thereof because my Debit card is attached to my bank account and my bank account is basically empty and thus, I am not worth very much. But the person against whom my every decision and every vote must contend is worth quite a bit, billions of dollars and nearly unlimited resources and that's because the person against whom every American will now contend is not a person at all but a corporation, a conglomeration of individuals who exists for the single purpose of making money, creating capital on capital on capital and the Supreme Court decided last week that corporations have all the rights of the constitution.

Because if, like they have decided, a corporation is guaranteed the right to free speech (which would apparently be violated if the government doesn't let them spend as much money as they want sponsoring political candidates, parties, etc), than they must also be guaranteed the rest of the rights provided by the Bill of Rights. So a corporation can form a militia to protect its interests (won't that be fun); cannot be forced to testify itself (what does this mean for members of the corporation, i.e. employees who would like to testify against another member maybe the CEO, can the corporation claim the fifth Amendment to prevent itself from testifying).
What counts as excessive bail for a corporation worth billions of dollars?
How long until Microsoft has a vote?
Does a company have to have been founded at least eighteen years ago before it gets that vote?


Beyond that absolutely ridiculous nature of this entire idea, the implications for the American people seem rather dire. Advertising for and against political candidates have been notoriously foul, evil-hearted for at least a century and the omnipresence of media in the Twenty-First century has only exacerbated that problem. Fortunately for the American people, the adds have always needed to be sponsored by a candidate who puts their reputation at risk if the ad proves false, dishonest, or simply immoral in the eyes of the public. But now, the gloves are off and the only slight guarantee of honesty or truth in politics has been wiped away completely.

We are only left with on option, we must place our hands into the laymen, the uneducated masses who must be able to see through a torrential downpour of unadulterated deception and be able to make an intelligent, clear-minded, moral, just decision based on their personal values and personal interests.

How do you think its going to go?

Why White Guilt?

Targeted Demographic: Individuals of any race who write off acts of generosity or kindness from whites to any other race because "they are obviously just feeling the white guilt! They're obviously not sincere!" Or any other such bull shit relating to the concept of "white guilt."

In case it wasn't obvious from the tone of the TD, I'd like to point out that I fucking despise this entire concept; as someone whose love of literature in part grows from his acknowledgement of its capability to provide a voice to the voiceless and stomped on, I encounter a lot of stories (both fact and fiction) of people who have felt the oppressive hand of the majority who, in most cases, happens to be power-hungry white dudes. And yet, I shouldn't feel guilty? I shouldn't feel sickened by the actions of people with whom I share a common identity? After all, why should I feel embarrassed? I didn't do any of those heinous things? I'm not the oppressor, I just look like him.

The problem with this is I'd feel guilty even if I wasn't white. I'd look at the acts of those people who I inevitably share some commonality with and be ashamed. But because I am white, any action to rectify or repair the cultural damage is nulled, insincere, unimportant.

Well fuck that. I would feel black guilt if I was black for gangster rap, for BET, for a popular culture that demeans woman and rights off any attempt at personal progress as meaningless because "we're disadvantaged;" I would feel woman guilt for feminine-ism (look it up, it's ridiculous), for taking the freedoms and near-equality gained in the sexual revolution and squandering them on the ability to spend your own money on makeup and trampy clothes instead of your husbands, for the modelling industry; I would feel Christian guilt for allowing the Political right to steal a two-thousand year old religion and re-write it for use in their political agenda, for falling into a mindless follower position despite a religion born of anti-conformity; I'd have Islamic guilt for the extremists who feel it necessary to represent their religion through explosives instead of words.

But I wouldn't be written off for those types of guilt because all of those demographics help form people's identities. White can't be an identity; being white is the lack of racial identity because by forming your identity in part as "a white man," you are siding with the KKK, with the Aryan Nation, with everybody's worst imaginings of an oppressive being, with Bill O'Reilly. Screw that. I am left without a racial identity but I'm still clustered with a bunch of numb-nut assholes who have been lording over (in spite of a number of size issues) every other race on the planet for too many god-damned years.

I'm not asking anybody to feel bad for white folks because they're not allowed to relate to their race unless they happen to be heartless bigots. I don't expect anybody to feel sorry for the majority. But I expect the damn right to do whatever I can to change the common perception of what it means to be white without being written off by a bunch of fucking pricks who feel the need to compensate their inability to do anything productive in society by claiming I'm just feeling white guilt which, incidentally, they probably feel too but feel the need to repress because they're secretly (or not) just really glad they didn't draw the racial short-stick in American society so they don't have to worry about minorities. Or other people at all.