In direct conflict with America’s customs and traditions, I have no interest in using or abusing anybody and I have no interest in being used or abused by anybody. I have no interest in taking blame or credit for the words or actions of others and I have no interest in others taking blame or credit for my own words or actions. All of which categorically makes me un-American.
And wholly uninvited to family gatherings.
This society measures patriotism by eagerness to see Americans suffer. To patriots, opposing any war is unpatriotic no matter how many Americans suffer. Opposing private gun ownership is unpatriotic no matter how many Americans suffer. Opposing pandemic masks specifically or universal free healthcare generally is unpatriotic no matter how many Americans suffer. But the circle-jerking public encourages themselves to blame the people protesting against lethal force for being the ones not keen on saving lives. Proponents are sold on marketing, by forces that can certainly afford it. If one can rationalize the loss of any life regardless of circumstances, the ultimate denial and deprivation of life, liberty and pursuits of happiness, they will never know a moral high-ground.
Freedom is not the right to impose, it’s the right to not be imposed upon, no matter the self-interest preaching. A self-declared supremacy or pledging allegiance to a supremacy portrayed as flattering for anything beyond the bottom line, invariably proves itself like the rightwing leadership overseeing the state of Texas, thinking it can be its own self-determining nation when their privatized power grid just this last winter made lethal assurances to the contrary.
I do think that Capitalism depends fundamentally on codependency, and codependency makes itself conducive to lacking personal responsibilities. Like rationalizations for living beyond one’s means as somehow being necessary for survival. How many people gripe about billionaires not lending a hand, while also shelling out for whichever streaming service hot this month instead of giving that money to the single mother next door desperately hurting for assistance? It is at once excruciating and nauseating how so very many citizens seem to adamantly believe that endangering others whether by negligence of lacked considerations or by direct imposition, is some form of constitutional right. Nobody’s pride or comfort or raging ego means more than the well-being of anybody anywhere. The ability to protest abuses of power is what makes a democracy. The Black Lives Matters protests were largely about people not getting what they needed, namely urging others to stop killing indiscriminately, whereas the storming of the Capitol was largely about people not getting what they wanted, namely the proactive and continuous imposition of self-interests to extents of indiscriminate killing. While few Americans are willing to stomach the reality of their country being the lone democracy in world history to have codified slavery in its constitution, warring between capitalists and populists actually predates Howard Zinn’s observations by more than two millennia, real populism as opposed to the whims of the self-entitled mass-marketed as zeitgeist. For that matter, what we understand today as antifa finds its origins among the Enragés, predating the great-great-great-great-great grandparents of everyone alive. Contrary to the wishes of Americans no stripe of Americana is the center of the universe, and regardless of hyperbole life, liberty and pursuits of happiness are not dependent upon others being deprived of life, liberty and pursuits of happiness, as freedom is never a finite thing in danger of depletion.
Nobody has to like me/you and nobody has to agree with me/you, as our thoughts and feelings are our own, and failure to be adored is not an infringement of any civil or basic human right. Being prevented from infringing upon the actual rights of others is not unto itself a violation of any inalienable rights either however, as the resulting personality cults mandated by any variety of supremacist perspective by design can only ever service the centerpieces, never society at large. And, as power corrupts, then absolutely none must have it.
Ethically and at least on paper legally, free speech doesn’t guarantee an audience and it doesn’t guarantee praise, because obligatory responses to speech whether for or against is itself still a censoring of speech. The government should never be allowed to do such a thing, in a free society, but also in a free society audiences must have the right to support or to not support the free market, rather than companies making those decisions on their behalf. Goods and services are supposed to be manufactured to meet existing demand, as opposed to demand being manufactured to meet sanctioned goods and services, which limits both profiteers as well as choices for consumers. Markets have the freedom to fail, when choosing to diminish their own prospective demographics, just as societies have the freedom to fail when favoring any subset of the whole as superior to the rest.
Such transactions are actually undemocratic, when, instead of letting consumers decide for themselves whether to support a thing or not, a company is empowered to make the decision without consensus or intermediary. Disney was wrong to let Roseanne go for posting rightwing stuff on her own social media, and Disney was wrong to let James Gunn go for posting leftwing stuff on his own social media, because in either case what they were posting had zilch to do with what they were filming by day. The company should have allowed audiences to make the judgement call themselves in both cases, whether to support the actual products or not. Telling a customer what they should want is the reverse of supply meeting a demand. Wiser minds are really offended by the fact that national-level votes can only ever be for billionaire-backed millionaires, so why does the public give industry a free pass for giving as little consideration to the principles and convictions of the public?
Because they have none to speak of, a matter further complicated in how, as far as proprietors of personality cults are concerned, the customer is never actually in the right or else they would be left well enough alone. Marketing obsessive-compulsively forbids such details from ever being spoken aloud though, as no ego might evade fragility for long. The small fact of suicide being a felony only adds to the irony of the American desires for self-immolation, of not necessarily wanting what they cannot have, but wanting what others cannot have. Nothing in all of creation might possibly be more un-American than guarantees of a natural lifespan, of unchallenged liberty and of independent pursuits of happiness. While entertainment is a poor facsimile and poorer alternative, manufactured of the poors, by the poors and for the poors, freedom is never a finite resource, although by the strangest of happenstance neither is responsibility.