I’m having politics fatigue.

I haven’t exactly run out of evidence to support my position, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when I try to reach across the proverbial aisle to have one of those “difficult conversations” with Trumpanzees such as my asshole brother.

I don’t understand why I have to explain to someone that they should care about other people – or why it is a good thing to feel compassion. To me, it’s simple common sense.

I’m more than happy to pay an extra whatever-percent tax for my stupid gas if it means that others can afford to feed their families and be healthy and go to school. That makes me happy. I’m glad to pay taxes for infrastructure and public works and a social safety net for all. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents to pay for the common good of everyone, you’re a fundamentally different person than me.

I am a stone-cold Democratic Socialist and proud of it. I’m perfectly content to pay my share of taxes, as long as they go toward things that taxes are supposed to pay for, instead of weapons of mass destruction and corporate welfare. Things like: improving public schools for one thing, because guess what? All children deserve a quality, free public education. And I don’t even have any children of my own. It’s just the right thing to do. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, then we will never to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay a tiny bit more out of each paycheck to ensure that my fellow citizens have access to health care, decent jobs, affordable housing and public transportation, then SIGN ME UP TODAY.

Big fucking deal.

But if you’re okay with thousands of people dying of starvation and all sorts of other perfectly treatable diseases just so the billionaires can hoard more of their ill-gotten wealth – then there is a fundamental divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged. Poverty should not even exist in the richest country in the world.

WTF is wrong with people?

Most of our tax dollars go to support the Military-Industrial Complex [MIC], anyway. Seventy percent of my federal taxes go directly to the War Machine whether I like it or not. So, answer me this, smart guy: If I’m so fucking free, why can’t I decide how my tax dollars are spent? Half of the military’s annual budget is classified, for fuck’s sake! Not even Congress has a right to see it. That is the very definition of unconstitutional. Congress by law has sole legal responsibility to account for every single penny spent by the government, according to that ‘sacred’ document’

Yet no one bats a fucking eye. I can’t imagine why.

You can’t force someone to feel basic human emotions like empathy or compassion. But I just have to ask: what sort of sub-human creature feels no empathy? Not even for their own goddam children, apparently? Because that’s who’s future they’re actively destroying, after all…their children’s…and their children’s children’s…

Clearly they don’t give a shit about what kind of world their kids will have to grow up in.

We are talking about a nation of sociopaths.

When are young people gonna wake up and figure out just how screwed they are? Their parents are busy fucking up the planet while they stare down at their little tracking devices [smartphones] playing video games. They don’t appear to be very concerned about it, if you ask me.

I can’t stand hearing one more justification for these evil acts from people who are content watching millions suffer needlessly in exchange for a fucking tiny tax cut that statistically they will probably never even see anyway.

And I refuse to have political debates with these people. Because my disagreement with them is not merely political. It’s a fundamental disparity concerning what it means to live in a free, secure, civilized society – and what it means to be human.

You can’t argue someone into caring about other people. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in the national political discourse is both infuriating and terrifying. The “I’ve got mine, screw you!” attitude has been oozing from the underbelly of American society for decades. But this gleeful exuberance in support of legislation which punishes our most vulnerable citizens is downright chilling.

It wasn’t always like this. I’m a middle-aged man now; too many young people are just now waking up to the unimaginable callousness we all that must endure in our daily lives. Maybe social media has made this tendency more visible, I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing: watching the human drones spring to the defense of evil ‘austerity’ measures that will make their own lives far more difficult is truly a wonder to behold.

The asshole-ization of America has been ongoing for decades. Trump is merely the result of a society driven down to its lowest common denominator. It is clearly impossible for some people to shed the ignorance and bigotry of the past. I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel, ignorant people to look beyond themselves and consider the future – for everyone’s sake.

It’s not worth it. There is no future anymore.

[Edited re-post from 2017]