The Church of Black Coffee

That guy who got significantly less votes than his opponent, but then is still president because the several people in North Dakota get as many votes as the entire West Coast, made a speech yesterday. I felt it elicited a response.

Regarding the World War Two veterans and the astronauts who went to the moon, great job. Really, that was super cool. It was awesome how the WWII veterans defeated an entire nation consumed with the hatred of foreigners and religious minorities. I loved it when they did that. Specifically when they destroyed the Nazis, because Nazis are scumbags. Going to the moon was awesome too, it was really sweet how the nation used the money made from a tax rate of about 70% on any income over the equivalent of $700,000. It’s almost like if we make really wealthy people pay back into the system that allowed them to get so stinking rich, then we can do really amazing things. Maybe we should try that again.

Pretty hilarious this guy talking about overcoming partisanship. Anyone who takes that seriously has been living under a twitter free rock for the last couple years. Anyone pretending to is a hack.

I see he invited the families of people murdered by illegal immigrants. You know who isn’t here? The families of children murdered by other children. The families of people accidentally murdered by their own children. The families of people murdered en masse by some strange psychopath with an arsenal fit for a squadron of soldiers. The families of people murdered by an abusive spouse. I feel bad for the families who lost their kids, but seems like a pretty horrible way to try and make a point, parading their grief as if it proves anything.

Ah yes, the economy. Remember when the policies of George W. Bush destroyed the economy, and then Barack Obama built it back into one of the strongest in the world? Because this guy does not remember it. His good buddy Sean Hannity, a moron, denied it was even happening while it very clearly and obviously happened. Glad it’s still going strong though, way to not destroy it yet.

As far as wages going up, I’m glad to hear it. When it hits $15 an hour in Las Cruces, in El Paso, in Kansas City, let me know. That’s the baseline. In New York it should be twice that, same as in Seattle, and in San Francisco. There is exactly zero rationality behind allowing a handful of people to have billions and billions of dollars, while others starve to death. There is no justification for anyone having so much money that they couldn’t spend all of it on themselves in a million years, while children sit freezing in their homes, gnawing on bread and drinking poisoned water. We have to abandon the idea that billionaires are a laudable part of the American Dream. Their existence is a travesty, a mistake. Raising wages significantly is only the first step, and it must go hand in hand with ways to bolster our small, independent businesses, but it is the first step.

It doesn’t matter how much energy we can export (or that we are a net exporter thanks primarily to the policies of the previous president). All that matters is that we stop destroying the planet to do so. There is a big ball of thermonuclear energy sitting in the sky, ready to power millions of homes. There’s a gentle breeze outside of my window ready to augment that power. The way we discovered to power our cars and lightbulbs 150 years ago was literally the worst way to do so. We should divorce ourself from this idiotic method and become the world’s leader in renewable energy.

Ha! He actually said that the government can’t function while the president is being investigated. That is the government functioning, dummy!

Prison sentencing reform is huge, and an actual bright spot. The First Step Act, a truly bipartisan bill, is a tremendous achievement. My favorite part is that the bill acknowledges that locking people in a cage for some period of time, having them grounded by the federal government for being naughty, does not improve our society. Not every person who has committed a crime could earn their way back into civilization, but every person ought to have a chance. When they do, when they graduate or earn that certification, when they find work, when they’ve been successfully reporting to a PO for a significant period, these people need to be recognized as full citizens, voting rights and all.

Oh, I was wondering if he was going to discuss the wall. You know what would make me believe this administration cares about immigrants? If they didn’t separate small children from families seeking asylum. If they acknowledged the role United States policy had in rendering so many Central and South American countries impoverished. Even just an acknowledgement that it was totally hypocritical for the children of immigrants who live here now, which is everyone that isn’t Native American, to deny right of entry to those who wish to follow in those ancestors footprints. It is all the more stunning given that we took the whole of the Southwest, including all of California, from Mexico by force less than 200 years ago. Imagine that happening today, the United States deciding to annex the rest of Mexico. If we did, it wouldn’t even be a fraction of what we have already taken.

Our approach to immigration should take into account the fact that the vast majority of people in this country are the progeny of immigrants. It should take into account that this land was occupied by societies that were 10,000 years old before Europeans arrived and tried very hard to destroy them completely. It should take into account those same Europeans built this nation through the widespread use of human beings who were kidnapped, beaten, tortured, had their children pried from their arms, and forced to work under threat of death for over 200 years. There is no “our” that this land belongs to, this land can only be morally justified if it is approached as an experiment, one in which people from all over the world can partake in. This was not the intent of the founders of this country, not really, but it is a contemporary manifestation of the idea of the Land of the Free. Open the borders wide, provide support systems for every single human, and treat each individual with respect and judicial equality, that is the American Dream.

Great, a new trade deal, I’m sure everyone in the Apple factories all over China are super excited. the fact is that if we aren’t working to ensure that the people building our phones, computers, cars, and televisions aren’t being treated as human beings, then we are destroying peoples lives by proxy. If there are people working in sweatshops, we are employing them. If the United States is to have any relevance in the discussion of raising the standard of living across the world, that is where it starts. From what I can tell, our trade deals only affect the amount of money people who already have billions make. The prices of these things might go up or down, but until they go up in order to provide a decent wage to the people constructing these things, it’s almost irrelevant. The only relevance is to the degree the poor in our country are affected, caused to be unable to buy the things that they need, and that is a discussion that revolves around minimum wage, not trade.

Yeah, medicine is really expensive. I’m legitimately glad this is being acknowledged. Also, you know how if you are pregnant, you have to have money to have your baby in a hospital? That seems bad, too. Also all those people who lose their houses over medical care, many of whom are insured. Hey, remember how the government uses a bunch of its money to provide roads, bridges, public schools, the post office, national parks, police, and defense? What if it provided healthcare too? It seems like that would fall right in line all those things. Unless you are making millions and billions off of our current lack of a healthcare system, you don’t have an argument. We need to give every person in the United States access to medical care regardless of their financial situation. As of right now, if we do cure AIDS and cancer, it will only be for those who can afford the treatments. That is cruel. It cannot be acceptable.

Here’s a bone for the pro-lifers. Remember when men were told that they had to raise any and every child they fathered, regardless of the circumstances? Oh, that didn’t happen? Huh, then maybe we shouldn’t ask women to either.

Venezuela was brought down through the government selling out its resources to make a few people rich while the rest of the country starved. If that’s socialism, we’re already there. If you mean the kind of socialism where the government collects taxes to provide basic resources to the citizens, things like roads, bridges, public schools, the post office, national parks, police, and defense, we actually aren’t that far off either. Ensure a basic standard of living through a progressive minimum wage, and ensure that every person in the United States has access to health care, and we are in. We essentially have a foot on two different paths, the one that leads to a Venezuelan situation is not far away, and creeping closer all the time, but neither is the one that leads us to being a truly first world, 21st century, society.

Talking about the Middle East always reminds me of a Bill Hicks bit about using our weaponized technology to instead shoot food into people’s mouths. I’m tired of this president, he could have decided to focus solely on the expansion and improvement of infrastructure, on developing an exploratory space program, on being the leader who fully invested in 21st century energy, and brought its vast riches to the United States. Instead the hands of billionaires are shoved up his backside, flapping his mouth about. These ventriloquists shout about horror and fear and hate, but in every instance, even where the problems are very real, its only purpose is to distract the masses from the happiness and resources that it is being deprived of, in order to ensure that these billionaires keep their Scrooge McDuck silos of gold.

I do not believe they will win. There is a bright side to this circus of a presidency, and that is the fact it has brought together millions of people who aren’t willing to live in this world anymore. I’m so happy to see women saying they won’t put up with the bullshit of entitled men anymore, and I am just as happy to see men agreeing with them. I love seeing progressive nations around the world embracing renewable energy, and am hopeful it isn’t too late. I’m heartened by the politicians getting arrested at airports for defending a human beings right to be of their religion. I’m so glad to see people standing up for their kids, be they gay, transgender, non-binary, or anything else. I’m particularly happy about the kids stating without question that they will not stand to live in a world where going to school feels like stepping on to a battlefield. I am no Pollyanna, there is so much work to do, and it feels like for every step forward we’ve taken in the last 300 years, we are taking two steps back. I see a future, however, in which we’ve gained each of those steps and a thousand times more.

Love you,

The Church of Black Coffee

p.s. I don’t know why I even talk, Bill Hicks always already said it better.