Tag: politics

The craziest part about all these distractions

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago as I was doomscrolling, I saw this one meme.  At this point, I can’t remember what it was about, whether it was Iran getting bombed, the rise of shitty gas prices (again), a bunch of dumb white guy CEOs biting into hamburgers, or whatever, but it went like, The craziest part about X is that [orange fuckface in the white house] is named in the Epstein Files over 3,000 times.

For whatever reason, this stuck with me, and I really began to actually think about recognize about all the shit going on in the country and across the world, that really are just a whole bunch of distractions to the fact that the sitting president of the United States has been named countless times in the Epstein Files.  And of course, not a single fucking soul is doing anything about it, and as much as I want to love my country of birth, I just end up hating it a little bit more each time I think about it and am reminded of such.

A few years ago, I felt like I had one of those life’s revelations that in spite of the constitutional right to have information, the media really does go out of their way to steer people away from thinking about bigger issues, and at the time, there was a big hullabaloo about the Washington Redskins finally agreeing to change their name, conveniently at a time where the country was in turmoil over coronavirus, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and just the ‘usual’ state of civil unrest.

That was probably the first time I really noticed and recognized a scenario of mass distraction like that, and despite the fact that I was like 40 years old, it felt like one of those naïve moments of realizing that the world isn’t quite as innocent and altruistic as we might want to believe it is. 

We are truly never too old to learn and realize new things.

Either way, that’s kind of where I’m at these days, feeling frustrated, disappointed, and generally mad at my country for being so simple-minded and easily distracted to bigger things.  Obviously, I knew nothing major was really going to come out of the initial release of Epstein Files, because Washington is a spineless and gutless swamp full of people with all the cards who would absolutely not narc on each other, and would sooner eat their young than to act in a manner that positions themselves contrary to the mutation of whatever direction-wing that the right has transformed into these days.

It’s almost flabbergasting the lengths that the current administration has gone to in order to get people not talking about the Epstein Files, and that the actual president of the country is named literal thousands of times in it, which is absolutely not a good thing, considering the context of just about everything else in them.  Like, the United States basically started a war, with Iran, in order to get people to avert their eyes somewhere else.  And then predictably, war-like conditions always result in a spike of gas prices, and for the people lucky enough to remain blind to World War 3, they definitely wouldn’t miss the escalation of gas prices on the homefront, and then they’re busy being miserable about that.

But honestly, it’s the fucking noise about the McDonald’s CEO and the wimpy bite he did, and the ensuing chatter and bullshit that has emerged from that, that has me feeling the most enraged.  Because there’s literally an unearthed horrific global pedophilia ring that was just revealed, but people would rather expend their energy debating and analyzing some rich asshole taking a bite out of a hamburger.

As much as I loathe all of the fucks in Washington that are keeping our entire country as the cesspool it’s been downgraded to, I have just as much vitriol and disdain for all the people in the country that fall for such elementary distraction tactics.

I digress though.  This is a topic that I really didn’t want to expend any energy on, because politics are all shit and I hate them, but it’s like when I’m on social media, and I see things that I want to comment on, where I can utilize the template of “the craziest thing about X is that [orange fuckface] is in the Epstein Files,” but I don’t want to deal with the rebuttals and responses of anyone who does live on that side of the fence, because their stupidity would undoubtedly be detrimental to my general state of mental health.

So to my safe little brog that nobody reads, where I can pop off about whatever topic I want, without there being any real chance for any recourse, even ones as inflammatory as politics are.

Like sending gorillas to do custodial work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s the best analogy that comes to mind when I think about the bright idea to send ICE agents to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport, Nail Salon and Chicken Tender Museum in order to assist with crowd control and the nightmare scenario where the vast majority of TSA agents are no-showing because they’re not getting paid.  Sure, they’re marginally capable of perhaps doing some base job functions like staring at people menacingly while behind a gaiter and holding an automatic firearm so that people think twice about trying to cut any lines and shave an hour off their wait, but there’s a higher possibility that these ICE clowns make things worse, escalate a situation, and there’s probably going to be more arrests and possibly deaths, before any progress or civility is restored to the airport.

I’m just really glad that I don’t have any upcoming flight bookings coming up, because I’d probably punt on any airline travel I have coming up if it required me to go through ATL right now, because it doesn’t seem to matter when people are rolling up to the airport these days, the waits just seem to grow commensurate to how early people are showing up.

Mythical wife and I are current with The Pitt, and the most recent episode introduced a sub plot where two ICE agents bring a woman set to be detained to the ER, because she was most likely injured during a raid that they conducted.  And the presence of ICE in at the hospital passively makes all sorts of minority staff, patients and waiting patients to peace the fuck on out of the Pitt.

When Doctor Robbie tells them to stay the fuck to themselves and not be meandering around, they basically roid rage and attempt to interrupt the treatment of their detainee and send her to detention without treatment, with no regard for her injuries, and when an RN intervenes, he gets taken down and arrested as well, and in classic Pitt logic, there is no situation that cannot be made worse, somehow.

I feel like this is exactly what’s going to happen at ATL, with ICE wandering around the airport now.  All sorts of Hispanic and other minority would-be passengers will see them lurking around, and decide it’s not worth getting targeted and possibly detained and shipped off to a concentration camp detention center, and slip on out of the airport and ironically, ICE will have assisted in relieving the congestion of humanity at the airport, slightly, but seeing as how this was probably also the intention of the whole plan, it begins to grow the narrative that airline travel is becoming more of a white privilege than it already is.

Regardless, it’s just sad, laughable, and endlessly pathetic to see the state of, well, everything these days.  ICE agents trying to do TSA functions is like asking gorillas to do custodial work, at first they’d probably show remote capability of the bases of functions, but ultimately something is going to set them off, and ragey, power-tripping violence is going to be inevitable.

The craziest part about all these airport nightmares is that the guy sitting in the White House was named like 3,000+ times in the Epstein Files.

This is where I’m at with my trust in my country

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I got a thing in the mail from the US Census Bureau today, that wasn’t the next official US Census, but something called the American Community Survey.  My address was “randomly selected,” and it’s claiming to be collecting information to decide where important services are needed:

• Improving roads and reducing traffic
• Building schools
• Planning for the health care needs of the elderly

As a dutiful American, I took the time to fill out the survey in regards to my household, but I couldn’t help but notice just how tremendously thorough the survey seemed to be at gathering the specific racial breakdown of my household.  Mythical wife and I often joke about how we would conveniently tweak our children’s ethnic checkboxes to give them the most advantage in various situations, and considering the state of our nation as it is today, I had half a mind to just put my kids in as just “white” because there seems to be little benefit to being anything other than such, and it’s not like I’m completely lying, seeing as how my little girls are 50% white.

However, it’s apparent that “white” isn’t sufficient enough on the ACS, because there’s not only just a checkbox for white, but a text field asking for specificity on what kind of white; English, Irish, German, etc, and naturally the survey makes it a mandatory field where you cannot continue without some sort of clarity.  For once in my life, white people have it harder than I do, whereas all I had to do was check Korean, and that’s it.

It’s like they’re trying to filter out the people who can pass for as white, and make sure that the light-skinned Spaniards, Middle Eastern, Western Asia, and South Americans, who might be Latinos or Muslims or any other un-‘Murican category can’t be existing the country in plain sight.

I played it straight, and entered both of my kids as Korean as well as white + whatever specificity mythical wife could surmise was her background, because I have this paranoia that the US Government already knows the answers to the questions they’re asking, and this whole thing is a gigantic government-sanctioned phishing quest to find out what Americans are liars, and then target them for some sort of federal retribution.

However, by the time I got to the point of the survey where I was down to the final screen where my final buttons were “review” and “submit,” I couldn’t help but notice that about 85% of the survey was entering in racial information to an uncomfortably granular degree, and there were a few sections dedicated to asking about cars in the household, and level of education of the residents of the home.

Considering there are basically concentration camps being not-so-silently built throughout the country to capture and detain and worse, minorities, ICE raids and acts of murder, the timing of the ACS is extremely unnerving and gives me an overwhelming feeling of distrust that this isn’t being done for the altruistic purposes it claims to be gathering information for.

But it’s got to be legit, it’s from the US Government!

Yes I am aware, and frankly that’s precisely why I don’t trust it, because that’s where I’m at with my trust in the country, to where I’m scared to be compliant and submit my information, for fear that my response gets filtered into a bucket of people and households that aren’t the preferred pool of just white people, and puts me on the radar for a future ICE raid or federal scrutiny, because I’m not white.  There’s little to reason to believe that my spouse being white, and my kids being half-white would give them any more protection, and I don’t want them to be categorized as future targets, especially at this stage of their lives.

Needless to say, I did not hit submit on my survey, and short of being strong-armed in the future through some strongly-worded follow-up snail mail or actual communicative contact, I’m in no rush to do so.  Because I do not trust the United States government at all these days, more than ever, and the ACS just reeks of racial information gathering, and I have zero faith that this information won’t be used for anything that isn’t nefarious or malicious towards minorities.

It is sad and pathetic that I feel this way, and it sucks knowing that no matter how good of an American I try to be, I’m always going to be looked at as a second-rate human being by the people who run the country, because I’m not white.  Yes it’s not lost on me that Asians are among the more tolerated minorities in the country, but when white people can’t seem to figure out how to eliminate more black people, and they feel that Hispanics are too lofty a goal to try to eliminate, they’re going to target Asians, if they already aren’t, just to feel like they’re getting some traction somewhere.

It’s like playing a really hard video game, getting frustrated by it, and dropping the difficulty down just to feel good about yourself.  ‘Murican government probably doesn’t operate much differently, and as a result, I have no faith in them at all, nor am I in any rush to be complicit with submitting my ACS survey information.

Is this right-wing of me?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I try to actively avoid politics, it’s inevitable that politics finds me from time to time.  The world as a collective just can’t ever shut the fuck about politics, and occasionally, I’m going to run into news that I really didn’t care to learn about in the first place.

Recently, I learned of some politics person; I don’t care enough to be specific on who it was, their party, what their title was, or what state they represented, but they basically said that they were trying to pass some bill or law that stated that child rapists should be eligible for the death penalty.  I’m pretty sure they were a Republican, and probably nine times out of ten, I disagree with most of the shit that comes from that side of the fence, but if I’m being honest here, not only did I not disagree with this proposed idea, I actually kind of like it.  I would be in support of child rapists being put to death.

That being said, is that right-wing of me to feel that way?

I always felt that I had somewhat of a nurturing, protective instinct, but those probably ramped to twelve upon having offspring of my own.  I would do anything to protect my children, and I would want the harshest punishments there could be toward anyone who would maliciously harm them.

There being child rapists and predators in jail, with any possibility of getting back out into the free world doesn’t sit right with me, and if the federal courts want to take the need for justice away from law-abiding citizens and put it in the hands of the courts, and rid the world of some of the sickest of fucks, I can’t say I’d be opposed.  In a way, it’s kind of like the Mr. Miyagi adage of the best defense is to no be there, and allowing the courts to dispense justice and punishment onto child rapists is kind of like allowing concerned parents like me to no be there.

Okay, that analogy really was terrible and I just kind of wanted to work in the Mr. Miyagi no be there adage, but the point remains that I don’t hate the idea of child rapists getting the death penalty, and I wonder if feeling that way is right-wing of me.  Mythical wife says yes, and I can get that assertion, but I feel what I feel.  I just don’t believe child rapists have any point in needing to exist, and keeping them locked up in prison still means they are a drain to taxpayers with every scrap of food they eat and manpower needed to keep watch over them.

From what I’ve heard from a friend of mine that used to be in law enforcement, child rapists typically don’t last long in prison, because even amongst the most heinous of murderers and criminals, harming children is still a line most don’t cross, and there are notable amounts of them that get dealt with, organically.  But in the instances where they manage to not get offed by other inmates, I wouldn’t be opposed if the courts exercised that justice themselves.

If that is right-wing of me to think, then so be it.

Daylight Savings blows, 2025 edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At around 5:20 am, I heard #1 outside my bedroom door, panicking in the dark about how she couldn’t find her sister.  The fact that my child was out of her room in the pitch black of the morning was enough to get me to pop out of my bed, but upon hearing that my other child was allegedly missing immediately put me into a state of panic myself.

Worse off, for some reason there was a light on in my sunroom, which I knew wasn’t the case when I went to bed because I’m neurotic and always make sure all lights are off prior to going upstairs; I would later discover that there was a power surge during the night, and since that room’s lights are controlled via remote control, it light switch is usually in the on position permanently, and stuff like power surges or outages usually result in lights coming on upon reconnection.  However, I didn’t know this, and it immediately put the fear of god into me that #2 was in some sort of danger.

I walked #1 back into their (we let them sleep in the same room on weekends sometimes, on the unfolded futon) room to have her wait for me while I would investigate downstairs, but upon entering the room, there’s #2 snuggled up like a little taquito on the futon already, still sleeping.  Relieved, I set #1 back onto the futon as well, covered her, gave her a kiss on the head, reminded her that it was the middle of the night and hope she bought it, and implored her to go back to sleep; she didn’t need to know her circadian rhythm was correct at thinking it should be 6:20 am, when she’s normally up for school on weekdays, because obviously I really wanted to get some more fucking sleep.

Nope, by 5:30 am, I can hear activity on the baby monitor, both girls are now awake, and it’s only a matter of seconds before I hear doors opening and shutting, and #1 is marching back into my bedroom, with moments later, #2 freaking out in the darkness of the hallway, wondering where everyone is.  I bring them both into the master, and get them into our bed, in between mama and dada, hoping they might actually go the fuck back to sleep for a little bit longer.

Naturally, that doesn’t happen, and by 5:40, I give up, get out of bed, usher the kids downstairs, and concede that the day is now beginning.

The thing is, I actually had a tentative plan about this morning, because I figured there would be some monkey business with the time change, and the chances of me having breakfast ready for awakening kids wasn’t going to be high, which was that we were definitely, going to go to Waffle House because who doesn’t love Waffle House?

It’s just I was not anticipating them to be getting up within the 5 o’clock hour, but here we were.

It actually wasn’t that terrible, I got them dressed and we were at Waffle House by like 6:30 adjusted time, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that we were not the only customers there.  They were definitely the only kids there, and a part of me was hoping to have seen some other parents under similar circumstances having the same plan that I did, but alas, it was just me who was carting my kids out at this ungodly bullshit adjusted time.

But the point remains, daylight savings remains the antichrist, and it’s abundantly clear that the people in the BC years who came up with the idea were a bunch of selfish fucks who either did not have children, or had the privilege or were bad parents enough to not take into consideration the effects of the time change on parents who did have children.  And I hate them for all eternity and hope their descendants are wholly unimpressive pleebs who have nagging gastrointestinal issues.

I like to imagine that if the originators of daylight savings actually had any children, that they were obligated to actually care for, ranging from ages 0-7 years of age, they would think twice about the whole concept of rolling clocks back and fucking with their circadian rhythms and suddenly having to deal with them at ridiculously early AM hours, while people under most other circumstances would still be getting to sleep, regardless of what hour it actually was.

And as I’ve said before, I didn’t care much for it prior to children, but now that I do have kids, I fucking loathe it, and I like to think I’m pretty serious about sticking to my claim that I’d vote for absolutely anyone who prioritized the abolishment of this bullshit antiquated concept, including, those Somali pirates.

The complaining will likely happen yearly, until either this bullshit program is killed off, or my kids get to the age where they want to sleep in, and therefore my entire house can actually benefit from the rollback instead of bemoaning it.  Not going to bet on the former, though.

Seems kind of ironic to me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was driving home one day, and I decided to take an alternate route, because it might be a little longer as far as street distance goes, but there are fewer lights, and I was in one of those moods where I was over all the red lights that I seemed to be hitting.  There’s a point on this route where there’s this farm, that I’ve come to know as being owned by some obvious hard-right-wing nutjobs, as indicative by all the hard-right-wing signs that they plaster all over their property.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
PRAY FOR AMERICA
LET’S GO BRANDON
KEEP AMERICA GREAT
AMERICA FIRST

And the list goes on and on and on.  There’s pretty much no matter, no election or no opportunity missed by the people who live on this farm to spout their views or automatic support for whomever is repping the right.  In one hand, I kind of respect and wish that the not-left had such devout, obsessed and dedicated to voting and supporting their cause, and perhaps every single political arena wouldn’t be so fucking one-sided.  But in the other hand, fuck these shitheads and their support of just about everything I disagree in.

Anyway, as I was passing by today, there was a sign in their primary viewing sign space, that said: WE ARE CHARLIE.

I scrunched my brow at this one, and at the next red light I stopped at, I whipped out my phone to google it because I was curious.  Of course it had to do with the fairly recent assassination of some right-wing nutjob who had the same name, and I felt a microsecond of embarrassment at not realizing that sooner but on that same note I actively avoid politics as if discussing them will give me COVID.

Unsurprising, his death made him into a martyr to the right, and I guess saying WE ARE CHARLIE is some sort of defiant solidarity, and basically the white people version of everyone else saying that they are George Floyd, Sandra Bland, or any person that dare ever stood on the other side of the fence.

However, I couldn’t help but feel that there was some severe irony in the phrasing of WE ARE CHARLIE, because the very first thing that came to my mind is that “Charlie” was the nickname/slang/slur that US soldiers used to describe the opposing Vietcong forces during the Vietnam War.

Every skirmish was, against Charlie.  Charlie ambushing US forces.  Fuckin’ Charlie all over the place.  Spraying Agent Orange in the jungle to weed out Charlie.  Etcetera, etcetera.

Charlie is a term that has some hard negative connotation, especially for those who served, come from military backgrounds, or were impacted or affected by Vietnam in some way, shape or form.

And now we have white folks all over the American landscape who are now defiantly and proudly proclaiming to be, Charlie.  Okay

The ironic thing is that the Vietnam War more or less ended in 1975, which is just 50 years ago.  Across America and the rest of the world, there are still living people who fought in it; there are people who have killed, are widows and fatherless children from the conflict,  in the name of war, still alive today.  I can’t imagine that a lot of these people are all too thrilled to be seeing the word Charlie being used in such pro hard-right-wing propaganda, especially those who have and still suffer the effects of loss, death and PTSD.

Or perhaps I’m being presumptuous and giving too much credit to right-wing supporters to have the morals that would put something like this into question, and even they have no problem dropping their stigmas over the word Charlie and are more than happy to take it back if it supports their idiot beliefs.

Given the nature of modern politics, it’s probably the latter, unfortunately.

Because like I said, I saw this sign on a farm.  Farms are usually family joints passed down generations, and I’m going to go out on a limb and take a guess that if the owner of this farm didn’t fight in Vietnam, they’re probably descendants of someone who did, and because politics are unfortunately often times practically genetic at the success rate of offspring buying into their parents’ beliefs, I’d wager that through the 80s, 90s, 00s to up until a month ago, the name Charlie was probably something that was probably spit out, with some resentment, as opposed to being a phrase of solidarity and left-wing defiance.

One thing that I thought about though, that would be ironically funny, but not that funny because the loss of life isn’t really a laughing matter in most cases, but piggybacking onto the recent termination of AOL dial-up service, I’m imagining a scenario where the elderly final users of the service, now without any real internet service to brainwash them any further, have no idea about the whole Charlie situation, and have no clue that being Charlie is considered a good thing among their right-wing brethren.

And then ‘ol Hershel is going down the road in his 1957 Chevy pickup, and he drives past a house with a big ass WE ARE CHARLIE sign in their yard, triggering his PTSD.  Naturally he is packing, and he parks his truck, grabs his double barrel shotgun that’s on a mantle behind the driver’s seat, and storms into the house, and blows the fuck away out of some right-wing family.  Took care of that fuckin’ Charlie.

Right-on-right crime, just like the actual Charlie incident, from what I’ve heard.

Like I said, the loss of life in any case isn’t really that funny under most circumstances, but I’m just being honest here, if I were ever to catch wind that a scenario like this actually happened, I have to admit that I’d be kind of amused.

Wouldn’t it be funny if

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: America Online to discontinue dial-up internet service which is still miraculously still available in the year 2025

Frankly, I’m astonished that AOL is even still in existence, much less their very specific dial-up internet service.  After Instant Messenger had the plug pulled from it back in like 2017, I wouldn’t have imagined that AOL had any product or asset at all remotely capable of keeping them afloat as a business, but here we are in the year 2025 where they’re not only still alive, but about to pull the plug on the very thing that put them on the map in the first place.

I mean, who among my general age range, didn’t ever have AOL?  It’s basically a rite of passage for elder xennials like myself, and probably most everyone could probably remember their very first @aol.com screen name slash email address.  And everyone was innately aware of the free trial CDs that were just about everywhere, and looking back at it, it worked in the sense that they saturated the playing field so heavily that for a while, internet access = America Online, much like soda became synonymous with Coca-Cola.

But before I can go down the rabbit hole of nostalgia and wax poetic all day about stories involving AOL, I’m just going to get back to the point of this whole post, and finally wrap up the title of this post because I don’t write as often as I want to lately and I can’t get myself sucked into my own vortexes of words instead of getting to the point of the things that I actually do want to write about.

But anyway, wouldn’t it be funny if, with the elimination of AOL dial-up service, it completely turns the tide of the political battlefield in America?  With the obvious implication that GOP supporters are mostly a bunch of antiquated olds who only have their internet access via AOL dial-up, and when the service is taken away from them, they lose their umbilical cord to the modern world, and either shrivel up and die sooner from boredom, or without the bullshit they currently imbibe on, on the regular, their minds actually clear up and break free from the brainwashing they’ve all been subject to over the span of the last few decades.

Like I kind of write this partially in jest, but at the same time, there’s a shred of hope of believing that this might actually come into play in the future.  The numbers (well maybe not necessarily) don’t lie, GOP voters are on average 726 years old, and short of having shitty brainwashed tech-savvier children setting up their internet, I have to make the assumption that there’s a tremendous overlap between Republican voters and AOL dial-up users. 

And since neglecting the elderly knows no political affiliation, there’s no guarantee that when AOL dial-up goes offline in September, there’s actually going to be people readily available to swap these geriatrics onto any form of higher-speed internet, and thus begins the prophetic disconnection with the modern world for these demographics, and it lowers their chances to be auto-right voters come the next election.

Yes, there are a ton of holes in this logic, but all I’m saying is that it would be real humorous to me that come 2028, the next election is seemingly way less dramatic and there’s a surreptitiously noticeable reduction in Republican voters, from a very specific demographic, and I for one will immediately point to this specific news story about how AOL killed their dial-up, and inadvertently changed the fate of the entire country in the process.

/goodbye.wav