Recently, I’ve had a few encounters with people over 65 who can only be characterized as bitterly angry. Their certainty about an impending apocalypse has created a seething cauldron of despair they want others to know about and understand the danger because this is the moment in history when the wheels finally come off; we are all doomed. Their rationale is the talking points they’ve been spoon-fed; to disagree with them draws out their wrath that anyone should be so uninformed. Ignorance of doom is a red flag for them but also allows them to flaunt their disdain that one should be so belligerent about seeing the obvious truth of collapse all around them.

While I recognize that this wasn’t necessarily created by the Republican party, they did take advantage of a giant, malleable meatball of disenchanted, fundamentalist Christian, white, angry Americans walking in the crazy shoes of Charismatics. The Republicans soared and picked up the baton for this vast group of misfits when they and their media lackeys took on the role of fabulists to lure the simple-minded down a rat hole. Now, we have a riled-up base of the nearly insane that likely will not be pulled down from the rafters without someone giving up the strategy that was used to ensnare them, and that would reveal them to be tools for the propagation of a kind of zealotry that is nothing short of fundamentalism on the side of irrational extremism. Why would a political ruling class do something like this to its constituents? Because it’s lucrative and gives power to those who want to harness the energy of a loony machine.

The reverend Jim Jones and his People’s Temple in the jungle of Guyana immediately come to mind after listening to these cranks in public spaces defending their messiah and his party’s bizarre plan to accelerate his disciples onto the path of encountering heaven. Jim Jones was a master dog-whistle illusionist, painting images of impending doom that would befall the cowering, less-than-educated masses pummeled into fear. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Donald Trump, and the majority of Republicans appear to my simple mind to have taken a page from Jonestown to massage their followers into a state of panic similar to those who were coerced with fear and drugs into committing mass suicide, but ChatGPT brought me around to have to admit that the violence deployed in that jungle over 40 years ago is not a part of this modern equation. To quote:

It is also important to acknowledge that within any political party, there is a wide range of beliefs, opinions, and tactics. While it is possible to find similarities in some tactics used by various political groups and manipulative methods employed by cult leaders, it is crucial to distinguish between the extreme behavior exhibited by the Peoples Temple and the standard political strategies used by mainstream political parties.

Next, I asked it to define “dog whistle” as used in politics because I see some in politics and media using “extreme behaviors”:

In populist political culture, a “dog whistle” refers to a coded message or subtle communication strategy that conveys a specific meaning or sentiment to a targeted audience without explicitly stating it. The term is derived from the concept of a dog whistle, which emits a sound at a frequency that can be heard by dogs but not humans.

In politics, dog whistles are often used by politicians or political groups to appeal to certain demographics or supporters without alienating other potential voters. These messages may involve using certain words, phrases, or themes that resonate with a specific group but may not be apparent to the general public. Dog whistles can be used to convey controversial or divisive sentiments, such as racial, ethnic, or religious bias, while maintaining plausible deniability for the speaker.

Well then, I’m sticking to my potentially misguided thought that we are living through a moment of cultism being played on a massive scale where those with an inkling of hate of change or difference have been manipulated and taken to the brink of madness through dog whistles and extreme speech influencing people into irrational behaviors. As far as ChatGPT’s take on things, I tend to believe that it’s programmed not to take controversial positions, but the way I see it, there are those with public voices that are difficult for me to distinguish from someone like the reverend Jim Jones. Stay away from KookAid, you freaky right-wing extremists.

I’m not supposed to be here sharing this mugshot of a grumpy old man; I’ve been taking a writing holiday. But if I don’t jump into splashing about and hammering on my keys in the deep end of the word pool, I’m going to drown. This break from blogging was supposed to allow me some respite from the constant nagging of saying something, but the circumstances of being out and about demand I write or lash out. Putting letters and words on the page about love and beauty would have been preferable, but that hopeful act is about to be crushed as I veer off into describing the abhorrent stupidity I’m all too frequently witnessing. I sit in public and become a reluctant listener to the asinine musings of undereducated idiots who regurgitate absurdities I feel like correcting, but their passion for vapidity will never be overcome. So I don my headphones and try to disappear into song, but every so often, something gets through, and I have to raise my eyes to be the universe’s witness to who just muttered such nonsense.

I could sit at home and isolate myself from the morass of devolving intellectual creep but I prefer turning to home in the evening to relieve myself of needing to be productive. While I’m out and about my goal is learning, be it by reading, writing, playing with music tools, photography, engaging conversation, or exploring something in nature. If I were to take to the seclusion of being safe from stupidity, other than my own, at home, I’d risk becoming a shut-in.

Certainly, I grant that it has never been uncommon to witness grotesque anti-intellectualism in all of its glorious stripes of banality, and I’ll also be the first to admit that this could well be a condition of my advancing age, but I feel that large and profound public displays of vast stupidity are becoming a mark of modernity. Maybe my sensitivity is being exacerbated by my growing awareness that the machine is quickly gaining on us humans and that; in short order, my phone will effectively be smarter than 95% of those I encounter in almost any given situation. Every day lately, I talk with ChatGPT and it’s a rare moment that I fail to be impressed with its abilities. All the while, it’s advancing by leaps and bounds even though that progress is not being made immediately available to the general public yet. So, this machine with which I converse evolves on an unseen forward trajectory while those before me are stumbling down the evolutionary ladder into dark ignorance.

To say I’m unhappy writing this is a gross understatement, but I don’t know what else to do with the seething that afflicts me when I cannot avert my senses from being abused by those who flaunt such aggressively dense ignorance. Maybe writing about it will act as a cathartic moment and exorcise these demons of the dull, but I know I’m not fooling anyone as tomorrow or ten minutes from now, the bombardment of excretory density will again fall upon my shoulders and into my senses. What’s left to do?

Leaving the moment is likely my only escape, but where can I be immune to the disease of self-righteous stupidity? The void might work, but my overall love of life lets me know that’s a bad idea. Even getting in the car is risky as it’s inevitable that someone will need to be in my space due to their impatience or incredible importance that requires them to arrive at a red light 12 feet ahead of me.

I can’t be angry about this movement towards such abysmal depths of anti-intellectualism as it’s a symptom of a frightened culture on the descent from its former heights where success bred dizziness and greed. Being humbled by the arrogance that catapulted America into a role it wasn’t prepared to carry seems the only likely outcome at this time, but I have to admit that I wasn’t really ready to see it splayed out so nakedly in my lifetime.

As I drive away from the coffee shop and get home, I realize that the thing that is different this year and maybe the past two weeks is we are not traveling as much as we did last year or even the year before, and so instead of being distracted by the writing chores of capturing our experiences, I’m spending more time in my environment where I’m intentionally not writing with the frequency I’m used to. After lunch, I think I’ll head out to take some photos of the desert bloom that’s occurring right now and see if I can’t shift my focus a small amount to help me avert my gaze from what I’d rather not see.

• This is what I wrote just before my May Day missive that took my focus off this rant. 

We have no national dialog about the responsibility of individuals to themselves aside from being economically self-sufficient. There are arbitrary rules and motifs that instill fear, anxiety, and anger, but ideas about societal direction emerging from the intellect are negated and ridiculed. I hate this subject because I feel that I’m trying to tell free people what is good for them and that my ideas have relevance – when I have no sense of certainty that anything I know has any meaning to others. I do believe I know that the bedrock of a culture is its relationship to the humanities, which act as a catapult for progress. In the United States, we have marginalized the liberal arts as some demonic, anti-American, woke agenda that steals our national identity and makes white men superfluous. Survivors’ guilt, imposter syndrome, and fear drive the petty hate machine disassembling the building blocks of what sustained this country, and we are now on a trajectory of capitulating to the worst part of our natures.

Of all the crap I write, this is the most difficult as I feel it is the most evident. How do those around me not recognize the grotesque facade of mediocrity we now wear? Of course, we are all aware that the American emperor is fully naked, but who wants to tell an angry man armed with all the guns that his insipid stance that he’s a god is not reality? Do I sound angry? I’m disappointed and probably angry too. I’ve always felt on the margin where hate is directed at those who dare question the soundness of a laissez-faire approach regarding the ability to project knowledge forward. We encourage wealth, strength, belligerence, winning, thuggery, and violence through our complicity to not have the ambition to better explore what we don’t know, namely ourselves.

Read the wrong post from me, and you might believe I’m an unhappy old man, but you’d be wrong, though there is certainly a streak of frustration in my conversation that hardly does me a favor. At the heart of this is my peculiar, probably unreasonable, desire that others be guided into finding a path to their own happiness within the parameters they are capable of. The bulwark that is modern American life that deludes and tricks people into ideas of grandeur, though, is a greater force than I might ever muster in my musings that go unread by all but my wife.

For example, between yesterday and today, it was announced that Bed Bath & Beyond will close 400 of their 691 stores, but on the bright side, stores such as Dollar General, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Five Below are expanding like mad. Take Dollar General who last year opened 1,039 new locations and is on track to open 1,050 this year using a $2 billion investment because poverty shopping in America is growing. Remember the days when Walmart was America’s low-cost shopping destination? Well, they appear to be the new Macy’s or Nordstroms, while the coterie of dollar discounters become go-to shops for those on the margin. And don’t tell me that people just want to save money: they don’t have the money to save; they are trying to survive.

Another can of worms opened as I was relating some of what I’m writing to a friend; I started looking up how many Dollar General (19,022), Dollar Tree (16,000), Family Dollar (8,267), Goodwill (8,000), and Five Below stores (1,367) there are in the United States, and I came up with more than 52,000 stores catering specifically to the poor. Compare this to only 13,272 McDonald’s distributed across the country, the comparatively tiny number of 4,648 Walmarts, or the 514 branches of Whole Foods. Poverty is big business in the United States, and while people make fun of “Whole Paycheck,” relatively few people can ever afford to shop there compared to where a much larger number of people spend the little they have.

Meanwhile, Phoenix has a homeless camp in its downtown area in which, according to the New York Times, as many as 1,100 people live, while AZFamily believes there are close to “7,500 individuals experiencing homelessness” in Maricopa County. One out of every 100 Americans uses meth, about 3 out of 100 misuse opioids, and 380 people die daily from alcohol-related issues. Continuing on this grim march, every day, 192 people die from drug overdoses, 125 people decide to take their own lives, and there are nearly 3 million Americans in jail or prison. Does this sound like a country that is healthy? Oh, and don’t forget that there are between 600,000 and 1.5 million homeless people spread across our great land. We are talking about nearly 1 in 10 Americans whose life is a tragic mess that they struggle to survive.

These are symptoms of a system that is breaking down NOT only due to a failing government, corporate tyranny, or some secret cabal it is each and every American who has no connection to the ideas of what helps form a functional society where the quality of life is improving for most everyone. It is education, and I do not want to imply that our teachers are the ones failing us; it is the individuals who do not take pride or have any effective measure if they are truly smart or profoundly stupid, as this is not something we as a society really want to understand. We are a country based on the idea that I have the freedom to be as stupid or smart as I choose to be, and who are you to judge me?

Don’t watch TV for over 30 years and then have your eye catch an ad you didn’t want to see, but there it was. DirecTV embedded itself in part of my scroll through Reddit this morning, and while I’ll move to block the advertiser after seeing an ad too many times or one that is garish, the DirecTV ad I had not seen much up to this point and it isn’t distracting due to grotesque aesthetic, yet. So I paused and looked at what they were trying to convey, which triggered a bit of shock.

The advert was luring me with a 2-year special price lock-in for only $64.99 monthly, plus some fine print. My calculating brain was aghast at what it figured out quickly, but I had to know more. I see that the price does not include taxes and fees. The receiver will cost an additional $15 a month, and tax will add at least $6.40 per month, bringing the monthly cost to only $86, but wait, there’s more. This turns out to be over $1000 a year, and I’m certain that this price doesn’t include ad blocking. Then there are pay-per-view movies, regional sports fees, and premium/foreign content channels if you happen to indulge in those. And then you have to figure in AppleTV, Hulu, or Netflix with their fees should the consumer be so inclined.

As I write this stuff, I start thinking that this is not the first time I’ve lamented the cost of entertainment in the home, but maybe the part that really grinds up against my sense of value is that even after paying these exorbitant costs of membership, the consumer is still burdened with having to watch countless insipid ads that I want to believe harms the mental health of viewers.

Throw in a TV or two over the course of 10 years, and this means that Americans are paying roughly $12,000 per decade to be bombarded with stupidity while they allow the entertainment industry to whittle away at their free time under the pretense of alleviating boredom and loneliness and all of a sudden this feels like an aggressive act of emotional/intellectual robbery against the vulnerable general public or maybe it’s something akin to connecting a toxic sewage pipe to their minds which robs these people of dreams and intelligence.

By the way, if I have written more or less the same thing or the theme is worn, just try to think of this post as a rerun.