We were cruising down the Blue Ridge Parkway, drinking cheap beer. We talked about politics like we knew what was happening, jabbering wildly, using big gestures. While Jim Morrison sang out his sexual frustrations at top volume on the stereo, we carried on joking about the idea of left versus right. National politics bloated like a carcass, threatening to bust in an explosion of maggots and fanfare. The very notion of decency was rotten, naive.
Each taste of the alcohol felt like another step toward victory over something. The unseen forces holding us back – the very hate we were pecking at all day – seemed to wash away in a calm bath of fresh knowledge. We were just kids.
I would have done anything to “be” a good person, anything but goodness. I always looked for the shortcuts, the easy way out. If I couldn’t find it, I bullshitted it. The gears of my existence were lubricated with bullshit. I was a misery factory and I even capitalized on the byproduct. The sludge. I knew a way to both poison and satisfy. I was heroin, but not so pleasant. None of you are even worth the guilt I would feel after the harm. None of you are worth the kill. I hate you. I know you.
Looking back, I wouldn’t have been so happy. I think contentedness holds people back in general, and it’s definitely not for everyone. There’s no more passion in me for that stuff. No romance. At just the sound of it, I’m immediately bored with the familiar conversations of television ideology. It’s not a talk worth having. Almost nothing is. Generalizations and platitudes are what this paragraph is about. I hope you’ve enjoyed them.
I canvassed for Net Neutrality in 2005, before I even knew how to explain it. I could sense it was important, and something compelled me to tell anyone about it who would listen. It’s the only political cause I ever truly got behind. The built-in obviousness of its necessity should be apparent to anyone who’s ever tried to yell the loudest in a room full of screaming people but it’s a question, because policymakers don’t just listen to people with money, they let them think and write for them, too. It makes the already easy job of voter representation even easier. So it’s up for grabs. Whatever. That battle’s lost even though all signs advise cautious optimism. It is also falling out of fashion with the mercurious evolution of Web 3.0. I’ll be happy when Net Neutrality dies. It’s time already.
Kill it all or let it die. I don’t give a fuck and there’s nothing left to give a fuck about. Those were warm nights, with the windows down, talking about Utopia. It wasn’t a crime. It never happened. No one was watching. No one remembers.
