Rant warning.

This is a post I'll probably delete in the morning, but a head cold courtesy of the 1500 person Rail Ridge Fire Camp and hot whiskey have me thinking clearly. Or not. You be the judge, and I mean that, sincerely. I'd like to hear where I'm wrong.

Unspeakable atrocities against innocent humans have run wild since the Oct 7 2023 attack on a music festival in Israel by Hamas. It's been one year of unfathomable suffering in a sliver of land that has been war torn for centuries - eons even. But this time, it's the marionette Hamas, puppeteered by warmongerers and oil oligarchs, with the megaphone of the virtue-signaling Fourth Estate backing the full eradication of the State of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish Nation. Israel responds like a rabid, cornered animal, like a nation denied a home for generations upon generations. Like a people who have been, a time or two before, threatened with complete obliteration. And the whole thing is a proxy war for the people who have the oil and the people who want the oil and the people who are manufacturing a war machine in perpetuity that pays all the bills of all the legislators who vote for all of the aid we send to these places.

Record breaking fire weather and storms ravage the country while FEMA blunders it's way through the management, or mis-management, of an unmanageable situation. Conspiracy theories run wilder than the flooding rivers of the Carolinas, while all the time, if you were there, on the ground, you'd see people helping people the way it should be, while the government moves money around in a shell game that justifies another decade or so of excuses for why the rich get richer and the poor run out of ways to survive. If you want to get on the other side of that, just start tracking where these career politicians are making their investments ahead of major disasters and unrest in the middle east.

We face an election without hope. No one, deep down, likes Donald Trump any more than the creepy uncle who gives them quarters at Thanksgiving and is entertaining until mom gets pissed and he mercifully leaves. And I hope, in spite of the "protest too much" syndrome of Harris backers, nobody seriously likes her much either, if they're really honest. We have no good options.

And yet even so. EVEN SO. Nothing has outraged me quite as specifically as hearing that Chappel Roan recently canceled a string of concerts due to mental health concerns from all the pressure she was under to declare who she supported in the upcoming presidential election. As if there was really any question about who Chappel Roan - arguably one of the biggest musical phenoms (correction - FEMININOMENON) of an entire generation and a wildly charismatic standard bearer of defiant LGBTQ (sorry if I missed some) support - would vote for. And yet the bullies wouldn't rest. They wouldn't relent until she canceled shows and finally released a statement addressing her political support. And it makes me so angry I could spit. Almost as angry as the bullies and tyrants who think "Taylor Swift should shut up about politics" because she has the audacity to have a different view than they do.

Since when do the bullies win? Since when do we get to demand to know how someone votes? Since when is an artist subject to different privacy rights OR (yes all you hard-right assholes) first amendment rights than the rest of us? If they want to talk about it, that's their right and prerogative. If they don't, we have no business asking. Shame on us. What have we become? Our cancel culture and public shaming and the ENDLESS boycotts, all the while claiming our steadfast adherence to the first amendment. It's garbage. And it flies in the face of E Pluribus Unum.

I don't agree with Chappel Roan's politics, or Taylor Swift's. Or anybody else for that matter. I care about the fact they are American citizens with the right to think and vote as they please and I will defend that to the death. Along with, for better or worse, as in the case of my rant right now, the right to speak, or not speak. That right is not conditional and it is not based on political affiliation.

If it isn't clear to you by now that the posts you're seeing and sharing on social media are engineered overseas by entities who thrive on our misfortune, then maybe it's time to put the KoolAid down. The farthest-right and hardest-left memes and headlines and clickbait propaganda all originate from the same source, and it's not friendly. (and yes, I am preaching to myself as well)

We are no longer the greatest country in the world. We are gullible, we are bullies and we are bullied, we are misled and soft and easy. None of us has a clue what's really happening. Turn off the voices clamoring for your outrage. Hold fast to your convictions and base them upon knowledge and experience that isn't derived from media conglomerates owned by the same warmongerers and oil oligarchs feeding innocents into the insatiable jaws of turmoil.

And side note, any federal agency that has to do their own "rumor control" webpage is doing something wrong, speaking from direct personal experience. (I'm looking at you, FEMA)

Undo it all. #ChappelRoanForPresident