America’s Big Stupid Energy, or What Happens When Stupid Goes Radioactive and Melts a Society Down

If I had to put a name to it, I’d call it Big Grandiose Stupid Energy.

It’s just ripping through, out of, into America these days. I don’t think the country’s ever been stupider. And that’s sort of like saying I’ve never been more goth. It takes a lot, in other words.

This level of stupid isn’t just painful, deafening, screeching in the way of a train wreck, or maddening in the way an attack of killer gnats. It’s flattening. Doof. Like the gigantic pyroclastic flow riding down a volcano. You look at it, from a distance, and wonder: what the hell is going to survive that?

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

There’s Trump, sort of grin-leering on stage, as he denounces…Tylenol. This is the Soviet Union, but for over-the-counter-pharmaceuticals. Denunciations, in case it wasn’t clear, are the stuff of Marxist-Leninism. They’re how that system worked. It was about fanaticism, and as in other forms of absolutist ideology, one denounced one’s own colleagues, to prove one’s own moral faith.

But it’s one thing to denounce Trotsky, and quite another…Tylenol.

It might sound trivial, but in fact there’s a whole series of historical turning points in that example. Tylenol comes from paracetamol, which was one of the first modern “wonder drugs.” And marked the transition to a post-Victorian age where society moved beyond laudanum and vapors to genuinely modern drugs, created and synthesized and tested…scientifically.

The Revolution Against Tylenol is one against science, modernity, and equality, in that very real sense.

So here’s America’s Big Grandiose Stupid Energy. Of all the goddamned things to be revolting against in the 21st century…from violence to hatred to killing the planet to, I don’t know, lonely dorks thinking ChatGPT girlfriends are going to answer their mildewed prayers…in lieu of thinking anything vaguely useful…doing anything remotely sensible…no, forget it guys, we’re Revolting Against Tylenol.

Have I even begun? Let me continue blasting you with America’s ginormous laser-beam of brain-meltingly stupid.

Then there’s the stock market. Since nobody over the age of 70 and or who’s not already named Bezos, Musk, or Gates can afford to retire, hell, most people can barely afford to feed their kids, there’s the stock market, pumped up higher than Lance Armstrong’s fastest, most testicle-choking ascent up the side of a French mountainside.

This is the greatest bubble since the dot com era, but what is it about, precisely? It’s a Bubble of Stupid, really. We all know—all of us, except maybe creepy freaks who worship creepy freaks like Elom—that AI isn’t going to do anything remotely or beneficial. It’s going to be to jobs what Trump was to interior design, to human consciousness what a bottle of scotch is to Pete Hegseth, and so on. But the bet here is that…maybe there’s someone even stupider, that’ll buy this whole flaming shitpile, just in time for me to sell.

That’s how bubbles work—the most apt historical description goes, “and let the devil take the hindmost”—only in this case, what’s genuinely pathetic about it is that it’s sort of like watching the world’s biggest dorks desperately, furiously playing a game of strip poker with each other, while the demonic elephant in the room burns the house down. Hello, your country is on fire.

The stupid. I know that stupid runs through the blood of America like acid runs through the veins of The Alien. We all know that. America has this fatal, funny, almost cute love affair with all things inane, idiotic, cheesy, and often, that’s even sort of OK. After all, every nation has its flaws.

But this is like if the French only ever wore black and spoke in Camus quote or, if the Italians went a whole year and all they did was kiss while spattering each other with freshly trodden grapes. This level of stupid is something breathtaking.

Like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen America this stupid before, and that means that maybe a country, none of them, period, have ever been this stupid before.

Does it feel like anyone cares much that the country’s currently a) losing its democracy b) barely hanging onto its sanity c) clinging to the embers of a once-functioning economy and d) sort of faintly hanging on to itself if at all? I don’t mean “people like you and me,” yes, I know there are about fifty of us left, but I mean the other three hundred and thirty million and whatever minus this fifty of us, go ahead, let’s just call us The Last Fifty, if you like.

Does it, and I mean that seriously, feel like anyone much remotely cares enough, and isn’t that just stupid at an incendiary level? Apart from the Last Fifty in your town, city, county, and so on? Like…this is either an Oscar-winning performance by an entire country, or, actually, we’re in something even worse than the scariest horror moves ever fully imagined, which isn’t just Idiocracy, but Idiocracy Meets the Purge by way of 1984 while the Nazis Won and Terminator Drooled All Over The Ruins.

You see, by this point, most countries facing this level of absolute wreckage and ruin…I don’t know…do something. Anything. That something is usually in the national character, to some degree. The French barricade the nearest street, and everyone sort of groans, because, sigh, man, I just wanted a croissant this morning. The Italians get salty, worked up into a lather, and sort of yell indignantly at each other, before they hug it out (alright, sometimes there are hangings, too.) The Germans go ice cold and suddenly, it’s like the ghost of Goethe’s right there in the whites of everyone’s eyes.

Every country has its go-to panic response. But America’s may just be to get even stupider when the chips are down.

And that’s what different about this.

I don’t know, you can tell me, yell at me, hate me, whatever. But I feel like this is different. America’s go to response used to be better than this. Didn’t it? Am I just imagining it? Do I have to coin a whole word for it, OK sure, here you, go, let’s call it panicstalgia, the thing we remember we do when we’re running out of options. I feel like when when the chips were down, Americans would suddenly grow a backbone, jut their jaws out, call forth on some weird reserve of wisdom and collective action and heroism that was surprising to the whole world, because, hey, it meant Americans weren’t just selfish shoppers, wow, look at that…and they’d sort of leap into action like the goddamned…I don’t know…Fall Guy…Michael Knight…the A-Team…Arnold vs Terminator…whatever…all these hyper-American modern fairy tales after all are about something, and that’s something’s the hidden truth of the national character.

But maybe things have changed. And instead of becoming veritable heroes when the chips were down—hello, remember World War II, the Civil War, I could go on—now, America’s different, and maybe Americans are different. Maybe now their panic response isn’t to sort of pilot the bomber through the flashing havoc of the anti-aircraft guns and carpet-bomb the Nazis to bits anymore…it’s to Hit the Throttle on Maximum Stupid, and do comedy Seig Heils with L’il Adolf in the jump seats, while the engines burn out to oblivion, and the whole goddamn mission flames out at sea.

Maybe I’m being mean. I don’t know. You tell me. Here’s what I do know.

I can barely see straight anymore. Typing a word, anymore, is like lifting a goddamned metric ton of plutonium, every keystroke, because to do it, I have to fight the weight of more stupid than human history has known since the Fall of Rome. You do too. That’s why so few of us write anymore, or even talk about it all anymore, really. We have to lift off the weight of all the headlines, all the psychodrama, the gaslighting, the spectacle, the scandal, the idiocy, and that’s like lifting the heaviest elements in the Solar System, with only the tips of your fingers, which is a Herculean Feat. I know, you didn’t quite get that, so let me make it clearer.

Just think of what it takes to wake up and even think clearly anymore. Jesus, was it…yesterday…did he…fucking…what the fuck…Declare a Revolution Against Tylenol? Ah, Christ, I was having such a nice dream, and what is today…are we At War With Chicago Again? What are we Making Great Again Today, the Bubonic Plague? Goddamit, I was skipping through the fucking springtime meadows, and as soon as my eyes clacked open, what the…are we…fuck…fucking…banning…baby formula for being too woke? Jesus effing Christ, what is it today, do I have to drink the blood of a goat and declare that The Adorable Baby Hitler was really the reincarnation of Saint Peter, or else I’m on the shitlist? What the sweet holy fuck is even going on anymore?

I don’t blame you. I can barely fucking see straight myself. I hang out at the cafe, and my vision blurs. At first, I used to think it was radiant heat from the implosion of a distant star, but now I know, it’s the literal force of stupid so impossible, its pressure wave is striking my glasses with the power of a thousand suns. The stupid is literally radioactive at this point, guys, and it is melting our goddamn faces off. But why is that?

Here we are, walking around like half-faced zombies, and sort of asking each other, hey, do you think this is normal? No, my man, it is not normal to walk around with half a face melted off by the Gamma Radiation of Stupid so Stupid it’s Literally Undergone Thermonuclear Fusion With Itself. Not remotely normal. What’s normal, maybe, is asking: is it even possible for this level of Stupid to exist? How did this level of stupid even happen?

It’s like when they discovered whole new phases of matter. This is a new phase, order, level, of stupid. All stupid before this, it feels like to me, was something else. This is stupid condensed, distilled, evaporated, into its most potent, truest, and finest form. One goddamn drop of this stuff, this Thermonuclear Distillate of Plutonium-Level Stupid—it’d be enough to take out Stockholm, Rome, or, heaven forbid, most of a really nice and kind and gentle place like Western Canada. It’s should be under strict containment on the Fifth Floor of the biohazard lab at USAMRIID, right next to Ebola and Marburg.

But here it is, unleashed in the wild, just ripping through, across, out of, America. What? Don’t look at me like that. I don’t have the antidote, and if I did, I’d share it with you. Do I look like an asshole? Of course I’d give it to you. The only antidote, really, is chilling at a decent cafe or shop in Paris or London or Rome, though, and the problem in that sense is that you can’t fit it into a syringe.

Where does that leave us? Talk about missing the point. That leaves us in the way of Stupid That’s Undergone Thermonuclear Fusion With Itself and Become a Whole New Phase of Matter. In the way of this nightmare thing that’s so lethal just a single drop, one Gamma Ray, is enough to take out a whole goddamned city, and there you are, asking me questions, like this is the first autumn afternoon of philosophy class at Harvard. Dude.

Get down, my friend, get down. The gigantic laser beam is coming this way again. Doommm dooommm. It’s walking this way, the giant machine pulsing with an idiotic fury. Half your face is already melted off. You can already barely see straight. Just hope for the best, and hell, if it hits you square in the mouth this time, and blasts right through your cerebellum, maybe that is for the best, because in the end, maybe even the Romans asked, the Last Fifty, who weren’t busy puking their guts out in the vomitoriums, so they could go feast yet again, anyways: what the fuck on earth could possibly survive this level of stupid?

Now. That’s a bit of a rant, so let me distill the lesson. Stay away from this. Put a Haz-Mat suit on your mind, your spirit, your soul, and your wealth. “Stupid” is more formally the mental energy of a society going off the rails with delusion, paranoia, mania, persecution complexes, irrationality, infantile narcissism. It is mass psychosis. And it must not guide your life, any aspect of it, from relationships to finances. It will destroy everything it touches, from marriages to money.

Be steadfast in remaining sane, my friends. You are the not the crazy one. Those babbling in the mass psychosis of everything from stock market bubbles to conspiracy theories to death cults are. That is the first challenge in times like these, where the Thermonuclear Power of Stupid is melting everything down around us.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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