On Substack I’m pursuing the question of why so many people I know have submitted to the New Cross, the orange t.
provided a big piece of the puzzle (emphasis mine):is on the same wavelength (emphasis mine):Trump’s team blatantly scammed their own supporters out of millions with their rug pull of the pajeet shillcoins the other day. But this probably only endeared him to his fans even more. Making money by any means necessary is the only trait that anglos and their underlings admire or aspire to.
In other words, they love scammers and passionately worship them. They’re all used car salesmen at heart. Temporarily embarrassed con men who will one day find their grift or their mark and make it to the top of the dung heap.
Yes, as I’ve written about many a time, the Con Man is the American archetype. From Poe to Melville, to The Big Con, to Burroughs, to Mad Men, it is the central trope of American literature (such as it is),
Yes, the con man is not an American invention - I’ve been reading about scammers in Sanskrit - but what other country is led by a con man worshipped by millions and ‘merely’ supported by millions more? The vast majority of Trump voters are not QAnon believers or even MAGA maniacs, but in the end they voted for him.
Just like I did. Twice. But not thrice. I never got CONvid, but I can’t claim to be immune to memetic toxins. I was infected with MAGA for years, long after I disavowed him in 2017 and voted for him in 2020 only because he was the ‘lesser evil’ (which is still evil … I know now).
Still, I never got a full-blown case of what I’ll call Krass. An American affliction.
A non-American told me I couldn’t get ahead in America because I was poor at selling myself.
In modern America, everyone has to be a salesman.
Every year, millions of students write sales pitches for themselves to get into uni-farce-ities.
They grow up and write CVs to sell themselves to employers.
Some are caught lying about their credentials. But how many others manage to sneak into the supposed meritocracy?
If they can manage to get through the gate, they then take on a side hustle. Like YouTube. Like and subscribe! Or Substack. Watch me! Read me!
No dignity. The self as product. Buy me! Krass.
Even people who don’t make any money on Facebook or Instagram are selling themselves for the digital currency of likes.
I’ve written about Kuration, the selective filtration of information. Lying by omission.
Everyone’s a Kurator online now. Look at muh perfect family, muh perfect pet, muh perfect meal, muh perfect vacation … Look on muh Posts, ye Mighty, and despair! (with apologies to Shelley)
How many ask themselves, ‘What am I not looking at? How representative are the digital personas of my friends and parasocial idols?’ Almost no one, I’m afraid.
Conditioned by countless hours of ads, of movies and TV, we’re all acting for the screen now. Scripting our own lines, hoping to reach an audience.
Isn’t that what I’m doing right now? Trying to sell me to you?
At least on Substack I admit I screwed up. Over and over. That’s why I’ll never be a ‘success’.
I put the word in scare quotes because my idea of success is the Sanskrit word siddha, defined by Sir Monier Monier-Williams as (with a Wikipedia link I added)
one who has attained the highest object, thoroughly skilled or versed in […] perfected, become perfect, beatified, endowed with supernatural faculties (see 2. siddhi) […] sacred, holy, divine, illustrious
Not exactly ‘success’ in Murrica today.
Trump is the embodiment of ‘success’, USSA style. He is what his voters aspire to be. He is not siddha.
He is the god of the grifters. He even has the same hair color as the superhero Grifter!
Grifter from the cover of WildC.A.T.s: Covert Action Teams #1 (1992) by Jim Lee. I bought this thing when it was new. Shame on me …
Forget Superman, Batman, Captain America, or Spider-Man - the super embodiment of Murrica is Grifter … or his father:
From a young age, Cole Cash1 took part in his con man father Jacob Winston "Win" Cash's various grifts, until Cole witnessed his father's apparent murder […] Grifter eventually found out […] that his father had faked his own death […] Winston revealed that he had stolen money from the Mafia, and had faked his own death to escape retaliation from the mob. Win tried to manipulate Grifter into protecting him from a man he had partnered on a con with and had come to the conclusion that Win was exploiting him. Grifter realized that his father did not love him, and was a psychopath who was trying to use him. Cole then unraveled Win's latest con, and threatened to kill him if he ever came to Cole's attention again. Ultimately, letting his father escape before the police arrived.
Okay, his father isn’t superhuman, but he is super sleazy. Krass. Willing to do anything to … win cash. Win, period.
Like Trump just did.
His supporters complain about him to various degrees, but in the end, they stand with a winner, and that’s what matters.
Listening to a loser like me? No way. Why should they care about Sid Duh when they can look up to Trump and their other idols like Eeeelon? They can’t see anything seriously wrong with their billionaire ‘betters’ because they do the same thing, just at a smaller, far less ‘successful’ scale. Sleazy salesmen all.
I’m sick of the giant shopping mall that is the United States of Sleazy Salesmen. Of in-your-face Krass creatures begging for my money or at least my attention.
I’m hiding in a forest behind the mall, hoping it doesn’t get chopped down for an AI facility.
I tune out the commercials still barely audible in the distance and do drills in devavāṇī - the language of the gods.
I aim for siddha.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice the pun in “Cole Cash” until tonight! That’s what happens when one reads comics silently.
Isn't it funny that at the higher levels of society, there's no testing or need to show competence like we face in the middle and lower classes?
I've had idiot bosses that knew that they got in because of connections or nepotism dare to challenge us skilled workers.
It was beyond stupid and he lost every time.
Sometimes things would get frakked up because he didn't want to give a guy overtime and sent us home instead.
But nobody challenged his job, he was untouchable, while he tried to get some of us fired on technicalities.
These days with all the Randian like bullshit about meritocracy, we might get some karma. They can claim that they don't need to be experienced in a field to lead that field. Tedros the not doctor could be head of WHO. A used car salesman type who never practiced can talk like he knows vaccines are safe.... And so on.
Fine. No way to make a competency test for them either.
But if they hold people's lives in the balance, what skill could we test for? Empathy. And guess what, it's not that hard to diagnose sociopaths and psychopaths these days.
If someone is blind, they're not allowed to drive.
If someone lacks empathy, they shouldn't be able to lead anyone.
Boom, problem solved.
We live in a dystopia where the system can easily flip to utopia. People don't need to slave to barely live. Just cut the frakking parasites out and their stolen wealth could feed many. We could solve homelessness on 30bln while that's just a drop in the bucket for a stupid bullshit cold war 2.0 or our favorite aircraft carrier fascist extremist nation.
Seeking Atman is the only right path. Amen, broski!