I figured out some time ago that the propaganda of American exceptionalism I was raised with - and I got a double dose because it's embedded in Mormon theology - is bullshit. By November 2024 at the latest, I knew that American society was rotten to the core. I had some understanding of the psychological reasons why MAGAts are dumber than mold, but it never satisfied me because nobody is putting guns to their heads and making them only watch Fox News. This video is the first explanation I've heard, though, that really drives home how deep the rot goes and makes me feel genuine compassion for MAGAts without being on drugs. No, really. When I'm on drugs, I understand that it isn't their fault they're so goddamn stupid, but as soon as the drugs wear off, I'm too tired of their bullshit to care. I still don't know how to help them when they don't want to be helped because they're too stupid to know what's good for them. I don't know how to fix the systemic, intentional problems that go back to the founding of this country. The current foundation will probably have to be burned down entirely. Trump is doing a decent job of that. I think AI has the potential to fix a lot of these problems, but chances are just as good that it will make them several times worse instead. I think it really depends on whether there's a divine purpose behind this world or just massive cosmic indifference. I'm not on drugs right now, I'm just not trying particularly hard to be coherent because my motivation is shot, which is why I'm happy to share a 50-minute video (though you can watch it at 2x speed, like I did) instead of writing a real post.

Sometimes MAGAts claim that normal people will oppose everything their cult leader does just because he's the one doing it. An example I've seen more than once is "if he cured cancer," and that's a spectacularly obtuse example because he literally cut funding for cancer research, you morons. The phrasing I saw most recently was "if he developed a vaccine for cancer," so that was extra stupid coming from one of the people who don't believe in vaccines. Anyway, to prove that this line of thinking isn't true, let me say that Trump did good things by rescheduling marijuana and expediting research into the healing effects of psychedelics. These are probably the second and third best things he'll ever do. The first, of course, is to stop breathing. Maybe if he used marijuana and/or psychedelics himself, he would learn not to be a piece of shit.

The Democratic contenders for the new congressional district in Utah were rocked by scandal last week. First, someone found out that Nate Blouin wrote anti-Mormon comments and joked about sexual assault on the internet over a decade ago when he was in his early twenties. I didn't much care about the anti-Mormon stuff. The other stuff was icky. Frankly, though, I think we need to make allowances, within reason, for people to grow out of being pieces of shit. I'm a completely different person than I was in my early twenties, and I believe the same is true of Nate. He's the only candidate I've ever seen attending or speaking at protests. If he had actually assaulted someone, that would be a dealbreaker for me, but if the left insists on crucifying people for past mistakes after they've become better, they won't have much incentive to become better, will they? One of the other candidates, city council member Eva Lopez Chavez, condemned his remarks, which irritated four women enough to come forward and accuse her of restraining them while she made unwanted sexual advances. Good Lord.

I went to the Democrat convention again yesterday to help choose a candidate because I thought it was my civic duty, not because I felt like spending my Saturday at something that's like Comic-Con minus all the fun parts. I now feel like the whole process was a waste of time. I spiraled into a bit of depression when I saw that I'd missed multiple Signal messages from the lady I came with, asking if I wanted to just go home and vote online, which would have given me up to four hours to do literally anything else, such as make money from my remote job. I had Signal notifications turned off because I used to get two hundred a day. Anyway, through the ranked-choice voting system, Liban Mohammed emerged victorious. Now he's the Democratic nominee, chosen by people whom I have no reason to assume are representative of voters. I know I'm not. I became the vice-chair of my precinct because I was one of the two people who showed up to caucus. And three of the losing candidates will also be on the primary ballot because they got enough signatures, so I don't see the freaking point of what I did.

I like Liban just fine, but I don't think he'll win the primary because he's young and has no direct political experience. I think Ben McAdams, the Republican Lite career politician who came in a close second, will win that. Some people at the convention booed him and yelled "FREE PALESTINE!" - two of them were sitting by me, which was a stressful experience - but ordinary Utah voters don't likely care that much about Palestine, or the minimum wage increase or public land protections or union protections that he voted against. I'd love to be wrong. The people near me also yelled "RESIGN!" and "WE BELIEVE WOMEN!" multiple times when Eva was on stage. It's nice that they don't have a double standard for lesbians of color. Unlike Nate, she didn't address her recent controversy; she just brought her family onstage and asked us to vote for her grandmother's future. We had been asked to treat all candidates with respect even if they weren't our favorite, but only one person in the front was removed for yelling at Ben, so that made the event organizers look pretty impotent.

Is this overly negative? Perhaps. I'm just tired of all this political crap, and I want to take a break, but it won't pause. Ever. Despite my exhaustion after this apparently pointless convention, I went to a protest at the governor's mansion against the proposed ICE concentration camp in our city. At least that had music, and I let off some steam by writing him a postcard. I didn't mean to add the part at the bottom, but someone mentioned Prop 4 while I was writing, I got pissed off, and my fingers moved faster than my brain.

If you're in Utah, please sign this letter, "A Statement of Utah Values," to register your opposition to the concentration camp. If you're not opposed to the concentration camp, please go play in traffic.

Mary frequently doesn't respond to my texts for days or weeks. I keep at it, and then one day she responds immediately. Then once in a while, I get her to call me, and we talk for two to seven hours. Last weekend, after a couple of unresponsive weeks, she became rather chatty, albeit with rather random responses.

On Sunday evening, we talked on the phone and watched the second episode of a show called Paradise that she's obsessed with. The last time we talked on the phone, she asked me to watch the first episode with her, and I said I wanted to watch all the episodes with her as a clever way of getting her to talk to me more often. She said maybe I wasn't really tricking her because that's what she wanted. So there were only two weeks between these phone calls, which is a record.

This time, I was high. I've texted people I trust while I was high, including Mary, but I've never talked on the phone. Mary's voice sounded softer than ever and like it was right inside my ear. Most of the episode proceeded uneventfully, but there was a part where a woman picked up a carton of ice cream at the store and asked her son, "Horse?" and he said, "Horse." I understood this to mean that the ice cream was horse-flavored, and I didn't question that. It's kind of a weird show. In the next shot, her son was riding the coin-operated horse ride outside the store. I laughed my ass off as I explained my misunderstanding to Mary, and she laughed at my laughter and asked why I don't laugh more often. I should have told her she needs to be funnier.

Then there was a part where a woman, I think the same one, told some guy that it was sexy when he did what she wanted. I boldly asked Mary if that was true and said that I could do what she wanted. She laughed. When the episode ended, I said it again and told her I needed to say it now before I got my inhibitions back. She said that because I probably wouldn't remember that conversation, she would be blunt, and of course I didn't like the sound of that, but all she said was that it was obvious (i.e. that I wanted to do what she wanted). "Within reason," she added before I got a chance.

"I trust you," I said, and that was so true. I've told her before that if I could, I would give her my soul and feel perfectly safe.

I kept her talking while she needed to go to bed, and she said she was going to do a Sudoku before bed and that made her a nerd and also a hypocrite for calling me and her sisters nerds. I said she needed to tell me what words I was allowed to call her so I didn't get in trouble. She said I can call her whatever words she calls me.

I said, "I like that you set the rules, and I have to obey them."

She said, "I know you do."

Perhaps this experience is just weird to anyone else, but it was beautiful and titillating and thrilling to me, and this is my blog, so of course I'm going to write about my life, not everyone else's. I used to be scared that she would feel misled about our friendship if I told her I loved her, and now I routinely test her boundaries and kiss her ass, and she doesn't hate it. I guess I'll keep at it until she gets a boyfriend or tells me to get lost, but I don't anticipate either of those things happening.

She hasn't responded to me about watching Paradise together this evening, though, so DuckTales alone it is.

This week, a $40/hour creative writing project was available to me on the AI training platform that's my sole source of income, and I missed it to go to a city council meeting that I could have watched online. I regret that. I was there to express my opposition to the ICE detention center, but I didn't even make a comment because I didn't bother to figure out how city council meetings work and sign up to make a comment beforehand. That's life, if you define life as me making unnecessary mistakes. Anyway, the city council already opposes the ICE detention center, so this was more about encouraging it not to back down. At least eight people expressed that sentiment.

A fat redneck stereotype expressed a different sentiment. He started off sarcastically thanking the council for cutting off water to the warehouse even though ICE agents can shower at home and bring bottled water, and then he went on an unhinged rant about four "illegals" who committed violent crimes in places that aren't Utah, which somehow bothered him even though he obviously voted for a serial rapist who was best friends with a child sex trafficker. I swear to God, one of the Hispanic council members left the room during his rant. I was gratified when a math teacher diverted from her prepared comment to explain to him (and any other high school dropouts who might have been in the room) how percentages work. After the meeting, I flipped him off because punching him in his dumbass racist teeth was illegal. (Yes, he could have flattened me alone, but I wasn't alone.0 Then my keys, loosened from emptying my pockets for the security check before the meeting, fell out. And he said, "You dropped your keys, bud." So that was humiliating. Now I've increased my credibility by sharing this humiliating anecdote instead of casting myself as the triumphant hero of the situation.

On Saturday, I attended the Salt Lake County Democratic convention as a delegate, which is something that I've never been interested in doing but did anyway because fighting fascism can't be fun and games all the time. I had friends there, and I picked up a decent amount of free food and candy, so those two things salvaged the event from being as boring as General Conference. I went to a dance protest at the ICE detention center afterward because fighting fascism is fun and games sometimes. Something like eighteen cops were there to flush our tax dollars down the toilet. They sat in their darkened vans and watched us for two hours, and then, as soon as the guy with the speakers left, they pulled him over and cited him for an expired registration, disorderly conduct, and being too loud for this neighborhood of empty warehouses. It's all very obviously a bullshit attempt to intimidate us, squelch our First Amendment rights, and protect the fascist secret police, and of course we're not putting up with it. Also, we just found out that the city considers drawing with chalk on the sidewalk a Class B misdemeanor. I have no words.

Hungary just ousted its far-right authoritarian president, Viktor Orbán, who pleasantly surprised me by not rigging the election or refusing to concede. His successor, Péter Magyar, is center-right, which would make him a Democrat in the US. His party, Tisza, also won a supermajority in parliament that will help him reverse the damage to democracy caused by his predecessor. Orbán has spent his sixteen years in office patiently dismantling the checks on his power. Trump openly admires him and has been trying to speedrun the same strategy, with less success. Trump sent JD Vance to campaign for him recently, having somehow failed to notice that nobody in the world like JD Vance. Also, like Trump, Orbán is an ally of Putin who's blocked aid to Ukraine and caused turmoil throughout Europe. This is a great day for a lot of people and a bad day for some very bad people. Orbán is a very bad person - but again, he did concede the election on the same night. Trump still hasn't conceded the election from over five years ago. Trump is a worse person, and I'm just grateful he has a lot less time (both in office and on this Earth).