Caitlin Johnstone

This But Unironically

This, but unironically. This thing we do, where we are people who do not understand what’s happening because we were raised by children and we are still children, and we are falling toward death with damaged minds in a universe made of awkward silence and we don’t know how to be cool about it. This…

Caitlin Johnstone
, ,

This, but unironically.

This thing we do,
where we are people who do not understand what’s happening
because we were raised by children and we are still children,
and we are falling toward death with damaged minds
in a universe made of awkward silence
and we don’t know how to be cool about it.

This place where we clawed our way up the food chain
to become the apex predator
and now we’re all afraid
because we are surrounded by apex predators.

This place where powerful men spend fortunes on confusing us,
where we walk with Prozac faces among the ghosts of the indigenous,
where we ache for a forgotten culture like a fresh amputee for a missing limb,
where modern medicine makes us outlive our own neurons and skeletons
but not our exuberance,
where brains make people so miserable that they blow them out their skulls,
where you can become rich just by pretending you know how to live
or pretending you know what’s going on.

This.
This whole mess.
But, unironically.
Just the way it is.
No hiding behind furtive coolness.
No stepping a click backwards or above
to avoid the uncomfortable intimacy of this disaster.
Let’s just sit here a minute in the family dinner weirdness of it all
and be here with it.

This is where we meet.
Not in detached imperviousness
or behind some pleasant reframing,
but here.
In this.
In this life-sized life,
in this universe-shaped universe,
in this reality-flavored reality,
in all its awkward awesomeness,
in all its courageous carnage,
in all its holy hideousness.

We do not fear the sloppiness,
the fleshiness,
the clumsiness,
the chaos.
We make like Bowie.
We turn and face the strange.

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34 responses to “This But Unironically”

  1. who Avatar
    who

    __________________________________
    __________________________________
    this masks we wear
    as we obey this fathom away rules
    so we can line up at the closed church parking lot
    to get our free poisoned food
    this i fear to warn your about vocally
    full of glysulphates and what all I can only guess
    This sandwitch that made me sick
    that was put aside special for me
    This unirony… that you treat my kindness
    my song, my wisdom my jokes
    in my vain attempt to AWAKEN you that you are being led downward
    selling your senscbilites for a free sandwich and coffee
    This unirony, that your mask won’t let you see my open face
    this irony that you fear to be seen listening to me who
    has been slander-gossipe branded as the one with the talk- desease
    of joyous knowledge available if you would just
    let yourselves be free to disobey the head masters.
    “this, this, this kiss” —- you missed.
    The Guess Who sings: “NOT supoosed to touch nobody…
    This fine state of affairs. No one cares.”
    from Vancouver
    ____________________
    _____________________

  2. Shilo Avatar
    Shilo

    Trump faces the strange. Sure he’s a “miserable rich man” , but he’s something else as well. There’s some deep, dark stuff he knows, and is facing. The real question is…..what will he DO? What can he DO? Whatever it is, it has to be executed with the wisdom of Soloman, or rather a latter day sage of a high order. Maybe he has one of those in the back room. Maybe not. Like most of us he’s a flawed character, and perhaps unlike most, he seems to enjoy ‘playing ‘ it. The playing keeps people guessing. He’s hard to follow, but then again he’s surviving, and when you face the strange that is not guaranteed.

  3. mike k Avatar
    mike k

    I am not a robot. But sometimes I wonder — is that a good thing? It’s often quite uncomfortable….

  4. Aroha Avatar
    Aroha

    Cait are you a Central Intelligence Agency Tool?
    Is that why you support the mainstream media celebrity Agent Assange and ignore the COVID psyop?
    The idea has been currently up for discussion at other lefty astrotuf blogs.

  5. jimmy gulag Avatar
    jimmy gulag

    while we worry and fear we are also duped:
    the virus fear:
    call me when Covid19 CASES pass 1% of world, city, or state population.
    ring my bell when Deaths by Covid exceed 25%. of cases.
    make me redo my math. ALL the cases fit into 1% of human population. the wrong 1% i’ll agree with you on that. but still….so 25% of all cases die. that is one fourth of 1%.
    uhmmm…if 100% looks like 100.00
    then death by Covid looks like 000.25
    why am i not scared? also bats have been around forever. i’m not sure US BIOWAR labs invented this version of batshit. i dunno. it’s secret. YOU run in and ask ’em! the US has about 10 of these labs, and more like in Winnipeg, off limits for us to visit overseas, i again dunno.
    Plus, in various University labs like Iowa State home of the anthrax scare. and North Carolina U. a big playah in da corona tourney….there is where i read [since redacted from da X-outs], that TWO (2) Chinese fellows were caught red-handed so to speak with corona lab samples stolen from NC BIOWAR lab XXX….and i’m never gonna cheer for them again. The FBI said one of the charges they were hit with was the theft and the other, CONSPIRACY !!!
    TO STEAL…i’d expect. they were 2 or more people and had to have plan for that, so voila!
    the FBI has become a conspiracy theorist …after all these 19 years.
    i’m just sayin’…
    i prefer to worry—if one has to worry—about the bozos on “our” side who are using these labs for Offensive weapons instead of quick action vaccines that will nullify anything anyone can invent:our Defense Dept is more Offensive. so offen-seively leaking money, they have to create offenses for the Others to fight us with.
    Defense is muted as a game changing play killer….too cheap to live.
    here are some nice options….we have inside us ALL some friendly viruses in each cell. they pop up and cut open and eat bad boyz like Covid for breakfast. huge things called “phages” also eat viruses. tame some of these to pitch in like guard dogs or cleopatra’s cheetahs, or Falcons on a string, or cats, ..even…and we could relax about this minor irritation.
    but power does not gain when the people are relaxed and happy. they hate that.
    so they tellus to lock ourselves up. and wait fo futher instructions.
    TRump needs a bigger screen. like the one on Broadway. or one floating high inthe sky over AMerica entirely. or over the WHOLE planet…hanging down over us from SPACE ships of our very own space army….
    ohhhh, joy.
    what aperfect planet for apoet.

  6. Roy Avatar
    Roy

    I’m sure that everyone knows what, the prase, ‘total domination’, means in terms of US foreign policy. Total domination is also one of the psychological reasons for consuming one’s enemies, and as everyone knows some people can’t eat pork because of religious restrictions, luckily for them though human flesh tastes like pork, and it is for that reason and that reason only that eating human flesh is kosher

  7. Dennis Kogl Avatar
    Dennis Kogl

    Russia is not our enemy. Our government can fill that role nicely.

  8. ron campbell Avatar
    ron campbell

    The Civil War and the Alaska Purchase
    The sale of Alaska stands out as an incomprehensible historical anomaly for many who choose to see history merely as a sequence of linear events determined by “practical decision making”. The failure to recognize higher organizing principles shaping humanitys collective experience as a universal process has blinded many historians from recognizing the true dynamic from which such a decision sprung and which could only be recognized from a top down perspective.
    Russia has not always been our enemy; In fact they save the United States during our “Civi War”; please read this great article here:
    Tomorrows Arctic: Theatre of War or Cooperation? The Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase by Matthew Ehret!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/19/tomorrows-arctic-theatre-of-war-or-cooperation-the-real-story-behind-the-alaska-purchase/

  9. Dennis Kogl Avatar
    Dennis Kogl

    I love what you can do with words. It doesn’t hurt that I can’t find disagreement with what you say. I like the Downunder accent as well. It tickles my mind…

  10. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    Each new generation shares its ignorance and pain with the next
    Who do likewise to the next innocent victims
    Who will do the same to those yet unborn
    The Predators at the Top sit back and laugh at this carnage
    They stir the global pot a bit
    And we – the people of the world – take it from there
    And make a toxic brew and stew of it all
    It tastes god awful
    It smells terrible
    Yet we feed it to everyone around us
    And resist all those
    Who dare to want to change the ingredients
    Like those who sit in prison
    For committing their unpardonable sin
    Of exposing the Predators toxic recipes
    And worse… our role in cooking up this concoction from hell

    There are other recipes!
    There are the unborn as yet not poisoned
    Do they stand a chance?
    Or will they be pulled down as well?
    What are you cooking today?
    Do we turn and face the strange?
    Or do we just turn away?

  11. Douglass Avatar
    Douglass

    Donald Trump has now killed more Americans with his “herd immunity” and “Profits over People” response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, than Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon killed in the Korean police action and the Vietnam unconstitutional war.

    1. khatika Avatar
      khatika

      Loosen your mask and goggles. They are cutting off the flow of blood to your brain.

  12. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    The problem is that ‘common sense’ used to mean being able to see through the fog to a clear reality. Today, that same phrase makes no sense, because most Americans get lost at a simple fork in the road. They don’t know how to discover which is the proper choice, because they can’t even recognize the fog.

  13. ron campbell Avatar
    ron campbell

    While funding right-wing groups to destabilise socialist countries, the United States destabilises Cuba not only by maintaining the illegal blockade. To drive a wedge in diplomatic relations, Cuba is back on a list which the United States itself should be leading in prime position.
    The false designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terror is also a direct means of incitement against the island, at a time when Cuba is a leading nation in efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19. Revolutionary principles and terror motives cannot be part of the same agenda. Cuba does not promote violence – hence the United States has no grounds upon which to discredit the revolutionary nation.
    Only on the Internet will factual articles like this one ever appear. The ” real truth ” never gets told to the completely brainwashed public. Once the “owners and the masters” think of you as “their property” your life belongs to them forever!
    Cuba Is Punished for not Emulating the United States by Ramona Wadi!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/25/cuba-punished-for-not-emulating-us/

    1. Blessthebeasts Avatar
      Blessthebeasts

      The world should be emulating Cuba. They have stood up to the most terrorist nation on earth and survived. Their culture thrives even in the face of blockades, embargoes and terror.
      Viva Cuba.

      1. JungianINTP Avatar
        JungianINTP

        Travel there, and be slam-dunked into the UGLY reality that is Commie Cuba. // This Jungian psychologist has coined a term for those who can smell/see the poop, pee, and rotting flesh produced by Marxian systems—of their Top-Down BUREAUCRAMENT (( my term )): Utopi-Psychotic. -Rick.

        1. JungianINTP Avatar
          JungianINTP

          That is: ‘ those who C A N ‘ T smell/see, ‘
          dear BlessTheBeasts.

        2. Douglass Avatar
          Douglass

          I’d like to travel there, but the totalitarian police state in which I live forbids it in the name of Freedom.

        3. Tired and no longer active revolutionary Avatar
          Tired and no longer active revolutionary

          Don’t blame Marxism nor capitalism nor socialism for the problems we see in society. Blame smart, greedy, crony, lying psychopaths at the top of the pile who operate and exploit the system, either capitalism, or Marxism or socialism. People are the problem, not the system. Naïve citizens have all been indoctrinated and those who are not hoodwinked are apathetic or powerless. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf

          1. JungianINTP Avatar
            JungianINTP

            Dear Tired,
            Are you referring to the TRIBE’s bad influence? If so, I agree. -Rick

    2. JungianINTP Avatar
      JungianINTP

      Ron:
      You exhibit, in your “thinking,” what this Jungian scribbler calls, U T O P I – P S Y C H O S I S—because you are BLIND to the massive loss of life – about one-hundred-million-plus victims, from the last century forward – due to Marxists’ unbridled torture, rape, starvation and full-bore warring against I N D I V I D U A L I S M in both EASTERN and WESTERN nation-states. -Rick

      1. Friedrich Avatar
        Friedrich

        Capitalism….Goood! Fascism Beeeeter!

        1. JungianINTP Avatar
          JungianINTP

          You may not know, both Hitler’s fascism and Mao’s communism are couched within the political/social/cultural category: Leftism. Hitler and Mao are – psychologically! – SISTERS. // Leftism is matriarchal, not patriarchal. The liberty-loving Founders/Framers were patriarchal. // Make two columns, Friedrich: One list of all the deaths by free-market, meritocratic Republicans , and the other one of deaths by Marxian, make-the-inherently-unequal-equal, socialist-communist revolutionaries. // You stand in the camp of mass murderers—as does Caitlin by her hate-both-camps fence-sitting. // Your choice here is between GOOD and EVIL // Choose more wisely, Freidrich. -Rick

  14. Rosemary Nissen-Wade Avatar
    Rosemary Nissen-Wade

    Wow!

    Yes indeed.

    1. JungianINTP Avatar
      JungianINTP

      Yes, WOW! -Rick

  15. ron campbell Avatar
    ron campbell

    And here we all are on this planet as the ” owners and the masters ” seriously intend to blow it all up just because they can do that.

  16. Joseph Olson Avatar
    Joseph Olson

    Irony ~ is the opposite of Wrinkly

  17. Infinite Onion Avatar
    Infinite Onion

    I have no fear of false starts and misconceptions, all mistakes are offered up for the benefit of the adventurers in experimental philosophy who follow. He who does not foolishly affect to be above the failings of humanity will not be mortified when it is proved that he is but a man.

    When I was a teenager I was a troubled and restless person. The world made no sense to me, and I got no answers to the big questions I had about life. In particular, I didn’t understand why there was so much suffering in the world and in my own life, and what could be done about it. All I got from the people around me and from the books I read were elaborate fictions: religious myths about gods and heavens, nationalist myths about the motherland and its historical mission, romantic myths about love and adventure, or capitalist myths about economic growth and how buying and consuming stuff will make me happy. I had enough sense to realize that these were probably all fictions, but I had no idea how to find truth. When I began studying at university, I thought it would be the ideal place to find answers. But I was disappointed. The academic world provided me with powerful tools to deconstruct all the myths humans ever create, but it didn’t offer satisfying answers to the big questions of life. On the contrary, it encouraged me to focus on narrower and narrower questions.

    For a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions. Increasingly, it’s looking like we have no other choice.

    Which is excellent news if you are a one-eyed archaeologist, or a penniless young artist, or a wandering playboy-poet, or anything else. We might be offering misfits like these a death sentence but we’re also offering a new way to live.

    The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

    “I’m scared.”

    Good, now you have something you can kill.

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file

    1. JungianINTP Avatar
      JungianINTP

      Infinite Onion: Would that you could have just one OBE, then you might diminish, somewhat, your fears. Investigate TMI (( The Monroe Institute )), and possibly learn how to separate from your physical body—and, then, uncover your true SELF. -Rick

      1. Infinite Onion Avatar
        Infinite Onion

        But what if the OBEs are simply a projection of your own mind based on your cultural programming?

        What if we want to escape without retaining the illusion of control?

        What if we already know we are mere ripples influencing ripples?

        What if we’re in no rush to leave this body because we still have work to do within it?

        What if we’ve simply embraced the chaos that we all spring from?

        1. JungianINTP Avatar
          JungianINTP

          Infinite Onion: Has not been my experience. It confirms for you—that you survive “death,” and that you’re here for a SPECIAL purpose. -Rick

        2. John Day Avatar
          John Day

          Infinite Onion,
          I have shared your seeking, and your fervor to put-it-all-together. I just had to keep patching it together as I went along. College physics was cool, especially relativity. I tried to hold it all in my mid as I walked across campus. Directly experiencing different states of consciousness might or might not be “cheating”. I did that at the same time as relativity. It’s all one truth.
          It’s all one truth. Just do all the work you can, in every way, gardening, meditating in groups, meditating on compassion and wisdom.
          It all moves you towards knowing in fits and starts and epiphanies.
          Doing the work gets you the changes that conscious inquiry alone will not accomplish.
          Lots more, always more, life is short for all that there is to know-by-doing.

          1. JungianINTP Avatar
            JungianINTP

            Very well said, John Day! -Rick

          2. Infinite Onion Avatar
            Infinite Onion

            The path of `The Long Walk’…

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