It Will Set You Free
* * *
But right now, the gap between the promise of technology and the actually existing, deeply stupid reality couldn’t be more obvious. Instead of a means to liberate you, technology is a tool for your boss to track you, message you, and harass you at any time of day, whether you’re on the clock or not. It doesn’t enhance your free time, it destroys it. It has you checking your phone, e-mail, or Slack feed every three hundred seconds while you’re awake, and, once the next generation of iPhone rolls out, during your REM sleep as well. Meanwhile, the same people preaching the gospel of “innovation”—the Cory Bookers and Paul Ryans both—are scheming to privatize every last facet of your life, grooming everyone born after 1980 to work, work, work until they all keel over.
The supposed trade-off, of course, is that the more you work, the more stuff you get. There was a commercial a couple of years back featuring the blond guy from Band of Brothers in which he owns France for taking two-month vacations, bragging that, in America, we take just two weeks off and earn the money to buy a Lexus instead. He walks into his McMansion with his hot wife—and so can you.
Except this is also a lie. There is no Lexus, no McMansion, and no gold-encrusted bidet waiting for you, no matter how hard you work. Thanks to an unrelenting class war waged since about 1973, wages have stayed the same for four decades, while money has been funneled to the top. Even supposed nest eggs like 401ks and pensions are wired to the insane, wealth-obliterating machine of the stock market, which can and will implode again and again.
And if we manage to get across one thing in this stupid book, let it be this: it doesn’t have to be this way. Even weak-ass, social-democratic France passed a law a couple of years ago making it illegal for companies with more than fifty employees to hound staff after hours, and no matter how hard neoliberal pod-person Emmanuel Macron tries, he can’t seem to pry the country’s labor code out of the hands of the citizens who like it. It’s why a century ago, even the assholes who liked the system didn’t think it would last this long: in the 1920s, John Maynard Keynes was predicting that we would have a twenty-hour workweek by now. America itself was on this road in the twentieth century, slicing down the workweek, granting labor rights, and taking care of all the shit your paycheck had to cover. The tragedy of the 1970s wasn’t that the cycle was broken but that it simply started over.
So don’t believe the tech lizards, the reactionary billionaires, or the Democratic paypigs who tell you that work is actually cool. It won’t be cool until their bank accounts are emptied into everyone else’s and “work” becomes something you squeeze in between posting, gaming, and having a nice, big wank.
* * *
I. Avery Hartmans, “Facebook Is Building a Village That Will Include Housing, a Grocery Store and a Hotel,” Business Insider, July 7, 2017.
EPILOGUE
“My father always told me . . . He said when you think you’ve done all you can do and you think you can’t do no more . . . do some more.”
—STEVE HARVEY
Absorbing the litany of horrors committed in American history by both Knuckle-Dragging Conservatives™ and Well-Meaning Liberals™, a reader might be compelled to call us on our shit and demand, “Okay, assholes, but where was the Left during all of this?”
Besides doing the grassroots organizing and agitating that pushed those Well-Meaning Liberals™ into backing social and economic reforms, the answer is: getting shot, arrested, deported, spied on, and purged. Since socialists, Marxists, and left-wingers of all stripes were the only people challenging the hegemony of capitalism in America, they were targeted for harassment, intimidation, and death at all turns. The list of left-wing martyrs destroyed by state and right-wing vigilante violence reads like a who’s-who of activists in the labor and civil rights movements, from Albert Parsons to MLK. The strongest, smartest activists for justice in this country did not seek to “reform” capitalism and its hierarchy but to destroy it—so capitalism and its hierarchy destroyed them first.
Under that pressure, the Left cracked. Driven from the ranks of increasingly business-friendly labor unions and with its political parties shot through with informants and provocateurs, the movement splintered into microsects and retreated into the ivory tower of academia (from which the Marxists were eventually also purged).
However, this neo–Gilded Age is creating wealth disparity and precariousness that have millions of Americans questioning the underlying logic of capitalism in a way that hasn’t happened in generations. Lefties are again at the tip of the spear against a desperate capitalist system that’s readying a blood-soaked, militarized response to climate and economic catastrophes.
And believe us, those catastrophes are coming. You don’t have to be a mindset genius to realize that the engine of capital, running on greed and the vampiric logic of profit, will fuck up the world over and over again. Who knows what will happen first: A new speculative bubble that obliterates people’s wealth as it enriches an ever-ascendant class of inbred oligarchs? A final wave of automation that destroys everyone’s job, leaving no one left to buy anything and crashing the economy? Or the first singular 100,000-plus-death-toll climate event caused by decades of thrashing the planet for profit?
Of course, there’s a chance that a natural extinction event like a supervolcano or meteor will wipe out all human life, letting capitalism off the hook. But barring that merciful possibility, the parasitic system that runs our world will 100 percent, for sure, you betcha end up ruining or killing at least one person you know in your lifetime.
That is, unless we finally stun the beast, reach for the cattle gun, and scoop its brains out; unless we find a moment or series of moments to claw back power from the Jeff Bezoses and Bill Gateses and Charles Kochs, whose wealth could instantly end world poverty four times over.
Finding some happiness in this hellworld is essential for your mental health, but it’s not enough. No one would blame you for simply “getting by”—zoning out after work, ordering the occasional GrubHub delivery, and saving up for a PS4. But you’ll still feel the dread. Fact is, there’s no way to truly escape the anxiety and alienation, let alone the economic and ecological catastrophes we’re going to witness in our lifetimes.
Getting by is not enough. But neither is ceaseless anger, sadness, and fear. That will burn you out quickly, and what you need is energy to sustain you, to motivate you to be a part of something bigger. Spending every single moment thinking about politics (particularly on the Internet) will turn you cynical, hysterical, and probably reactionary. Let’s avoid that.
What we all need—as far as our ancient, wise, giant brains can tell—is a good-humored, thick-skinned, and maybe even optimistic struggle against the world outside. You may be thinking that that’s easy for us to say, since we’ve stumbled onto some success and money for our very dumb but also very brilliant comedy show. But the truth is, we really did believe this stuff when we were broke, and we’ll believe it a year from now after we foolishly invest all our money in BitcoinDark and lose everything.
It’s true—we don’t know much. But we know this: as the liberal opposition to Trump (and whatever nightmare comes after Trump) reveals itself to be feckless and incompetent, more and more people are going to realize that there is no reforming a system built on exploitation and nonstop, infinite economic growth. Socialism will emerge as the only genuine alternative to the savage, hopeless, gangster system of capitalism—an alternative that offers an actual future, one in which there are enough resources to take care of everybody and to take on humanity’s challenges with a dab of dignity.
That, or we’ll all drown in boiling seawater. Always good to have options.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the course of writing this book, a number of people have provided us with insight, moral support, hugs, and faves. Tradition dictates that we recognize them at the end of the text, despite the fact that we wrote it and they just kind of existed in our orbit while we were do
ing the real work. If we are the sun lighting up this project’s solar system and supporting all life, the following are a few of the lifeless rocks and gas clouds that have coalesced around us.
First and foremost, for making this book possible, we thank our editor, Matthew Benjamin; Lara Blackman, Abigail Novak, and the whole team at Touchstone. We’d also like to recognize our literary agent, Daniel Greenberg, for bringing this prize hog to the county fair.
Outside the immediate business of books, we’d like to thank our managers, Ben Curtis and Parker Oks, for their dedication to our inane pursuits; Brett Pain and Bryan Quinby of Street Fight Radio for being our podcast godfathers; James Adomian for his brilliant and unique contributions to the show; Eli Valley and Jon White for their amazing artwork; our producer, Chris Wade, for his heroic work in making us listenable; and the staff of Nostrand Café, who let us drive away most of their customers while we spent hours at their workplace writing this book and drinking from the same smoothie with five straws.
We’d now like to break from the collective and each individually acknowledge the people who weaned us on the milk of their virtue and character.
Will: More than anything I want to thank the haters, trolls, and everyone who is mad for making this all possible. Special thanks to Robert Weil and all my former colleagues at Liveright and W.W. Norton for giving me my first real job and teaching me everything I know about books. Also much love to my cohosts and coauthors who made writing this book so damn fun. Thank you to Marty for finding me, and to Katherine for keeping me. Finally, and of least importance to my success, I’d like to acknowledge Katherine Bouton, Daniel Menaker, and Lizi Menaker—that’s my mom, dad, and sister to you goofies. In the words of Ricky Henderson, “Today I am the greatest of all time, thank you.”
Brendan: For inspiring my contributions to this book and my creative pursuits in general, a sincere thank-you to Dave Hackel and Tim Berry, the creators and producers of the underrated and oft-maligned sitcom Becker (1998–2004). Set in the New York City borough of the Bronx, the show starred Ted Danson as John Becker, a misanthropic doctor who operates a small practice and is constantly annoyed by his patients, coworkers, friends, and practically everything and everybody else in his world. Despite everything, his patients and friends are loyal because Becker genuinely cares about them.
Virgil: This book would never have existed had it not been for my old editor, Blake Zeff, who introduced us to Daniel Greenberg to pitch another, less extant book. Thank you to everyone over the years who faved and RTed and made this go viral. Thank you to the celebs. And thank you to Blair, to whom I dedicate the good parts of this book.
Felix: Mom, Sam, Lucy: I did it. To my grandmother: I also did it. To my friends Brandon, Kyle, Jalil: Call me Steven King, because I made it. Special thanks to the Hudson boys for the Stephen King joke. Listen to the Episode 1 podcast. Piece!
Matt: Thanks to my mother, Jo Ann, my stepfather, Glenn, my sister, Sarah, and to my wife (borat), Carolyn, eternal love and gratitude.
GRIEVANCES
While we join most authors in providing an acknowledgments section, we feel it is just as important to recognize those who antagonized us, held us back, and stood opposed to our mission.
In no particular order: Mr. Bloss, ninth-grade math teacher who said we would never be able to make a podcast; Ashleigh, that barista who never smiles; Leon Trotsky, terrorist and hound of fascism; The New York Times editorial board; The Washington Post editorial board; the IGN editorial board; actor Benedict Cumberbatch; Boss Burger on Ave U in Washington, DC; the entire city of Washington, DC; all of the incredibly minor inconveniences that have made Felix want to kill himself; every listener or fan who has approached us with so-called “constructive criticism”; the dead—everyone who has ever died and whose psychic weight bears down on the nightmare of history like the grave itself; and finally, all mods, especially Darth_Ayatollah88, who arbitrarily banned us from the GameFAQs off-topic message board on September 17, 2004, for daring to question the rationale behind male circumcision.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Felix Biederman is a member of the PlayStation Network, a fellow at Xbox Live, and professor emeritus at Steam. He is the author of the espionage thrillers The Husband’s Wife, Wifeocracy, The Wife Cuts Both Ways, and The Backgammon Deception, as well as the hard sci-fi novella Chronicles Of J’ariska: Origins.
Matt Christman is a humorist and raconteur with a lifelong love of broadcasting, political comedy, and exploring shipwrecks for sunken treasure. As part of Chapo Trap House, Matt has recorded hundreds of hours of podcast content, performed more than a dozen live shows, and salvaged long-lost galleons and frigates from the Spanish Main to the Barbary Coast. He lives in a crow’s nest made of melted pieces of eight.
Brendan James is a writer, musician, and producer emeritus traitor of Chapo Trap House. An early member of the show, his revisionist tendencies and collusion with cosmopolitan elements of foreign podcasts resulted in his forced expulsion in 2017. Since then, a loose network of his so-called Jacobite followers have spread lies and terror among the peace-loving Chapo fanbase on Reddit, Discord, and Friendster. From exile, James continues to disseminate toxic propaganda in his newsletter, The Masked Merovingian, where he demands the show return to the .wav format. His lies have also appeared in The Baffler, Newsweek, Deadspin, Vice, the Guardian, and Slate.
Will Menaker is a publishing industry scion who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as the product of a secret KGB/FBI breeding program to produce a star child capable of sheep-dogging gullible millennials into supporting reformistpettybougimperialismamerikkka and/or tanking the 2016 election for Donald Trump. He is the creator of the “Menaker Mindset” motivational success brand and the editor of many prize-winning and bestselling books and graphic novels such as: Booger-Eater: A Memoir, Garfield Dungeon: The Best of DeviantArt, The Cardassian Gambit: A DS9 Novelization, Generation Selfie, Invisible Battleground: A Mason Tank Novel, and The Glass Chickadee: Poems. He lives in Brooklyn.
Virgil Texas is a satirist whose yuks and sends-up have tickled readers’ funny bones everywhere from the Toast (“If Caddy Compson Were On Tinder It Would Go A Little Something Like This”) to McSweeney’s (“Carmen Sandiego Tries To Find Nambia”) to the New Yorker, where he authors the popular column “Borowitz Report.” His quips have had the public rolling in bookstore aisles from coast to coast with such recent titles as Grab ’Em By the Debussy: Classical Song Parodies for the #Resistance; Nevertheless, She Exfoliated: The Nasty Woman’s Self Care-a-Day Desk Calendar for Keeping Sane in the Age of Drumpf; and Make America Snark Again: A Covfefe Table Book (with forward by Ken Bone). He can be found three nights a week at the Allen Dulles Theatre in Washington, DC, performing with his band the Capitol Steps (tickets available through Ticketmaster).
FOR MORE ON THESE AUTHORS:
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Felix-Biederman
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Matt-Christman
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Brendan-James
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Will-Menaker
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Virgil-Texas
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SimonandSchuster.com
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UH, SOURCES FOR THESE CLAIMS?
You should believe everything we say without asking for “evidence.” However, in the event that you would like to look up some of the more
surprising tidbits—or the embarrassing things written and said by our enemies—we’ve provided footnotes throughout and a brief bibliography below.
Chapter One
Harvey, David. Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Jones, Jeffrey M. “Blacks Showing Decided Opposition to War.” Gallup, March 28, 2003. http://news.gallup.com/poll/8080/blacks-showing-decided-opposition-war.aspx.
Chapter Two
Applebome, Peter. “Death Penalty; Arkansas Execution Raises Questions on Governor’s Politics.” New York Times, January 25, 1992. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/25/us/1992-campaign-death-penalty-arkansas-execution-raises-questions-governor-s.html.
Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Clinton, Hillary. It Takes a Village. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: New Press, 2010.
Freeman, Joshua B. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II. New York: New Press, 2001.
Royko, Mike. “Ok, So ‘Trailer Trash’ and ‘Democrat’ Not Always the Same.” South Florida SunSentinel, January 29, 1997. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-01-29/news/9701270210_1_paula-jones-trailer-park-trailer-trash.
Weigant, Chris. “A New Direction for America?” Huffington Post, June 23, 2006. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/a-new-direction-for-ameri_b_23684.html.
The Chapo Guide to Revolution Page 22
