by Corey Taylor
But that’s not saying that anyone should be prejudged because they’ve done well for themselves or because they have an education either. You work your ass off, you should be allowed to enjoy it—but don’t forget where you come from, and don’t make motherfuckers feel like you’re rubbing it in. Herein lies the problem, and we finally come to the revelation that changed this book completely. This book is less about politics, and more about… us. We, the People, standing like schlock jocks at a Halloween weenie roast, waiting to give out prizes for “best shitty Crow costume,” we have become the very reason for our downfall. The country’s a mess because we are a collection of fucking messes. Our politicians are overwhelmingly fucked because we are overwhelmingly fucked, and I mean IN THE ASS, NO SPIT, NO LUBE fucked. We don’t talk to each other anymore, face to face, like civilized human beings. We scream AT each other, constantly, violently, anonymously, from behind computer screens and cell phones, in an almost perpetual duel of “I have to be right.” Do you know why this country is starting to eat itself? It’s because we handed it a knife and fork, and said “Chow down, Cupcake.”
We have no accountability for anyone anymore, because we refuse to accept it ourselves. We have no boundaries for right or wrong or fancy and common sense. Who’s going to listen if you’re constantly butting your heads together? Who’s going to care if someone’s hurting or needs help if the only thought that goes through our heads is “Well, they should’ve helped themselves…” or “Nobody helped ME when I was in trouble, so…” These are fucking cop-outs in the face of the reality that it takes a whole lot of energy these days to be a good person, or at least that’s the way people would make it seem anyway, as so many people are wearing themselves out patting themselves on the back. Let me ask you this: when, in our history, did the concepts of “the welfare of the people” and “fiscal responsibility” become mutually exclusive? Hmm? Can anyone answer that for me? I’ll tell you right now what it’s all about, and this is exactly why there will be no draining of any swamps or construction on any fancy walls or incarceration for political adversaries, much to the chagrin of the howling cunts who voted for the Cheeto: because behind closed doors, with the lights low, they’re just as despicable as the ones across the aisle they all purport to hate. They are the mirrors on the bridge at Gitmo, the sentries keeping stride between the Koreas: they are exactly what you fear, Trump included.
We’ve also become a gigantic tribe of total hypocrites. We talk shit about each other’s flaws when our own back stories have enough plot holes to drive convoys of semis through, nonstop twenty-four hours a day. The Right keeps telling the Left to “get over it” and “you didn’t see us protesting when Obama won”—when there is in fact clear video, audio, and photographic proof of these people protesting when Obama won, for the better part of eight years. The Left keeps harping and harping on offensive language and yet has no problems whatsoever with labeling someone a Nazi or a bigot or a racist if it seems like they’re not winning the argument—“you know, like I’m supposed to!” This kind of behavior stems from years of resentment and yet has festered and come to fruition under the Miracle-Gro speed of tech and social media.
I’d love to sit here and write about some of the heroes fighting for us on the other side of the fence, but I just can’t do that because, like you all, I’ve lost a lot of faith in our “leaders.” Our governing bodies are running out of compatible tissues. Every generation of politicians gets more extreme, leaving behind the concerns of the populace in favor of a narrower, more personal agenda. They don’t want to end the ACA because it hurts the American people; they want to end the ACA because they’re vindictive crab catchers who are still pissed off that their version of the ACA didn’t get passed in the first place. This is less about you and more about them, and it’s getting to the point where I can see it’s been like that for a long time. Idealism is now a dirty word. Those fuckers in DC know better than anyone that we’re all in different books on different pages, and they exploit it: Why do you think no one gets held accountable? Why do you think a bastard with more strikes against him became president? The reasons are in our differences.
This is where that stops, and I mean RIGHT FUCKING NOW.
I will not stand by while zealots gut and fuck this pig of a nation as they smile and lie to our faces. I will not accept the fact that this happened simply because we’ve all forgotten that we have more in common than we realize. I will never stop trying to get us to look up for a second and realize that those folks you’re ranting about on your tiny screens are real people, with real lives, and it may give you a temporary hit of happy when you cut them down, but that depression is going to come screaming back into your face as soon as you take another look at your situation. That’s a fact. We need to bury the hatchet, and the best way to do that is to find the motherfuckers more suited for said burial. We need the real enemies—the ones carrying on a tradition of playing us against each other like a chess game in denim and pleather. However, we can’t do that until we start talking to each other.
There is nothing on this planet easier than finding all the ways that we are all different. It takes a little more effort to see our shared likenesses anymore, mainly because, like I said before, we don’t see things eye to eye. We’ve reached a breaking point where everything is offensive—everything. In the old days, if something was wrong and it offended us, you spoke up, protested, and tried to point out how repulsive it was to the rest of the world, thereby continuing our advancement as humans and as just plain, neighborly folks. Back then there were real issues, like prejudice and racism (which are two different things, people), corruption, and abuse of power. Today we have those same issues, but you can’t tell how bad they are because people consider everything to be on that offensive level, from the color of your fucking cup at Starbucks to a joke shirt about OCD at Walmart. Let me put it to you this way: you know how you can tell if there’s something wrong with your plumbing? The pipes make noises, especially if air gets in the system before you can flush it out. It’s like a high-pitched whine of a noise, the Banshee of the Bathroom—squealing like a pig trying out for the opera. It is a shriek from hell, and it is fucking annoying. Now, imagine everything in your house making that crazy fucking sound, for shitty reasons: someone left the light on in the bedroom (crazy sound), there’s a rogue sock left in the dryer (crazy sound), nobody took the garbage out (crazy sound)…
See why people just fucking tune out? If social media had perpetual sound, the Banshee Scream is what it would sound like. Although, I believe if social media had actual 24/7 sound, not as many people would have those sites shoved up their asses next to the gerbils and shit-talk. Even if it’s something they are strenuously against, they can’t take the BS that comes with the whine of the progressives. I know I’ll catch some shit for that, but it’s true. It’s like everyone forgot the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”—IT’S THE SAME DAMN IDEA! I want all of you liberals to pay close attention: putting a cross at the top of a Christmas tree is not the same as letting someone get away with using racially or sexually offensive language, like the N-word or the F-word—you know which words I’m talking about. These things should NOT BE PROTESTED WITH THE SAME LEVEL OF OUTRAGE. I get it: the cross does not represent everyone. However, I’m sorry, what other symbol in this day and age would go at the top of the Christmas tree? Hmm? Those are not the same.
This chapter refers to being on the road, and I’ll tell you why because it harkens back to the real message I want this book to convey to you. You see, I’ve been all over the world and back many times over. I’ve seen beautiful cathedrals in Spain, and I’ve spun myself dizzy with my kids watching the strobes on the Eiffel Tower in France. I’ve walked the floors of historic buildings in London and stridden through Red Square in Moscow. I’ve glutted myself in Tokyo and São Paolo, Sydney and Singapore. I’ve been all over the world, and yet my favorite country is still my own—largely for the places but also for the people. One of the th
ings these politicians love to beat us over the heads with is how wide the culture gaps are in every state—hell, I as much said so too at the beginning of this chapter, going on and on about our differences. For all intents and purposes, that is indeed true: we range as different as they come, sometimes even within the same state, even the same city. But that doesn’t mean that (a) we don’t have more in common than we’d like to admit, and (b) our differences are something to be looked down upon, ridiculed, or held against us.
That being said…
Some of you motherfuckers are absolute morons.
I’m not just referring to one region, state, or demographic. I don’t mean only the people who don’t know any better. I am not just talking about those of you who support one party or another. I mean—and I don’t want you to get this wrong or take it a different way—I mean ALMOST ALL OF YOU. Yes, there is a handful of you out there who are just as fucking flummoxed as I am about the state of this cocked-up union. But I’m not talking to them—I am screaming at the rest of you.
I am talking to the fuckholes who bitch, complain, cry, and threaten “celebrities” and “rich folks” for daring to care about what happens in their country—then help elect a celebrity “billionaire” cunt who won’t show you his taxes, won’t talk to the media, may have been peed on (hell, who hasn’t), and can’t tell orange from tan. I’m also talking to the butt-hurt pricks who squeal and accuse people of the most horrendous shit any time they don’t get their way. Oh, and lest I forget—I’m also talking to the shit heels who have made it impossible to have an opinion about anything in this country without being labeled a bigot, Nazi, racist, or misogynist dick stain. There is no right side anymore. I used to think there was, and I was wrong. There are officially two sides now: what I believe, and what everyone is shouting directly into each other’s faces. That is it. There is no one party that represents what I believe anymore, and quite frankly I don’t think that party ever existed. It has become the worst case of “I know you are but what am I?” since Sunset Elementary School in Clear Lake, Iowa, 1980. Betsy Smith and Erica Toller went back and forth on the Sunset playground for the better part of an hour and a half, running the gamut from “motherfucking titty asshole shitty” to “lard-licking turd humping garbage face.” The epicness of that argument still has not left my memory, and that was thirty-seven years ago. Now imagine that war of/on words raging ON EVERY PHONE IN EVERY HAND IN EVERY HOUSE ON EVERY STREET IN EVERY CITY OF EVERY STATE IN AMERICA… AND BEYOND. I had some ass-munch tell me I was a “Killary lapdog.” He was from Alberta in Canada—you can’t make this shit up, and if you do, there’s a good chance you swallowed peyote with dog shit all over it.
But let’s be clear right now: if you’re a racist cunt, you can go ahead and throw this book in the nearest trash bin at your Klan meeting—you aren’t going to like the things I say about you. I’m also going to warn anyone who doesn’t like people from other countries: you can give this book to your hippie barista at the nearest Starbucks—I’m going to fucking rip you up too. Oh yeah, I forgot: anyone who thinks you can’t be American unless you’re white, like white people only come from the USA, oh and people who think that Muslims only look like Osama bin Laden (maybe not show them the Asian Muslims in the South Pacific… or the white Muslims in Croatia… or maybe just fucking tell them that Muslim is not a fucking skin color), yes, if you’re one of those people, you should probably avoid this book like a love-in at the NAACP. While we’re at it, let’s include everyone who thinks that it’s mostly black people who are on welfare (not true), it’s mostly Latinos and blacks who sell drugs and commit crimes (also not true), and that only nonwhite people commit terrorist acts (Dylann Roof and the Bundy brothers)—yeah, none of those fucking people are going to like this book. So if you have a subscription to the Breitbart newsletter, jack off to pics of Milo, or think that a handle bar mustache is just misunderstood, stop reading this book right now. I invite you to either give it away or tear the pages out for TP in your militant prepper bunker because that’s the only good you’ll get from what’s in here.
People pick and choose whether to believe the MSM (mainstream media) based solely on who they’re ripping into—their candidate or the other guy. Meanwhile real fake news sites incite real violence by making false claims that zealots pick up as fact and spread like herpes on spring break. Not to mention the fact that while that is going on, people are choosing whether to discredit our various intelligence agencies, once again, based on whether the info is damaging to Their Guy or The Enemy. Now, I don’t expect everyone to be a genius. For fuck’s sake, I don’t even expect most of you to have a high school diploma because most of the smartest people I know never even finished high school (I didn’t either). I’m not asking for this country to be full of Mensa members. But god damnit, I do expect people to have some fucking common sense—especially the ones who voted for the Cheeto. You were the ones who were certain you had it all figured out, that you were through listening to regular Washington and irregular Hollywood, and you were tired of letting all these so-called bleeding hearts vote against your best interest. You are just ordinary family people who don’t mind calling a guy “Man of the Year” or telling someone you’ll keep them in your prayers, regardless of whether they are actually religious. The salt of the earth are taking back the country. Fine, fine, but you gave it to a bunch of dick bags, man!
They aren’t draining the swamp, they’ll never lock her up, they will never build a wall, and they will never get everyone on the same page about the Affordable Care Act. I’m sorry to say it, but they are going to fuck you over, and I truly, from the bottom of my heart do not want them to do that. I don’t give a shit about Right or Left, conservative or progressive, traditional or liberal. I care about Americans—all of them. I care about every color, every religion, every ethnicity, and every life this country has enabled to be better than it would have been had that life started anywhere else on this giant blue-green billiard ball planet called Earth. I care about rednecks and hippies. I care about yuppies and hipsters. I care about black and white and blue. I care about Asian and Latino and Native. I care about Christian and Muslim and Jewish and Catholic. I care about you all—even these gutless bastards in Congress trying to destroy the tiny foothold some people have on life at the moment all because in some way it doesn’t jibe with the party line. I care about HRC, and I care about DJT. I care about everybody who can claim this country as his or her own, born or adopted.
Now ask me if I agree with all of them.
Of course I don’t. That’s my prerogative as an upright animal with sentient thought, and it’s also my right as an American citizen. There are two guarantees in our lifetimes: that we will die after we’re born and that not everyone is going to think the way we do. Even that statement right there is sure to cause some resentment and angst in many of the shady corners of the chat rooms and message boards out there in the digital revolution above our heads in the analog air: “Well, actually, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be born, so blah blah fuckin’ blah…” “Only a fascist would say something like that blah fuckin’ more blah…” “TL;DR Corey Taylor should just stick to singing…” “You call THAT singing? You’ve obvs never heard…” That right there is a conversation between the people who will most likely be running the country someday. If that doesn’t make you shit your pants, it’s only because you’re oblivious to Crazy Town, USA, population HOLY FUCKIN SHITTY BEETS, IT’S EVERYONE. Then you wonder why hard-working people in the Rust Belt and just south of the Mason-Dixon Line look at you like you’re all fucking mental patients.
I have a lot to say on the matter, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my work: I always have a lot to say about everything. We’ll get to all that and more. But I want you to understand this right now: it is not my intention to offend any of you. These are merely my thoughts on the United States at present; I am not trying to dissuade you from feeling how you feel, and I am not going to try to
make a dent in your views either. I am just trying to make some semblance of sense for myself. If I accidentally help one of you put two and two together (it’s four, btdubs), it is with your consent and not against your will. I mean, you did buy this book, after all. I guess you could’ve stolen this copy, but there’s no need to do that when I’m quite sure a bunch of you will get pissed off and bent out of shape over one fucking sentence in here and it’ll end up in the trash or in a half-price bin somewhere. I’m not too worried about it. I half-expect most of my books to be used as kindling anyway. I’m blown away when I find out people actually do read these things.
There’s a lot of ground to cover here, and I feel like I’ve procrastinated long enough. Time to get on with it. I’ve finally found that peace that comes when you eventually see the road in front of you and what you’re supposed to do, say, and see. My goal is clear: to bring us all back to the center as I also tell you all why you’re wrong, dumb, or both. Only a cunt who cares would be crazy enough to give that a shot. Seeing as I’m both of those things, I guess it’s as good a miracle as any to try to get by on you. Maybe they’ll make me a saint; let’s just hope they don’t make me a righteous martyr. We’ve come this far, Big Money, so we might as well try to hustle our fat asses toward the summit before the sun goes down… on all of us.
