by Corey Taylor
Yep, just straight-up misogyny will do for a major factor. Then you add to that the racism that rose up in response to our first black president, and it was going to be hard to get the hat trick for first female president. I know Obama wasn’t perfect. I know he did just as much weird shit as any white president. But in a lot of ways that’s why he’s my favorite: because he proves the equality of the races in a way that can help us let go of that smug assertion that some of us are better than others because we don’t treat people like they’re better than others. Think about that lateral head-fuck for a second, and you’ll go full-on Scanners, Michael Ironside style. Obama wasn’t perfect—he wasn’t supposed to be. But people were already building his mythos, much like they did with Kennedy before he died. Once Kennedy was murdered, he was deified, and all his dirty secrets were swept under rugs, then locked in vaults, waiting for the high volume of docs made in the eighties to establish that America’s prince was flawed, that America’s Camelot was just as fabled in real life as the original, a false front designed to fan the flames of hope no matter how vivid the truth may be. That’s why I think the Eternal Flame is the most appropriate dedication to JFK—because as long as there is youth and vigor to fight the good fight, those fires will burn at home and abroad for all time.
Okay, let’s get away from Hills for a split second and talk about something liberals do that drives me up fucking Mulholland and back. It kind of goes hand and hand with another aspect of being liberal that pisses me off: the lack of follow-through. Sure, the base is all electrified now that the Cheeto is rubbing his ass on everything inside the Oval Office. But before the inauguration you would’ve had to check these frilly Left hands for a pulse just to see if they were kicking. They were the party of all talk but no action. Seriously, that’s why I had so much respect for Republicans: when they said they were going to do something, by fucking Odin, they did it, and if someone challenged them on it, they told them all to get the fuck out of their faces. That is how you get shit done. But Democrats all too often rely on the outrage of the people to shut down any criticism instead of just backing their collective shit up with attitude and intelligence. Nine times out of ten they’d never stand up for themselves; they’d always claim they were “taking the high road” or “going high when they go low.” What a fucking pile of burning Goodyears. You’re in fucking politics: THERE IS NO HIGH ROAD. Lose this convoluted sense of righteousness and get your hands dirty. You don’t have to go full fuckface, but you do have to act like you have a spine. Being in the moral right does not mean you have to be a fucking coward.
It’s this double standard when it comes to doing the right thing that has led to a sort of passive-aggressive approach to helping in the community or just plain helping others. I may catch some hell for this from some of you pseudo-peacenik neophytes, but I have to tell you something: ideas like the “homeless gift bag” are a crock of shit. If you’re not familiar with the concept of the homeless gift bag, let me enlighten you as best I can. It’s a double-edged sword, this idea: there are good connotations and bad observations to be had on all sides, considering the vibe behind it in the first place. It’s almost like a sort of “pay it forward” but not really. Let me explain: the idea behind the homeless gift bag is ostensibly to fill several plain, biodegradable sacks with dried goods and maybe some spare clothing or toiletries. You would then take them all over to a Thanksgiving dinner or a Christmas party, offering the recipient the opportunity to take these items out and give them to people in need or homeless people who haven’t been able to make it to a mission or a shelter. Honestly, I have a hard time bagging on a concept like this because the end result does actually help people when it’s done correctly. It’s a wonderful gesture, and it requires just a few minutes of your day to make sure that not only do you get it done but that the people who receive it get it at its freshest or at least as soon as physically possible. Trust me, it’s a really charitable idea for a worthy cause.
Now allow me to hand the microphone over to Captain Prick Biscuit…
This is such a lazy attempt at doing charitable work that it makes my fucking blood boil under my already thin fucking skin. For all intents and purposes, people put these homeless gift bags together because “they couldn’t afford a really nice gift for everyone this year, so instead they want you to pay some good will forward.” You couldn’t afford a decent gift, yet you had plenty of money to spend on all these supplies? Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather have you buying things like that for other people, but don’t fucking lie to me like you’re doing me a fuckin’ favor. That’s like shitting in my mouth and calling it a pudding pop. Also, if you were going to go to all that trouble to get things to hand out to homeless people, why the fuck didn’t you just do it yourself? Why wouldn’t you take all these dried goods and spare belongings out, pass them to the people who need them, then tell us what you did in our names? I’ll fucking tell you why: because buying the shit is the easy part, and you can still feel self-righteous about “avoiding all the consumerism that hangs from the holidays like a hangman’s noose because you did something good and nice for people”—that is, except you didn’t. You didn’t actually do anything nice for anyone other than yourself. I’m sure you told people that you did all the work because that’s what most hippies do anyway: talk a great game then dump the ball off when the win is on the line. What you actually did was put more work on other people’s plates than maybe they really have time for, like people who work multiple jobs or families full of kids. Yeah, what you did was a chicken-shit attempt at being a saint, all so you could play the martyr. You want to show me something? Next time do it yourself. I know houses where there are still some of those bags left over from the holidays, and that family also gets saddled with the guilt because it got lost in the shuffle. Not you modern-day Mother Teresas, though: your hands are clean because you washed your hands of that responsibility long ago. Fuck you very much, you cunts.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to back this team with all that shit going on. It’s not that I don’t support the cause and the values behind it; it’s that I can’t stand some of the faces of the party anymore. Hell, half the time I don’t even know who’s driving the bus, you know? All I know is that the Democratic Party has a pretty spotless and spectacular fucking record for blowing the shit out of a victory, even when that victory could be considered guaranteed. During the campaign the second I saw the contention between the DNC and the Bernie Sanders supporters, I had an inkling they may lose this thing. Then came all the behind-the-scenes garbage where the head of the DNC basically was railroading the Sanders campaign, even though it had the groundswell way before “I’m With Her.” That’s another thing the Democrats have never gotten the hang of: street-level passion. I’m not going to sit here and say Bernie would’ve beaten Trump—I’m not that skilled in the dark arts of prophecy right now. But what I will say is this: if they hadn’t split the foundation, the House of Kennedy would probably still be in charge. If they hadn’t tried to play fast and loose with “next man up” while also sabotaging one of their brightest stars (albeit one of their oldest—and also one who only declared himself “Democrat” so he could run for president), maybe the ship would be right on target and we wouldn’t have the opening to Dawn of the Dead going on right now. This is all based on eyewitness accounts, simple common sense, and the bigger picture, seeing as everyone I know has said the same goddamn thing to me on the subject.
Now we have a DNC led by two guys most people only heard about because all the recognizable names are on vacation. I’m not knocking their cred or their abilities, but I will say this: after Trump’s speech to Congress, the Democratic rebuttal seemed like the usual liberal shoot-yourself-in-the-foot tactic. Instead of building on the momentum and passionate word on the street because of all the support and activism going on against the various policies the GOP is trying to push through, who do the fucking Democrats put out there to talk to the American people? A WHITE MALE WHO
APPEARS TO BE JUST SHY OF HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, SITTING UNDER A HOT TIN ROOF AT A 4H POTLUCK, DRESSED IN HALF A CANADIAN TUX AND ABOUT A VERB AWAY FROM WHITTLING A PIECE OF WOOD FOR HIS GREAT-GRANDKIDS. And with that final shot, the coolness of the liberal Democratic Party passed silently in the night like a fart in a windy car, never really to be heard from again. When most of your supporters seem to be people of color and a great deal of whom are female, who in their left-handed right mind would turn the cameras on the antithesis of your base? The dude looked just like Mike fucking Pence, for god’s sake! I’m not saying the guy has the same qualities as Pence—probably far from it; however, when those two could be mixed up in lineup, do you think you could’ve found a better way of saying “fuck you” to the people who’ve been marching and screaming since the day you let the “W” slip out of reach?
It’s hard to defend this party and this point of view when the Democratic Party honestly has set themselves up for failure at every turn and opportunity. I’m convinced that Democrats only win by accident. Obama only won because it was Obama. Clinton I only won because it was Clinton. I feel like the only person to really win on the merit of the party was Carter, and even he was dragged through the mud a few hundred times before the country remembered why they loved him in the first place: because he’s a good man who tries for the absolute best this country can provide for us. That’s the only thing I can really think about right now; then again, maybe that’s the case with all presidents, regardless of politics or policy. Reagan won because it was Reagan, Bush Sr. won because he’d done a great job under Reagan… okay, after that I have no fucking idea how the others got there. Dubya was the good ol’ boy most people could relate to, and Trump is just a celebrity who got lucky. That’s like saying Schwarzenegger won because of his political background—he won because he’s Ahh-nold. Trump won because he’s famous, not because of his expertise. If he were really that good, he’d have released his fucking taxes. Hell, he’d have plastered them all over billboards and Times Square if he weren’t hiding the fact that he sucks at pretty much everything.
When I was a kid I couldn’t understand why so many people got so bent out of shape over things like free school lunches or food giveaways or even musical programs in school. I’d hear the bile in the arguments, talking about how “they don’t pay taxes to support poor people and their laziness” and “why the hell should I have to kick in for shit I don’t feel like I should—I work too hard” and all that jazz and nonsense. They would get all huffy like they were the only ones paying for things like that. Now, of course, these are the very programs the Republicans are trying to get rid of, even though every day these programs help nearly all the people who voted for these guys. In a world where the people who need these programs largely vote for the politicians who hate these programs, how in the ever-lovin’ hell do they have a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate? How the hell did Trump win the presidency? I’ll tell you why: because Democrats have never stopped trying to appeal to the intelligentsia in this country, the Snob Squad. Even though their values are more in line with the greater public than the Republicans are, the Dems only really care about going for the “cooler” crowd. That’s no shock: that goes back to when Joe Kennedy was running his son John’s campaigns all over the Eastern seaboard. It also smacks right in the face of that elitism that turns us all off. It’d be like a really great rock ‘n’ roll band deciding they only want to appeal to the man-bun and beard crowd in Silver Lake, a suburb of Los Angeles. There are worse fates than that, but not fucking many of them, I’m telling you right now.
Let me be frank and earnest with you (although I will not answer to “Frank” or “Ernest” if you scream those names at me at the mall). I was raised on free school lunches and “Reagan Cheese Giveaways.” I am a product of musical discovery because of the school programs that allow children to find their true potential for greatness. I did in fact grow up poor, and I still remember the brutality of going hungry and being scared when everyone around me seemed destined for failure and pain. But those programs helped keep me alive, and still other programs like them helped give me confidence to hold my head up in the face of adversity and destitute despair. If it weren’t for those programs, I’d have had no food in my belly, no road map to my future career, no shoes on my feet, no clothes on my back, no way of educating myself, and no real home to live in. Yes, there were issues in the houses I grew up in—and there were several, I’m telling you; however, there were people outside this circle of chaos who showed me the value in a hard day’s work and the pride that could come from putting the hours in and coming out the other side stronger and more independent. I learned these lessons the hard-fought way and yet never abandoned my belief systems, even when I was homeless myself or when I was living and sleeping in a closet, or out of a bathtub, or in the back window of a car because the two toddlers were sharing the backseat itself. Oh yes, I know and remember every taste of every shade of shit I was forced to consume because at the time there was just no getting around it. But I never forgot who I was or what I wanted to be, aside from everything else: a good man who helped people who couldn’t help themselves. Sometimes that’s all you need as a subtle reminder or bookmark to the soul. Honestly, is that too much to ask?
I get it: shit is tough all over. No one wants to feel like they pay more than anyone else does. Well, if that’s the case, why do you conservative supporters keep voting for politicians who raise taxes on you, the working class or lower class, only to lower taxes for those cocksuckers in the upper 1 percent who can actually afford to pay more? Don’t believe me? Go back and look at their goddamn voting records. From Reaganomics to the new spending bill that the GOP is trying to push through Congress, they’re gutting your ability to make a living, and doing it based on “alternative facts,” like “a higher minimum wage hurts the poor”—what kind of bass-ackward fucking thinking is that shit? Guess what, morons: if you’d sort out the economy, the inflation rate would go down. If the inflation rate were down, YOU WOULDN’T NEED A HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE. By taking away all these regulations on big business and federal lobbying, you’re driving that shit through the roof, putting more pressure on middle America. But you GOP-stopping sons-of-bitches only care about gilding your own pockets and those of the other cunts who help you stay in power. Just when the home run should go to the opposition—the party that feels and cares and speaks in terms that make hero speeches look like a drive-thru order—they not only go silent but slink away from the fight by and large. They do this under the auspices of keeping their integrity. I say they’re too fucking scared to dig down in the fucking mud and find the shit that’s buried beneath—and that’s more than likely because they all have shit down underneath the surface. Below the topsoil they’re all a bunch of bloodthirsty bottom-feeders, burying skeletons from their closets slower than they can keep killing in the name of morality. The cycle only breaks when the righteous man stands against the tides of tyranny. But no one is taking on those waves anymore, if they ever did to begin with.
Sometimes I wonder if the general public really gives a shit. It’s got to be like American Idol—everyone voting for the one they like the most but never picking the one with the best abilities. In the Age of Twits and Faces and Grams, the cheekbones are king and the “Eyes” have it. I can’t even remember the last time we may or may not have voted for anyone from any party based on skill or know-how. It’s always the motherfuckers who might look best on paper or at least are slinging the message at a rate that doesn’t make the populace feel like knuckle-dragging cucks—except they really are. The joke is on all of us. This shit isn’t about what they say they can do for us; if it were about that, we wouldn’t still be slinging the same arrows and insults at each other—we might actually have changed things. But no one runs on real change. The only change that either side really wants to talk about is reversing all the “horrible choices” that the outgoing party has made in their policies. The Republican may be the wo
rst at it—I saw on C-SPAN some fucking idiot member of the House saying that men shouldn’t have to pay for prenatal care when it comes to insurance because “it doesn’t have anything to do with men.” HOW THE FUCK DOES THE GOP KEEP WINNING ALL THESE FUCKING SEATS WITH MORONIC VITRIOL LIKE THAT? That guy’s lucky he hasn’t been nutted so hard that when he shits himself, he can’t feel it. So once again, how does the Democratic Party keep losing when they’re up against such a pile of Man’s Disease?
I’ve always been very vocal about my support for various individual freedoms and points of expression. I am an avid fighter against racism, bigotry, prejudice, bullying, sexual oppression, repression based on religious beliefs, and a host of other offenses that keep humanity trying to eat itself. I am pro-choice across the board. I am a firm believer in science, tech, truth, facts, right, wrong, justice, and the American way. I am a supporter of women’s rights, civil rights, equal rights, and LGBT-plus rights… while also supporting law enforcement, military, our Second Amendment rights, the right to steady work and equal hiring as well as equal pay. I believe in innocent until proven guilty just as much as I believe in capital punishment if the evidence is there and the guilt is clear and undeniable. I am a man of the center who isn’t afraid to go to extremes on either side of the fence or aisle because that’s what this country is. This country is men and women, many colors, many creeds, many sexual preferences and identities while also being full of the intelligent and the idiotic, the Right and Left, the snobby and civilized alike. It’s no secret, so I’m still blown away when people act surprised when they find out that most Americans may be all over the map, but they’re usually right near the center. There are zealots and fanatics on both sides, of course. But then again, who do you think drives people to the center? Hmm? It’s certainly not our leaders. They’re too busy leaning on the fence they’re sitting on to worry about anything else, and if they’re not doing that, they’re just trying to accomplish all the ideas and policies that their backers, their boosters, their lobbyists have manipulated and paid them to get to the front of the political chow line. Make no mistake: we push ourselves to the middle where we feel the most comfortable. So why don’t more of us vote that way? Why do the Republicans have a better track record of appealing to smart people and rubes (no offense, none taken) than the party who tries to do more for them than anyone else does? I think it’s because the Democrats are not nearly as smart as they think they are.
