Music N' Other Drugs

“The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena” – Brian O’Blivion in “Videodrome” (1983)

In David Cronenberg’s grimy 1983 classic, “Videodrome,” Professor Brian O’Blivion’s solution to his failing health is to record hours upon hours of himself speaking on a variety of topics so that his ideas will live on long after he’s gone. All his daughter has to do is play the tape, and, voilà, the illusion of someone being in total control of their surroundings is born.

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the upcoming election via social media has me convinced that he could become the first candidate to exist solely within the digital realm. He would never have to appear in-person, all of his debates or speeches could be phoned in, and his team could orchestrate every aspect of the campaign to ensure that all of his flaws are hidden. Like Ice Cube’s dick in “It Was a Good Day,” hatred of Trump and everyone who supports him runs so deep that it’s easy to envision The Left backing an AI being before relinquishing any power to the other side.

If that sounds crazy, well, we’re living in crazy times. So crazy, in fact, that Kamala Harris was recently anointed by the same group that kicked her to the curb back in 2019 with a 3% approval rating. Bill Clinton became known as “The Comeback Kid” following the 1992 New Hampshire primary, but Harris doesn’t have a quarter of the charisma that Clinton did at that time. If she ends up winning, her ascent has to be considered one of the luckiest political comebacks of all time given how little the perception of her has changed since then.

I’ve written before that the joke is on us if we think that there’s any tangible difference between the parties, because they’re all part of the swamp that Trump promised to drain once upon a time and their main objective is self-preservation at all costs.

How else do you explain J.D. Vance being named as Trump’s running mate after referring to him as “America’s Hitler” and Trump himself donating money to Harris’s campaign for California Attorney General?

We can’t even trust so-called journalists to call it like it is anymore, because the media-industrial complex is too invested in stoking the fires of fear and division to be bothered with the truth. Toning down the rhetoric can’t happen when commentators such as Joy Reid, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, and Laura Ingraham have made careers out of doing the opposite.

I want America to live long and prosper as much as the next person, but I don’t see either candidate being able to unite everyone in pursuit of a common goal at this time. Pat Buchanan foreshadowed our current culture war during his speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, and, while I’ve never been a fan, he knew what was coming and wasn’t shy about throwing it out there on a big stage.

As a father of three boys under 10, inflation, gas prices, and general cost of living expenses matter more to me than the identity politics that have come to define the last two decades of American society.

I’m not looking to the government to solve every problem; I’m simply looking for the person least likely to screw up the opportunity for my wife and I to solve them on our own.