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The Scathing Sting of Self-Serving Supremacy

(Dedicated to those who respond to life’s pain and confusion by giving in to it instead of overcoming it.)

A clamorous structure, decay camouflaged,

Your castle of ‘truth’ is but a mirage.

Catching mesmerized eyes from a far, lonely place,

Close inspection reveals heaps of virulent waste.

Your shrieks of opinions first splinter then maim,

Your swarm decimates without reason or aim.

Miseducation, self-righteousness tempt.

Complying, you grope at collective unrest.

The scrupulous gardener picks up his rake,

The malleable mind brushes off your mistake.

They build foundations; you tantrum and jest.

What’s left to disparage? Are you satisfied yet?

Hopelessness reigns while puppeteers play,

Complicity beckons the end today.

Trampled truth-tenders and overlooked thinkers

Risk hard-fought survival to stop you ship-sinkers.

So what’s left to do? It all seems so far gone.

We can’t afford food while you fertilize lawn.

But the fight clouds our judgment and makes us forget

There’s still endless happiness left to beget.

While stubbornness burns the most innocent dove,

You can change for the better, accept science, and love.

Though delusion exhausts us, we hope after all

That you still can choose truth and stop building that wall.

Written: 2-27-2025

Author: Joshua Janusiak

*Note to the reader: While you may read this article and think, “Hmm, this seems like a left-wing extremist perspective,” I can assure you that it is simply an accurate representation of the political situation from the perspective of a genuinely concerned and educated citizen, and my goal is to provide a clear truth amidst the endless spewing of anti-truth bullsh*t that has become so overwhelmingly prevalent (especially among Republicans, which I generalize based on personal experience, since I have met few to no people who proudly and intelligently self-identify that way) in 2025. Also, please note that if you voted for Trump and have realized what an enormous mistake you have made for not only you, but your entire society, and if you are working on genuinely educating yourself on the following topics without searing hatred for things you don’t understand, the rest of the Democrats and I are genuinely proud of you and thank you for being someone who is able to admit their mistakes and help work to make the world a better place.

Wokeness

Imagine you are an American adult who fell into a deep sleep in 2015, only to awaken ten years later in 2025. Once you awaken, a loved one informs you about everything that has happened since. You clearly don’t believe the story that seems more dystopian than most dystopian novels (which depict the worst imaginary societies possible). So, you take to the internet to read up about what has happened. What you see are horrific stories of preventable suffering amidst a flurry of garbage, or ‘bullshit’ (which philosopher Harry Frankfurt describes as “speech intended to persuade without regard for truth”), sprinkled with a bit of scientifically trustworthy information and some admittedly very entertaining TikToks and videos.

In the United States in 2025 (mostly due to ‘president’ Trump’s policies just from the last few months)…

• Naziism – yes, that’s right, white supremacists who share the ideologies of Hitler ‘animalize’ and literally eradicate and kill other people who don’t look like them – is making a comeback.
• Elon Musk is paying $0 in tax money while I (in my low income bracket) pay thousands and literally don’t have enough money for groceries. (Furthermore, Frump says the word ‘groceries’ is outdated and shouldn’t be part of anyone’s lexicon.)
• Children are being shot with guns in schools, and the government doesn’t feel the need to create better gun policies.
• Young people can’t afford houses, and they aren’t paid nearly enough to work.
• The ‘president’ is a 34-time felon.
• The ‘president’ is encouraging people to have babies while taking away MANY rights women have to their own bodies, protections, and basic medical care.
• The ‘president’ of the US pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement and hundreds of other measures taken to protect the environment, basically saying “f*ck it” to the future of the planet and all of the nature it contains – including humans.
• The ‘president’ pardons violent criminals who vandalized, looted, fought, and defecated in the country’s capitol, encouraging those who disrespect the integrity of democracy in this country the most. He also pardons rich, white millionaires who definitely did commit financial crimes similar to himself. (Coup, anyone?).
• The ‘president’ directly and unmistakably supports hateful extremist groups and authoritarianism.
• The ‘president’ tears apart families who are perfectly kind and cooperative members of society just because they immigrated from another country or have different colored skin. ICE has illegally kidnapped US citizens who have done nothing wrong, destroying their property in the process, and causing huge problems for innocent people.
• Unqualified billionaires are given political power that is utterly undeserved and unfair, yet ‘respect’ for their greedy ‘business skills’ remains strong at the expense of 99% of the people in the country.
• Support to the poorest people in the world (through organizations like USAID) has been revoked, and now many more adults, children, and babies are all preventably dying of starvation.
• General principles of respect for women and minorities are being obliterated.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which are literal concepts of justice, are being irrationally problematized.
• Many people who identify as ‘religious’ in one way or another barely know the tenets of their own religions, but they use ‘religion’ as a justification for evil and blind support for hate groups.
• The United States government has mostly harmed or supported harm of other countries, and has not taken appropriate or intelligent action toward international issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resulting in tens of thousands of preventable and unnecessary deaths to completely innocent people (and babies).
• Countries that were once our friends (looking at you, Canada) are now our enemies.
• People who are being directly targeted by hate groups still support said hate groups and the politicians supporting the hate groups. Examples include “Hispanics for Trump” and “Blacks for Trump.” Quite the statement of irrationality and self-disregard until ICE shows up at their doors…
• Trans people are literally being bullied by the administration, who is trying to force them to comply with one of two gender identities despite the scientific fact that neither sex nor gender is binary. Humans completely made up the concept of gender, peeps.
• Those with the loudest voices and most convincing-sounding rhetoric are rewarded with hordes of supporters looking for a new source of ‘excitement’, while people who are genuinely intelligent are unnecessarily challenged, silenced, and overlooked although they just want good lives for themselves and others.
• Republicans pretend that facts are up for debate just because true knowledge is based on careful examination of evidence and thoughtful experience, neither of which is desirable to them.
• People who give a sh*t about anything genuinely good are afraid, and the ‘president’ and his supporters continue to fearmonger and lie.
• Nothing is actually getting better for the American people with Frump in office.

Obviously, the list goes on…

Upon hearing these things once you’ve awoken from your 10-year slumber, you realize you are living in a nightmare. What concerns you the most is that all of these things are so… obviously bad. Why are people rushing to the defense of someone who is so clearly spreading hatred and falsity about immigrants, minorities, and women? The answer evades you, but you suspect that some of the contributing factors include widespread insecurity, pessimism, selfishness, a lack of education, and a lack of, well, love (and not the kind that Katy Perry said that you can only understand once you’ve been to space using millions of poorly-spent dollars).

You draw a few conclusions based on what you’re seeing:

1. That a lust for money, in combination with voracious gluttony and the abuse of power, is drowning out the entire point of human life (to love and flourish alongside others).
2. That genuine education for understanding no longer seems to be valued (because money), and that people are being treated more like pawns in an economic game rather than valuable beings in and of themselves.
3. That everyone wants to be right without doing the work or admitting when they’re wrong, which can be a direct source of evil itself.
4. That it is always easier to break good things than to build and sustain them, which makes it that much more important to build and sustain those good things (from LEGO structures to democracy).
5. That if we want to avoid corruption, the absolute destruction of Earth and nature, the destruction of society’s ability to function, and evil, then we must be assertive at dismantling these things and disagreeing when someone or something is anti-truth, and we must build and protect that which is good.

Rude awakening? Absolutely. “What a nightmare!” you exclaim, with a deeply disturbed expression on your face. Little do you know, your acknowledgment that this IS a waking nightmare puts you leaps and bounds ahead of half the country in their understanding of the gravity of the state of this country.

While this is a very literal interpretation of being ‘woke,’ the point is, if you were to ‘wake up’ today and be able to genuinely assess the state of things and what needs to be done to preserve humanity, love, nature, reason, and respect (values that I sure hope you share), you would sure as hell be able to identify the problems. So, ‘woke’ people are the ones who can identify problems in society with the intelligence to assess how to fix them? Sounds pretty f*cking important, almost like we should all be that way.

“Home of the Brave,” not “Home of the Beige”

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself” -Plato

Trump supporters are a great example of an entire group of people who refuse to acknowledge the repercussions of their adult actions while they act like children trying to get away with as much as they can get their greedy little hands on despite the obvious hell it creates for everyone (including themselves). Ironically, acting without regard to real, thought-out consequences often results in ending up in a worse state than before. I am typically slow to blame others, but this re-election is the result of a problem with certain members of society. It is a problem so crystal clear that it cannot be further dismissed as miseducation, ignorance, or ‘different’ beliefs. It is pure hatefulness, and it is vile. Still, I believe that change is possible. I will not put my energy into the game of bullsh*tting that has become the forefront in this country, but I will set a boundary for myself and hope that genuine goodness soon reclaims its place of power.

It is obvious that it is possible for us to have a successful society where we do not have to act like we need to ‘take’ something from someone else to get it for ourselves. Look at Norway as just one example. They have struck a great balance between socialism (not communism) and democracy. It’s not a zero-sum game, folks. I don’t know if there’s any kind of “quick fix” we can do while we watch all the good things in this country that we’ve worked so hard for burn to the ground. For many of us (“left-wingers”), the only solution may be to do what you’ve always done, but with more seriousness. DEFEND your informed beliefs; LISTEN to others and change their minds if possible; REJECT anti-truth, hateful rhetoric; UNITE with the people who genuinely care about everything that is worth caring about; and, lastly, SET boundaries. There is no need to entertain the loads of garbage that come out of other people’s mouths if it is going to destroy your emotional well-being. Obviously, we cannot save everyone from the depths of self-imposed insanity.

People who are unsure of themselves choose chaos over calculated work to improve ourselves and society because it’s easier to hide in chaos than to do the work, form an opinion, and take a f*cking stand accordingly. Is it a problem of moral laziness and a lack of character in the American people? Yes. It’s also a problem of becoming extremely fragile and insecure in the face of the boundless confusing information that is available to us today (as exemplified by the stereotype Republican repeating the same untrue thing over and over while trying to get others to believe it). But really, no one is ever certain of everything (or even very many things). That’s right, it’s okay to be wrong! That’s called learning. It’s good to mull things over in your head, do the research, and talk to people until you form an opinion you can be pretty sure of, and that’s usually the best we will get as humans. Science itself is only about getting closer to the truth. Science is all about proving things wrong until you get closer to what’s right – not proving things right. This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding among modern-day Americans with their obsessions with being ‘right’. YOU ARE FIGHTING THE WRONG BATTLE. The only intellectual battle worth fighting is the one for the actual truth, which is evasive and necessarily means constantly being wrong so that you learn and get closer to that which is real. ‘True’ does not equal ‘right’. How you cope with the inevitable moment that you realize you are wrong is what really defines your character. Falling into passive complicity or a state of utter fear is obviously not the best option. Complete denial or amnesia of the whole experience is worse. Merging the new information into your existing understanding of the world is the only way to go, no matter how difficult it may be.

Create the world you want to live in. Don’t be a reactive dud of a person who acts out of anger at the state of the world. I can admit that I have been going through phases of feeling completely shut down by this political situation, but I am still trying my best to be a functional and kind human being while assimilating this unbelievably outrageous actual state of the world into my mental schema, and I do what I can even in the midst of my months-long breakdowns. While you can’t control everything, you may feel small, or you may feel like you don’t have much influence, it is a fact that you are contributing to many things that are bigger than yourself at any given moment. Make your decisions wisely and with a good heart. You may be surprised at how things can change around you if you start with yourself.

Let’s recover from this colossal mistake and get rid of this absolutely horrible orange man that some people are calling ‘president’, as well as his entire, unethically appointed cabinet of egotistical school bullies ASAP. Furthermore, let’s make some of the necessary changes to our outdated government. That means YOU, people of the United States, as well as future politicians. Take initiative and really go for it. Unite over goodness, truth, and, yes, freedom; leave that crazy cult sh*t in the past. For you (us) Democrats, it is not cool to be passive or people pleasers. The felon was elected because the people with good consciences were too passive. We need the people with boundaries and genuine intelligence to come forward and take a f*cking stand, or leadership roles. If felonious Frump can abuse almost every single rule in the book, I don’t see why our next democratic (or at least non-neo-Nazi) politicians can’t be a little bolder in making some extremely significant changes to actually help people and the environment. God knows we’re gonna need some boldness to recover from this sh*t storm. We should be done living in the worst dystopian novel ever written. This chapter sucks, and it’s best to cut it short. Let’s move on. My hope is sustained by all the people I see putting forth this exact effort to stand up for what is right while still living their lives, and I believe that some Republicans will be able to change their perspectives as well. But we all have work to do. The good and bad news is that this book doesn’t have an end, but, unlike in a book, we have the free will to make decisions to change the course of the future. Make a difference for the better.

-Joshua Janusiak
B.A. in Philosophy & Spanish