1. |
X
03:49
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The whole world is designed to shatter you, slowly, into a million little pieces and remake you in its image. I can feel it succeeding every day. Every institution and inequity, every constraint and brutality, calibrated to rob us of any sense of trust or refuge. The emptiness I feel when I look at other people, the mental arithmetic I’m forced to do just to navigate the endless maze that we run like rats. (The whole world is designed to shatter you, slowly, into a million little pieces and remake you in its image). Like a blighted devil whispering in your ear “break, break, it’s the only way. Break, break, it’s the only way." You’ll be assimilated and disposed of. There’s no middle ground. No way out. We just break.
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2. |
XI
02:52
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How many songs have told me to trust no one and nothing? Smash the system, question everything, bow to no god? Yet this can’t be what they envisioned: a formless indignation groping for any target, aimlessly and joylessly celebrating the the destruction of any shared reality. We foolishly assumed that rejecting authority led to unlearning the hegemonic ideologies that have kept us hooded and caged. Turns out it’s just as likely to lead to bigotry, cynicism, and nihilistic glee as you drag the world down with you. Until there’s nothing left but the lies we tell ourselves to feel righteous and safe.
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3. |
XII
04:59
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A whole species, united only in perpetual alienation. Anhedonic disaffection, all we share. A wretched race, arrogantly erecting glorious spires that become our prisons, leaving us grabbing on to any shred of dignity, meaning, identity, or security. Anything to deaden the anomic entropy. The endless spiral of contempt and precarity breeds a rage that beheads kings cause those with nothing have nothing left to lose. Nothing left to lose at all.
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4. |
XIII
02:04
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It’s always someone. A hundred years ago it was Catholic immigrants. Lurid pamphlets spread rumors about imagined evils they hid from view. Because there’s always someone willing to make a dollar off hatred and ignorance. Because there’s always someone else willing to buy a lie if it makes them feel powerful. Willing to buy a lie if it’s what they want to hear.
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5. |
XIV
04:15
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I’m part of a generation that can only find solace in the creaking passage of time. Waiting, inert in slumber, for the infernal kings who have taken everything from us to perish, one by one, so we can emerge from their long shadows to survey the ruins they have left behind. Then, when we see these blood soaked edifices, obelisks dedicated to their endless, grasping folly, we will raze them, brick by brick, smashing windows and destroying foundations. So as you cower in the dark, waiting patiently for your time, take every chance to look up at them and, through gritted teeth, spit:
“we will bury and burn your legacy.”
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6. |
XV
05:33
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We won’t pledge allegiance to those who cannot be bothered to let us have a shred of dignity. So know this: we refuse to pray to gods and bow to kings and labor for bosses who have not earned our loyalty.
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7. |
XVI
03:39
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The most profound isolation overtook me when I realized how easy it was to let inertia force you to go through the motions of something that no longer holds any meaning. So now I spend my life forever committing ritual acts of penance to a god that abandoned me long enough ago that I struggle to remember the prayers that once burned my tongue. I have long forgotten the theologies we devised, the myths that were spun between us have slipped from memory. Now, devoid of faith and bereft of hope, any light inside of me has been choked for air. Ever dimming, now merely a smoking ember. I have learned that I don’t know what I look like when I’m not reflected in your eyes.
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8. |
XVII
03:40
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If you have suffered in this nation, if you’ve been locked out or pushed down, don’t forget what your compatriots think of you- that half of everyone you see would rather cover the country in a sea of ash than see you ascendent. They’d rather starve themselves then see you satiated. Don’t forget how little it all means to them: your security, your safety, happiness and liberty. Empty words in the face of their resentment. Ideas as hollow as their craven, Janus hearts. They will clutch their privilege from you with cadaverous fingers, and they’ll make you claw and fight and scrape for every scrap of power you wrest from them, for every shred of dignity you pry from their dead hands. So never forget that this means you have nothing to apologize for.
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9. |
XVIII
04:18
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Insecurity is being condemned to perpetually behold everything you hold dear, consumed with the knowledge that it could all crumble in an instant. We have been conditioned to understand that the walls around us have no permanence because there is nothing so sacred that they wouldn’t dare to destroy it. It’s what they do: see anything of value and set in motion the process to steal it all, sell it off, starve it out, tamp it down, bleed it dry, tear it up, bury it, and salt the earth.
Infernal kings! You rule but ruin!
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10. |
XIX
04:09
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Fear is the gasoline that fuels the dreadful engine they’ve built. And fear, like all gasoline, ignites when put to flame. We turn on each other with bullets and ballots, but nothing satiates the damned machine, seething and whirring in perpetuity. It will profit off your fear, your hate, and eventually your death. It will sell you lies to keep you scared, it will sell you weapons to give you the illusion of safety and power. They’ll tell you what you want to hear, as long as you stay afraid.
Fear is the gasoline that fuels their cursed machine.
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11. |
XX
01:54
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