I remember in ~2000 someone was in the parking lot of my office at a picnic table on their laptop and people commented how “cool” that was.
I’ve noticed since then that IT people qualify anything that drives work into personal spaces as “cool”.
2012: Wow, you can hot spot to your blackberry and connect your laptop to the Internet from the ferry, when you used to just let the wind ruffle your hair during your commute? “Cool.”
2026: Wow AI can write 78% of your code so you can produce twice as much shitty code while you spend even more time at your desk then you used to, for less money? “Cool.”
Well, you freed the slaves that you had enslaved. I mean, their descendants anyway.
I guess the answer is yes. Some small part of you can be proud to be American again. All you have to do is not think about it too hard, and you could try yelling “Silver Bullet” and shotgunning a Coors Light every now and then. That could maybe act as a stand-in for pride, anyway. C’mon buddy, it’s not that bad…
To me, it boils down to what political alignment best suits the political money machine, and in a vacuum that will always be strong police, strong military, and a loose application of the laws that are meant to control their actions toward 99% of the population.
That may be simplistic as well, but the scrooge mcducks of this world have far more use for the bootheel than they do for the reallocation of their wealth to the great unwashed.
