There Comes a Time

When you just gotta say

Trying to find a way to say this without making the wrong people feel attacked.

If you’ve kept quiet because you needed your job to survive and haven’t been able to find a new one that won’t fire you for being a normal person with sane opinions, I’m sorry to hear that.

If you’ve kept quiet because it’s not really your style to be outspoken, I get it.

If you’ve kept quiet because you’re literally a cheerleader for big tech or the ad or media/entertainment industry dreck which underpins everything that without a major intervention will end the world as we know it, I feel sorry for you in a way, but I also just don’t care that much about what happens to you anymore. Because I know you know exactly what you’ve been fueling and furthering, and that you’ve either found a way to rationalize it or you’ve adopted it as a belief or default political position, in which case there’s nothing to even keep quiet about; your voice is already the loudest.

If you’ve stayed “neutral” in the belief that “both sides are bad” and that this “division” is designed to “make us hate each other” I’m intensely questioning you, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but leaning toward the more likely scenario that it’s easier for you to sit it out for fear you’ll pick the losing side. I’m hoping against all odds that you’re not a coward and that you truly are just not aware you’ve been hoodwinked, that you’ve simply not woken up yet to the reality that there’s no “division,” no conspiracy to make us hate each other; only one consolidated corporate state and their media vs. the people who believe in the power of a free world. I’m sympathetic that you may have temporarily been under the spell of a HR Department so big and so global and so powerful they were able to sell you a re-brand of observable truth as “getting political.”

It’s not politics, it’s truth. They tried to shut you up by telling you it was dangerous, and when you didn’t listen they literally made it dangerous by attaching material consequence to speaking it.

That was then, and because you stayed quiet, this is the now:

21st century mean girls and their male equivalents now run the front of house in the western world. A U.S. presidential candidate is trending on the merit of “those other guys are icky” as this grinning dance-off we-don’t-answer-questions campaign quickly becomes a twerk session overlaid by hysterical laughter. The UK is jailing people for social media posts about the problems with mass migration.

It’s a humiliation ritual.

For the kids who actually believe in voting for a woman because she’s a woman and that’s good because she’s a woman, it’s time to finish breakfast and get your shoes on, we’re late.

For the teens who seldom do anything in life for any other reason than mad at orange daddy, it’s time to move out and get a job.

For the young adults, I’m not sure what to say anymore, because you well know we’re probably too late for it to matter anymore, and there’s no longer any school to teach what you need to survive.

Maybe that’s why you’re so demoralized, so sure nothing will change; maybe that’s why you can’t speak. But on the off chance it’s just a coming of age thing, or it just hasn’t happened for you yet and you’re finding a voice for the first time, there’s a pill for that.

Sometimes you gotta say "What the Fuck", make your move. Joel, every now and then, saying "What the Fuck", brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future.

The thing about this film is that Miles’ words of wisdom are passed along like a powerful meme, and despite major setbacks, through internalizing and sharing the idea, Joel finds his way, and eventually wins the day.

That may never happen for any of us. There’s no magic spell to make the horror disappear, it will have to be vanquished, and that can never be painless. This is the part where you pray.

Quiet is nice, but there’s a time and a place for it.