Read The Douchebag Bible Online
Authors: TJ Kirk
When a boy who looked like he could be anywhere between 12
and 20 walked up to me in a crowded bookstore and said my
name, I was puzzled as to who he could be or how he might know
me. My first guess was that I went to school with him, but he
looked far too young for that to be the case. “I watch you on
YouTube,” he told me, extending a hand for me to shake it.
It never occurred to me until that moment that there were
actual flesh and blood human beings, who occupied the same
physical realm as I did, watching my videos. It was off-putting. I
was pouring my heart and soul out to actual human beings? How
unlike me! It was cringe-inspiring and traumatic to think that
people, no better than any people that I had ever encountered in
my life, knew things about me.
Of course, on a rational level, I always knew that my
audience was comprised of real human beings. I was under no
illusion that my subscribers were as physically intangible as the
characters that I have always created in my head. But there is a
massive chasm—at least for me—between rational reality and
visceral reality. It’s the difference between hearing the words,
“Your friend is dead” and actually seeing your friend’s lifeless
bullet-riddled corpse. It’s the difference between what we know
and
what
we
know
.
There is a cruelty inherent to the relatively new medium of
internet vlogging in that it lures us into believing in some gullible
and intellectually soft area of our brains that we are not talking to
an audience, but to ourselves. By the time we realize otherwise—
truly realize it—we’re already exposed.
From that initial sting of realization, there can only come
relief. It’s a relief most people will never experience—the relief of
being freed from the burden of the mask of their own contrived
banality. Once you’ve opened your mouth and removed all doubt
that you are a complete nutjob, you don’t have to pretend
otherwise anymore.
Truth is freedom. Freedom is truth.
On September 11th 2001, this entire nation was awestruck with
the spectacle of an attack on American soil of proportions not
seen since December 7th, 1941. The American people rightly
screamed for justice. They wanted to see those responsible for the
heinous act against their fellow American’s punished.
That’s the problem with suicide attackers. You can’t
retaliate against them. They’re already dead.
This is probably why so many Americans called the 9/11
hijackers cowards in the wake of the attacks, but by now we can
all surely set that comforting lie aside and admit to ourselves that
cowards do not die in the pursuit of their goals. The hijackers
were certainly evil, brain-washed idiots—but not cowards. They
were, in fact, bold and brave men who made the ultimate sacrifice
for what they believed in.
The bloodlust of the American populace could not be sated
with the destruction of those who perpetrated the attack against
us, because it was a destruction that they had chosen for
themselves. We had to go after who they worked for, and instead
of investigating the matter thoroughly, the Bush administration
pinned it exclusively on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in
Afghanistan, ignoring the ties of almost all of the hijackers to
Saudi Arabia.
Soon enough, even Osama was forgotten. The war in
Afghanistan was swallowed alive by the war in Iraq. The bloodlust
of the American people formed a red carpet for big government
and big business to stroll into the Middle East and set up shop.
Military contractors like Vice President Dick Cheney’s former
employer Halliburton made record profits by overcharging the
government for busy work. Oil Companies like Exxon made
record profits while gas prices nearly quadrupled. By the time
Americans forgot about their need for vengeance, they found
themselves stuck in a war that will end up costing nearly a trillion
dollars and has already cost thousands of lives.
If these were the events of a novel, you’d be incensed if the
fictional population of the book didn’t revolt and overthrow their
government for such a miscarriage of their will. But this isn’t a
tidy fiction, it is a complex reality and the American people are
too stupid and defeated to have the means or the inclination to
rebel against their masters.
So, the question becomes: How did a population
descended from a bunch of badass rebels who kicked the ever-
loving shit out of the English when King George III tried to tax
them too highly turn into a cluster of tepid pussies with no real
ambition? How did the home of the free and the land of the brave
become the land of the timid and the home of the enslaved?
The American people were tamed by a trifecta of factors:
safety, patriotism and individualism. Now, I happen to believe
that safety, patriotism and individualism are good things.
However, when those who run the system use these concepts,
they use them as weapons against the people. Safety starts to
mean fear. Patriotism starts to mean obedience. Individualism
starts to mean lack of empathy.
Safety is a good thing. There’s no reason for people to be
needlessly endangered. The thing is, safety is not something that
should trump personal freedom—as it did when our government
passed The Patriot Act.
Patriotism is a good thing. When you take pride in your
country, you want to see it prosper. You want to make sure it is a
peaceful and opportunity-rich place for the next generation to
inherit. However, when patriotism is transformed into blind
support for one’s government, then it ceases to be a force for
positivity and instead becomes a detriment to that which we
should most cherish. Our children do not benefit from a world
where corporate profit is king. The mindless obedience of the
populace to the idea that corporate greed is good does not feel like