How To Respond to Clown World

The absurdity levels keep going up, and the default response is apathy.

“But he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.”

Is anyone else having a really good time watching this shit fall apart?

I’m sure there were many who could have predicted the fall. The end of the U.S. dominated world order. The collapse of the West. But who would have predicted it would be so cartoonish?

We have a senile dementia patient at the helm of government who can’t help but misplace classified documents — and his excuse is that they were stored with his Corvette — our cities are crumbling, inflation is rampant and to get worse. We’re sending over 100 billion dollars to Ukraine for a proxy war, pushing us closer to WWIII. The COVID vaccines didn’t do what they had promised and now we’ve coerced millions of people into experimental injections. We find out that Pfizer was experimenting with gain of function research from a Grindr date entrapment. Paul Pelosi is smiling in his underwear with a beer in his hand with the intruder assailant moments before getting hit in the head with a hammer. And on and on.

The term clown world was coined a few years ago, probably on the boards of reddit or 4chan to label the absurdity. But could anyone have guessed this level of clown?

The majority of us, even if we don’t pay close attention, know how fucked up everything is. We fall into the camps of:

1. Not paying attention, ‘cause what’s the point? The world is ending, but these tacos are just so damn good.

2. Just laughing at clown world, mildly noticing this or that there but taking nothing seriously, studying nothing intensely, just glossing over headlines share the memes, and moving on. Maybe we’ll attend a protest when the cops kill somebody or share something about Roe Vs. Wade on our stories, in a performative, temporary display of outrage. But at the end of the day, these tacos are just so damn good.

Or perhaps worst of all:

3. Trying to actually do something about it. We start our podcast or write a newsletter that nobody is going to read (ahem) with the naïve journey that we are going to change the world! While making those who fall into category 1 & 2 think of us as fucking nutso — seriously, if you want to actually pursue taking on the problems of the world, you’ll just be annoying to your friends, alienated from social circles, be called a bunch of derogatory names you may or may not have earned, and be no closer to shifting the Overton window in the direction of sanity. You wanted to take the hero’s journey and you were fooled that you could make a difference.

Of course, there are some folks who are good at garnering attention and can make waves. But they are often, at the end of the day, tools of the system. As bad as mainstream media has become, they are worse. Alex Jones has popularized brain dead conspiracy theories about globalist luciferins, no planes on 9/11, and false flag actors. Jordan Peterson sounds like a parody of himself promoting CIA talking points about regime change in Iran and the war in Ukraine is about wokeness. Andrew Tate, the supposed shining figure of masculinity, is in a Romanian jail for sex trafficking allegations while he tweets about how reading books is for losers. Donald Trump is still touting that his vaccine has saved millions of lives. But don’t worry, Stephen Crowder is taking on The Big Con so he can make more parody music videos about COVID. The political and social figures on the left are so far gone they have joined in with the neocons to sing the tune of the war party. At the end of the day, we’re lucky we have a few comedian podcasters that online streamers that can have some form of an open and fair dialogue. That’s how low the bar is.

There is, some highly imperfect but counter-culture figures we can depend on. But they have been pushed to the fringes. To generalize, a bunch of nerdy, autistic, libertarian dudes who are actually anti-war, anti-state, correct on most of the major issues of our day. But they are terrible at optics, terrible at delivering their message to the masses, and held back by censorship on any platform that has a mainstream following, until maybe Twitter recently.

So what are we left with?

We’re left with you.

You, working your dead end job, sifting through your broken relationships, trying to put your life together. It’s in your hands now. You are not only responsible for your own life, but the entire stock of humanity. It is you who will decide what human history was for. What we are meant to be — a fossil, a remnant of what once was? Are we meant to perish in the next 100 years from climate catastrophes or nuclear winter, or are we meant to survive, so that future generations can continue to shape the course of history.

I get it. Most of us just want to play videogames after work. Go out on the weekends. Look good, be cool. But deep down, you want your life to mean something. And if you embark on the journey of actually caring, it probably won’t do much.

But it’s worth it. Because there’s nothing more meaningful that we could do than try and make an impact. Cue Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for.

So like, that’s all I’m saying. If there was an inkling of you that cares, and you made it through this article, consider paying attention a little bit more. Much like those who don’t want to lift weights because they think they might get too jacked, you won’t send your life spiraling down into a pit of chaos if you read an article from time to time or have a conversation with your friends about world events. You will only be better for it.

Besides, Paul Pelosi would prefer you didn’t: