The Douchebag Bible (33 page)

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