Every creative mind eventually reaches that point where they accomplish their masterwork; that definitive statement that symbolizes the culmination of their life’s work. Well, my friends, family, spam bots, and random Nigerians who arrived here via bad search-engine optimization… here is my Citizen Kane:
Wow. I don’t know about you, but that left me breathless. I can’t even right now, you guys. Just… wow.
Seriously though… can you believe how deep that was? All the nuance. All the layers. It was like a visual feast of lasagna for the soul.
Seriously seriously though… I learned a lot while crafting this modern day epic. I learned that tomatoes are actually a fruit. I learned that all the numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666. I learned that everybody I disagree with is more than likely “literally Hitler”.
I also learned a bit about cult of personality.
I never understood why so many seemingly intelligent people would gleefully back a modern politician, when none of them does more good than harm while in office. Between the last two administrations, U.S. citizens have had their privacy and rights stripped at an alarming rate. From the passing of the Patriot Act, to the limp, sort-of-a-fix Freedom Act that followed, to the continued propagation of a surveillance-state, the overreach of the NSA, FBI, and CIA, etc. On top off all this, both parties have continually ignored improving the education and industry in the poorest areas, both black and white, whom they have no qualms gleefully preying upon for practically guaranteed votes.
So why would anybody slap their hands together like a trained seal over any of these regressive, ineffectual goofs?
While making this video, I amassed quite the collection of presidential verbal and physical gaffes. In doing so, I started to notice something. George W Bush was a goldmine of physical and verbal slip-ups, while Donald Trump has been a verbal train wreck, and Hillary Clinton held it down in the physical slip-up department. I could have produced a full 5 minute video with any of these folk’s gaffes alone. Barack Obama was a different case, however.
The guy rarely said anything stupid, and only tripped on one occasion that I could find. Most of his gaffes had to do with him playing sports very poorly, or working out with the finesse of a little girl. I didn’t even use much footage of him in my video, because quite frankly, it wasn’t very entertaining.
All of this footage acquisition served to bolster a belief I’ve had for quite some time now. That belief being that people who don’t follow politics very closely tend to judge politicians purely on optics rather than actual policy. This seems like a fairly obvious observation, but the people who are prone to this behavior tend to be in denial of the fact that they operate this way. They think their opinions on politicians are dictated by some sort of knowledge they possess. Grill them about some basics on politics however, and you realize they’re merely absorbing their opinion on the matter from some source, much like a plant suckling sweet sun milk out of that great teat in the sky. Whatever that means.
Hence, people who engage in this cult of personality, elevating up politicians for no actual legitimate reason, will always focus on the gaffes. Obama had great optics. He spoke well, looked sharp, and never looked confused. Even if he had shanked 14 Guatemalan children in the face, there are people who would have ignored that transgression, and still held him up as something extraordinary. Meanwhile, Bush said something moronic, or tripped over something at least twice a week, and so it was easy for those same people to set him up as the villain. To anyone actually paying attention to the policies however, neither guy was exceptional, or all that bad. They were two sides to the same coin. They could have been in a buddy cop movie together. Maybe they still will be.
The point I’m trying to make here, is that 9/11 was an inside job, and every president had their hand on the button just a little bit. We were all an inside job. We were all 9/11. Never forget us. Never forget that you were an inside job. Never forget that Tower 7 was because of you. Yes it was. Stop lying to yourself. You did that. I forgive you though.
