At long last, we have been liberated from being able to afford anything
You’re reading Here’s Something, the humor newsletter critics call “Uneven,” “Not necessarily the worst thing to come out of the pandemic,” and “As-described.”
I’ve got a new piece for McSweeney’s, and it’s all about Liberation Day (did you know we’ve been liberated?!) Read below, or even better: give it a click here.
My fellow Americans,
For far too long, we have been held captive, prisoners of an unfair and unjust system—one that would see us access goods and services beyond the wildest imaginations of most developing nations. No longer! At long last, we have been liberated from being able to afford anything.
For many years, we have struggled to right this ship, to bring our spending and employment to heel. We have chipped away at our economy, bit by bit, but somehow we have continued to suffer under a global hierarchy in which we are both the wealthiest and most influential country in the world. A terrible fate to suffer, indeed.
Fear not, my friends, for those days are over. We are finally free from the shackles of capitalism. I mean, to be clear: it’s still capitalism. We’re just making sure that basically none of you benefit from it anymore. You. Are. Welcome.
This was not an easy battle. It came at a price—a price you’ll all be paying, based on a random assortment of numbers we pulled from thin air. We accomplished this great feat the way we always have: by just making it all up.
Our people have all fought valiantly, and we have won. Now you shall enjoy the spoils of our victory, which will cost about twice as much as any previous spoils. One day, we will all look back on this period and remember it as the beginning of the end of the best days of our lives.
Smile, countrymen, for a time of great surplus is finally and firmly out of sight, and a time of great agony is upon us!
No longer shall we exchange our economy of ideas and innovation for labor and goods.
No longer shall we bend the knee to other nations by being the nation other nations look up to.
No longer shall we be bound by the straitjacket of prosperity.
From now on, we are the envy of no one. Does that not feel righteous? Does that not fill you with purpose? You are all now unencumbered by things like “long-term market stability” and “jobs.” You are finally, totally free. (Nothing else is free, though. It’s all very expensive now.)
Congratulations, we did it.
What I’ve been reading
What Will You Do? by Kaveh Akbar
“Why am I seeing these videos? Remembering them, writing about them? What does it do to me, fasting for Ramadan? If the administration is communicating to me through social media—and of course it is; Zuckerberg and Musk own the algorithms, and Trump himself tweets like a manic child—then what am I being told? That I am here at their pleasure. That my presence is contingent on my docility, my good behavior.”
The Last Taboo by Patrick Blanchfield
“Trump has now spent several days claiming, at once absurdly yet also plausibly, that even he wasn’t quite sure what was happening, although he of course supports his friends in doing whatever great job they did. His adjutants’ group chat, then, is not a record of a group of people trying to “lead from behind,” deducing the Leader’s “true motives,” or otherwise acting per some new version of the classic Führerprinzip. This is a gaggle of killers who are also bureaucrats administering a machine for generating death and destruction because that is their job and that is all they can envision. Killing Houthis abroad, dismantling infrastructure at home, booting immigrants into foreign gulags, disappearing dissidents, and beyond: death and destruction is what the machine does, and maybe even all it can do.”
I’m just surprised TFG named this with a word that had “Lib” in it …
Yes! Yes! I’m finally free to pursue my retirement hobby: dumpster diving