I sent a link to a news story about Trump speaking at the McSummit(tm) to my friend and said "Burgerland is becoming even more real and I hate it" and she said "Burgerland?"
so I replied:
burgerland is a derogatory term for America based on the idea that we are all treat-brained rubes who just want to grill and consoom borgor, more concerned with unsustainable and destructive luxuries than the human connections all around us, and around the world)
Then I thought about it for a while and started typing another message, then I just kept typing and typing and here's an essay, originally posted in the comments of a hexbear post but I wanted to post it elsewhere as well to share!
Burgerland is a derogitory term for america based on the idea that we are all treat-brained rubes who just want to grill and consoom borgor, more concerned with unsustainable and destructive luxuries than the human connections all around us, and around the world
On a person to person basis you'll find this isn't really true- in reality the treat-brainedness, I think, is just the manifestation of each person's coping mechanism for the fact that we live in hell, and in this hell we are raised and groomed to desire products and wish to consume them even good things are a part of this pattern, like my [hobby redacted for opsec] for example, it is unambiguously only a thing I can do this easily like this because of American capitalism's relentless drive to commercialize every aspect of reality, and the fact that I am in a ridiculously lucky situation. I say 'the only reason I can do this as easily' meaning as I have been able to within the system of capitalism, buying amazon slop was the direct and cheap path, but in an ideal world it'd still be very easily possible but more likely through a communal center of some sort where we can all share resources and materials and working spaces to more efficiently use resources and create wide access to [insert thing here].
The reckless and unsustainable modes of production that simultaneously produce cheap goods while also marketing the fuck out of us to entice us and find ways to suck money from us condition all of us from birth (book about this: Capitalist Realism), I'm talking about the deep roots capitalism has worked into our collective psyche's* and common modes of thought reinforced and iterated/ escalated upon throughout the 'developed world' over the last 200 years of capitalism and imperialism, and its recent, slightly delayed by the Soviet Victory over the Nazis (yes I'm serious, idk if this will be contentious with you but we could talk about it more!), descent into fascism as a desperate attempt for capital to keep hold of its control over the masses. See also, Brainworms.
Is that why I got into [hobby redacted for opsec]? Because capitalism tricked me into thinking that I enjoyed doing things like that? No! But you've seen how mad I get when a single 10 second ad pops up (well, you, the girl reading this, haven't. but trust me, I get bigmad when I am subjected to ads), I have completely banished them from my life so any intrusion is offensive and noticeable, I am clearly not an average consumer of advertisements, but there are always outliers for one reason or another. But that doesn't change anything. Regardless of the fact that I started doing [Hobby redacted for opsec] because I like working with my hands and making things, I am still participating in the slop machine, many of my tools came from Amazon, or other infrastructure owned by billionaires.
Thus, one way or another, as a collective, as a broad class, the rule holds true that capital finds some way to ensnare almost all of us and drain our time, money, and agency.
That's what being treat-brained does, it makes us firmly attached to those few small scraps that most of us hold on to if we are atomized and lack community (as a near majority of us do), what more do we have to hold onto but those small joys? Those precious hobbies, or video games, or that hit of the vape, or bringing your children to disneyland so you can manufacture some joy (even if it means credit card debt) and pretend that the world your children are growing up into isn't a savage hell designed to tear at them and force them to only dream of a better future the way someone might hope to win the lottery.
It makes us fear that if we do something drastic to change the way things are, that we might even lose that small remaining sliver, and then what would we have?
We'd have nothing to lose but our chains.
anyway, in summary, Americans do be eating them BORGORS tho
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