Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: elections

  • Same Damn Bus

    I sat in the back of the bus

    because that’s where the broken kids sat.

    Not the cool ones—

    the twitchers, the burnouts,

    the ones who already knew by third grade

    this world was a bad fucking joke.

    Left side, right side?

    Jesus.

    That was for the believers.

    The ones still dumb enough to think

    which seat you chose

    meant a damn thing when the brakes were cut.

    Now we’re adults—

    barely—

    dressed up in grown-up costumes

    shouting bumper-sticker manifestos

    with all the conviction of a child

    reading a cereal box.

    You think your side matters?

    You’re still on the bus.

    Still headed straight for the edge.

    It’s just that now—

    you paid for the ride

    with your spine.

    I saw a sign the other day:

    Gays for Gaza.

    And I thought—

    Holy shit,

    we’ve lost the script.

    In Gaza they’d hang you by your ankles

    and call it justice.

    But sure, wave the flag.

    March in circles.

    It’s not about truth—

    it’s about being seen.

    I feel like I’ve been dropped into a Kafka play

    rewritten by TikTok influencers

    with terrible ring lights—

    everyone stuck in a loop,

    lip-syncing their own execution.

    That’s what they want, isn’t it?

    To be seen.

    Heard.

    Felt.

    Fucked.

    Validated by anyone, anything—

    even if it means

    joining a parade

    led by ghosts.

    They want to belong

    so bad

    they’ll build homes in their own execution chambers

    and call it progress.

    Left side, right side—

    there’s no steering wheel.

    The driver’s a ghost.

    The road’s on fire.

    And the rest of us?

    We’re just passengers

    pretending our seat matters

    while the bus barrels toward the abyss.

    And when the smoke clears—

    if it ever does—

    they’ll find bones in rows

    like teeth in a grin,

    still arguing

    over who had the better view

    as the whole goddamn thing

    went down.

  • The Only Side

    The channels, the magazines, the sites—they’re all peddling the same poison under different labels, like snake oil in a kaleidoscope. The pundits, the hacks, the echo chambers disguised as platforms of truth: one chorus chants, “Democracy is over,” while the other screams, “They’re coming for your freedom!” Different flags, same battle hymn.

    Some call it the Matrix, a web of manipulation so dense you can’t tell truth from propaganda. But let’s not flatter ourselves with cinematic metaphors. This isn’t some grand sci-fi conspiracy. This is humanity, stripped bare, its truest colors bleeding through like wine stains on cheap carpet. The educated look down on the working class with the smug disdain of someone who’s forgotten who fixes their plumbing or grows their food. And yet, why? Because intelligence without wisdom is just arrogance with better grammar.

    The working class isn’t innocent either—eyes glued to screens, buying into their preferred flavor of outrage. They, too, love a good villain, and they’ll take whatever bogeyman the talking heads serve up.

    And the intellectuals, oh, the intellectuals. They are often intensely stupid. The kind of stupid that comes with thinking you’re immune to manipulation because you’ve read Marx or Hayek or, god help us, a Twitter thread. They call themselves critical thinkers, but their critiques are as hollow as the echo chambers they inhabit.

    What if one had to actually pick a side? Thank god we don’t, because there’s only one side: theirs. And “they” don’t care which team jersey you wear, as long as you’re on the field, playing their game. Democracy? Freedom? Those are just words they use to keep us running laps, convinced we’re winning something while they laugh from the VIP lounge.

    So pick a side, if you must. Red or blue, left or right, Coke or Pepsi. It doesn’t matter. The scoreboard is rigged, the game already decided. And when it’s over, the only winners will be the ones who sold us the tickets. 

  • The Fine Print on Freedom

    Don’t Hang Your Joy on a Ballot Box

    never let the outcome of an election
    decide your whiskey pour or your morning scowl.
    one single vote’s a pebble in a canyon –
    we toss it down, watch it fall,
    hear no echo.

    they told us about checks and balances,
    a seesaw for suits
    to keep the beast tame,
    but some checks
    they roll overseas,
    a deposit here, a hand there,
    tucked safe and sound in the Alps,
    in the vaults with no names.

    meanwhile, the talking heads tell you
    to pick a side, pick a tribe,
    pick a face from a screen,
    and let it roll you like a cheap cigarette.

    so don’t get all unhinged if your horse didn’t come in,
    don’t hang your happiness
    on a bought-and-sold dream.

  • Pending Doom of an Election

    A breed of their own, slinking through the cracks of D.C. like junkies hunting for a fix—

    power, money, control.

    Strip away the glossy suits and hollow speeches

    and watch the grand facade of kings and queens vanish.

    Behind the curtains of corruption, you’ll find commoners,

    servants trapped inside the illusion of superiority.

     

    They were meant to be janitors,

    fixing toilets and tax codes,

    no different than the man pushing a lawnmower,

    or slinging garbage into the back of a truck.

    They exist to serve, to clean up the wreckage,

    but somewhere along the way—on garbage day—

    they took a detour, plugged into the system like addicts,

    craving attention and worship like a freshly cooked, hot shot of heroine.  

     They were meant to be disposable,

    like cheap labor, background noise,

    used needles in a hazardous waste can, faceless and forgettable.

    This is my official announcement: the revolution won’t be on YouTube, X, or Instagram.

    260 million will take to the streets for a collective reminder—

    these pawns are nothing but functionaries,

    meat for the grinder.

     

    We will teach them how to earn their keep like the rest of us,

    hired hands who forgot what they signed up for.

    Let’s put brooms in their filthy briefcases and watch them clean the mess they’ve made.

    Pending Doom of an Election

     

     

  • The Green Tablet

    The green tablet.

    All my life I stumbled, staggered like a drunk at closing time, reaching for something, anything. I’d been told to find meaning in the sermons of men, the wisdom of books, the clink of coins in a beggar’s cup

    it was all more of a junkie’s dream. The kind of thing you’d find slipped in between the folds of the Interzone, tucked inside the sweaty palm of some two-bit dealer with half his face gone, nodding off in the alley. I wasn’t looking for it, not really. But it found me. They always find you.

    Years spent in the static haze, the off-channel white noise of existence. I moved through life like a virus spreads—covert, unnoticed, but always present, always creeping. Everything felt slippery, synthetic. The streets, the people. All part of a bad signal, fuzzing in and out of view. I tried to decode it, cracked open veins and heads alike, trying to read the messages in the blood and the circuitry. It all led nowhere. Circling the drain.

    Then the tablet. Green. The color of rot, the color of new life. One third of the tricolor draped along the walls of the long, hollow corridor of time, reverberating with the somber hymns of Irish proverbs, and maybe, just maybe, carrying enough luck to turn pessimism into hope. Sort of like a coin toss, only with a tablet. I didn’t so much find it, it found me, pressed itself into my hand, throbbing like some living thing. Organic. Synthetic. All of the above. I swallowed it without thinking.

    And then the world folded in on itself, a collapsing wave. Time ceased to have meaning, space unraveled into dimensions I didn’t believe  existed—places where gravity was just another bad trip, a suggestion instead of a rule. The walls of the room bent, melted, reformed. Faces flickered, sliding in and out of their skulls. Bureaucrats with insect eyes and needle fingers. All the usual suspects.

    The tablet wasn’t knowledge. It was beyond knowledge. It was access, a key to a hidden layer of reality, a frequency just out of reach unless you knew where to tune the vibrations. And there it was—the whole system laid bare. The machinery behind the facade. The puppet strings of control, the invisible hands pulling us all in circles.

    The thing I’d been looking for in gutters and bars, in the eyes of strangers and the bottom of empty bottles. Turns out, it was the very thing that made me stop searching.

    I don’t remember what was written on it. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe it was just the act of finding it that mattered. That green tablet wasn’t salvation, not in the way they sell it in churches or schools. It was just a reminder that the world, the one I had spent years fighting, didn’t give a damn. It never would. And finally, I no longer needed it. 

    I wasn’t stumbling anymore. My new found saunter suggested confidence, not arrogance—just the ease of a man who knew the system and could slip through its cracks unnoticed, the few eyes that caught me probably green with envy. But I always looked past them, through their lost souls, and left a simple inscription on their softened brains…

    “You want out? There is no out.’”

  • The High Isn’t Coming

    god is the new obedience.

    the rest of us? just junkies chasing the first high. eyes glazed, hands outstretched for the next hit of belonging. the tribe, the party, the movement—they offer you a fix, say you’re one of them now, part of something bigger. they sell you purpose in a pill, a flag to wrap around your shoulders like a noose disguised as a security blanket. but here’s the thing—just like the junk dealer’s push, it’s all laced with something lethal. the high doesn’t last. it never does. you wake up sick, needing more. always needing more. and the cold truth is, the club you think you’re part of? it doesn’t exist—not the way they sold it to you.

    talking heads and politicians, like junk peddlers, know the game. they cut it just right, enough to keep you hooked, just shy of dead—or at least, that was the plan. but the bodies are stacking up. 279 die every day from counterfeit killers. more dead recruits than Vietnam, and these aren’t soldiers, just citizens swallowing the lie. it’s all poison. they toss you a pill, tell you to vote, tell you it matters. but it’s counterfeit, a placebo laced with sweet nothings. you down it, even though it chokes you every time, feel good for a minute, like you’ve made a difference, like you’re part of something righteous. but what’s in that pill? more poison. just another way to keep you tethered to a system that doesn’t give a shit if you live or die. hell, they’d prefer you sick, obedient, just healthy enough to show up and follow orders.

    and they need you to chase it again—the high of belonging, the sweet lie that you’re on the “right side.” but there is no side. it’s grey. the world is grey, the people are grey. the skies are always grey, the streets paved in grey since day one. I’ve walked down that avenue, eyed grey faces lost in the grey mundane of their everyday. everything’s muted, colorless, lifeless—just the way they want it. they need you blind, seeing in black and white, picking one of two flavors, because they need you to believe you have choice. But you’re just another number on that team jersey they sold you at the concession stand. they know you’re never actually going to be a real player on the squad. that’s why the numbers are grey—just bright enough to keep you loyal and coming back for more counterfeit salvation.

    i’m done with their game. i’m done swallowing their pills. i’ll walk through the grey, hands dirty, eyes wide open, because that’s where the truth is. the rest of them? let ‘em keep chasing that first high, keep lining up for another spoonful of sweetened bullshit. i prefer the chaos, the mess. i want the real thing, the uncut stuff—bitter and sweet, raw and true. not the garbage they keep the masses hooked on.

    it’s all an illusion, this belonging. a drug they sell to keep you numb, keep you thinking you’re alive, when really, you’re just another junkie in line, waiting for your next fix. the question is, when do you wake up and realize—the high isn’t coming?

  • Uncivil Savages

    Uncivil Savages

     

    Here we are, a nation of uncivil savages.  

    Bumping into walls, knocking over the furniture, 

    blind to the fact that the room we’re in 

    isn’t even ours. 

     

    Identity? What a joke. 

    It’s a mess of recycled sound bites and half-truths, 

    spun out like the web of a spider high on bad dope. 

    George Orwell’s laughing his ass off in the back, 

    maybe sipping whiskey, shaking his head. 

     

    It’s not the left. It’s not the right. 

    It’s just jabs and crosses, a nice little show. 

    The real damage, the real kill, 

    comes with the headkick you never see, 

    brought to you by your friendly neighborhood 

    Weapons of Mass Distraction.

     Flying elephants, underground donkeys— 

    who gives a damn? 

    We’re all shopping at the same supersized mall 

    jacked up on steroids, neon lights buzzing overhead, 

    propaganda posters hanging like cheap art 

    next to racks of aborted dreams. 

     And what are we doing? 

    800 million eyes, glued to glowing screens, 

    watching, waiting, scrolling past the snakes 

    slithering under the walls. 

     They’re coming for the kids first, 

    turning them into slaves. 

    Then they’ll poison the rest of us, 

    and we’ll call it anxiety, 

    pop a pill and go back to pretending 

    we’re free.

    So tell me—is this what freedom looks like?