Shook Ones

~ watch what you say ~

I need y’all to stop what you’re doing right quick and retire these two phrases from your lexicon:

1. “We’ll see.”

Naw, homie, we won’t. We’re not waiting to measure the damage a Black Talon corkscrews out of our belly when it rips through. We’re not measuring exactitudes of damage or the trace remains of black oxide in our wounds to determine our panic level. We’re not calibrating, post impact, the footprint of damage, nor are we scrolling in flashing LEDs the numbers in dot matrix red for the amazement of the crowd watching.

“We’ll see” is weak sauce, is limited thinking, is obedience in advance—it’s bitch shit and we should not be sitting around navel gazing at the bullet holes in our flanks. “We’ll see” implies there is a scale to our response to tyranny when in reality it should be all hands on deck, de rigueur on the trigger, 100 percent NEVERMORE. From day one.

We do not negotiate with tyrants.

2. “Four years.”

These two fucking words. Whether phrased as “We just gotta survive four years,” or “So, for the next four years,” or “Four years to get it together, folks!”—this is the hopeless language of a snowball trying to piss its name into lava: not long for this world. Thinking in terms of four years is another escape hatch that ain’t gonna help anybody whatsoever. The animals in charge, and The Management that placed them there, are not thinking in terms of “four years.” They’re thinking in terms of permanent residencies.

They don’t wanna leave, at all. They like it here. Taking what they want. Pitting us against each other for their amusement. Pounding shots of 50 year scotch, the aromatics released by a splash of orphan tears, their hands on the thighs of the handmaidens they have anointed to sit beside them as they sell the lie.

We don’t reschedule the Reckoning.

I know you’ve heard it a million times: the power of language is real. While true, this is not that simple. I’m not here to pump self-actualization or speak of the law of attraction or any other truth to power aphorism that might inspire any cynicism in you about the words we choose.

I’m just trying to break you out of the freeze mode so many of us have locked into. Disrupt the dissonance the blitzkrieg being deployed has anchored in your mind, body, and spirit. And the sooner you stop saying “We’ll see,” and you stop calculating your happiness or hibernation by the next four year term, the sooner you can get to work.

We’re gonna need you. You get that, right? I understand that we turned a corner, many years back when 9/11 happened, in saying, when witnessing the event, “It was like a movie.” But come the fuck on. This is not like a movie. This is really happening. Right here, right now. The wolves are at our door.

You gotta unclench your ass cheeks, unpucker your asshole, relax your jaw, and shake it off. All that adrenaline locking up your frame, threatening to warp the chassis, you better let it out. Release steam. The Management got slick, with their hyperblast, this flood-the-zone, shock and awe bullshit, but we know that’s what they’re engineering, and we’ve known about it for quite some time, so—

Don't make me slap you and shout, “Snap out of it!”

Like I said back in Cold Open, this is when a little sensory gating is a good thing. External coping mechanisms like “Wait and see” and framing the fight into a four year stretch will only cripple you. KNOCK IT OFF. Get in the present. We got shit to do.