There are Things That Matter

Escapism has a time and place.

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you... that meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.”

— Samwise Gamgee

There are things that matter.

And they are not the things that the post-Cold War, hyper-consumerist world tells you they are.

When I was younger, I subconsciously wanted to believe that I was living in a time of great peace both abroad and within domestic affairs of the country. I wanted to believe that, as Francis Fukuyama supposed, history was over. History was filled to the brim of great conflicts, great tragedies, that did not reflect the 21st century world I lived within. There were narratives we told ourselves — With the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States of America had won this big game of Civilization V and was the dominant superpower. There were no threats of large-scale war. Things would only get better and better (materially speaking, of course, for the modern person cannot understand flourishing outside of the materialist paradigm). Yeah, maybe there would be a terrorist attack here and there but those guys were half a world away. Yeah, China or whoever was on the rise but we control the waves, the global trade, the global market, the nuclear deterrent, and so on. The Pax Americana had been realized.

And what did that mean? What do you do when you have no enemies yet a fiercely materialist and capitalistic mindset? Really, the only path available to such a society is to gorge on pleasure — on film, on reality TV, on video games, on hobbies. In a sense, hobbies became our identities because the only thing holding us together before 1991 was a sense of American identity in the face of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Now, with that common foe gone and the rapid development of technology producing a golden age in content (in quantity if not necessarily in quality), identity became rooted in these entertainments.¹

In a time of great peace, what did even the slightest bit of conflict mean? It was nothing less than a threat to take everything upon which the Pax Americana (shakily) stood upon and flipping everything upside down. Conflict meant starting back up history. It meant a return to violence and tragedy. So why fight? Even if there are fundamental disagreements that could not co-exist (such was the coalition of Americans at the end of the Cold War), just simply ignore those problems. Why deal with those problems when we have such great movies and video games coming out!

That model of peace was unsustainable.

When I was younger, I had a strong disdain for politics (and, in a sense, I still do to this day). From my perspective and experiences, it did nothing but bring conflict into this world of peace. It did nothing but show that this uneasy coalition we called a "society" was unsustainable. Politics was something I wanted to ignore. Rather, enjoying the fruits of peace, I immersed myself in the world of fiction. I became an expert on Transformers lore, perused Star Wars guidebooks, wrote roleplay journals of my characters in Skyrim. Did I have political beliefs? Sure, if you could call them that. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I unconsciously had a law written on my heart. But the point is that I believed political ideas were something to be kept deep inside in a shell, hidden and only really coming into contact with the "real world" in the voting booth. Politics was not something for polite discussion. Politics wasn't supposed to be talked about in "the real world" which, as I understood it, was a never ending carousel of movies, games, comics, and shows. That was all that mattered.

This status quo was infringed upon. I don’t remember exactly when things began to change. I don’t remember the starting gun. But somewhere around 2014, 2015, things changed. As I ignored the actual real world, the political world, the real world came to me. Mockingbird #8 showcased the titular character with a shirt with the words “Ask me about my feminist agenda.” If you had asked me at that time if I was a feminist, I probably would have said yes (though the blatant misandry of the feminist movement going forward would result in my alienation from the movement). That wasn’t the issue — the issue was that the border between worlds were blurring, the one I sought to ignore and the one I sought to immerse myself in. Angela Queen of Hel #4 had another scene foretelling what was to come when it had the character Bor yell something that was censored inside the text bubble with the words “unsolicited opinions on Israel???” It felt so out of place that it became a meme immediately. The “culture war” had come to my entertainments, my hobbies.

It’s funny, these seem so small now. But they were signs of what was to come. I remember feeling particularly alarmed when a self-identifying transgender person by the name of Magdalene Visaggio got the job to work on books in the IDW Hasbro Universe, my most favorite fictional universe of all time that occupied so much of my thoughts in those days. Visaggio had once tweeted out about smashing in the heads of “cis-gendered” people with a baseball bat. This kind of person was exactly why insane asylums were built and yet she was given the job to work in my favorite fictional universe? A fictional universe that, mind you, was ultimately part of a children’s franchise?

Over time, across the different posts on Tumblr and Twitter in my favorite fandoms, posts by celebrities on social media and decisions by editors and companies on comic books and films (Almost always being justified by brain-dead repeated clichés like “this piece of fiction has always been political,” completely illiterate when it comes to concepts like subtlety and allegory), I realized with fear one simple fact: They hate me and want me and my family to die.

And yet I still didn’t say anything. I simply hoped it would pass. And year after year, things only became worse. The world was becoming dangerously stupid. But I still held my tongue to avoid conflict. I wanted to keep the peace. Because once the illusion of peace was shattered, there was no going back.

But it never stopped. Things got stupider and stupider.

The breaking point was July 13th, 2024, when they tried to kill President Donald Trump. They tried to blast his head open on live television.

I still haven't really collected everything I have to say on that, but I'll try to do so here. I wasn't particularly public with how I felt about Donald Trump. Heck, when he first came into the scene in American politics, I didn't care for him. His first term was frustrating, at times wonderful (his handling of the 2017-2018 North Korean Crisis for one) and at times infuriating (I was greatly disappointed by his strike on Syria in 2018). But overall, with culture under siege by psychos on every side, I saw Donald Trump as an ally and ultimately as my preferred candidate. In a way, Trump was the only hope I had for the future of the United States.

And they tried to kill him. On live television.

In the words of Hulk Hogan, "enough was enough." I think that moment was the straw that broke the camel's back for every single levelheaded and normal American in the country. It certainly was for me.

Another moment worth mentioning — Words cannot express the rage I felt at the covert melting down of the Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee, a cherished symbol of my people and identity. This is a topic I could go on for pages and pages about, but those who know already know and those who don’t understand already will never understand. That moment was the moment I felt that total war had been declared on me and my family, and it was that moment when I supported total war on them. That total war could only come in the form of Donald Trump.

Folks, I write this today because I have regrets. I regret the way I behaved the past ten years. I regret giving room, giving even an inch to monsters who hate me and everything I stand for. I have been coming to terms with the fact that the population of the United States of America has gone through one of the most intensive propaganda campaigns in the past decade (as Mystery Grove highlighted) and I am realizing that there are large portions of the population that are actively anti-civilization and anti-human and that, unfortunately, they are uneducable (as Athenian Stranger has illustrated). I recognize that an attempted "co-existence" with evil cannot happen and I also recognize, after the landslide victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 election, that the nation is waking up and I really shouldn't feel too concerned over the people that hate us. They are being left behind.

As a Transformers YouTuber, I saw someone post in X something along the lines of "I don't want to talk about politics, I just want to post Transformers." Seeing that post, I've felt a calling to simply voice my experience. I might have sympathized with those words back in 2014. But not now.

Escapism is important, and it does have its place. I'm not denying the value of escapism. J.R.R. Tolkien himself spoke of the value of escapism.² But Tolkien also understood that escapism had its time and place and that there needs to be engagement with the real world as well to be a healthy human being.³

But saying "I don't want to talk about politics, I just want to post Transformers" is ironic, that post is inherently about politics and not about Transformers. The poster had the option to simply post Transformers which would be understandable enough. But the post itself implies and inversing of the primary and the secondary worlds.

Folks, there are things that matter. And it’s not perpetually consooming products. I realize the problem with this article is that I'm preaching either to the choir or to zombies. Those who understand these things, well, understand them already. Those who don't, on the other hand, will never understand. I suppose there really isn't any point in me writing this for anyone. Maybe I'm writing this for myself. When a character (from a safe distance or with the aid of a glass barrier or whatever) sees their loved one turned into a zombie, they have a tendency to talk to the zombie as if they can hear them as a way of saying goodbye.

I am crying out, pleading with the deaf, for you to understand that there are things that matter.

God matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry that God isn't real or that I'm not acting Christ-like or that religion only enslaves people.

Your family matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry about patriarchy and trauma, hatred of children and of your parents for whatever reason, and that you're fine being independent as if any human can stand independently and being self-extant.

Your nation matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry about past atrocities and war crimes as if nothing good could ever come from a group of people. Flags of nations are equated to hate symbols and heroes of high character must endure lies and embellishments from you, you who never wants to look up to and aspire to something good but tear down and put below you. You can’t stand something standing above you. You can’t stand something being better than you.

Tradition matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry about backwards and outdated ideas, that there is no way the past could ever create something of worth compared to the present, the present which you identify as being the greatest generation to have ever walked the earth, the generation that has cast aside most of its prejudices. You have put time itself in a courtroom and made yourself the judge but how can a temporal judge declare a verdict on something that is eternal? It is no more possible than subtracting one from infinity.

Literature matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry about race, gender, and ethnicity in representation, I hear you cry about the great works being "fanfics" as your mind is incapable of understanding anything besides fandom and consooming.

Love matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry that love is not real, just a chemical in the brain that manipulates behavior for the goal of reproduction, so you care not who you love or with whom you do things that should be reserved for those who matter, for to you love is a lie. And my heart breaks.

Health matters.

And when I say that, I hear you cry that all bodies are beautiful, as if beauty was something subjective and not a transcendental that we participate in by degrees, and in your nihilism you promote a death cult that paints a smile face on the grave but at least you got the affirming comments on social media by other people likely to join you in the ground soon enough. Mental health to you is something only possible through the work of a magician you call a “therapist” and elixirs called “anti-depressants” and you can’t fathom that a system that profits on your illness does not want to see you cured.

Enough is enough. There is no good that can come from trying to create understanding with zombies who simply hate you and want you dead. By definition, “unity” is impossible between opposites and efforts to create unity are in vain. While not may main focus, know that I will speak on things that matter, on things that are important, and I will not hold my tongue anymore. Any whining from the zombie crowd is simply going to be shrugged off. There’s nothing that can be done for them. A decade of conversation and debate has taught me that.

I’m so tired. Like nearly 75 million Americans, I’m so tired.

There are things that matter.

1. To say nothing of the pitiful state religion was in at that point in time.

2. See On Fairy-stories

3. Tolkien understood the value in not confusing the Primary World and the Secondary World for one another.