Boxcars of Thought

By Nathan Payne | pablosmoglives | 16 Jan 2023

"I like bein' free
and that makes me
an idiot I suppose"
Stan Rogers

Remember the scene from The Pianist when everybody is logging into their social media accounts, and either Adrien Brody's character or one of his siblings says this boxcar is better than those other boxcars, because on this boxcar I get to say what I want? This is a free speech boxcar. How dare you tell me there is no hope. What are they going to do, kill us all? And while the family is all lined up to log onto Farcebook, "Minds" control, and other boxcars of thought, the Jewish rat character who became a speech-moderating Nazi shill pulls Adrien Brody out of line, barks in his face so that it wouldn't look like he was setting him free, then shoves him away to save his life?

Remember when Adrien Brody then had to pretend to be on body-disposal detail, to exit the scene without being observed by the almighty algorithms and other online moderators, symbolized by armed goons with swastikas wrapped around their arms?

Here it is, in case you don't:

I know why people want to believe there is hope in this world. It's because God put hope in our hearts, and so at some level it's only supernatural of us to believe that "everything's gonna be alright." It's a truly great song. But is it true? Is everything really gonna be alright?

Are Gab and Minds Control true, genuinely-liberating alternatives to the obvious Nazi boxcars like Farcebook and Twitter? Does one bulletin board in a police station have more rights and freedoms than another? If everybody is posting their whereabouts and other details of their lives on a bulletin board in a police station, does it really matter if that bulletin board is symbolized by a frog, or a lightbulb, or a bird? It is a bulletin board in a police station, after all. How great can it really be?

What if we stopped projecting the goodness and faith and hope in our own hearts on the fascist pigs around us? What if we stopped assuming that because we'd never harm them, that they'd never harm us? What if we stopped justifying the fact that our thoughts have been corralled onto a Nazi train platform, and we stopped denying the doubt screaming up at us from deep within our being, telling us that Gab and Minds are not "refreshing alternatives" to their mainstream counterparts. Though technically, indeed, Gab and Minds probably are refreshing alternatives to those other intellectual gas chambers. Like a firing squad, perhaps, is a refreshing alternative to choking to death on poison gas in a naked horde of one's own terrified, panicking peers. At least in a firing squad, you generally get to die with your clothes on.

When did we start defining freedom as the ability to choose what we wear to our own executions?

Does that sound like freedom to you, really?

I don't think it does. But that's what naïve, deceived, well-meaning people say, when they get all excited about one police-station bulletin board over another. Hey, this boxcar has seats along the walls! Some of us will be able to sit down while we're being shipped to our deaths. Hooray!

You will excuse me, I hope, for not sharing your enthusiasm. You can call it "negative," fatalistic, doomer, black-pilled, or anything you like, but you will not shame me into joining you in a rousing chorus of "Deutschlandlied" while crammed into a standing-room-only social media platform just because everybody else is doing it.

"Deutschlandlied," of course, is Germany's national anthem. Linguistically, it can be separated into 2 basic words, "Deutschland" and "lied." Meaning, it amuses me to observe (even if the observation is in English), Germany lied.

They lied. Deutschland lied. The president lied. The media lied. The priest lied. The professor lied. The CDC lied. China lied. The government lied. Your girlfriend lied. Everybody lied.

So how can you tell me, over, and over, and over again, that you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction?

Is it denial? Is it because the song is old, and we're still here? Nothing has happened yet, so we must be okay?

Or were the late 60s merely the eve of destruction, and now, half a century later, the holiday of destruction itself is finally here?

I dunno, but from now on, if I'm going to sing about trains, it's going to be of the gospel variety.

"Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route;
I'm gone"
Elizabeth Cotten

And that's really what I'm logging on to say. I have written recently that "politics are obsolete" (which they are), and have expressed a desire to die that, on the surface, borders on suicidal. But it isn't suicidal, any more than a desire to be released from prison is suicidal. "To live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), after all. In the past, I have had my own ideas about "How To Save The West (in 161 words or less)," and could waste more time on worldly solutions (like politics, or art), if I thought it would make any difference. There may or may not be any reason to ever again point out that all social media are "Thrift Stores For The Arts," or explain "Why I Kick People Off Social Media Profiles," without offering a solution that does anything less than point the way to the door of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Anything less, frankly, doesn't look good.

The boxcars have been lined up. People are being herded into position, perhaps even by their own friends and family. Many have already fallen, in the last couple years alone, in the battle for hearts, minds, and souls raging around the world. Is it illegal to post footage yet, of people collapsing while they're standing in the firing line? We've all seen the videos. We're all being told it's "perfectly normal," and the giant plume of noxious, weird-smelling black smoke coming from the "Freedom Camp," isn't the smell of burning, dying people. As usual, we're told the plume of death-smoke is natural, and that teenagers collapsing from malfunctioning hearts on a daily basis is not only normal, but the "price of freedom," or a "sign of progress," or some other Orwellian exercise in institutionalized doublespeak that our boxcars of thought have trained us to accept.

It doesn't matter if you get to talk a little louder on this boxcar than on that one. You might even get to post a dissenting meme without being immediately shot, from time to time. The train conductor doesn't mind. As long as you're on the boxcar, that's the only thing that matters.

It's happened before. It's happening again.

Just don't let it happen to you.

Thanks for listening.

p.s. The rich aren't going to escape the holiday of destruction either, y'know. If you want to know what the set of The Shining part 2 looks like, here it is: