You Have to Hide Your Struggles Because Nobody Wants to Hear or Help

We Must Dismantle the Myth That You Can Work Hard and Succeed In the USA

Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

You Have to Hide Your Struggles Because Nobody Wants to Hear or Help

Your sponsorships make this possible! Here are some discounts: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I recently went through a box of my old artwork from high school. My daughters are both artists and they were curious to have a look. So, I opened the cover of the first notebook to reveal a picture of a smiley face shooting himself in the head. At first glance, it’s kind of funny. I laughed and so did my daughters. But seeing that image also brought me back to those difficult days. Even now, looking at the picture, I thought to myself, “I’m surprised I didn’t get into trouble for drawing that.” Even now that’s my response. I was worried about getting into trouble. A drawing of a mask of happiness superimposed over suicide and the thought is, “They’re going to punish me.” I could just imagine what the school counselor would say. “How dare you draw something like this? Don’t you know how serious this is? Some people are dealing with enormous emotional traumas. Do you realize how awful a person you have to be to mock them in this way?” “I didn’t mean to mock anyone, I just...” “Don’t be so impertinent. Now get out of my sight.” I swear to god that’s what he would have said. They were always looking to punish us. The whole United States is a culture of punishment. If you haven’t done anything wrong, they assume you’re just hiding it better and deserve even more abuse. “We hate the smart ones!” With my kids, I went through a bunch of my old drawings. There was a study in colors. There were some scratch boards. There were a bunch of strange pictures of frogs. With every single picture, I had a story about how the project had pissed off my art teacher. Every Friday, the teacher would set up a still life. They’d be boxes or bottles or whatnot. We had the hour to do a sketch. It became boring so I started introducing objects into the still life that weren’t there. Naturally, this infuriated the teacher even though the other students got all excited about my work and used to gather around my station during break time. We’re all emotionally immature during our high school years. Even so, I thought generating interest in your artwork was sort of the point. My classmates thought it was cool. Everybody loved it but the teacher. This was a community where the kids drew things like the fish they caught or the deer they shot. I was doing strange, surrealistic images of the tentacles of an octopus grabbing a bottle. I’m sure the teacher had to answer questions about me during the annual art show. “Yes, he’s in the same class as your son. I don’t know that he’s a bad influence. I can’t explain all the strange images he creates.” As my daughters looked through the pictures, I realized they didn’t make any sense without the context of what everyone else was doing. My drawings and paintings needed to be seen within the confines of the mundane and banal prison of conservative cruelty and conformity. It was always conformity. Conformity, conformity, conformity! Every single thing I created was an act of defiance. I had to defy them just to survive. Naturally, it never occurred to anyone who surrounded me to help. They considered me a saboteur. They considered me to be an out-of-control menace. They wanted me out of the classroom because they thought I might have a negative effect on their black-and-white perfect little conservative brat. They didn’t want any rainbows in the classroom. How dare I! Anger does a decent job of covering up frustration. They’d look at my sketches of smiley face stick figures and shake their head in disdain. “Why do you have to do weird stuff like that? What’s wrong with you?” Maybe it was because we had three suicides in our school already. We were losing kids left and right. Whenever it happened, all anyone did was tell lies. They’d talk about how dedicated the parents were, even though we knew that wasn’t true. They’d talk about how much the teachers loved the kids, even though we’d seen those kids get bullied every day. For some reason, we were all supposed to be silent and lie and depict a perfect world of vibrant colors in dull, uninteresting, monotone. You couldn’t tell your problems to anyone. Listening requires work. Lecturing requires no energy at all. So, instead of interpreting anything I drew, or even judging it on its own merits, they defaulted to anger. “Why do you have to do this? Why do you have to make trouble? Can’t you see how much effort we put into making a perfect world? Why do you have to keep going along and screwing it up?” “I’m just drawing what I see.” “That’s just it, you should be drawing what we give you permission to see.” The sad part is that it works on so many. So many of them put their box of crayons with all the colors away. They put away their construction paper. They put away their paints. Instead, they pick up a pen with black ink and a ledger. They pick up a red pen to tally everything that’s owed to them. After a while, they see everything in red. They think everyone owes them something. Some kids stop resisting and join the side of their oppressors. Other kids die. A smaller number still manages to survive. When I was seventeen I drew a picture of a smiley face blowing its brains out. At age 51, it remains a striking image. It was something I felt reluctant to publish. Would people look at that drawing and think I was making a mockery of suicide? Would they think I was being difficult? Would they think I was being disrespectful? “That’s a kid who needs to learn something about respect! Doesn’t he know how serious that topic is?” But that’s not what I see when I look at that drawing. I see an expression of the fact that we all wear a mask and that we’re all hanging on by a thread. It has been many years since I took a moment to contemplate the relics from my years of uncertainty. Those images are a reflection of the inner-workings of my mind. There was a lot of creativity there. There was a lot of understanding. There was a lot of curiosity. There was humor. There was sadness. I wouldn’t draw something like that today. But I did draw it. I share that picture now as a message for others who might be feeling that way. I hope that they look at that picture and know that I see them. I hope they know I understand them. I hope they feel seen, and they know that I think they’re beautiful. The happy face is not a mask, it’s the real you. The lie is this horrible world filled with ledgers and red pens that’s fixated on nothing else but punishment. Remember that. This world is a lie. Your colors and your smile are the truth. Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Toxic People Bring Problems Into Your Life, and Disguise That They Are the Cause

Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Republicans Sabotaged Farmers to Buy Land Cheap For Data Centers

Please support me if you can! Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] The Republican party is so corrupt that they don’t even bother to try and hide it. Instead, they dupe the American public with their endless hate indoctrination. That’s why they bought up all the local newspapers and got white supremacists elected onto school boards. That’s why they gobble up all the radio stations and use algorithms to deprive people of choice. It’s a full court press of oppression and they get us from every angle. That’s what you have to do when your objective is to rob people of their constitutional rights, their autonomy, their property, and, ultimately, their lives. Take, for example, the proliferation of surveillance centers. Other people call them data centers. I call them surveillance centers. For a long time, people have whispered about the dangers of government surveillance. Wouldn’t it be awful if the government tracked your movements? Wouldn’t it be awful if the government recorded your conversations? Wouldn’t it be awful if the government had access to your biometric data? Well, surprise, smartphones allow malicious forces to track all of that. There’s a reason batteries can’t be removed from your phone anymore. If you could take out the battery, you would have assurance that the phone was turned off. Now, even when a phone is off it can be turned back on with a signal. People have been turning all sorts of information over with their fitness apps, their social media profiles, and the mics and cameras of their devices. The problem is that malicious forces really couldn’t process all the information. Think about it. Could they really afford to have some dude sit there and listen to everything you said and did? Of course not. That’s why they invented artificial intelligence. Actually, first they got the taxpayers to fund it [https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/openais-tax-subsidy-efforts-amount-to-silicon-valley-socialism]. As always, the working class is forced to fund their own exploitation. Modern AI can go through billions of hours of recordings and find the information authoritarians need to destroy you. If they can’t find it, they can make it up [https://abcnews.com/GMA/News/man-sues-law-enforcement-alleging-ai-facial-recognition/story?id=133810835]. It’s increasingly getting to the point where AI has more authority than real people. The problem is that processing all that data takes a lot of computers. Computers generate a lot of heat. Heat burns up a lot of water. If you wanted your kids to have access to fresh water, too bad. Republicans are committed to establishing a surveillance state. So the problem becomes where are they going to build all those water consuming surveillance centers? The answer is obvious. All Republicans had to do is look for an already indoctrinated population that’s extremely vulnerable to economic hardship. They’re called farmers. Farmers like to think of themselves as independent from economic fluctuations. After all, they literally extract food from the soil and the sun. The problem is, selling their crop depends on international markets. It turns out those markets can be easily destroyed by tariffs. Farmers also rely on government subsidies. Those subsidies can be easily destroyed by dismantling USAID [https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/usaid-dismantling-what-it-means-farmers-and-ag-research]. Farmers also need fertilizers that are shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait can be easily shut down with an illegal war. Republicans know full well that American farmers are not going to be able to keep their land. The vice-president himself funded AcreTrader [https://civileats.com/2024/09/18/jd-vance-invested-in-acretrader-heres-why-that-matters/]. Naturally the Republicans are prepared to take advantage of all the economic devastation that will come as a consequence of their deliberate actions. Republicans know exactly what they’re doing. They profit from it. They hurt farmers. They also know they own the media and they’ll be able to direct a hate propaganda campaign against liberals to cover up their crimes. They’ve been doing it for fifty years, why stop now? “But what’s going to happen to all the angry people?” you ask. Well, Republicans have also dismantled the pandemic response [https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/white-house-empties-office-us-pandemic-policy-gaps-left-behind] team. Today, a particularly nasty strain of Ebola is fighting containment [https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON607]. If it escapes, all the angry farmers who had their land stolen are likely to be wiped out. After all, Republicans have already indoctrinated them to eschew wearing masks, washing their hands, or taking any other reasonable precautions to avoid infection. With all the people gone, the tech overlords can rely on AI and automation to do all the work. They’ll have their land. They’ll have the surveillance centers. The people that remain will be uneducated servants who live in constant terror of speaking or even thinking anything that will result in punishment. Land of the free, home of the brave. The last bit of irony is that the government is already equipped with the power to take your land. It’s called eminent domain [https://www.justice.gov/enrd/condemnation/land-acquisition-section/history-federal-use-eminent-domain]. The fact is, the idea that you can own anything is an illusion in the USA. The government can take what it wants when it wants. Except, at some point along the line, the Republicans realized all they had to do was run for office. The very voting demographic that claims it doesn’t trust the government, gives power to the people who strip them of their land, liberty, and ability to live. The Republicans told them exactly what they were going to do and the farmers voted for it anyway. It was all in pursuit of “owning the libs.” Now they’re poised to lose everything. When the bulldozers roll in to knock down the farmhouse that’s been in their family for generations, I wonder if they’ll realize they’ve been duped. When all the water is used up by surveillance centers, I wonder if they’ll start to recognize the difference between the liars and the people who tell the truth. Republicans are about to steal everything from the American farmer. It adds salt to the wound to recognize that the farmers gleefully voted for this. They laughed the whole time. Nobody is laughing now. Please support me if you can! Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

When Are Democrats Going to Wake Up and Recognize Republicans Can't Be Trusted?

It’s always my great pleasure to talk to Marlon Weems [https://substack.com/profile/158194-marlon-weems]. This conversation was from about a week ago. There’s a bit of a dead spot in the beginning, but then we get into it and have a productive talk. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you Shannon [https://substack.com/profile/8698869-shannon], John H [https://substack.com/profile/259157469-john-h], Beth the Baker [https://substack.com/profile/87423796-beth-the-baker], Robert Danna [https://substack.com/profile/198756983-robert-danna], Ms.Yuse [https://substack.com/profile/322112054-msyuse], and many others for tuning into my live video with Marlon Weems [https://substack.com/profile/158194-marlon-weems]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788] I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]