The Anarchist is not a political cynic, because he believes in the power of self-organization. The entire premise of his political philosophy is that people can self-organize and govern better than the so-called ‘professionals.’ The cynic would be someone who believes people will cause their own ruin no matter what government they choose or eschew.

When you complain about the government, you are doing it in your Uber, on Instagram, on your phone, en-route to work. You are not burning cars, or hacking into the Chicago exchange to drop the price of rice, and you most certainly are not among the Principled Unemployed—those who would rather starve than commit crimes. Those who would rather do nothing than do evil. You mock these people. I’ve seen it. Nobody defends these people. Even I don’t.

I was eating lunch at Safeway and there was this scruffy twenty five year old vagabond carrying his entire life in a hiking pack. As I shoved bits of bread and turkey into my maw during a brief and annoying lunch break, he passed my table. As a reflex, I reached for my taser but he was just trying to maneuver past me to sit at a large table away from the door. Presumably so he could leave his bag a moment to go to the bathroom if necessary. I suspected him for no good reason of no good, no reason. I left to go pay a phone repair guy for a phone I’d later find out he didn’t repair, and when I returned, the vagabond sat at the same table, composing a poem. Who was the reasonable one now?

I should have lived that life, but I was a chickenshit. They have the courage to do what I could not. They can accept derision. I have too much pride to accept that. I’d rather have money schemes and money thoughts to crowd out the poems I could have written, the philosophies I could have crafted. No matter what I discovered, they’d always whisper ‘fool’ and I knew I’d never have enough wisdom to know they were wrong.

This Anarchist quit his job in banking and moved into a van. Not in a cool millennial San Francisco Let-Me-Instagram-My-Poverty-Into-Celebrity-And-Later-Money way, but in a gritty Oakland and Richmond style I’m-Really-Sleepy-And-It’s-Late-But-Those-Guys-Across-The-Street-Keep-Staring-At-The-Van-And-We’re-Under-A-Freeway-And-I-Hope-They-Aren’t-Here-To-Murder-Then-Rape-Me way.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. You think this is a bunch of hype for a formerly homeless guy. You think, ‘Big deal, he’s a white guy with a high IQ who failed. Boo hoo.’ Well, what do you think it means that a white guy rejects the system that is supposedly stacked in his favor? Aha! I’ve trapped you in your own bigotry. You don’t care about his motives. You only want him to fit into your narrative, because he has no power to assert his own narrative. You want to place him in your power structure. To give him a role. In short, you seek to GOVERN his conduct. To tell him how to live his life. To deny him his humanity when he does something else. And who has given up more. You? You got bored and stopped reading, because of Netflix, because of work tomorrow, or party tonight, or chase chase chase, because you feed on the happiness that work deprives of you. He gave up everything. You hate him because his principles brought him to see what a sham Trump et al were when you were hoping David Brooks would offer you a silver lining. His principles inconvenienced him. Now that you see the folly of your way, your principles really don’t matter in this context and you fear the result. Is this neanderthal of a man who committed no crimes and earned no money your future? If it is terrifying, that is only because it is terrifying how much power the governing structure has over our lives. The Anarchist is willing to reclaim his life. To live free or die. It scares you. That’s why you want to know what he has to say.

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This era symbolizes is a kind of culmination of a kind of war against reality. These people aren’t just at war with facts, but the basic nature of reality. These are people who find reality extraordinarily uncomfortable. Trump offers an escape.

American culture is sick. We’re drowning in our own waste. Landfills, plastic and racism. Malaise is a good word for it. Other than eating and jacking off to porn, what Americans are doing vigorously? The opportunity Trump saw was nihilism and self-hatred.

The election of Trump is further evidence that whatever is in charge of the universe likes a good story above all else.

Deep down there’s no way any of these people can look at him and listen to him and think anything other than he’s just going to fuck it up. I think it’s a mass delusion.

He’s a living embodiment of the values of the 1980s. Gordon Gekko. Acquisition. Flashy cars. Beautiful women. It’s what he’s trying to cling to and pull off. If you sent him in regular clothes down International Boulevard in Oakland amongst the hoi polloi, he’d have a heart attack.

He’s the softest predator there is. Give Trump a baseball cap and he doesn’t look very threatening. But he’s affected hundreds of lives. How many people have committed suicide because of him?

Trump is a very pitiable man. He spent 70 years building a gilded cell for himself. There’s a bottomless pit. A terrible need that’s driving him… I think he deserves to be beaten to death with a length of pipe. I would say that’s probably true too. But… threatening the president is illegal, ha ha ha, I didn’t say I would do it.

He’s surrounded by these sycophantic serpents of lies and dishonesty with evil agendas. This mix of people with really evil agendas, all these clever enablers trying to find a way to get these things done.

He hates parody. He has no sense of humor about himself. A sense of humor about one’s self is the ego’s ability to flex and move. His sense of self is like his physical body. Bloated and lumbering… He must have a hard time with everything. Sleeping. Getting up in the morning. Imagine what it’s like being him?

Trump is all Id. It’s all this atavistic reaction against things that terrify you. Trump attacks women and minorities and I think it’s because they terrify him.

Trump and the whole specter of the 80s, the 1960s backlash is anti-community. It’s an anti-human impulse. If you can find a way to disrupt the community you can disrupt what it means to be human.