The El Chapo Contribution

   
     Fourteen fucking billion dollars, that’s billion with a capital B ladies and gentlemen. Apart from that amount of money being astronomical and a literal boat load of cash, you may be wondering what significance that money holds in relation to the article that you’re reading? Is that Trump’s budget for the proposed wall along the border to Mexico? Is that the amount of money that Jeff Bezos is paying to keep pictures of his Willy Johnson off of the internet? Is that the price tag attached to all of Nancy Pelosi’s plastic surgeries? No, that fourteen billion dollars is just the documented amount of money that the infamous drug smuggling, bad boy himself, El Chapo made during his time of being the world’s most wanted drug kingpin. In case you’ve never heard of him before, he’s a loving father, a caring husband, and an entrepreneur. He also happens to be one of the world’s largest suppliers of that sweet, sweet nose diesel that we call cocaine and not to mention, a stone cold killing machine that was known for stacking bodies like two by fours in the bed of a Chevy outside of a Home Depot. The dude was a wild fucking animal that the feds had been trying to put in a cage for a very long time, and as many of his predeceasing moguls of crime before him, he too was brought to justice.

     Back in November of last year El Chapo’s trial began in New York, and before being found guilty of a whole slew of crimes that everyone already knew he had committed, (mainly because of his exuberant and very public “I don’t give a fuck” kind of lifestyle) El Chapo was living a life that most people in this world couldn’t even begin to fathom. Apart from the Scrooge McDuck sized piles of straight fucking denaro that Mr. Chapo was swimming in, he was a lawless creature living life tethered only to the bounds of what someone that powerful considers reality. He was so powerful that he and his cartels believed that they were not only above the laws of the land, but also above the laws of human decency. I won’t get into it in great detail in this particular article about the grizzly manners in which they would take the life of another human being at the drop of a hat, and for no reason other than to protect their wealth and power. Needless to say the incarceration of El Chapo is a decent victory in America’s war on the Mexican Cartels, but not nearly a large enough victory to slow them down. The question the authorities are presented with now is, “What’s the next move?”, and somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, Ted Cruz heard that question and decided to take a break from growing his beard, and said “Hold my beer, and watch this shit!”

      Ted Cruz the Republican Senator  for Texas came up with a plan called the “Ensuring Lawful Correction of Hidden Assets to Provide Order” Act, or better known as the “E.L. C.H.A.P.O.” Act. Even though the name of the plan hints at it, the intent is not to develop more cute acronyms for legislation based on the prosecution of drug lords, go figure. Instead, Senator Cruz brought up the idea of reallocating the fourteen billion dollars that El Chapo had profited from selling drugs and being a murderous piece of shit, and putting that money towards furthering security at our southern border. When I first heard of this idea I thought to myself, “Right on Ted! That’s not a half bad idea, I mean the name is awful, but damn we can work on that!”, and then in typical Ted Cruz fashion, he shit the bed. He did so by saying that we give all fourteen billion dollars to fund the border wall. Here’s an idea Senator, why don’t we take the money that we seized from a notorious drug lord and put it towards something that could actually damage the Cartel’s infrastructure and their flow of drugs into this country. For instance, like better funding for I.C.E., the D.E.A., the F.B.I., or any of the other physical entities that are actually doing something about the cartels and immigration. For God’s sake this idea was so poorly received that even President Trump didn’t even bat an eye at your proposal and I’m fairly certain that at this point, he would sacrifice Mitch McConnell on live TV in the name of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if it meant that his wall would get funded. However the outlandishness and the reach of Senator Cruz’s idea shows just how ridiculous this whole border situation has become. Why are we even still talking about building a wall that will have a minimal effect on illegal immigration at best (unless the Rules of Engagement for the Border Patrol Agents is drastically reformed), and no effect at all on the drug traffic and resulting violence from the cartels, but will continue to be a dividing wedge between the parties and the citizens of this country?

     The wall is nothing more than a political pissing contest at this point. Plain and simple, the left wants leniency for illegal immigrants so that they will vote Democratic (which they do), and the Right wants less opposition from the Left come election season. Neither of them could actually give a fuck about your safety or the actual treatment of those that enter this country illegally seeking a safe haven. Also, neither party is naïve enough to believe that a wall will stop the Cartels, you’d need a full on goddamn war to stop those savages. They’re not your average dope peddlers, they’re militant, they’re vicious, and they are criminal geniuses. They already negate using the physical border as much as possible, most of their traffic is via flight or tunnel, so a wall no matter the size would just be a pebble in the ocean to them. But their pebble is our mountain and as we face another government shutdown, because of these asshole politicians, the drugs and the crime just keeps on moving up. Situations such as this might make you wonder who the fuck our fearless leaders actually care about, and whose interests they really have at heart.

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                    Reporting Live from the Box Office 

    A Cinematic unfolding is a spectacular display of storytelling unlike any other. A great film can translate almost any point or message seamlessly. Second only to music, it is the universal communicator across the globe. Good acting and excellent writing can transcend almost any language barrier. There is nothing quite like a good story unfolding before your very eyes to heighten your senses, pull on your heart strings, and give  you the warm and fuzzies, and at the end of the day all we want from the movies is a little bit of satisfaction. We want to feel connected to something outside of our own realities. A lot of times we use movies as a quick break from our real lives to play a little bit of make believe. And playing pretend is fine until we blur the lines and become too disconnected with the tangible aspects of life that we actually live amongst. Life is hard, this world is vicious, and however frightening that aspect may be to some, we must never sever ourselves completely from the not so pleasant parts of life in order preserve our mental fortitude. Ignorance is undeniably blissful, but if we leave ourselves in the dark and shield our eyes from all the evil and brutality that is in this world then we become sheep in need of a Shepard. We become subservient and wait patiently for the powers that be to come to us when we begin to cower, whimper, and quietly beg for someone to tell us everything will be alright. We look so earnestly for an escape from our current events and happenings, rather than staring into the abhorrence that looms over us, that we’ve become willing to distort not only our perceptive knowledge of the world around us but also let mediums such as major news outlets dilute and mangle what we ingest mentally. We have welcomed that same aforementioned movie magic into our news rooms, and in the same fashion as the big Hollywood studios, the news networks have began to create their own wonderful, cinematic masterpieces and bring their own interpretations of the truth to life against the backdrop of reality. And just like that the sheep have found their shepherds, they’ve put on the blinders, and found a comfortable place to lie down in the midst of a burning house. 

   We live in awful times, arguably the worst in the last hundred years. With everything from the constant wars, the 
constant threat of new wars, the fact that a large chunk of the world hates us, most Americans hate other Americans, the immigration shit show, the Cartels, Police brutality, police being murdered, racism, and slew of other awesome shit that’s currently happening here in the U.S of A. With all of that going on, it’s hard to imagine how the News networks can even begin to handle all of this blistering information. You may find yourself wondering “How do they do it?” Well simply put, they fucking don’t. Instead they report on whether or not the President is justified in eating a second helping of ice cream or if pregnant celebrities are holding their bellies correctly, as to not appropriate their higher status onto the lower class. Holy fuck, how I wish I made both of those stories up, but it deeply saddens me that the ice cream story was from CNN and the belly debate was from Fox News. And as much as it sucks for us, those two power house news outlets are the real decision makers in this country. Because it seems that CNN and Fox have become overtly proficient in “bait and switch” style journalism. They use what seem to be meaningless and benign stories in order to lube us up, so they can hit us with whatever increasingly biased and angled story they need to shove down our throats next, in order to preserve the American Dream (of course, that’s the dream of whichever party is paying them). It’s no secret that we live in a two party system where both entities are at a constant battle for the throne, always scratching at the idea that they are the Messiah we need. And no one seems more capable of partaking in the grunt warfare  and hitting the pavement for these potential Saviors  than the bought and paid for journalists that work for the networks. 

     One would have to be riddled with a sense of angsty naivety to truly believe that being completely unbiased as a journalist is not a fallacy. Everyone has a bias and an aversion towards something, without it you’d be in a constant state of shoulder shrugging neutrality. And a strong stance against or for something, when driven by passion, makes for a powerful and impacting outcome. But the same stance fueled only by the paychecks from overtly predisposed lobbyist and politicians, creates the watered down dribble that we call news today.

  Modern journalism has been murdered. Murdered in an over the top, execution style, plaster the walls with brain matter, Quentin Terintino-esque manner. At least on a mainstream scale, lobbyist have done a stellar job at silencing those interested in reporting truth. But when you do away with those that are spreading real news because it doesn’t coincide with the agenda of control, you are left with stories that sound like outdated jokes, for instance, have you heard the one about the Catholic kid and the Indian Man in Washington D.C.? It’s unsurprisingly coincidental how this story could not have been released at a better time, and could not have been a better example of crooked journalists reporting some biased bullshit. At the time of this story hitting the press, the government was still shut down because of the controversy around the Great Wall of Trump, and we were left in the midst of watching our fearless leaders sit around and publicly tug their own horns and partake in what was one of the most vicious dick measuring contests we’ve ever seen. They were toying with the American people, in the name of the greater good, whilst simultaneously looking for the best way too seem
 righteous in their unprecedented acts of blatant selfishness, they found the proverbial holy grail of stories. This story was plastered on TV screens all across the country, and sold to the public as a young mans display of despicable racism towards an old Indian man. All the while, the boy was wearing the “new white hood”, the all powerful and oppressive MAGA hat. At a first glance at what was reported, which was only a few visible seconds of a video that’s actually an hour and half long, that’s exactly what this looked like. However, if you delve a little deeper you’ll discover that this was an incredibly confusing situation that was horribly misconstrued because it was perfect for the current political gain. If you watch the entire video it starts with a religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, who instigated the standoff by insulting the Native Americans for “worshiping totem poles” and “everything besides the most high”. The Black  Hebrew Israelites told them their land was taken from them because they didn’t believe in the correct God and that they should stop worshipping Eagles and Buffaloes. Obviously these dudes are tolerant as fuck and completely mentally stable. Eventually many people outside of the Lincoln Memorial began arguing with the Black Israelites, who responded with little to no scripture or religious backing as to defend their crazy bullshit doctrine. No, instead they pointed out a group of kids (one with a MAGA hat on) and began saying shit like, “Why are you not mad at these corny ass billionaires?” “Why don’t you go talk to these little bitches?” They went as far as to call these teenagers “faggots”, “racists”, “crackers”, and “bigots”. As a result the tensions grew higher, and that’s where our viral video begins. The man beating the drum (Mr. Phillips) stepped in front of the teenager in the MAGA hat (Nick Sandmann) as an act of solidarity, so that no violence broke out between this group of students or the Black Hebrew Israelites who were accusing all of these teenagers of everything from bigotry to blasphemy. However that’s the farthest thing from what was being reported. This story was used to further and unnecessarily fuel the fire of racial unrest in this country, and to add opposition to the building and funding of the Wall (which is a whole other topic for a while other time). To all those that reported this story incorrectly with a malice intent of propaganda, just remember that you’re no better than a fucking trick

     Now here we are, from all walks of life screaming about fake news and how we deserve better than to be lied to by paid strangers on a TV network, get fucking real. This atrocity to our delivery and reception of information did not occur over night, and it did not happen accidentally. It happened violently, expeditiously, and right in front of our big puppy dog eyes. As long as we allow ourselves to be force fed information and believe what we are told without question, when we have unlimited resources to learn about the world around us, then we deserve this well written, expertly acted news filled with such Oscar worthy performances. Performances so endearing, they make Leonardo DiCaprio’s bear attack scene from the revenant look more like he was licked by a puppy. Such power and delivery from these reporters that they make Matthew McConaughey look like he had battled a case of the sniffles instead of full blown AIDS in the Dallas Buyers Club. As long as you have the freedom to do so, I beg of everyone to question everything, accept nothing shy of honesty, and spread the exact fucking same.