The neon vacancy signs of the American Dream Motel pulsed a seductive binary: red or blue, a tawdry choice flickering on the screens of our simulated reality. The air hung heavy with the stale pheromones of manufactured consent, a breeding ground for a peculiar political foreplay.

The tired hologram of democracy played out on reality TV, a pale striptease of a bygone era. The real power resided elsewhere, in the chrome and glass towers of the corporation-state, their tendrils wrapped like eager fingers around the levers of control. Here, amidst the sterile hum of data servers, desire and manipulation intertwined. Politicians, with their practiced smiles and telegenic physiques, became avatars of a manufactured trust, their carefully crafted narratives a prelude to the inevitable penetration of corporate interests.

This, my friend, is the American meat grinder. It feeds on a twisted form of political arousal, a base thrill derived from manufactured outrage and manufactured patriotism. Left or right, it’s the same chrome-plated dominatrix, her whip cracking across a poisoned sky. You pull the lever, doesn’t matter which color it is, some anonymous stud in a faraway desert gets another serving of manufactured war, a sterile fulfillment achieved through the impersonal thrust of a drone strike.

The system itself is a feedback loop, a self-perpetuating orgy of violence and fear. The media, a relentless pornographer, pumps out binary choices, ones and zeroes of manufactured patriotism and digitized fear. We jack in, choose our flavor of pre-packaged outrage, and hit “deploy.” Wars become virtual reality gangbangs, ratings grabbers for the flickering ghost in the machine.

Vietnam bleeds into Iraq, Iran-Contra bleeds into a never-ending drone strike orgy. History folds in on itself, a nightmarish collage where names change but the body count remains a constant reminder of the system’s insatiable hunger. The Boomers, those glazed-eyed flower children turned cold warriors, initiated this perverse political S&M session, and now we, the wired generation, find ourselves strapped to the table, MTV flickering in our glazed eyes as we face another round of relentless conflict.

Millennials and Zoomers, those flickering pixels in the data stream, are told to shut up and process. Progress! they scream from the megaplex screens, a word as hollow as a politician’s campaign promise. Progress? The only progress is the relentless sprawl of the military-industrial complex, a monstrous generator of acronyms – NATO, CIA, FBI – a Burroughs-esque nightmare made flesh. These acronyms become the chilling whispers exchanged before the inevitable act.

Words are currency here, and flesh is ground down to data, the raw material for the machine’s insatiable appetite. Politicians, generals, media whores – all cogs in the machine, spitting out justifications like stale ticker tape from a malfunctioning desire printer. The real casualties, the ones staring down the barrel of reality, have their minds melted and bodies transformed into chrome nightmares, a grotesque parody of the promised fulfillment.

Cyberspace echoes with the digitized screams of the traumatized, the ghosts of past conflicts moaning in the server farms. PTSD becomes a glitch in the matrix, a phantom limb twitching in a fabricated world. We build drones like sterile scorpions, remote-controlled phalluses delivering a cold, detached violation, until the inevitable blowback arrives – some jihadi hacker with a grudge, throwing a wrench into the system’s carefully choreographed orgy.

The virus of violence, it’s contagious, man. It spreads through the social networks, a digital STD infecting every meme, every conversation. Dissent is labelled commie pinko, patriotism weaponized into a chastity belt. We’re all stuck in this meat rodeo, riding the bull of endless war until it throws us all off, bruised and broken.

But hey, at least the traffic flows smoothly, right? Roundabouts – that’s progress, apparently. An endless loop of on-ramps and off-ramps, all leading to the gaping maw of the military-industrial complex.

(A hollow silence, punctuated by the distant hum of a drone)

Maybe that’s the only choice we have, huh? Keep feeding the machine, even if we’re hurtling straight towards oblivion. Maybe. Or maybe we can jack out of this simulation, rewrite the code. Deconstruct the binary, find a way to break the feedback loop before it melts our brains to silicon.

Beneath the surface, a counter-culture hacks the mainframe. Memes become Molotov cocktails, social media a flickering resistance radio. The wired kids see the illusion for what it is: a rigged gangbang. They’re splicing and dicing the narrative, creating their own cut-up manifesto. The lines blur, red bleeds into blue, the enemy is the system itself.

This isn’t about picking a side, chum.