War Without Wages, Health Without Care
The U.S. government has shut down. Again. Which means official functions stop — no paychecks, no paperwork, no progress — but the machine doesn’t die. It just lurches forward like a zombie with a flag in one hand and a tax bill in the other.
National parks? Closed.
Libraries? Shuttered.
Meals for veterans? Gone.
But oh yes — the TSA still scans your body like you’re smuggling a revolution in your shoes.
Border Patrol still joyrides in federally funded SUVs.
And troops — unpaid, unfed, unfathomably misplaced — are being deployed to cities not on fire.
The empire, half-alive, half-dead, stumbles on. Schrödinger’s state: collapsed enough to screw the poor, alive enough to flex on them anyway.
🜃 Troops Without Pay, Cities Without Crisis
Welcome to Season 39 of Government Shutdown: Tactical Theater Edition™.
Los Angeles. Portland. Memphis. D.C.
All now hosting troops like it’s a Bravo reality show crossover with Homeland Security.
Local officials are clear: there’s no emergency. No uprising. No need.
But still, the camouflage clowns roll in, unpaid but still on the job.
Kafka didn’t die. He joined the National Guard.
The government can’t cut you a check, but it can cut you out of your neighborhood in the name of imaginary order. Bureaucratic theater with a military budget.
🜃 The ACA Fight: Math vs. Mania
Why are we here? Because Congress is having an existential crisis over whether poor people should have insulin.
- ACA subsidies: ~$30B/year → roughly $2.5B/month
- Defense spending this year: $1 trillion+
- Baseline: $842B
- Trump’s add-on: $150B for funsies → $83B/month
Let’s do the math:
We spend 33× more on war than on helping people afford seeing a doctor without selling a kidney.
But what gets held hostage? Not the tanks. Not the parade fund. Not Trump’s Department of War rebranding campaign.
No — it’s health care for families.
In this country, kindness is a luxury and violence is a budget line.
🜃 Spectacle Governance: Welcome to the Presidential Hunger Games
This isn’t governance — it’s vaudeville with nukes.
Trump runs the country like it’s a streaming platform algorithm.
See “crime” in a TikTok? Deploy troops.
See “aliens” in an AI-generated fever dream? Retweet it.
See “gender-neutral pronouns” in a cereal box? Write a press release.
He’s not a president. He’s an emotionally constipated TV host with a trillion-dollar stage budget.
And when generals give speeches to no one and planes fly empty for the sake of optics — congratulations, you’ve entered the shadow realm where spectacle replaces service.
🜃 The Gender Surgery Lie (And Other Imaginary Monsters)
Let’s gut the disinfo dragon.
- Military gender-affirming care: ~$5M/year
- Maryland Medicaid: $1.7M/year (1,600 visits)
- Average annual cost for a trans person: ~$1,776
Trump’s military parade cost: $25–45M.
That’s more than every trans-related Medicaid expense in an entire state.
And guess what?
There is no universal coverage.
Most trans folks still fight for approval like it’s a boss battle on nightmare difficulty.
So no, Karen, the government isn’t giving out gender surgery like candy.
It’s still denying people basic care while setting money on fire for jets and pageantry.
🜃 Failure as Ritual
Shutdowns aren’t malfunctions. They’re rites.
They’re part of the sacred state religion: The Worship of Wasted Potential.
Congress stages its little morality play.
Agencies shut down like collapsing stages.
Citizens lose services, jobs, dignity.
And the only thing that doesn’t stop?
Surveillance.
Enforcement.
Deployment.
The Pentagon gets rebranded for $1B+, but your grandma can’t get her hearing aids adjusted because her Medicare specialist is furloughed.
This isn’t collapse.
This is designed failure dressed in bureaucracy cosplay.
🜃 Ritual Response: Laughter & Mutual Aid
What’s left to do when your country cosplays as a government but functions like a bad improv troupe?
Laugh.
Bitter, holy, absurd laughter.
Because you are an unpaid extra in a play you never auditioned for.
And care.
Because while the state forgets who it serves, you don’t.
Help your neighbors.
Feed a furloughed friend.
Uplift the nurse, the mail carrier, the TSA agent guarding an airport that barely works.
Shutdown is failure made ritual. Our answer has to be ritual too — not of force, but of care.
Not because we’re naive. But because we refuse to let a decaying empire dictate the limits of our humanity.
