Cognitive Dissonance

Modern civilization requires me to hold the following thoughts simultaneously:

• If crypto is clearly a scam, how come so many marks are happily scamming themselves?
• Do any How many rats live inside the walls of my decaying, Gilded Age condo?
• Is Mamdani, like Obama, another technocratic false prophet? Or does his mayoral victory augur a return to the economic policies of the New Deal era and portend a functional future for American democracy?
• What's the stupidest thing I've ever done and why was it attempting to monetize an email blog?
• How long could Taiwan hold out against a full-scale Chinese invasion?
• To screen for colon cancer, can't our sad little monkey brains come up with a better plan than: 1) starve yourself, 2) chug 48 oz of Zero Calorie GATORADE UREA, 3) urinate through your anus for eight straight hours, 4) chug another 48 oz of Zero Calorie GATORADE UREA, 5) micturate through your butt for two more hours, 6) wake up three hours later to piss more through your asshole, 7) have an ivermectin-curious nurse sedate you, and 8) allow a sociopathic doctor to ram a scope into your large intestine?
• Are things worse than they used to be, or am I just getting old?
• What's wrong with the Whites?
• How do I reconcile the fact that I'm considering spending up to $1,000 to take my daughter to a mediocre college football game at a rickety baseball stadium while my fellow comrades across the city of Chicago can't afford to eat and/or are being kidnapped by state-sponsored terrorists?
• If I won the game of traditional publishing, why do I still feel like a failure?
• Will the few always exploit the many?
• Is karma a salve?
• How many times has the Good Book been retconned?
• What's wrong with men?
• I know I'm supposed to practice gratitude, but Jesus fucking Christ are you seeing what I'm seeing?!
• When will people realize World War III began on February 24, 2022?
• If Mother Abagail is the embodiment of all that is good, and she was a lifelong Republican and proud Reagan voter, is human decency even possible?
• Can I create a better life for my children than the one I had while also preventing them from becoming selfish, entitled, ungrateful psychopaths?
• Is justice a myth?
• If everyone knows social media sucks ass, why won't anyone log off?
• How delusional does one have to be to think Middle East peace is a thing?
• Is public execution via guillotine a reasonable penalty for shitheads who refuse to clean up after their dogs?
• How many alumni know Northwestern University's gargantuan endowment was largely built through rent-seeking royalties generated by a fake drug designed to treat a made-up disease?
• If I live in a country full of armed lunatics, does owning zero firearms make me cannily smart or unconscionably stupid?
• A handful of unstable men have the power to eradicate billions in minutes—shouldn't this be humanity's primary concern?
• Does investing 200 hours of my fleeting existence into the Hades franchise prove I'm wasting my life—or living my best life?
• Will the forthcoming financial crisis—precipitated by a toxic collision of LLM hype, crypto madness, casino capitalism, reckless deregulation, feckless politicians, and unsustainable debt issuance—be as painful, much more painful, or catastrophically more painful than the Great Depression?
• Why do humans create art? Why do I create art?
• Would I eat another person to survive? What about for fun?
• If life is totally random and utterly meaningless, and none of this shit matters in the least, why do I care?

And polite society has the chutzpah to wonder why I'm like this: