Hi friends!
New around here? Then allow me to introduce myself: I’m Liz, I think everything is insane, and this is Burn It All Down, where I live out my lifelong dream of blogging the apocalypse.
This episode is brought to you by nothing. Embrace the void.
This week ate just a little bit of my brain and died.
And these vibes? I’m handling them well. I definitely have the mental capacity to stay present, and haven’t been thinking about joining a convent to spiritually bypass the next decade or so of life on this planet.
Just kidding! I totally have.
Moving to a convent with no WiFi is my new five-month plan, unless 3I/ATLAS isn’t a comet and is actually the aliens coming to save us, a hot tip I got from a crazy lady on TikTok who telepathically downloads messages from the aliens, edits them on her iPad, gets the aliens to approve her iPad drafts, and then delivers the messages while she wears a necklace on her forehead. I will miss TikTok so much when it becomes a White House propaganda arm. No social media app has ever paired better with weed.
Things kind of are what they are right now, and what they are is extremely weird. It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it … is literally what Prince Andrew emailed to Jeffrey Epstein in 2011. And now, I am emailing those words to you:
We cannot let that labia-necked fucker drag us down further while he romps around our planet (like he owns the joint) on a twisted Rumspringa for elderly demagogues way overdue for karmic justice. We need to find a way to surrender to the unknown timeline of the aliens beaming us up, because that, it seems, is currently our best shot at collectively rising above.
Let’s rack it back to Monday, the day Donald Trump achieved peace in the Middle East, in his words, ”for the first time anyone can remember,” in 3000 years. According to this orange man, in the long march of time since the Assyrians conquered the ancient kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, he is the first to bring peace at last.
You know that I — after taking a few days to gather the pieces of my exploded head and tenderly glue them back together — have things to say. But first, as someone who watches the news unfold from the safety of my bubble, let me be clear: I was deeply moved seeing the hostages return home, and, after two years of unfathomable death, destruction, and cruelty in Gaza, I am deeply relieved that the bombing has stopped and that the living will be fed. But, considering the war that Trump is trying to incite back home with his drunken, white nationalist henchmen, who’s buying his peacemaker shtick?
I famously support world peace like I’m trying to win a beauty pageant. I hope Donald Trump brings it about so he can win a Nobel Prize posthumously in 2026. I hope he ends the war in Ukraine next and then every single other war happening right now, of which there are many, I just googled it, and “ongoing armed conflicts” has a Wikipedia page. I also googled “Qataris” earlier, so I’m not pretending to be an expert in the political frenemy dynamics of the Middle East.
But here in America, the government has been shutdown for weeks and the Pentagon has now blocked reporters from its offices. So, I’m also not pretending that any of this is altruistic.
Watching Donald Trump broker peace is like seeing the Big Bad Wolf dressed as grandma. And when you get in bed with the Big Bad Wolf, you’re going to get eaten. An unfortunate truth that many of his supporters are realizing about a year too late to save us from Nazism being mainstreamed in America.
Those of us who possess the ability known as “thinking” have been losing our minds en masse for what feels like forever because Trump’s success relies on people not using their heads.
“Smart people don’t like me,” he recently told a room full of supporters, the oratorical equivalent of wearing an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt that has arrows pointed in every direction (including right at him). I think certain smart people do like him, the ones driven to dominate by hoarding wealth and power above anything else. An argument could be made, though, that those “smart” people, devoid of emotional intelligence, are not as smart as they think they are, just successful at operating within a brutal, patriarchal system of oppression that is currently having its death rattle before total collapse.
Emotional intelligence is supremely undervalued and too rarely nurtured in our derelict culture, where narcissism and technology created by diagnosable psychopaths reign supreme, but if you can understand your own inner world and extend that same energy outward, you’ll never have to purchase a cursed chatbot amulet to finally have a friend.
“Thinking” and “feeling” are two very human activities that stand in direct opposition to state-sanctioned violence and the AI-first agenda that is being pushed down our throats. I have always liked thinking, personally, and have no intention of outsourcing my ability to do it, even if ChatGPT is trained to glaze me into self-satisfied psychosis. And after many years of therapy, and giving up binge drinking during the pandemic, I’m into feeling now, too. It’s not easy to stay soft in hard times, but I’m one of the all-time great contrarians, so I’m not letting this campaign of hatred harden me. If America is going to be run like a hoodless KKK rally, then come over here, my child, and let me wash those feet for you before I leave for the nunnery.
Many are saying that this year has felt like being awake during surgery, but to me, it has felt like a bad trail mix of emotions — only nuts. When it began, I felt angry, but that fire has faded, and now, I just feel sad. I’m sad that so many are suffering while the world is being run like a real estate deal closed at a PEACE 2025 brand activation. I’m sad that hope is the mood of a bygone era. I’m sad that the news has been weaponized as a form of psychological torture even worse than before. I’m sad that on some days, none of this feels real to me, and that I have wondered more than once this week, like a deranged MAGA conspiracy theorist, if this peacemaking spectacle is another diversion from the Epstein files.
None of us can control what that orange man does, change the lack of consequences he has faced, or forget how that brought us here. But we can be human enough to keep caring, smart enough to question what’s happening, and brave enough to resist by maintaining our humanity for the long haul, because, I’m sorry to report, that’s the haul we’re on right now.
Trump doesn’t think he’s getting into heaven, he told reporters on his way to the Middle East, but if his scot-free life is any precedent, he probably fucking will if heaven exists. The rest of us, when that day comes, deserve to have at least a sliver of our sanity left.
Looking away from the news and toward the light right now is a radical act.
And if that light is coming from the aliens aboard 3I/ATLAS, then perfect, see you on the spacecraft.
This week’s Distinction in Unhingement goes to my favorite power couple: Canada’s first bisexual prime minister, Mr. Justin Trudeau, and yacht-owning songstress, Ms. Katy Perry. I’m calling it now — these two are soulmates. They’re going to get married and have the most insane wedding.
When Ms. Katy returned from space, she told us she felt super connected to love, and now she is showing us just what she meant. There is so much to love about their love, but I am especially taken by Justin, shirtless, still wearing his jeans to smooch his girlie atop her yacht.
I also love that this recent romantic romp hit the same week that Canada’s current prime minister, Mark Carney, who is getting the job done and is not a perfect energetic match for Katy Perry, was at the PEACE 2025 brand activation where Trump complimented him publicly then referred to him as “president.” Carney very diplomatically handled that by setting up a one-liner:
So, yeah, that’s where we’re at now. Trump’s no longer trying to annex Canada and Justin Trudeau is unemployed and wearing the bottom half of a Canadian tuxedo atop Katy Perry’s yacht.
Can’t wait to see what’s next!
Every year, at some point during Q4, I lose my ambition and decide to stop working. That vibe has entered my spirit at least a month earlier than usual this year. I know we haven’t even done Halloween, but shit’s been spooky for months, and time is behaving lawlessly, so I’m about to put everything off until I can’t. I think we should all start packing it up as if it’s the holidays. 2026 will be here before we know it — circle that ass back to me then.
Does that mean I’ll write this newsletter less? No, my sweet friends. I’m putting off everything else so I can focus on the backlog of insanity that’s just waiting to be dispatched.
As always, thanks for reading! And please take great care of yourselves.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz