My Ego Got the Best Of me

I caught this tweet from some French-sounding hack named Pascal Anglehart, spilling his guts about this sickness we all carry like a bad hangover—believing that if you just lay out the facts, neat and bloodless on the table, folks will flip like a cheap pancake. Elon, that rocket-riding wizard with his head in the stars and his ass in the headlines, nods along like it's gospel. Christ, it's the oldest con in the book, the one that keeps the world spinning on its rusty axis.Picture it: you're the lanky altar boy type, all scrubbed elbows and Sunday sermons, eyes like a kicked dog, trying to sweet-talk the firecracker across the dive bar counter. She's got legs that could start wars and a laugh like shattered glass, but she's tangled up with this grease-monkey brute, the kind who smells like motor oil and yesterday's regret, fists like hams that leave bruises blooming like cheap tattoos. You slide in with your lines—poems scribbled on napkins, stats on why he's poison, how you'd build her a porch swing out of dreams and decency. Her old lady's perched on a stool nearby, nursing a gin that tastes like forgotten Christmases, and yeah, she'd have ridden you like a stolen horse back in her prime, when her hips still had that sway and her heart hadn't turned to jerky. But she don't count for shit now; she's just echoing the ghosts of her own bad bets, the same deadbeat drifter who knocked her up and vanished like smoke from a busted carburetor, leaving her to raise hellions on welfare checks and spite.Nah, the only vote that lands is hers, and she's eyeing you like you're the last warm beer in a fridge full of empties—ugly, flat, and probably skunked. You keep talking, voice cracking like thin ice, because deep down you're betting on some miracle of mercy, some flicker in her jaded squint that says, "Yeah, kid, you're the upgrade." But mercy's a myth peddled by preachers with empty collection plates, and she's already halfway out the door, heels clicking like accusations, back to the biker who'll break her ribs but buy the next round.Me? I've danced that tango a dozen times, more maybe, in motels that reeked of mildew and regret, with dames whose eyes burned like faulty wiring—wildcats who'd claw your soul out for a spark of sanity. I'd roll out of bed at dawn, sheets twisted like nooses, preaching my gospel of clean sheets and straight talk, convinced my steady hands and half-assed philosophies could solder their circuits right. "Baby," I'd slur over black coffee and yesterday's smokes, "ditch the chaos; I've got a toolbox of reasons why we could make it stick." What a goddamn mark I was, strutting around like a knight in a threadbare coat, tilting at windmills made of lipstick and lies. They'd smile that razor-edged grin, pat my cheek like a stray pup, then bolt for the next storm cloud, leaving me with a gut full of whiskey and a wallet lighter than my illusions.It's the same rot when you wade into politics, that sewer of souls where everyone's waving flags like they're life rafts. You trot out your charts and your quotes, your bullet-point manifestos etched in the sweat of late nights, thinking it'll pierce the armor of their convictions. But opinions ain't opinions; they're barnacles on the hull of the ego, crusted thick with need and nerve. Folks don't budge for data any more than a junkie quits the needle for a PowerPoint on clean living—they shift when the fridge yawns empty, when the landlord's boot meets the door, when the wolf's teeth glint in the hall light. One whiff of eviction notice, one skipped meal turning the kids' whines to wails, and watch the principles peel off like sunburnt skin. Suddenly the firebrand union man’s voting for the suit who'll gut the factory, the eco-warrior's drilling her own backyard for a tank of gas, the bible-thumper's fencing his fence for the deportation squad. Survival's the great leveler, the bitch that kicks morals square in the teeth and leaves 'em spitting blood in the gutter.Unless you're up against the real freaks, the ones whose wires crossed in the womb, sparking circuits that laugh at hunger and howl at rooftops. Them? They'll burn the house down around the last can of beans, eyes wild as alley cats in heat, because crazy don't bargain with bread or bolts—it feasts on the flames. And there you sit, facts crumbling in your fist like wet ash, wondering if the sickness was never in the hoping, but in the waking up alone with the bottle, still believing the dawn might deliver.