Vaporfornia: Three Campaign Promos about the Future of the American Dream

Vaporfornia is available in paperback on Lulu.

“I go back to my room and check on the news with the election.

DCR is still the frontrunner, with Blackstone going from 4 points to 8 points behind, with concerns that the recent incel massacre, Russia-gate scandal, and the show might harm his campaign. The first episode hasn’t aired yet, but there’s a promo of me carrying out that unspeakable act next to surveillance footage of me with Blackstone outside his mansion. I feel terrible that I could somehow be responsible for him loosing after that special night we shared. And the Woke media is trying to claim Ari Meschel is a Blackstone supporter, like they don’t even get irony. Before #MeToo he attended every Democratic Party fundraiser.

Jackson is way behind, and has basically given up on challenging DCR. He’s just being used as controlled opposition to undermine Blackstone for any right leaning voters, trying to prove to conservatives that Blackstone is to the left of DCR while simultaneously smearing him as a fascist, a psychedelic Hitler. There’s a news segment about how this election’s theme is the future of the American Dream in this impending era of automation with Jackson defending the outdated model of striving for a corporate job and saving up to buy a home in the suburbs which primarily resonates with older voters who were able to make that work. There’s even clips of campaign commercials for the candidate’s visions for the future.

DCR’s depicts a family of color, a South Asian father and African American mother. Their trans child comes home in tears after being bullied for not fitting into a certain aesthetic mold. They show their parents an image of some rich blonde preppy teenagers who look like Chadsworth students. The trans child says: “I want to look like them when I’m older.”

Next it shows the parents volunteering for DCR, followed by imagery from the future of  successful women of color at a corporate board meeting. The transgendered child of color was evidently able to become a corporate consultant because DCR was elected. Then a quote flashes across the screen: “if we accept inclusivity we can all rise to the top.” That doesn’t even make any sense. There’s always going to be a limited number of slots at the top, but we all deserve a decent life and place in society regardless.

There’s even some released footage of DCR speaking at a finance summit where he said that rising working class White male unemployment is ok as long as it opens up jobs for women and people of color. Just in time for the release of his own version of a Basic Income which would be conditional on an intersectionality score calculator and a social credit score based on monitoring online activity for anti-social behavior.  I suppose all political systems and societies pick winners and losers: favored groups to thrive and pass on their genes.

This next campaign add is Blackstone’s. The opening scene is of a communal pod housing unit for workers who lost their jobs to automation. The captions says “DCR has been elected and we’re 5 years into the future”. There’s a depressed lone White guy in line with lots of menacing looking people of color for his daily serving of some gruel.  He then escapes into a VR simulation that shows the world that could have been if he had voted for Blackstone, of futuristic self-contained cities, all kinds of artistic and scientific innovation, and lots of attractive people swimming in lakes. Screw all that Woke bullshit. I think Blackstone actually wants to advance civilization and his policies are much better for my self-interest.

The newscaster mentions that Blackstone is going into overdrive on funding for adds because he fears the show is creating a lot of negative publicity and if it does cause him harm, I’m to blame. I must set things right. Find out a way to make things clear to the public.”