I won't ask for nothing while I'm gone

I am so sick of being lied to every second of my life

Luke O'Neil

19 Aug 2025 • 15 min read

Hey buddy how's it going?

I'm not doing particularly well myself since you asked. Physically or mentally. I understand that the smug shit-eating childishness of this version of fascism – a child who can nevertheless do grave harm – is part of the whole deal. Its intent being to frustrate and demoralize us into despondence and ultimately acceptance. And it's working on my ass. It has gotten my ass thoroughly. What does a person do? I know I've asked that before but no one has given me a solid answer.

I am so sick of being lied to every second of my life. I am so sick of watching human bodies being tossed into the fucking trash. And with glee! They're so excited about causing pain. How does a person like that live? I know I've asked that before but no one has given me a solid answer.

It was the seventh birthday of Hell World the other day which is exciting I suppose. In all sincerity it has been – well I won't say a joy – but it has been a something to be able to write this newsletter for you nice people all these years.

Then of course I had the thought: What if anything has gotten better in that time? Nothing? What was any of this even for?

The first proper edition of Hell World came out on August 16, 2018. It was an interview with a young man named Elmer who had made the perilous journey from El Salvador to the States to flee the threat of being killed by – or being forced to join – a brutal local gang.

He described the conditions in which he and others were held in detention facilities around the country once he arrived.

They would treat you like an animal, like a dog. They would give the food, three times a day, but they would give you a burrito, like every day the same kind of food. We were cold, there was aluminum foil blankets. Every time you asked for one they would be like, Do you want one? And we would say Yes yes! And they would throw them, like boom boom. And they were just laughing. I was like, what kind of people are this? It was a lot of kids.

I don’t know why they were treating us like animals. Every time you’d ask for water, they would drop it on the floor, like go ahead. You can imagine all these kids trying to get the water.

But his story at least had a happy ending. He had recently graduated high school when we spoke and had just gotten his green card. He sent a picture of himself smiling so big in his graduation gown.

I had the idea to go back and talk to him again all these years later to see how he is doing now but I couldn't find him. His Facebook page I originally chatted with him on has been deleted. I'm looking back at my messages to him which are all that are left and then a bunch of blank spaces where his replies had been. His profile pic is just a blank gray circle. The image we have come to understand signifies "not a real person."

I tried searching for people around the country with his same name and found one young man who had been shot and killed and another who was in jail for a drunk driving offense but neither of the ages lined up so I don't think they were him. If you're reading this somehow buddy let us know how you're doing. It would be nice to hear one single fucking good thing.

The second Hell World came out seven years ago today. In it I tried to make an analogy between the old practice of sin-eating – in which a person would be paid in order to ritualistically consume and take on the sins of the recently deceased – and reporting on the every day horrors of the world.

On Wednesday, a man named Joel Arrona-Lara was seized by ICE while stopped at a gas station in San Bernadino. He was in the process of bringing his pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth. The agents left her to fend for herself, the aftermath of which was caught on the security camera of the gas station.

Maybe things haven't changed as much as they seem?

It ends like this:

What exactly is it we’re doing, those of us who scroll through our newsfeed endlessly, like an addict lifelessly pulling the lever on a slot machine waiting for information and sadness to spill out?

Certainly there are ways to effect change in the world — taking to the streets, protesting, boycotts, pressuring your representatives, helping register people to vote — but those of us on the barricades of the news cycle I think sometimes delude and flatter ourselves that by paying vigilant witness we’re performing some necessary function.

Sometimes I think, like the sin-eaters with no other options, I behold the grief of the world without respite because I have no other choice. Each sin I consume I can turn into a living. Much like them it’s a paltry one to be sure, and we’re not much respected either. Other times I think a lot of us, and myself included, tend to be more like ol’ Bobby Munslow. We’ve been driven mad with grief, and we know nothing else but to continue to compound it in a gluttonous feast. We gorge ourselves on the sins of others until it sickens us, hoping, without any sort of reliable proof, that in the end it might help someone, but knowing nonetheless that it won’t.

Maybe I haven't changed much either?

I'm not going to go through all of the early ones here don't worry. The next couple were interviews with journalists who were busy covering the extremism beat and the burgeoning fascist movement in the first Trump administration including Cristina López G, Will Sommer, Christopher Mathias, and Tim Onion himself Ben Collins.

Here's something Mathias said when I asked if his work had changed his faith in humanity.

I don’t know if I have more or less faith in humanity. What I’ll say is that it’s radicalized me a bit. Part of this beat is seeing how fringe Nazi ideas end up in the mainstream. It’s horrifying. And you see the connections between straight-up fascists and those in power. It’s so alarming, and it feels like a lot of people — and I guess I’m thinking of white centrist people in the media — aren’t addressing this political moment with the language and the urgency and the force that it deserves. It’s scary. Keeps me up at night sometimes. You can see how things could get even worse.

And here's something Collins said when I asked him if there had been a particular instance of something he saw that shook him.

When I saw that whole family in Q shirts, I realized this is going to be a longstanding thing. I’m not sure how you decouple your parents telling you “don’t put tinfoil in the microwave” and “be careful of the donut shop down the street, former First Lady and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton is kidnapping all of your fellow five-year-olds for rape and murder purposes” in the same breath. You don’t unlearn just one of those things. That stuff stays with you, and we’re going to face a unique challenge in detoxifying these people from this absolutely abjectly wrong and stupid garbage.

Anyway happy birthday to Hell World. Happy birthday to everyone!

33% off a year of Hell World!

In honor of this important milestone here's 33% off a year's subscription. Thanks for all your support over the years. I mean that honestly.

Seven years you assured me
That I'd be fine if I complied
Only push the way off to fight you
Now I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not sure
Getting off my chest
The story ends

Down below paid subscribers can read a new essay by me. It's one of the meandering and maudlin ones that always somehow end up being about mortality.

Here's some other shit real quick first.

I get the message they're trying to convey but I'm still not sure why I'm supposed to be more scared of a cop who is also a troop than I am of a regular cop who has always been able to beat me within an inch of my life or shoot me to death for any reason or no reason at all and get away with it?

I think they think on some level that the troops are the cops' dad and you're really in trouble when he gets here?

This is what they're talking about when they talk about crime in D.C. by the way.

This shit sucks so fucking bad dude. When will this end? Run someone who promises to decrease the number of times we are being scammed every day of our lives from 50 to like 5 and they would win in a landslide.

It's so cool that every other email or text I get is trying to scam me and no one is ever going to do anything about it!
— Luke O'Neil (@lukeoneil47.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T21:35:43.890Z

Here's one young man we can all pin way too much of our hope on anyway:

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social) 2025-08-16T14:49:09.349Z

Every other Democrat ever has always fumbled this bad faith question. They're gonna call you a socialist anyway man! Fuck it just embrace it.

And another one:

And an inspiring young woman. Once again shout out to Sally Rooney.

“I feel obliged to state once more that — like the hundreds of protesters arrested last weekend — I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it.

“My books, at least for now, are still published in Britain, and are widely available in bookshops and even supermarkets. In recent years the UK’s state broadcaster has also televised two fine adaptations of my novels, and therefore regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can.

This piece by Alex Skopic in Current Affairs is good.

Now, why are leftists correct so consistently? It’s not because we have crystal balls tucked away in our cupboards. Just the opposite. It’s because, by and large, socialists and anarchists don’t have the inch-thick layer of bullshit covering our eyes that liberals and conservatives do. In Engels’ case, he didn’t buy into any of the narratives about national pride or martial honor and bravery that were dominant at the time. He understood that war is simply a way of gaining or losing resources, and that the economic position of “Prussia-Germany” meant it needed to gain them by force. Back in the abolitionist era, people like John Brown didn’t accept the idea that slavery was just the natural order of things. In the case of Iraq, leftists didn’t buy the Bush administration’s fearmongering about WMDs and Islamic terrorists hiding behind every tree. Today, they don’t buy into the repeated narrative about Israel’s “right to defend itself” by attacking Gaza.

There are countless examples like this. Leftists don’t believe in “personal responsibility” for society-wide problems like homelessness. We do not believe that “job creators” bring “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” to the “free market,” and thus ought to have billions while everyone else has pennies. We do not believe, as Joe Biden did, in some nebulous and ineffable thing called the “soul of the nation” which can be redeemed through “decency.” Instead, leftists understand that politics is primarily a struggle for control over wealth and resources. It consists of labor, money, land, power, and violence, not abstract ideals, slogans, and mythologies. The technical term is historical materialism, but it really just means facing material reality without a lot of ideological junk in the way. And if you don’t have that, you wind up running down all kinds of blind alleys.

The stakes here are high, because it’s not just the past we have to consider. It’s the future, too. To recap: the Left was right about slavery, about child labor, about women’s right to vote, about World War One, about Civil Rights, about LGBTQ rights, about Vietnam, about apartheid South Africa, about the invasion of Iraq, about Joe Biden’s mental health, about Kamala Harris’s disastrous campaign, and about Gaza. In each case, conservatives and liberals have been categorically wrong, and by insisting on their wrong view of the situation, they only got in the way of progress being made and lives saved. Now, with that in mind, it stands to reason there’s a good chance the Left is also correct about the controversies of the present day.

Ok here's a new essay by me. You'll have to be a paid subscriber to read it in full. See you next time if not.

It was gross and humid already when I woke up and stepped outside onto the porch and walked directly into yet another spider web that they had set up at eyeball level for me. With remarkable precision. Like a carpenter with a level.

I thought just now for the first time in thirty years of the chalk line tool my father used to make me hold for him while cutting wood.

The third time in a row this week with the web business by the way. Me flailing around. Goddamnit etc. You can envision how it looks when a person has walked into a spider web I don’t need to paint a picture for you. I don’t need to hold your hand here.

I had to admire their moxie for continuing to try to reel my ass in like this again and again though. The ambition of it. Maybe I had driven this particular spider mad. Maybe we were dealing with an Ahab type situation.

No that’s stupid. Spiders don’t dream of revenge. Or do they? We’re fucked if they do. I always say I’m sorry buddy every time I send one to Hell when they’re inside of the house but I leave them alone on the other side of the DMZ. I let them do as they please. Benevolently you might say.

What would it count for if they could understand me anyway? What does I’m sorry mean to something you've crushed?

Then I thought about Gwen Stefani for a minute or two for obvious reasons. I also do not need to spell this out for you. Zipping around on stage like she used to do. In that crop top we all know about.

I don’t want to be thinking about that kind of shit this early in the morning if I’m honest. I’m just trying to go about my life.