Squid Game USA

While we wait for the new season of Squid Game to drop, we fail to realize we're already playing a similar game in America.

I know millions of people are eagerly awaiting the return of the hit Netflix series Squid Game, but if we look around with unencumbered eyes and clear heads, we might realize that we’re living it every day in America.

The show has been out a while, so I’m going to go ahead and spoil it. (Consider this your only warning.) The show’s concept is that the modern world—or specifically South Korea—is filled with desperate people looking to escape serious financial debt and all the awful shit (crime, hopelessness, degeneracy, etc.) that comes with it. Unable to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps, the desperados get sucked into playing a cruel game by some creepy, smiling stranger who takes advantage of their plight. The first game results in them literally getting slapped in the face (multiple times in the case of the protagonist, Gi-hun) but rewards them with cold, hard cash.

The cash comes with a mysterious business card that lures them to an island, where they are forced to play a far more insidious series of games where the losers end up in pine boxes. I say “forced” because, even though the players technically consented to the madness and can vote their way out of it at any time with a simple majority, their choices are prescribed by powerful sociopaths, who keep files and tabs on each player. Sure, players can choose to leave the bloody, corpse-filled arena of Squid Game, where someone else sets the rules, but they’d only end up in a larger, inescapable arena (called life), where the game they have to play is a lot more complicated and where the rules are still not up for debate. At least in Squid Game they have a fair shot because everyone plays by the same rules—or so goes the logic of the gamemasters.

This is where the obvious metaphor hits home for me: Capitalism is propped up by the same bullshit propaganda—the illusion of fairness in an inherently unfair system. It’s sad that so many normal people believe that they only thing separating them from Trump or Musk or Bezos is hard work and ingenuity. And it’s no surprise the people who spread this lie the most are those controlling the game. What’s worse is that the failure of the desperados is rarely blamed on the system itself and those who profit the most from it—and the profits are never equally or equitably distributed. (I find it revealing that the players were not given the option to divide up the prize money in Squid Game.)

But the point of Squid Game isn’t to help the needy or the deserving: The point is mere entertainment for the game’s elite sponsors—who get off on the spectacle of pain and death. It’s no accident that the dead are referred to only by their numbers.

Given the rightward shift of many American elites and their puppets, this form of dystopian spectacle is exactly where the United States and every other capitalist-loving nation is headed if the masses don’t wake up. Once those overfed leeches have bled us dry in every other conceivable way, fatal children’s games are all that’s left. I would tell us to fight back—but most of us would rather take our chances at a children’s game. That’s who we’ve become, and I challenge anyone to convince me otherwise. We’ve become a nation of soft-hearted sellouts.

This is why a sociopathic moron could be elected in just a few days: We love spectacle and fantasy (of riches, success, etc.) above all else in America. We prefer bullshit to truth. We want to believe that we, like Trump, can win at the capitalist game—even though the game was rigged for him and other rich assholes like him. We’d rather “win” at all costs—even if it means killing scores of other similarly situated desperados—than join them in overthrowing the system.

If you disagree, prove me wrong on November 5.