You Don't Build a Movement on That

Demolition. You don't build a movement on that. It's not a building thing. You hire contractors. They come. They destroy. They leave. 

A Work of Great Stupidity and Malevolence

Trump isn't an evil genius or talented at anything. He's a loser and filled with hate. He despises life and himself. America had a class of haters and losers who latched onto Trump as their champion. 

End of story.

Influence Paddling

Republicans believe in violence, as an article of faith, like with Jesus for what that's worth. Not because violence is effective but because they think it's inevitable. They are preemptive people. 

I suppose they meant to spank Iran to exert influence. Conquest was not in the cards but Trump is a moron so, whatever. Any idiot would know Iran is not Venezuela. These are precocious idiots. 

People I know who know say Iran was getting the bang without the buck sitting short of having nukes.

Trump changed the calculus. I don't believe in spanking kids, though I've wanted to rough up a few. Spanking adults, humiliating punishment to induce submission, is Trump's personal shit.

Have at it, big boy, among your groveling government lackeys. What kind of fucking dunce believes it passes as foreign policy? The message is for everyone that can to get nukes.

That's where Trump has taken us. 

We're Number One

Rednecks are in the running for the worst people in the history of humanity. I think they win factoring in the good fortune of being born in America. What did they do with the good fortune? They cultivated a sorry-ass culture then rose up to destroy the country. 

Trump's admin runs on racism. They turn to racism to bolster the base because rednecks are racist pieces of shit and they always go for it. So when rednecks get jingoistic, rah-rah, we're number one, we can reassure them they are ... the worst fucking people ever. 

I Don't Want to be a Rock and Roll Star

Listen to what I say. Republicans think they've won. We are not competing. I am not competing. We don't see the world the way they do. Incidentally, our way is good for everyone and is sustainable. Their way is bad for everyone, even them, and isn't sustainable. Get it through your heads, you sick fucks. 

No, they can't.  That's part of the disease. We have to wrest control. It will be better for everyone. Republicans are meant to be wards of the state. Otherwise they destroy it. We will see to them, take care of them and treat them better than they will ever treat us. You see, we live in different worlds. 

Measles Deserves Respect

Republicans are the party of privilege, getting something for nothing. Anti-vax is another way to freeload. Only if enough other people choose vaccination can it work. 

Assuming they don't want to get measles. But they might because God made measles. Vaccines might be the devil's work. The devil is everywhere. Except for in them. 

Justice for Once

People condemn themselves by their behaviors. Everything flows from that. Discord, shame and social censure, condemnation, scorn and shunning, incarceration, exile and expatriation, whatever the hell. The entire Republican Party has condemned itself. 

Republicans have condemned themselves. We acknowledge that. Crimes have occurred. Punishment must follow. They must suffer consequences. And the truth come out. Justice for once must prevail. They've forgotten what it looks like. It's up to us to remind them. 

The End of the Fair

Civilization appears to have been a fair, in retrospect. Rides, competitions, amusements, performances and stalls where goods are sold. Not a party but better than nothing, maybe enabled by an age or period or era of unusually good weather. A 10,000 year bash is a good run. No complaints on my end. 

But the ICE age cometh, heralding the end of everything. 

I Guess We're Having Fun Now

Republicans are destroying absolutely everything they can get their hands on. I guess we're having fun now. We'll have to take their word for it. 

More Original

Originalism, I thought, was a constitutional philosophy without content, a smoke screen for doing whatever you want. A smoke screen or justification but transparently a ploy, adaptable ad infinitum. 

It has more going on than I divined, providing a rationale for devolution, for deconstructing the 'administrative state’ or whatever. It’s a form of relativism and can be used to chip away at the law.

Some laws are more original. Republicans hate the laws enacted to guarantee individual, constitutional rights across races and for women. More so races. So they're deconstructing the constitution. 

Eliminating what they don't like. 

That's an extension. Theocrats believe the constitution is Christian or only as valid as it is. Natural law, God's law, is more foundational. That turns out to be the law of the jungle. Arbitrary. Predatory. 

Exploitation, rape, plunder and murder. The 'law of the jungle' might be superseded by nonexistence. Originally the world didn't exist, having been created. Surely nonexistence is original enough. 

Wait, doesn't nonexistence imply materiality, in comparison with existence? They might be against that, wanting to get back to pure soul. Pure spirit. Don't count them out. They are fanatics. 

We observe they want to destroy everything and there is no end. Originalism might be a real philosophy. Or, just an instinct for or love of destruction. Annihilation, the path to purity as they see it. 

How Much for that Country in the Window?

Here's an idea. The U,S.A. is getting the private-equity, leveraged-buyout treatment so let's push for liquidation. If American billionaires can buy it, run it ass-deep in debt, raid the pension funds, sell off the assets and so on someone else can buy it as well.

The billionaires might bite. Because, pretty soon, the thing is going to fall apart. Also, the process has been illegal as shit so they might want to cash out against the possibility of a change of administration that ends with them all in jail and the seizing of the loot.  

Understanding

I worked hard on these issues, especially the word studies, but it's been a while. The Logos, I believe, is intelligibility. Without Christ the world will be unintelligible to you, to the point Christ is identified as intelligibility. That's an example, but my takeaway was that modern people must both drill down on meaning and let go of the need to place boundaries on words (and everything) and to strive for certainty. Or, strive at all because it implies a need or lack that's not there. We're born whole but flawed.

Literalism is an enemy, for similar reasons, presupposing something that's not true. Thematically and structurally I think the parables are the most important element in the Bible and that the Seed and the Sower is the most important of those. It says, shit happens, get over it. On multiple levels, like so much in the Bible, because we are seeds ourselves and we have seeds within us. The oak can't be implied from the acorn. What we can become can't be implied from the seeds within us but what's required is there.

The Garden of Eden story, I believe, is about taking things for granted, notably life, and losing perspective. Not accepting life on the terms to which it is given to us, as one part of creation and not as souls in isolation, and as a gift and with creation as a miracle we live within, for example. The apocalyptic elements, similarly, are about conveying the urgency of achieving the transformation because our lives are always ending. Not an urgency in time but existential urgency. Again, not taking stuff for granted.

Words have a semantic field or range of meaning. Words must be free and not corralled by us because it distorts meaning, a problem moderns have by the influence of the Enlightenment.

But even there we see that what they really discovered was indeterminacy, uncertainty and relativity. So I am, not a relativist, really, in the common sense, but a communitarian and contextualist because people are unintelligible in isolation. It's not that nothing exists outside of creation, we don't known that, be that we exist within it, as whole beings, but with elements that possibly transcend it. The 'truth' is always seen in a context of humility and humor which are expressions or an acknowledgement of human limitation. 

Trump's Monster Phase

Trump is going biblical. Not as a man of faith, of course. As a stupid, evil man. 

Florence versus the Machine

I haven't been there but friends back from Florence say it's been ruined for them, by some kind of growth or development. I believe it. Nothing resists the American plunder model. Or it takes some serious regulation and real effort, wherever there’s money to be made. 

Many unspoiled places exist, by remoteness or protection, and plenty in Italy. Let's all go there now, somewhere that hasn’t been ruined by profiteers. Or, if we get America back from the oligarchs, regulate the shit out of it. That’s an idea. Civility. Power to the people! 

Family Feudal

Republicans don't know or care where they're taking us as long as it has certain features, mostly a class of super-citizens whose ownership of of liquid and illiquid assets is so vast they control the society in cooperation with a smallish caste of others similarly rich. Robots will handle the equivalent of factory jobs on average. Functionaries, like estate managers, run the factories and other concerns, the status of those below devolving into that of servants or serfs. I'm not kidding. 

It's looking more like feudalism. They don't care. I suspect MAGA senses this in the lower parts of their brains that predominate and is okay with it, representing security in comparison with the horror of thinking independently and having their beliefs challenged or questioned and worrying instead only about harvests and who might steal their sheep. They're incomprehensible fatalists. There will be floods, fires and plagues. All cool. That's real life to them and God's purview.

Damn.

I think I lost my composure at 15 and am just getting it back at 70. Damn.  

Bootlicking Good

Republicans succeed by submission. By kissing ass. Then they celebrate by kissing ass. They probably kiss ass when we aren't looking and in ways we don't know about. You would think it's all they do. 

Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me

Albanians made more of a fuss about Kushner building some shit than Americans are about Trump and his Republicans destroying everything. On balance Americans aren't feeling enough pain. Too many of them have been up so long they can't imagine how bad it can get. Many think they're down now but they have no idea. Give Trump some time. He's capable of destroying anything. 

Scumbags of the Confederacy

Mike Johnson comes to mind first, an absolute worm. Mitch McConnell, another worm. A killer worm, who took it up the ass from any corporation wanting a break and screwed average citizens at every opportunity. Candidates pour in. Tom Cotton. That fucking football coach. 

John Kennedy. Sessions, before retirement. The Tea Party and the Freedom (Treason) Caucus, full of southern scumbags, racist Confederate groups in spirit and effect, undermining the federal government seeking revenge for the Civil War and desegregation. America didn't fail.

The government got conquered, by the Confederacy. 

Moby Dickhead

Moby Dick is a story of compulsion, an entirely unfree state. Ahab fights against his fate in stalking and attacking the whale, not understanding he's free and doesn't need to be doing this shit.

Trump is more destructive and compulsive. He's fighting himself and his fate, not understanding he's free and doesn't need to be doing this shit. We're collateral damage, hostage to that fatalism. 

Out for Themselves

American businesspeople who drank the laissez-faire, libertarian brew aren't far removed from the mafia. They would say, everyone knows the risks. You lose your ass, tough luck. It's on you. 

In the mafia you can lose your life. Average citizens are enabling and insuring all this shit as we saw in the aftermath of the '08 downturn and before. Even the mafia by providing a society full of prey. 

Some of it is inevitable. But America maximized it, with an atomized society that rewarded predation and hyper-individualism that encouraged sociopathy. Everybody loses. What a cool system. 

The Coming Eschaton

A reminder and perspective for those immersed in the fog of the culture wars, the super-rich secured power by buying evangelical votes with promises evangelicals would get want they wanted. They wanted the U.S.A. reborn as a Confederate, racist dystopia, and to see Jesus. Evangelicals came to collect.  

Masked thugs patrol the streets and arrest brown people with needless violence, spreading fear and sending a message of hate and intimidation. Voting rights, never fully realized, are being eradicated. 

Racist dystopia? Check.

The way to see Jesus definitively and with conviction is to die. Evangelicals despise creation, all that temptation and imperfection. They long for the end-times. Evangelicals want to see the world go up in flames. Millions die? No problem. Part of God's plan. The world engulfed in war? Exciting. Cool. Provocative. The Middle East mired in strife with Jews involved? Extra cool, because it's prophecy. 

Evangelicals get to see Jesus? 

Not check yet. They're working on it. 

Pirates and Pissants

Republicans aren't even good villains. They're pirates and pissants. They bully and grovel at the same time. Plenty destructive, though. They've got the plundering down. 

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stupid, Resentful and Mean

Republicans conform to Lakoff's strict father model of the family and extend it to society. The tyrannical, abusive version of the strict father model. I can imagine the strict father model working out if it's applied fairly and with kindness. The abusive father model will not work out well. Abuse doesn't make people stronger it makes them stupid and mean. 

I Want People to Think Well of Me

Apparently it isn't enough. 

Self-Loathing Opportunists

I don't know how to take in Stephen Miller, how to process him. He's Trump's racism czar. How do you digest that? The category shouldn't exist. The position shouldn't exist. The man shouldn't exist.

He is an insult to humanity. The tension, that illegitimacy, makes him a monster, a pretender to humanity, begging for non-existence. Stay with me. A death wish isn't as strange as it seems. Or strange at all. 

He loathes himself. He has to. Should society grant him his wish, his baiting us and begging us to annihilate him? Functionally, yes. He shouldn't exist. He should be jailed. For life.

What kind of a society creates such a person, with such self-loathing and such a capacity for harm? And then places he in a position where he can injure and destroy the lives of millions of people. 

Fucking insane. We put these people in these positions, some unacceptably large percentage if not a majority of us. Who were they? The super-rich allied with white, mostly evangelical southerners. 

The rich are always with us. They, some of them, always want more. Evangelicals gave it to them for promises of a new age of racist tyranny, promises now fulfilled. Initially against the wishes of the rich. 

This is not about blame, it's about understanding and facing the responsibility of all of us. It's about seeing clearly the racism and tyranny Miller and Vought represent. Which we now see. 

The core of this is racism. The rich are swept along if not fully allied in it, biding their time and above all looking for opportunities to make money, as fucking always. We had worked this out. 

Controls were embedded in the system, a system both the rich and the racists hated because it constrained them, less so the rich until recently. Notably the racism was constrained by the Voting Rights Act. 

That was our government. So they felt compelled to destroy it. The lesson is we hadn't done enough to constrain the rich and the racists. So that's what we need to do if we have the chance again. 

Time Waits for No Trump

I want so badly for Trump to go away. I have for so long. Nothing personal but the harm is immense. The harm is the problem. So much and for so long and it seems he will never go away. But he will. Then it will be hard to believe. 

Ask Me No Questions and I'll Lie to You Anyway

Republicans aren't lying to us interactively and as a behavior they're out there constructing a whole parallel world of lies, lying as a state of being. Existential lying. You become the lie. Beyond that the lie has to consume everything around. They demand we live within the lie as well, because they're so fucking insecure and can't handle anything that contradicts their wonderful lies. 

Living in the U.S.A.

Trump and his enablers are destroying things so fast I think it can't go on and that there will be a collapse or an enforced reckoning. Then I think how long individuals, including Trump, remain alive and active in a badly compromised state and I'm not encouraged. They are parasites, vampires and sociopaths. It could go on for a long time no matter how they screw everything up. Killing a host as powerful as the U.S.A. could be tedious, agonizing and explosive all at once.

Morning Is Broken

Normally I wake up with a small sense of rebirth and a little bit of innocence. Trump and the Republicans broke it. I think about what they're doing and get mad. I know it's what they want and that it plays into their hands. It does me no good and I can't help it. 

Hedonic Destruction

Republicans aren't getting tired of rape and pillage the way one would expect. No satiety, so I suppose we're looking at hedonic destruction that might have started in a desire for retribution but morphed into pure enjoyment.

Not that there isn't someone in the background capable of organized thinking and intent, the super-rich. They are on-board with watching our society be destroyed. They decided they can weather it. They will rule over the ruins. 

Maybe the worst of all possible worlds is being made. Donald isn't a don, if you buy the mafia metaphor, he's a goon, and the government is populated with enforcers and thugs. A goonocracy, I guess, with goonocrats at the top. 

The super-rich are not goons. They might have converted to end-times fantasism, in there with their evangelical allies. Not wanting to see Jesus or believing He is coming, they are volunteering to stand in. For Jesus. 

I say they're all Satan. 

Fuckwad Needs Your Support

Fuckwad is nothing without backing. Glorious fuckwad. Fearless fuckwad. President fuckwad. 

How Do They Screw Us?

Let's count the ways. No, they're not itemizable anymore. Or it doesn't make sense to try. We work at cross-purposes with the entity that's there to make accountability possible. 

And possible for us to have decent lives, our government. Which isn't ours anymore. What to do? Get it back. How? I don't know. I have ideas, but the government is against us.

Which probably requires expertise. Combined with force, perhaps. Meanwhile, at a personal level, how does one arise every day and go on in the midst of this mess? I don't know. 

Chariots of Fiber

After taking forever to get past DSL to copper broadband I have fiber. Getting there was messy, the copper going in at the expense of a rich inheritor-of-money neighbor and the subs cut everything they could bringing it in including a high voltage buried electric line but I got hooked up for nothing. 

Then I paid through the nose. Two other wealthy or relatively wealthy entities near me got fiber by throwing money at it, $30K in one instance, over (reputedly, believably) $100K in the other. A company I never heard of began trenching in no end of conduit in my subdivision a couple of years ago. 

They then disappeared. I figured it was Biden money that ran out but no idea. Lately other crews, under another corporate name, showed up finishing the conduit down the public road and I got fiber. Still a drop wire to the house but I got it. I have no cell service at home so this connectivity is important. 

But it's fucking important for everybody. People can't have normal lives without connectivity. Kids can't be schooled properly. Republicans fight rabidly against it. You can always get Starlink at twice prices that are already too high. But Republicans want exclusion. And this is a southern white thing. 

Take It from a Democrat

Democrats were factionalists within their party, starting in the 70s, I believe, figuring out what they stood for in changing times. They supported a lack of factionalism for the country. Inclusion. Fair play. Limits to corporate power, private wealth and privilege. 

Republicans were the other way around. They became a unified fighting machine as a party but wanted factionalism for the country. Division, polarization and, ultimately, a class war. Republicans won. We're a mess. The U.S.A. is now a factional country. 

And China is a unified fighting machine. They mean to win. And they will. 

Democrats and the Meritocracy

Democrats might be as wedded to the meritocracy as Republicans are to religion. Religion is more relatable and inclusive, so Democrats are on the prodigy program. They remain unrelatable and wait for another Clinton or Obama to show up. 

They wonder why they lose voters who, on paper, should be voting for them. Maybe they should get their heads out of their asses. Principles are one thing, and they're good. But they don't win you elections. Empathy at that abstract level is good. 

Policies that don't fuck people and might help them, I mean. But you have to get elected to do anything. That Democrats suck at. They don't learn. They say Trump is a catastrophe. Look at who's at the microphone, though. Then they wonder why they lose. 

The 'rank and file' feels it more and more. The few leaders who do and express the anger and indignation the situation demands are resisted by the establishment. Republicans, awash in billionaire cash, appear less  establishment than Democrats. WHAT THE FUCK?

I'd love to beat some Republican ass in the elections. But there's some Democratic ass I wouldn't mind practicing on. Establishment Democrats need to fucking get out of the way. Corporate Democrats had their chance for decades. And look at where we are.

Transcendental Time

I was fine being immersed in time but now I want to get the fuck away. 

Bullet Points

Life isn't a presentation, and bounded by ambition.  

Night and Day

You aren't the one, Donald. You never were and never will be. Get the fuck lost, you loser.

A Question for Republicans

Republicans, how many people are you allowed to get killed before it counts? I mean in the Trump manifestation. Bush's toll is still going up but I'll not include that. Musk is on your tab. Shall we say a million? 

Make-believe

Republicans achieved escape velocity into unreality. They look on from such heights human beings are ants. Republicans think they're gods but they're devils. They belong with the rest of us. They're making shit up. Republicans are living a delusion. In which they're persecuted. So they attack. 

Medicrud for All

I'm confused. Are Democrats for 'Medicare for All' with actual, unbridled Medicare for everybody or some watered down shit. I don't trust them. Fault me for that. I dare you. 

Trump Triumphalism

Their revolution succeeds. So far. Republicans are reveling. The U.S.A. is reinvented. As what? As the Confederacy. As a racist, totalitarian state.

Trump, drunk on power. Absolutely smashed. Staggering. They all are, furiously yanking levers. Seeing people jump. Seeing people die. What a high! 

What a rush. Glorious victory. The forces of evil ascend, the same as always, always differently. Patterns emerge. Overreach. They're overextended.

A crash is coming. Helmets on! We will rebuild. But right now we're in the shit. 

Trump is Trans

Building on Trump's sophisticated understanding of 'trans' that it includes anything with 'trans' in it I declare Trump is 'trans' since he's transactional. 

Twenty-Mule-Team Moron

The societal suicidal impulse is increasing. Maybe more like murder. Trump always heeded the call of the ditch, his destiny and compulsion. Annihilation. His egotism demands company. He will take the country with him. He'll take the world, perhaps. Anything that he can. A galaxy if he can swing it. 

Trump will leave a legacy of devastation, as big as possible. Pack up his toys, go home to daddy. Daddy dead. Posthumously, daddy gave him a country to fuck with. Diabolical daddy. Trump doesn't choose the ditch. He's a sick fuck, he can't help it. Who empowers such a man? Maniacs. Crazies. Cultists.

Evangelical Christians, mostly. They allied with the rich. The rich are always with us. They will take whatever they can. Who would give it to them? Idiots and lunatics with grudges. White, southern, racist losers who want revenge. And to see the end-times, as an afterthought. Jesus and all. And all.

Meaning complete, disaster-movie devastation. Death, the ditch nobody gets out of. Nobody pulls you out, unless you believe in the resurrection. It's not enough they believe that for themselves. They are idealists and fanatics. Death for everyone! See you at the resurrection. If you buy into that. I don't.

Get in Touch

Mainstream Democrats are not cutting it. People are pissed and scared. The leadership offers explanations and analysis. The electorate wants to feel the outrage. They want to see indignation. I’ve got it to spare if they want it. Get in touch. With me, with the electorate, with fucking reality. 

On This Payday in History

Trump did what? What ripoff, shakedown and scam? It goes on every day. I think Trump became the biggest crook in history. Nobody compares. Great crooks typically worked at it and assumed risks. Trump shot his mouth off, became president and got granted immunity by political hacks on the Supreme Court. He's a crook by decree. A crook by executive order. 

Grifter-boy has gone scaredy-cat. People who steal that much fear retribution. They fear justice. They fear somebody taking their shit that they stole. One good thing. Trump enables us to see that America's super-rich are all crooks. They get so wealthy by stealing. Some rode the wave. Maybe they're not personally responsible. Still, that's our money they're sitting on. 

But I'm a Cheerleader

Karoline Leavitt thought she was special, exempt from the rules of Trump. Rah, Rah, she said. Sis Boom Bah. No matter what Trump did it was go team. He shit all over everything it was go team. He shit the world, go team. 

Some are more team than others. The Trump distractibility index is high. If it isn't right in front of him it doesn't exist. Object permanence is an issue. People are objects. An army of ego-strokers attends Trump. How to stand out?

Kneel down? It's been done. Every variation, manner and position, and with accoutrements. Pompoms, you name it. Probably things best not thought about. Our boy is so needy. Nobody gonna fill that void. Bye-bye, Karoline. 

They Are War

We've note that Republicans start wars, as a matter of witness. We have seen, we report. They engage in violence in other ways, the violence of deprivation, for example. Circumstances have nothing to do with it. They exaggerate or invent threats. They are violent people. They are war. 

The Unforgivable

Democrats, I believe, are on the leading edge of a reckoning. The old guard needs to get out of the way. Let me rephrase. Get the fuck out of the way. If you don't want to be remembered poorly leave entirely or support the hell out of Mamdani and those like him. Don't resist. Resist and you will be remembered as assholes, wimps and dicks. Dicks and limp dicks at the same time, if that's possible. 

The context is this, that we can't go back to normal. Normal is gone. Normal is done. The revolution has happened. I think irreversibly until we have an economic crash or a contagion or unprecedented fires and floods or whatever. Of course there might be a mix. What Republicans have done is unforgivable. For once we can't let them walk. And what are we coughing up? Newsom, no. Just no. 

Buttigieg better, but not for president. We need a warrior. We don't have one. Some Democrat might find his inner asskicker, you never know. It will have to be in response to some level of catastrophe, though, for the ground to be ready. Maybe someone will come out of nowhere. The U.S. has ceased to exist as a nation that fulfills its constitutional responsibilities to itself enough to confer legitimacy. 

We're starting from there. From scratch, in a way. We need to get that through our heads