The Collective

For those of you who watch Star Wars it's interesting how much Republicans resemble the Borg. There's a robotic, shared-consciousness aspect to the new Republicanism. They will also sacrifice themselves for a cause. It's a shame it's the wrong cause.

Our, American tradition is to sacrifice individualism only for a real threat and temporarily. Republicans had been trending another way--to achieve political power by thwarting individualism and inventing threats. And more so after the dramatic attack of 9/11.

There was no real threat. Some hicks sucker-punched us, as hicks are prone to do. Every culture has a backward element. We stupidly responded in-kind and on their, tribal terms, for reasons of Republican self-interest. What an utter failure of our system.

Catchy Phrases

We turn now to catch phrases for the candidates, vaporous bits of nothingness, slogans that still capture the essence of a candidacy. 

For Cruz: Death to the Infidels! or Slay the Heathen!

Remember, this applies firstly to his fellow citizens.

For Trump: Roll the Dice with Me!

This sounds like an invitation to gamble with Trump but it is ambiguously clever. It is an invitation to gamble on Trump. That way, he has deniability. If the world explodes on his watch he can say we knew the risks. It is how he already does business.

And for Hillary: It Could be Worse!

The Reapers

What, exactly, is a hedge fund? Hedge funds are bubbles within a boom-and-bust economy, islands of concentrated unreality. Someone can usually live on borrowed time for a while.

Hedgers apply a multiplier to that. They go exponential on it. That is a hedge fund: three-dimensional racketeering, stereoscopic theft and postal exploitation. And it's risk-reduced and insured by us. 

The profits come from us. The hedge-fund people are grim reapers. They find value and extract it within a system that has been prejudiced in their favor over time. They are insulated.

It's a game to them, grim because many non-hedgers' lives are ruined as part of the game. The practitioners are insulated from any sense of involvement or responsibility or engagement. 

Borrowed time is stolen life. Vampires live like this. Human life doesn't matter among the hedgers, not with the pressure for profits. Vampires are envious. They want more of life than they are given.

The hedge-fund guys are financial vampires and will take whatever they can get from anywhere, no matter what the consequences are to anyone or even themselves, longer term.

Even Ants...

have "Oh, Shit!" moments. I can see this as I fight with them for control of my kitchen.

They scurry from the thumb of doom.

This reminds me so much of our right-wing. They are against individualism and all about conformity.

Everyone must agree with them. Dissent is not an option. If you resist them you will be destroyed.

They only care about their collective, but they do scurry. There's a hint of individualism there somewhere.

Your Daddy's Rich

Clearly we are going to have another son of a wealthy father heading the Republican presidential ticket.

 

Is this all that they can cough up, beneficiaries of inherited wealth? Inheritance must be such a thing with them. 

Cruz-Flanagan, 2016

It's already Hail-Mary time among the Republicans. John McCain needed crazy credentials and a woman. Voila! Sarah Palin. 

Ted Cruz needs uncrazy and corporate-friendly credentials and a woman. Aha! Carly Fiorina. But he could have chosen me. 

I would have really balanced him out:

I believe in reason, not revelation.

I don't like blowing things up.

I will provide jobs--in our country.

I want better wages and working conditions.

I will build infrastructure--in our country.

I believe that people have rights even after they are born.

I am more feminine in outlook than Fiorina.

Ted, I am willing to talk his through with you. I can save you from yourself and your falsely perceived destiny as a suicide bomber for Christ, chosen to obliterate the apostate, materialistic, godless government of our country.

Feel it, Ted. The weight is lifting from your shoulders. 

See the light of reason--God's reason, as it happens. You can be saved, Ted, truly saved, and live a life as described in the Bible and promoted by Christ, a life of love and integrity and caring for others.

But this can only happen if you choose me.

The Upper Crust

I just watched an episode of an English mystery series and the head of the manor did it. I don't know where the butler was. 

The assumptions of privilege were well-portrayed. The noble family couldn't imagine that they would have to answer to anyone for anything.

Accountability was outside of their experience. They had never encountered it, like the latest generation of our conservatives. 

It's so deep, the assumption of exclusivity, that they are indignant or uncomprehending when confronted with consequences.

They have never known consequences. This is a problem of upbringing, a failure of education and socialization. They were poorly raised.

The Trump Conundrum

If, in his better moments, he doesn't think he's not fit to be President he's not fit to be President.

Moving On Up

Black folk's fantasies about a better life may have to go other-worldly again. Swing that chariot low. They aren't going to get any justice in this world, not with the white boys in charge and the racist resurgence.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft7lIotNTHo

Roaming in the Gloating

There may be a bunch of Democrats somewhere gloating over the implosion of the Republican Party but it's their funeral. Donald Trump filled their void.

That sounded bad. You know what I mean. Trump walked into a space left empty by Democrats because they didn't have the stomach for the fight. 

Now it's too late. Gloat away, anyone with a taste for it. It's all our funeral.

Where to Go

Thank God for predictable digestion. I never have to use public bathrooms. I have my breakfast, with coffee, take a shit and go to work. I'm good for the day.

But for those less intestinally blessed things are getting more complicated. I can't believe it's an issue, what with various Republican murderers running around free.

This is how they do it. They keep you always on your heels by attacking on all fronts and you get bogged down and demoralized while they kill and steal.

They kill and steal while we argue about bathrooms and Bruce Jenner. Underlying it all is their assumption of moral superiority and the willingness to attack us.

Back in the day, of course, it was their religious conviction that segregation was ordained by God. White was right. Now might is right, money and power.

It's the same old stuff, the new racism. The old ways don't die hard they are unkillable.

Thumb-Smashed

For the first time I'm fighting ants in my house and the little guys keep coming. I leave the thumb-smashed corpses of their comrades around as a message. 

But they don't get it. It's both admirable and stupid, kind of like us in the Middle East.

A Mighty Wind

North Carolina has never been first in anything, except maybe as the source of more lung cancer than anywhere. The Wright Brothers, with characteristic sense, investigated and learned where they would find the best winds for flying their gliders. 

It was North Carolina.

When the winds weren't needed the Wrights went back to Dayton and stayed. Now North Carolina is senselessly pioneering repression and becoming a haven for bigots, an Afghanistan for the NASCAR brand of racist honkey. Recall Jesse Helms.

For decades sensible people have discounted guys like Helms as unrepresentative of anything, a tenacious toe fungus on a political foot. We expected this of Alabama and Mississippi and two or three other states comprising the nation's idiot uncle. 

But North Carolina? What many citizens don't see is the lowest-common-denominator thing in operation, that the idiot uncle is running everything and has been, the weakest link and missing link that gets its way because it must be cared for.

Actually, the idiot uncle, the neo-Confederate South, is our North Korea.

The region is retrenching as a racist substate, incapable of seeing to itself and its citizens. It's criminally deranged, with a history of leeching off other entities, racial or geographic. Let's let the uncle fester and fend. Well, now we'll have to pry the sucker off. 

It's the Republican political linchpin, the source of their evil power, with political nukes and terrorist tendencies. And, North Carolina, please quit pathetically claiming to be first in anything. You're now a disgrace: first, perhaps, only in malfeasance. 

Dear Suh:

Dear Governor McCrory:

You have shown that you can't govern the state. It's possible nobody can but you still need to resign. You had your chance and blew it. Go play golf. Hang out with your rich, ass-kissing friends. Go to church and pray to Jesus. We all know that incompetence never has consequences for conservatives so you can have a great time with all your cronies and crackpot friends.

Kiss-Me-gate

Donald Trump is just a boy who wants a big smooch from the whole world.

Uh-oh. No! Yikes! Watch out! It's his ass! 

Coming Events: The "Too Big For His Britches" Fantasy Tour

If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination for president what ensues will be interesting. No doubt not even Donald knows. He's improvising everything.

Most politicians are as programmed as their handlers can make them. One gaff and you're gone. But Trump's loose-cannon review is gaff-proof and un-programmatic. 

And he's not a sickness but a symptom, a mirror held up to a suck-ass country in way more trouble than it knows. He's an arrested id-savant riding a really big wave. 

We've had trouble with dignity before and played the hicks, but nothing like this. 

Seven Ways to Deal

Finding ways to deal with the anguish of watching Republican assholes destroy the world is hard. The following have been tested and are approved of by me:

Food (better is better)

Luau, with tiki torches (sixties style; kitschy)

Drink (alcoholic)

Finnish Sauna (a cure for everything)

Sex (the cure for everything)

Sleep (ah, forgetfulness)

Writing (about Republican assholes--works sometimes)

Kick Ass, Jesus

Be like Jesus. And kick ass. How is it our kids don't all turn out crazy, with the messages we give them. You know, though, I remember it made perfect sense to me, growing up. 

Or it didn't. Why worry about it. Self-contradiction seemed normal to me. What's crazy is trying to resolve everything. And it's prideful. Human limitation won't have it.  

So there's insanity in the drive for personal consistency, because it's impossible.

Chorus Line

Somebody tell me--you out there with the psychology degree--why I keep picturing our Republican nabobs carrying on like a gay men's chorus, right out of Busby Berkeley.

A whole, florid, song and dance routine. The Democrats are film-noire, practical and serious. I see it now, that the Dem's are drudges and that Republicans are escapists.

It must be a deep thing, with roots in religion, cynicism and fatalism. Republicans are into denial and at-odds with life. Who cares, except they insist that everyone live their way.

Meanwhile, enjoy the show. There will be plenty to escape from before it's over.

Maginot Republicans

The blue-blood, red-neck coalition, of screwers and screwees, is as odd a thing as you will find. With Trump we have a rich boy successfully playing to the rednecks.

On the Maginot scale of isolationism it's ranking pretty high. We are as well-knit into the world economy as we can be but workers think the net flow of goodness is now out.

It is for them but not for the rich folks. That comes later. And, since the rich are oblivious to everyone but themselves, we are seeing some conflict. The rich just want more.

When they say "America" they mean themselves. When they say "freedom" they mean theirs. When they squander money it's ours and usually to their benefit. They are a class. 

They envision an "America" with themselves in golf carts and everyone else caring for them in a servile way. They think they are being generous by employing anyone at all.

The rednecks vote for this out of ignorance. But exceptionalism, to which most Americans at least unconsciously subscribe, is racist so the roots of the trouble are everywhere.

We have become an unwitting empire and our time is up. We are on the downslope of the cycle of empires. The rich think they can weather anything. Maybe they can.

But Trump has turned their methods back on them. They don't know what he will do and they got used to being able to buy the government. See how they squirm.

Proto-Trump

How do you know what's proto-? You must infer it back from when you get there, wherever it is you were going before you knew it. Take Trump.

I mean, who knew? Pre-presidential he seemed like kitsch, something that plays off of something else and has a surrogate, cheesy status.

Herr Donald embraces inauthenticity to the point of being authentic about it, an exaggerated case of something inauthentic to begin with, being his own hawker.

It's hard to get a handle on, the layers of inauthenticity. Now the Republicanism of the past 50 years all looks like proto-Trump. They cultivated this. Look at Reagan. 

Look at Nixon and the Bushes. Appearance is everything. Reality is whatever you can spin it into. It gives you Trump, the spin-master and man of illusion.

He's obviously, overtly about ten un-American things at once and it passes as patriotism. Wow, we are kitsch, our entire country: exaggerated, cheesy and inauthentic.

What an odd feeling, like being a shell of yourself.

Ceteris Paribus

The Ceteris Paribus assumption gets unconsciously used all the time. Someone thinks they will be happier with more money, for example. Which they will, in an instant.

But it will not last. It's a simplifying tactic, removing from consideration all other variables, including time. It assumes everything outside the model stays the same.

Which is nonsense, but it's empowering nonsense. And it's grasping nonsense, taking things for granted in order to try to get understanding or control. That's not all bad.

But the larger context shouldn't be forgotten. Eve wants the apple. She's narrowed her vision down to the apple and thinks it will make her happy. Okay, she's got the apple. 

Oops. The price was paradise.

Forget Smart

You would think we would at least aspire to intelligence. Is that too much to expect?

It is, of the Tea Party/Trump people.

Indignant Nation

I love indignation. Alan Arkin always did it so well, as in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. Mix it with befuddlement and you've got gold.

But where is it when you need it? We need indignation and we get ennui. And the Russians have come. They're called Republicans.

I'm Shocked

We were warned. We were told that change was accelerating and that each new generation would see more of it than the last. 

That's the quantitative angle. It's the qualitative aspect that has me startled. I was as certain as I could be at one time about us.

I knew what we stood for. All of that is gone. I now doubt my original understanding. I can't make the connection to the mad men we are now. 

Ornery People

There's nothing ordinary about what's going on in America these days, a mass version of insanity and complete moral collapse. This, in the most powerful country in the world. 

Winning is everything. No one cares how you get there so it's not the best and the brightest but the most driven and unscrupulous in control of the structures and systems.

What was left of a veneer of civility is falling away. The roots of the country in Calvinism, a hatred of "the flesh" and a longing for the purification of death, have resurfaced.

Sadly, many good lives are lived within this but it's our Das Boot. Individuals and identifiable groups create contexts where it all makes sense. They have their stories. 

There are trajectories that are responsible and coherent and sane but one day those will all end in an unintelligible mess. Think of the Great Recession but bigger and worse. 

That collapse was created, chaos willed into being by the state-of-nature crowd, ornery people who are reassured by conflict and discord because it is what they believe in.

Welcome to prison-camp USA, a hell-hole run by gangs and thugs where only power matters and goodness lives in the corners and crevices hoping to survive from day-to-day.

There They Go Again

I feel about conservative mass hysteria the way so many of them reportedly feel about socialism. I would have a hard time defining it but I think I know it when I see it.

Actually, the "socialism" thing is a good example of their hysteria. It isn't even remotely a threat to the American state, but conservatives need a huge stable of bogeymen.

So, socialism us a threat. Everything is a threat. They live on threats. They live on resentment and a feeling if superiority, necessarily, stabilizing by-products of their fear. 

They traded in their consciences for certainty. Rationally, there is no certainty so they traded in their brains for fear. One aspect of reason is the ability to weigh things.

It's the ability to separate what's important from what isn't. The war in Iraq is important, just the kind of stupidity that takes down great societies. The war on Christmas isn't.

It isn't important because it doesn't exist.

Banning Homer

At their "funk-works" Republicans are said to plan what they will do when they have fully taken over the world. I understand they will ban Homer Simpson. 

Any and all evidence of Homer's existence will be eradicated. His imagined self will cease to be and all memory of him will wither away over time.

Most importantly all video images of Homer will be destroyed. He is obviously part of a liberal, atheistic, gay-commie plot to weaken America's moral fiber. 

Homer is a horrible role model. He isn't a model at all. Homer represents giving up and giving in to hopelessness and despair. He is that incompetent.

Instead, George W. Bush will be promoted as a model of masculinity. He persevered through every adversity and came through it all without a scratch.

It's a shame the same can't be said for the country but, well, stuff happens.

"The Decline of Western Civilization"

That was only cute when we thought it couldn't happen. 

That Faraway Look

It's not what you think. These guys aren't dreamers. I mean "faraway" as in "nobody home." And I'm thinking of Sean Hannity, Scott Walker and George W. Bush. 

I've heard that the look they have in the eyes is characteristic of fetal alcohol syndrome but, to be fair, it could be from another kind of mental defect.