Musk Denies Oxen Connection

While admitting that he was difficult, aggressive, and smelly when rutting Elon Musk has denied any connection with the arctic beasts. He prefers warmer climes, he said, trying to take the wind out of the sails of those saying there were physical and behavioral similarities. Musk was willing to own that he was hardy and adaptable, though, and that he thought he was most sexy when exerting himself, in the business world as both a creator of new entities and plunderer or purchaser of existing ones. 

This is Illustrative

There's so much of it going on the obvious gets lost. Musk buys Twitter. More and more money is spent on elections that are more unrepresentative and biased. Rich people tell the middle class they're fine or admit they're not and blame it on Democrats as though the middle class doesn't know something's wrong. The blame part, however, they fall for even though it's unbelievably obvious they've been screwed by being sold out to rich people. 

Sold out by Republicans. 

Rich people sold and bought things they didn't own, notably our government, which is called 'leverage' by them but by us it's called theft. Because they socialized the risk. They passed it onto us. Again, this was obvious long ago. That's where the indifference and disinformation come in. Firstly, and this was meant to be my original point, the degree to which they don't give a shit about us is infinite. Secondly and relatedly, they are absolutely drunk on power.

Oh, how good it feels to be inconceivably rich. They live in another world. 

A parallel universe. Scarily, this world is not real and it's exerting control over ours, the real real. So the disconnect is incomprehensible. Not colloquially it is actually incomprehensible. This works in their favor. They use it. They make out that they are like us. Nobody likes being taxed, for example. You're not supposed to like being taxed but you're supposed to like living in a just society with healthcare and parks and roads and museums and other good stuff. 

But they make out that taxing them is either counterproductive or unjust. Which are lies. Self-serving lies. I knew a guy who had about $20M which he subsequently lost. Meanwhile he had a lot of fun. Bought 500 acres of gorgeous, unspoiled property, for one thing. Not out in the boonies but ten minutes from a booming college town. The gravity of it was startling. I mean, he was like a huge planet or sun and we were like tiny asteroids or space debris. 

No mass. So the illustrative thing is Musk. And Trump. One in the private sphere and the other careening around in the public arena like a drunken sailor. It's just indifference. Pure indifference. The thing about how these people relate to the government and their interest in it is that the government enables their wealth but they no longer need it or so they think and it's the only thing big enough to constrain them so they want to disempower or control it. 

A combination of those would be fine. Thus we have the conservative death star which feels it's acting passively or in such a normal way -- just trying to sustain itself -- that it can't be faulted but it's getting people killed like crazy and destroying lives and is reflexively indignant and reactive when someone points it out. Oh, how could they? This only shows how insanely insensitive they are to anyone's needs but their own. But the contraption is carnivorous.

And the meat they're eating might be you. 

The Asshole's Apprentice

What is the source of anus-licking subservience? Take Mark Meadows. How does someone get to be so degraded? To want to reside among Trumpian ass cheeks?

This is not a lack. Not a failure or early stage in a person's evolution. This is an assertion. An end point and state in the development of someone with certain assumptions.

Assumptions that life is shit. That creation is shit. That there is no justice or accountability in the world. That that would be an insult to God because God is a dick. 

The Calvinist God is an asshole. The Calvinist God condemns and scorns what He has made. Thereby condemning, or at least impugning and sullying, Himself. 

Cool god they've got.

Recall, the Calvinist God is a Swiss creation. After they got done with watches. A watchmaker's god, impatient with and disappointed in creation. For its imperfection.

For its corporeality, errancy and messiness, The Calvinist God loves death. Because death is perfect. There's not a flaw in non-existence. Meadows is apprenticed to this. 

In love with excrement. Because his world is already shit. 

The Plunderer's Imperative

After all these years of sick fucks running rampant average people still don't get it. Plundering is more than a prerogative. It's an imperative. 

There's no point where they will be satisfied and feel secure and stop trying to screw us. Or, let's say, we wouldn't be aware of it. We would be dead. 

They will screw people who are already screwed. They will screw people who aren't born yet. Hell, they'll screw people posthumously. 

By rewriting history. So and so wasn't a hero who saved the world from tyranny he was woke. He was a sentimentalist who didn't understand plundering. 

Who didn't understand the plunderer's imperative. That it's screw or be screwed. That screwing is the will of God and the way of man.

Requiem for an Asshole

Could this be it for Trump?  

V=1/Q

This equation is for (V) the political viability of Republican candidates in relation to (Q) a measure of character and integrity. We are reminded of this by Kevin McCarthy's eagerness to reinstall a hate regime when Republicans regain control of the House. He's issuing threats, he's so overcome with animosity.  

Fate Tempted Me

I never went looking for trouble. I'm unambitious and averse to risk. I wanted a quiet life, security and a low level of environmental impact. I'm a person you want in your scheme because I'm scalable. 

If there were more like me a society would be better. No credit to me here. I fully admit I was an accident of nature and nurture, no reflection on anybody. But the non-scalable people came after me. 

The driven, destructive sorts. The assholes. People with issues and complexes. Mostly authority issues. They think somebody has to be on top. Therefore somebody has to be on the bottom. Me. Us. 

Anybody but them. Everybody but them. 

Basically, screwed. So, they want to be on top. They want to be screwers, not screwees. Making me a screwee. They came after me. Not I them. They came after those who want fairness and cooperation.

Those who want moderation and decency. I feel forced to defend myself. Against the assholes who would ruin things for the rest of us. I suppose we should organize. Whatever we're doing it isn't enough.

Because the assholes are winning. 

A Cologne for Conservatives

It's . . . Sedition. 

A base of egotism, resentment and fear with hints of smoking ruins and torched dreams. Then, a bright finish, and undertones of sweat, smeared feces and man-must will make this fragrance a win with the ladies. If not they won't be surprised when you move in on them anyway, like the cad you are. 

They'll have smelt it coming. Sedition. For the man who thinks he's sexy in spite of an ass-load of evidence otherwise. Because he doesn't give a fuck.

Will Herschel Still Be Welcome at Mar-a-Lago?

And how many mirrors are there at Mar-a-Lago? In relation to flattering portraits of Trump? 

Herschel is a loser but he was a prop. He was sure a winner once. And he has huge insult value. He's kind of a walking insult, something Trump loves. I say Herschel stays. 

What do you think? 

Why the Lies?

Why do Republicans lie? They want stuff most people don't want. In the long run, world domination. Like so many before them. At least in Bond movies, Bond. James Bond. 

So they've created a suspicious array of potions and elixirs that do nothing except make them rich. I take that back, they hurt people. Republicans sell lies. And shit. What else can they do? 

There's deceit and there's force. Compulsion. That's where we are now, at a turning point, The lies are failing. Too obvious to be sustained. So they're transitioning to force.

This is going to be interesting. We've seen in happen in before. There it seems swift, to be read about. Almost instantaneous. But it wasn't. So we're not seeing it clearly..

 A four-decade or more creep of corruption. And we had better wake up. 

All Juiced Up

Drink Trumpicana, the juice that gives Donald the energy to Make America Great Again! 

Eyes at all Costs

Arrogance and insularity are catching up with Zuckerberg. Meta itself is going to go meta, in the 'gone' sense of beyond. 

A Little White Music

White people are fortunate. On balance. As much as they aren't they have no one to blame but themselves. So they blame everyone else. This is called 'unloading.' It's the music of the white imperium. 

We Are So Surprised

Uncle Donald was just being himself. Tasteless, desperate and indefensible. A huge surprise, say some supporters. We didn't know he was such a rogue. 

Oh, right. 

The latest trading card ploy is just so laughably pathetic and bad. But many, many of his grunts will lap it up as they will whatever rubbish he puts out. 

Jump into the Fire

Who in the world, with any qualifications, will want to take over a Muskian trashed Twitter? On the other hand, there's not much left to lose and any normal leader will look good after Musk and probably not be blamed if Twitter implodes. So, it might be a cool gig. 

A Taste of Honkey

The world has had a taste of honkey. Endless wars, destruction, inequality and despair. Whatever anyone else has to offer it's time to try it. I'm not optimistic. The white world's impulses have infected and distorted everything. 

The Assault on Intelligibility

'Conservatives' need to believe that some people are born better than others. They're somehow inherently better. They mean them. This, of course, is bullshit. Self-serving bullshit. 

It's such obvious bullshit they have to widen the scope of their defense of it. Attack intelligibility itself. Life isn't unjust as an aspect or attribute it's totally fucking meaningless.

Conservativism? Does this sound conservative to you? Yet again, we find that in action it's a scam. There's some humane thinking under their banner. But the movement attracts nutcases.

Nutcases with huge primordial drives they have because they're a mess inside. A mass of discord and, usaually, enormous authority and daddy problems. They're Oedipal as hell. 

Negative Fucks

Can you give negative fucks? My answer is yes, that there's something beyond unenlightened self interest. Animals don't want to die, I don't think, but some humans do. They can't handle consciousness. 

They can't handle the awareness of their mortality and limitations. So they want to destroy everything. Really they're trying to anesthetize themselves. Not feel anything. Which takes practice.

Because it's the most unnatural thing imaginable. They train themselves in sociopathy, opportunistically. They practice on us but they really want to die themselves. I say we cut out the middlemen.

Give them what they want before they get us all killed. Prisons protect normal people from those who compulsively prey on others. And there are other means. But, don't empower them.

Don't abet them, for God's sake.

The Real Insurrection

A Republican House is impending. 'Insurrection' will then be redefined, by them, as Democrats asserting their right to vote and have a say in government. Because Democrats are traitors and have no rights. This is the official Republican position. 

A New Financial Future

Kevin McCarthy has announced a new, twenty-first century effort to stabilize the world financial system. It will be the best hope since the perfidious Democrats sank the gold standard as part of their plan to destroy America. Democrats hate America, Kevin made sure to remind us. 

Anyway, everything will be based on Trump Trading Cards, with the full faith and credit of Herr Donald, thereby privatizing the money supply and credit markets and eliminating the destabilizing element of political winds, partisan rancor and the incompetence of supposed experts. 

Politicians can never be trusted, Kevin said. Trump will become the world's first trillionaire. But that's incidental. 

Somebody had to do it. Who better to empower? He doesn't need the money, just as when he was president. And look how that worked out. No one else straddles the public and private spheres like Donald, the first billionaire president, now an ex-officio, at-large goodwill ambassador.

Everybody, after all, loves his sense of humor and wonderful friendliness and inclusive nature. Who else understood that only by embracing racists and deploring justice initiatives can you rebalance the world's chakras and attain peace while ensuring inconceivable wealth disparities?

His brilliance is still underestimated, McCarthy asserted in forgiving and patient tones. He had determined Trump to have twice the intellect of Einstein and more innate goodness than any certified llama. He doesn't mean the animal, of course, though Trump is kind of smelly and shaggy.

Financial genius, Ayn Rand acolyte and expert in austerity Paul Ryan will be dragged out of retirement to implement the plan (and to craft another bill to cut taxes on the rich). McCarthy ended his announcement with a chant and by lighting votive candles from the Mar-a-Lago gift shop.

Trump Trading Cards

Big news out of Mar-a-Lago. No, Trump hasn't talked his homie Vlad out ot killing people, though I wonder if Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Donald hadn't made fascism fashionable again.

We're talking Trump trading cards, with heroic depictions of Herr Donald. Will there be stats on the back? An asshole slugging percentage or unearned insult average? Whatever the figures, be skeptical.

Don-boy has been known to inflate, deflate, and fabricate, You wonder who his advisors are, most recently. And what it takes to get them to walk out the door in disgust. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy.

Kev will be putting (traitors) insurrection supporters in charge of important committees. He doesn't have much choice. They're all lunatics and he has to throw bones to the worst of them.

His hold is so tenuous. Fantastically degraded actors like Jim Jordan. The redneck imperium is here. What a coalition. Rich sociopaths and people who are ruled by a pig farmer out of the Philippines.

They are running the most powerful country in the history of the world. As for the cards, if you're thinking about investing, remember that everything about Trump is fungible. So the Trump scam continues,

Literal Democracy

That's all I want. How hard is this? 

They Started It

Republicans have returned us to playground-level functionality. Tit-for-tat and all that. Kids are little animals. Republicans are animals. So it makes sense. 

But it pisses me off when the equivalency, both-sides-are-to-blame thing arises. Because, according to the appropriate, applicable standard, Republicans are to blame for everything. 

Because they started it. 

Trolling Error

What kind of person chooses to be a troll? A frustrated loser. A resentful wannabe. What do they want to be? Anything but a loser. But since they lack character and talent all they do is destroy. 

They can't raise anybody up. Not even themselves where they presumably have some control. So they tear everything down. But they won't feel better, standing among the rubble and the ruins. 

Which is why they must be stopped. 

Polling Error

When the polls are wrong about elections we find out. We don't with popularity polls, approval ratings and opinion stuff. Biden keeps registering as unpopular but he isn't trying to win favor. He doesn't play to the cheap seats. Or the hoodlums, like Trump. 

He's trying to undo a lot of Republican damage, the fate of Democrats since the Nixon years. I think people secretly love and respect Biden or love and respect the job he's doing. In any case, his government is pretty rational and free of psychodrama. 

And he's been productive considering that Republican cooperation in wanting a responsible government is zero. They want the government destroyed and replaced by business interests. Which is only possible with the support of fundamentalist religious fanatics. 

That would be a real dystopia. I assume we don't want that but there's no way to poll it. Do you want to fuck your government up the ass and ruin the country? Are you a demented traitor and cospiratorial fantasist? Sometimes I think polling should be illegal. 

The Madman of Mar-a-Lago

Any argument about Trump's supporters loving him in spite of his flaws should have ended. But now, with the madman of Mar-a-Lago no longer able to pack the Supreme Court with hacks and 'deconstruct' the deep state, choose your delusion, it's evident enough they love him because he's a deranged piece of shit and a wrecking ball. Think if how inconceivable it is that the lunatics who shot out a chunk of the electrical grid in North Carolina would be Biden supporters. 

A Putin-seque response is appropriate for the perpetrators. Life at hard labor in Nome or the closest thing we have to Siberia. Or, they could be shot for treason. I'd be fine with that. It's hard to argue it wasn't sedition and a premeditated act of insurgency. What's insurgent at Mar-a-Lago is a newly strong commitment to overthrow. Herr Donald has put a contract on our government. Of the Vinny kind, as the car guys used to say. Our country, ye olde unum e pluribus. 

 It would no longer be our country if he had it his way. It would be his.

The Mosh Pit

Musk has turned Twitter into a mosh pit. What that means I don't know. Good place to mosh now anyway. But where does that get you? And I like punk. But I'm not sure granting head-banging a ton of influence is particularly wise.

Sick Fuck

I thought Trump was in trouble when he came out with 'Ron DeSanctimonious,' It didn't sound like him. Maybe he has insult writers and someone else came up with it. Trump has an ear for an insult. It might be his only talent -- hard to tell when a guy is born that rich in America, because people will suck up to you, do business with you and marry you because you're rich. You never know if they're sincere. In Trump's case, he didn't care. Because he's not a normal person. He's a sick fuck. 

Mr. America

Okay, let's judge Trump like they do in one of the pageants he used to run.

Talent. Poise. Swimsuit. Overall appearance, including hair and in a gown. And he would have to be interviewed and give a little talk, maybe about how he wants to make the world better by overturning the last election and using the federal government to destroy the lives of those who resist him. 

'Let Trump Be Trump'

How's that working out for you, Republicans? They had their Night of the Long Knives, in painful slow motion. A loyalty purge. 

Then, a Reichstag moment. But in politics, as in business, Trump turns out to be massively incompetent. Thank God. More of a Mussolini.

But a führer is waiting in the wings. A number of them. Competing factions. The money is on DeSantis. His Nazi cred is high.

Meltdown at Mar-a-Lago

It's high noon. 

And Trump is shooting it out with himself. On Truth Social bullets boomerang. But Trump, reactive as ever, keeps firing. He's outwardly calling for a coup. Maybe not a coup, technically, since it's not modeled relative to the law, or its lack, or politics.

The model is business.

Call it an attempted hostile takeover. By a fantastically rich capital fund that believes in leverage--massive debt--to mitigate risk and maximize possible returns. It sounds like voodoo because it is. Risk has to go somewhere. Guess where. Surprise! Onto us.  .

All the risk is on us. Rewards to them. 

Republicans have this shit figured out. They've tested and perfected it in the private sector. But they want to own everything. Only the government, reflecting the collective will, might stop them. So they mean to stop it. And they have. They have this down.

The Plunderer's Guide to the Galaxy

Call me suspicious, but I don't trust these tycoons and their interest in outer space. Rapacious urges may be at work, insatiable drives and a longing for opportunities to have a shot at unspoiled territory. Virgin realms. Isn't this the lesson of America, how great it is to have a natural resources free-for-all? 

Free shit for everybody! 

Not for everybody, as it happens. Wealth has a way of accumulating at the top. And those people of ensuring it stays there. Even after they're dead. Maybe they feel awe and wonder looking up at the night sky. I don't know. But I bet Bezos and the rest feel a kind of lust. They wonder what's there to be had. 

By them. They want to make it theirs. 

Herschel Walker for President

Why are we messing around with this? The point of running Walker for the Senate is as an insult. A show of contempt. For liberals, the government, the country, the idea of America, and for life in general. Let's get it the fuck over with and have him run for president in 2024. If Republicans insist on having us in the ditch I'd rather jump. The only choice we have left might be whether to be pushed and dragged or to go voluntarily, they're so determined. 

Dreck the Halls

Conservative media is offering hate for the holidays. Hate the woke. Hate the gays. Hate the trans. Hate Biden and Pelosi. Hate antifa and the other made-up threats. Save the rich and screw the poor. Women, children and the elderly first. Not for the lifeboats. Sink them. Throw them overboard. Fuck them over and deprive them of security. And Merry Christmas from conservative media.

Burl Ives makes me violently angry.

Mostly, singing Christmas music. I can't help it. But he's dead. Maybe that makes it better. And he was great in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

Separately Unequal

Wealth inequality--which. is to say, inequality--is hard to reverse without trashing the economy and hurting everyone but it must be tried. Better to take the hit and rebuild than a slow decline. 

Quantum Trump

Everything is uncertain about Trump. Location, mass, movement. He's relative. Or, I should say, Trump is uncertain. A slippery character and shape shifter. You can never know where he is. Because there's nothing there. He's not a thing he's a fragment. He's missing parts. The ones that make you human. 

Muskian Shithole

Twitter is a Muskian shithole. It didn't take long. I've never been on it but I think it's a shame. 

Let's Make a Deal

I've had enough of Trump. He's running for president again to avoid prosecution and possibly jail. There's another way out. Cut him a deal.

He forfeits all his assets. We leave him $100M cash. He leaves the country. Hungary, Saudi Arabia and North Korea will be happy to have him.

Maybe Scotland. Scots love nothing better than battle and kissing rich ass. An odd people, the Scots. Wealthy Scots kiss their own ass, but that's another story.

Trump agrees to shut the fuck up.

That, or Rikers. He goes in with the general population. Okay, maybe Butner. Tell me why not, if  'the law' means anything. The kids go too, by the way.

The grandkids can return one day but they better behave. We'll be watching. 

I Invent a Religion

I follow a number of 'conservative' sites to keep my game up, a couple of which are Catholic. The misunderstandings there are rife so I'm inventing a new religion, a takeoff on Catholicism, which is right on many things. This will be a Catholicism that embraces the distinction between immanence and transcendence radically and in a new way. Meaning, no afterlife. No resurrection. No heaven or hell. 

And, no god. But, all God. (I foresee droves of converts.)

Transcendence is beyond space and time. We have no admittance there. It's a matter of faith. Immanence puts us in a place of necessary discipline and structure (that or chaos, the anti-logos) where we can glimpse the truths of transcendence and have them guide us, sometimes realizing the transformation. True spiritual traditions have to come to terms with this divide and dichotomy. They do so in varying ways.

Such as using stories (parables) or metaphors. 

For example, any talk of the eschaton is not about an event in time. It's about an event over time, our eschaton. Every day we live is one less day we have. This is not a parable, I know. I cite it because it's a huge mistake to take it literally. Put it in space-time. The point is to convey urgency in a situation that couldn't be better designed for complacency, apathy and ennui. Life. The point is that life is a gift. 

However mixed.

One not to be taken for granted. We live in an ongoing emergency, that of our mortality, which is hard to grasp. But the key is to grasp it well enough to live with love and joy while we can, as best we can, if not celebrating our mortality through radical acceptance, having a death-bed perspective all the time or as much as possible. The utility of end times talk is to convey that our lives are always ending. 

Slipping through our fingers. This same reasoning applies to everything. Literalism is heresy. In the Bible, or wherever there is truth. The Catholic Church was accused at one time of being stuck in the Middle Ages, a time of illiteracy. Right on. The Church had assumed the complete immersion of the laity in corporeality in an uncontrollable world, providing no abstract understanding to back up the rules. 

Take sin, mortal and venial. 

The Church gave us rules. No end of rules and lists. Which is insulting to people who can understand the abstract difference. That a venial sin is a goof and a mortal sin is denying that life is intelligible, a challenge to the existence of God, or even a direct denial of God's existence. Rules weakened the Church. And the delusion of purity in isolation or quarantine, in this case the purity of the clerisy, was in effect.

So the Church sowed the seeds of its weakness because the polarity is not there. Having a weak laity took down the clerisy which took down the Church, notably in the 1960s when literalism took hold. I miss the Latin which was a real loss but also a symbolic one. The Church had always rejected literalism, which is a structure of containment, and embraced symbolism, which is art, which is infinite if inscrutable.

Inscrutability or paradox is the idea, an expression or acceptance or embrace of human inadequacy and limitation. Maybe a celebration of insufficiency because, well, it's all we've got. It's all I've got. Party down. Back to that uncontrollable world. The big change is there, in control. The strides have been immense. So much so we're sometimes indignant when we can't control things. But then there's death.

We want this to be as convenient as possible. I want mine to be as convenient as possible, determining how it happens since I can't control that it happens. Thank God for morphine. A gift of God. Anyway, I can't fault myself or anyone for this but what have we lost? What have we lost in our resulting arrogance? I think the Brit aristocracy played polo to practice war skills when there was no war, an infrequent thing.

And hunting. I think we need to work to stay familiar with our limitations. As an antidote to arrogance. Humility becomes us. I've glimpsed the transformation and it's all love. The big embrace. And all humility. But nothing describes it. Which is what I'm trying to convey. It's a matter for art. Art, broadly, is uncontainable. Literalism, biblical or constitutional 'originalism' or whatever, are death and anti-art. 

As in the 'Antichrist.' Literalism is utopianism, perfectionism, hypocrisy and death. Death to humanity, kindness and decency. And, usually, actual killing since it makes life meaningless and nothing but a struggle for power and control in an ultimately uncontrollable world. We don't need an afterlife, a reward, to celebrate creation or feel good about life. We don't need a judgment day to behave.

Has it worked so far? I don't think so. We know transcendence because the seeds of it, as the good books rightly say, are within us, but needing some cultivation. We don't need anything else. Some discipline and an openness to inspiration are all. The head and the heart, working together and oriented to the higher things. None of the Bible works in space and time. Heaven is a state on earth. Not a state like that. 

You know what I mean. A condition. Containment is not a condition for love. It's antithetical to love because it seeks power. Containment of people, above all. Individually we're temporal beings. Maybe collectively, since we seem to be choosing to destroy ourselves. Because we're disappointed, presumably, about life. But that's a choice. And a bad one. Choose life. Create the day, as I say to myself.

It's an increment of time I can handle. Beyond that I often don't do well. Many people don't do well in this odd space-time thing we're stuck in because we all need help. And helping one another is why we're here. All we need is love. We want to think we're inherently different from animals. But we're as different as we behave. The good news: we can do it. It's not hard. Which is what's so sad about failing. 

  . . . (ongoing) 

 

Small is Terrible

So called 'conservatives' favor the consolidation of everything into huge combustible fireballs of tenacious gravity and inhuman capability, finally culminating in a single black hole or dark star of destruction. Monopolization, if you like, of everything and at all levels. Trump is representative. 

No light emanates from there. All the energy is inward until perfect entropy and interstellar unity is reached, in the perfection of death.

This is due to fear. At the core of conservatism is existential fear. Primal fear. It's the one irreducible thing, leading them to armaments, mobilization and attack. Preemptive attack. Justified, in their paranoid way, by projection. Of couse it's unconscious. Because they're sick. The sick fucks of the universe.

They will get us all killed, eventually. Meanwhile, maximizing misery will have to do.

I'm on Fire

There's nothing like fire. Maybe water. They're so cool. Wonderful when harnessed or we'll-used, but so incredibly indifferent. Fire is scarier. I'd rather drown than burn. We had a flood, reportedly, Noah and all. Now we're burning. By choice. Combustion, which we chose. Some passively but others, like evangelical Christians, want everything to burn. They think they'll be saved. 

Sucked up to heaven in glory. We'll all burn. Keep that in mind with the political discord. They want the world to end. In fire. And they want us to burn because they think it's just. We're not believers. The kindling is stacked all around and lesser fires are everywhere. But keep in mind they want this. To set the world on fire. And they're incredibly driven and running everything. 

Maestro Donald Conducts Overthrow Orchestra

Stewart Rhodes is going to jail. All this does is illustrate for me how it's a crime in America to be black or poor. Equal justice is a joke. Rhodes was Tex Watson to Trump's Manson. And that's before we note that trying to overthrow the government is now a franchise or sport. Maybe a sports franchise. A board or video game with real people and deaths.

They will get less time than a lot of low-level drug dealers, be called heroes and compared to Jesus and the Apostles and have admirers and groupies and cadres and cliques. From jail. We know those women who have a thing for inmates. There are women who have a thing for priests. A sexual fetish. 'Priest-fuckers' a Jesuit I once knew called them. 

I allow for fucked-up people. I know there will be crazies, sociopaths, and a percentage of every kind of mental abnormality. 'Abnormality,' I say, wondering what normal is anymore, when nutcases are running everything. Speaking of Jesuits, I recall a book by one that said there are higher and lower things in people. The higher must rule the lower.

Similarly for a society. Higher and lower elements. Where would you say we are with that? With a Republican Party that seems to function to find the biggest piece of shit they can and then slam him into office? Which they can do because they've gamed the system. Up to the Supreme Court which they own. They bought it. Like everything else. 

Justice is a joke in America. The Republican model for America is a family. A crime family. Dad is a drunken, cruel, authoritarian monster who can't be stopped. Country needs to head to the crisis center. We're being ravaged. Our political system is flexible for a reason, to allow us to do what we must to stop this kind of shit. We lack the determination. 

Throwing Mucus

The holidays are upon us again. Pandora is playing Christmas music on the system. The lights and ornaments are out and will soon be up. But the spirit eludes me. There is much hate in the land. A new fascist movement has arisen, internationally but as always America is the driving factor. 

Just as it was in the 1930s when American laissez-faire capitalists trashed the world economy and gave us WWII and the Holocaust. Their partners today, southern racists, were of course active then and influenced Hitler. Who knows to what degree but the racists and plunderers are back, wrecking everything.

They are giddy with the joy of destruction.

And, this holiday season, I want to extend to them a huge 'fuck you.' Fuck you and your children. Fuck you until you die, may it be soon. I will not offer the olive branch of cooperation. I will not offer excuses and rationalizations. Go to hell. Stick a tree-topper ornament up your ass and spin on it.

DeSantisland: A Hate Alternative to Disney

Just wondering if Ron DeSantis would put forth another message of hate and exclusion in celebration of Thanksgiving. He laid it on after the election, in particular attacking the 'woke mob' which doesn't exist. But since when did non-existence bother Republicans? They've been making shit up forever. It's what the party is for. And they want all their opposition to non-exist. To get out of the way.

Let their rights be fucked forever. 

DeSantis won by a lot. Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on in Florida. They've always had their share of rednecks. Rednecks are losers who resent everybody and own a lot of guns. Apart from that, I don't know. I suppose Florida has a lot of old people who don't give a fuck about the future. Maybe we should have voting restrictions on old people because they aren't invested in the future.

And they might have dementia so they vote for lunatics like DeSantis and Trump. Trump supporters should be excluded from voting since they support sedition and that's illegal. There must be a glitch in the system or they would all be in jail. A big glitch, because a constitutional framework can't include the means of its own destruction. Or maybe it can and all the rational people should spin off. 

Republicans want the government to be a corporation and corporations do this shit all the time. They morph all over the place. Opportunistically. Improvisationally. Floridians and Texans make out that yankees want to move there because they've trashed their cities with liberal values. But it's the weather. And the end of the relevance of the resources and know-how that built those cities up. 

And, that enabled them to support corrupt, spoiled states like Florida and Texas that never treated workers like anything but serfs. And black people and minorities like anything but slaves, inputs, raw materials and expendable stuff. They were expendable. Oh, for the days with darkies singing in the fields and giving up their women for massa's satisfaction. DeSantis wants to take us back to that.

As artificial as Disneyland but with a lot of bite. A theme park of hate.

Guess Who's Cumming All Over Your Dinner

It's Donald Trump, again. The great defiler is officially back. 

Cyber Stickup Deals

Buy this shit or we'll kill this dog . . . er . . . economy.

The Accidental Tsarists

I'm pondering, do Republicans know what they're doing or is it all brain-stem stuff? Animal drives. If they want a monarchy, why don't they say so? With talk of a reign of Trumps, one after another, this would be a real dynasty, not like the Kennedy and Bush jobs. More pomp. More circumstance. Lots of serfs scrounging around. And then, maybe, a revolution. 

Where Beagles Dare

Having put it off forever I finally read a first-hand account of the unbelievable shit-show of the Trump White House and I'm still trying to comprehend it. Clearly, for Trump it was a takeover. A leveraged buyout. The executive branch, and the country, for that matter, were his to do with as he pleased. It was up to others to rein him in if they could and, good luck, because he never met a law he didn't think he could break with impunity. He had never been a competent businessman, after all, only a snake oil salesman, a bungler, a rogue, a charlatan and a fraud. 

So Trump's end of it I can kind of understand. I defer to the wisdom of Animal House. The loaning of the Cadillac. The owner is told, when the inevitable happens, what did you expect? You give something nice to people who have no respect for anything and it will get trashed. Ergo, it's your fault. The part I can't understand is the ass-kissers, crotch-sniffers and anus-lickers. Almost all, for example, of the Republican elected officials in Washington. Among the vampires I'm sure it was higher. Among the lobbyists, arms-dealers, pollution-peddlers and so on, I mean. 

Washington is full of them. Even after WWII it was like a sleepy college town, with the federal government as the college. Eisenhower certainly saw the potential of the parasites and warned us. Beware the parasites. We did not heed him. Early on, it was bipartisan. But Republicans eventual bought the franchise on corruption. As an investment. And it paid off. As an investment. Oaths be damned. Legality and democracy and responsible government have nothing to do with it. They are in it for the money and the power. That explains the crotch snffers and anus lickers. 

So far, so good. I have progressed in my understanding. At an abstract level. Empathetically I'm still nowhere. I can't get there. Somehow I stumbled on Berchtesgaden. Hitler's hangout. So I researched it a bit and then I got it. How it must feel. The incredible high of the power. The seamlessness of it, since the feeling is with you constantly. Mark Meadows and the rest of them might have to eat shit to Trump but, what a small price to pay to be so close to inconceivable power. Weirdly, I don't think Trump feels powerful. Just isolated and scared. But he's a sick fuck. 

So the beagles flock to Berchtesgaden. I mean, Mar-a-Lago. Where they lick and sniff and try to follow a scent to a pot of gold and loll in the sun. I don't mean to impugn beagles. I love dogs. But, you get the point. Dogs are supposed to be dogs. Republicans are not. 

Just Asking

Entirely in the abstract, now that Trump is no longer president, I ask if someone with the opportunity would have been morally and ethically justified in employing the 'Magnussen solution' by blowiing his brains out? When he was president?

I mean, given what we now know? I pose this as a hypothetical, obviously, since he's no longer president. But it's worth thinking about. I stress, as Tucker Carlson so often has, that I'm only raising the point and not suggesting anybody do anything. 

Everything is art.

Everything is art. What we usually call 'art' is the good stuff. Or the stuff that tries to be good. Or the stuff that conforms to some category, like painting. But everything is art. Because life is entirely creative. 

Individual Wealth and Waste

I'm convinced that individual wealth must be curbed. It results in social distortions. On the other hand, I believe in a differentiated, diverse and even hierarchical society. I come not to abolish wealth but to diminish it. 

What Passes for Class . . .

among Republicans can be viewed in a clip of a 'Let's Go Brandon' chant at an LIV tournament with Trump, Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Greene enjoying the moment. 

Hackathon

Both Bush and Trump got hundreds of thousands of people killed, had adminstrations that ran on corruption and ill-will and, incidentally, they got into power in stolen elections and had negative mandates but did whatever they wanted anyway. Never mind. 

With Republicans taking control of the House though more chicanery enabled by a Supreme Court dominated by hacks, there will be plenty investigating going on. Of things the caliber of Hunter Biden's laptop, Hillary's emails and other imaginary scandals. 

Prince of Whales

Who comes to mind? 

You're Only as Fucked as You Feel

Republicans are extremely committed to their corruption. All-in, as they say. For the war criminals of the Bush years it makes sense. They could have gone to jail. They should have gone to jail. Probably too late now. It's not too late for the Trump crowd. The corruption in the Trump administration was laughable. In a dark, morbid kind of way since they, too, got hundreds of thousands of people killed. Americans, in this instance. Not that Americans didn't get needlessly killed in the Bush years.

The Trump boys did it with incompetence, ignorance, arrogance and vanity. Recall Trump's wanting a show of 'gratitude' before releasing supplies to suffering people, supplies that were not his and belonged to the public. What a lowlife highlight. And recall his considering whether those who were being ravaged were Democrats, who were disproportionately affected earlier on, or Republicans who were affected more later by being stupid enough to listen to Trump. A superlative asshole move. 

I'd say it's up there with Bush using 9/11 to put through a bunch of stupid partisan shit, like cutting taxes on the rich while burning through enough money to rebuild the country's entire infrastructure in the process of destroying an entire region of the world, accomplishing nothing and creating over 30 million refugees. Bush also crashed the world economy just like Republican laissez-faire capitalists did in the 1920s thereby empowering Hitler. So he caused the autocratic upsurge we see today. 

But Republicans are in denial. They're passing laws against truth. In Florida and Texas, for example, so white children will never learn what their daddies and granddaddies and on back did in the culture wars. They kicked some ass. And we see how powerful that denial is because we can't do anything that makes sense. Only make rich people richer. Period. Forever. End of story. That's what corruption is for. And the American economy. Rape the world, if you must. But the rich got to have more.

Florida Fuckups Dominate Race

Rick Scott and Donald Trump sabotaged their own party out of egotism and arrogance, resulting in an election favoring Democrats more than almost anyone expected. Having their heads so far up their asses they took risks offering little hope of reward but it scared people into voting for Democrats. 

We are accustomed to this from Donald, who got hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans killed with his incompetence. But Scott couldn't keep his mouth shut and followed Newt Gingrich down the hole of nearly admitting openly how he intended to screw his fellow citizens. Close enough, anyway.

Even if they couldn't articulate it American voters understood he was after them, out to take away every bit of security they have. Simply because he's an asshole. From a party of assholes. And a state ruled by assholes, the Free State of DeSantis, where they've taken the Gator identification too far.

My Net Worth

My net worth as a voter is supposed to be the same as Sheldon Adelson or Charles Koch, may they rot in Hell and die a horrible death, respectively. It is not. How many fifths of a man am I, then, I ask. We need a new denominator in that one, to capture the proportional difference in dollar reserves. And that, my friends, is American democracy. 

Congratulations

I want to congratulate J. D. Vance. He sold his soul and got something for it. So many others didn't get shit. Having mortgaged his humanity for votes we'll see how it goes for Mr. Vance. Will he hang in with Trump? Trump was standing right there, as he would have to be, when his own ego blew up in his face. Huge shit-splattering going on. Will Vance get splattered? Will he distance himself? 

We will see. But soul-selling is notoriously risky. Vance, anyway, has proven his own book to be bullshit. Rednecks are running rampant. Hillbilly culture isn't dead it spread. Gone mainstream. Whole country is an ungovernable feud--I wanna be a Hatfield!--and celebration of ignorance. Guns are every-fucking-where. People shoot one another for sport. It's the redneck way. And America. 

All Worn Out

One would think--I would think--that being an asshole takes lots of energy. Lots of drive. Lots of time and resources. Hate is not normal to be in all the time. That's not a natural state. It's exhausting. Exhibit A is 'conservative' media, a disinformation metaverse, and all the money and effort and ornery it takes to maintain the hate. All the stoking and stroking. These are business people. 

They want bang. Returns. So they fooled us into funding our own demise. 

When you get down to it they've found ways to make it pay, even. Kochists not only aren't regulated they cut their own taxes which they richly deserve to pay. The point is, the further you get from reality the more resources it takes. It's a rule in ecology. A monoculture, like a weed-free lawn, is the most unnatural thing imaginable. So it takes massive energy subsidies to make and maintain. 

And there's stability in diversity. Anything else is unstable as hell.

Same with the white hegemony. The white boy hegemony. Every blade of grass a white man. Women haven't been empowered the way we like to think. Mostly bought off, which I suppose is more benign than force though the religious wing sold their souls for certainty. We are the weeds. Democrats and minorities. 'They must be eliminated.' Very Vader-esque. But he's Luke's father. 

We too are in a genealogy of waste and destruction. Of harming nature which is suicidal and self-hating. We're implicated. Not as bad by a long shot as the Kochists but that's how they get away with it. They throw us bones. And we're so rich the bones are nice and meaty and fatty and great. We need a break. I don't mean a rest I mean we need to step back. The way we're living is crazy. 

Responsible people are creating a surplus that's stolen and used against them. Nuts.

A Disturbance in the Farce

The diapered dirigible of Trump's political charade is in trouble, leaking gas and needing a thorough ass-wipe and rebranding. Tie it to a mast for a while, Herr Donald. A mast at Mar-a-Lago. The neighbors will love it. Or we might be looking at a Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity! 

Mo' Ron

DeSantis is the real thing. His entire identity is tied up in hate. Hating his fellow citizens. What Democrats are DeSantis is not. As a point. We used to feel that way about Nazis. We understood ourselves as what they weren't. Now being a Nazi is fine among Republicans. Being a racist is fine. Being part of an identity movement is fine. Wishing your fellow citizens ill is good. Getting people killed is fine. 

So DeSantis and the Republican Party are an unbelievable fit. This guy is spitting out hate with his wife and children right there. And Republicans are SO worried about improper influences on children. DeSantis is a Nazi. When he says 'woke' we're talking about people. When he says 'mob' we're talking about nothing. The 'woke mob' doesn't exist.  But mobs exist among Republicans. 

They're replete with mobs.

Proud Boys. Militias. Capitol attackers. One-Percenters. The morons in Charlottesville that Trump loved. All the people who show up, often with guns, in groups to intimidate other people. Boogaloos. Oath Keepers. It's hard to keep up but the fascisti, being cowards, love to go out in groups and scare people. DeSantis went to Yale. He's more a Heydrich or Goebbels. Educated. Nicely turned out. Not illiterate.

Well spoken if hate is your thing. When he talks about the woke mob to begin with there is no mob. That's a lie. He's inventing threats to stoke fear and create hate. And, the 'woke' are doing nothing wrong, apart from not even being a group. They have rights like everybody. But not in Florida. According to Ron. Which should be illegal if it isn't but Republicans never cared, going back to segregation days.

The good old days. When America had apartheid. They like criminality. Selectively. 

The right kinds of criminals. Criminals who are on their side. Or who are rich as shit. After 9/11 Bush should have called for an end to anonymous international banking, tying it to money laundering and terrorism. Which is true. But tax cheats and arms profiteers and shady conglomerates are his peeps. Republicans love power. They'll do anything for power. And DeSantis is now their go-to thug. 

The Weekly Sack of Shit Returns

I gave up on my Weekly Sack of Shit series because it couldn't capture Republicanism. It was like heralding crushing one termite. Not only was it hopeless it felt counterproductive because it aided the illusion that something had been accomplished when nothing had. 

On the other hand, crushing that termite felt good. Thus this week I found myself wanting to crush the termite Ron DeSantis. I suspect he's a termite queen. A breeder. A propagator. And fertile, just the thing if you want hate rot. Because he's all about one thing, the hate. 

In that spirit I bestow upon Ron the award, for all the good it will do. I never dreamt Republicans could come up with a bigger piece of shit than Bush. I couldn't imagine it, a failure on my part. And they came up with Trump who we know blew the curve. Now we have DeSantis.

A normal person can't imagine the evil he represents. So he carries on eating our house down by breeding hate. He doesn't lower himself to the actual munching, it being beneath him. He has followers for that. But when you lean up against a structural member it might crumble. 

Voting, e. g. Without it the house falls. And it's the work of DeSantis or someone like him. 

McCarthy Hate Continues in Expected Victory

Kevin McCarthy, as immensely powerful as he is a piece of shit, won't let go of the hate. In his latest comment on the expected Republican takeover of the house he had to mention Pelosi, in a meme slur at this point, since gracious behavior in the new Republican Party is a sign of degeneracy. The total moral inversion this represents only continues to worsen. The bottom hasn't yet been found. 

Shithead Wins in Ohio

Unrepentant degenerate J. D. Vance has won in Ohio, cementing that state's status as a redneck hellhole. There are also many reactionary Catholics in Ohio so Vance, a convert, is appropriate there too. I read his book which was garbage. My Amazon review shows I saw through Vance's scam early. 

I'm proud of that. 

He's the cream, he thinks, who rose to the top but he's a turd that floats, a floating turd, too dumb to see that his Mamaw was bigoted scum. I saw it, when he didn't. Mamaw's line on Vance's sister's husband was 'he's a saint' which is, of course, her version of the old slur about the 'cult of the saints.'

A slur against Catholics. So Vance is a cultist. 

Several times over, taking it up the ass from Trump and Thiel, from the latter maybe literally. We don't know what went on in private. As Tucker likes to say I'm only asking the question. Other questions arise. How degraded will he be in action. Jordanesque, like another Ohioan? High bar, there.

Or low, depending on how you look at it. 

Pure Evil

Democrats don't want to say it but Republicans are evil. Republicans are saying it about Democrats but that's what evil does. It doesn't care. Their indecency is on display. We thought we'd escaped from the old stories. We could study them, cross-culturally and such, and see them recreated in modern versions. Like Star Wars. But they didn't pertain anymore. In escaping from want, to the extent we had, we thought we'd escaped from the demons within us. At least some of them. Were we ever wrong. 

It wasn't about want. Cruelty isn't about deprivation it's about fear. Maybe love deprivation, but, that's another matter. Technical sophistication has nothing to do with ignorance. Or real intelligence. They're on different tracks. A geeky 'genius' can be evil as hell. Maybe more likely because of his detachment and insecurity. You know the type. Tell me you don't have someone in mind. Anyway, as is often the case it happened slowly then in a rush. A tipping point or critical mass was reached. 

And it was a simple story. An old story. Selling one's soul. Republicans sold their souls for power. It's been written about. We watched it happen. Through the Southern Strategy. Play on race and get votes. Reagan did it and then treated Falwell like the useless, sick yokel he was. Bush was a turning point. A hopeless degenerate and congenital fuckup. Now he paints and collects his federal retirement check. Remember, he was an employee. It was hard to see through all the bullets, oil and arrogance.

They all played the race game. The racism game. 

And they won. So the devil is here to collect on that debt. As always the innocent and powerless will suffer. Are suffering. Have suffered. Republicans have the power but their souls are gone. It leaves a big hole. The souls are destroyed. Fragmented and obscured. Don't bother looking. But look at them. Just at them. The winners, still struggling for more because nothing is enough. Not when your soul is gone. How are they different from Darth Vader?  Where are our Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca?

I want to be Chewbacca. I kinda look the part. But that's another story. 

Pelosi Preview

The attack on Paul Pelosi is but a preview. As though we hadn't seen enough. Still, it's stunning. But get used to it. And, if it had been worse, if Pelosi had been maimed or killed, it would be no different. Sure, more cover-your-ass mutterings from Mitch or another piece of shit but they would be loving it since Democrats have been asking for it and deserve to be disempowered by any means. And retribution for past sins is fine. It's open season on Democrats. And Republican identification comes with a hunting license.

A Simple Desultory DeSantis

This guy is not an opportunist. Maybe to a small degree. He's a determined autocrat. An arrogant asshole. A born killer and absolutely committed to his mission, to disempower Democrats and establish a single-party state. Just like autocrats everywhere.  

He seems more organized and logical than he is. The consistency is in his drive and determination. In that sense it's a cohesive thing. Like an animal hunting. He's focused. Focused by his feelings of superiority and contempt for other beings. For everyone.

In that respect he's like Trump. He despises almost everyone. Those who dispute with him and the lowlies who serve him. He respects only power. Unrestrained power. Which he wants. Probably as president. Then he will ruthlessly crush anyone he wants.

But he's not inspired or inspirational. Rather, he's a drudge. An enforcer. In spite of his obvious ambition he seems to be working for someone else. I think he's working for the Force. Not that one but Darwin's. He thinks people shouldn't interfere with nature.

With its wonderful heirarchies and brutality. God made the world a mean, vicious, competitive, nasty and indifferent place full of suffering. It's an insult to God to try to make it nice. So DeSantis is fighting to make the world nasty and brutal and unjust.

In the name of God.

Dying for a Lie

Putin is getting a lot of his people killed for some very narrow interests. Possibly only his own. George Bush did a much better job of it. 

We Love Lunatics

Lucille Ball was too brash for me, However, I loved The Honeymooners. All in the Family I never watched. Couldn't get interested. Married With Children I never watched. I think I might have liked it. I'm not a fan of network TV, not even Seinfeld, though I know it's a matter of taste.

 

Put me in Guantanamo, make me watch most network TV, and I would tell you anything. Forget waterboarding, but that would work too. Use Baywatch. Sadist? Start with waterboarding. If it would save my family I might hold out for a while. I always hated politics. It seemed like torture to me. 

Most of the time. But when you score you score big. Civil rights. All of FDR. Preventing wars and nuclear holocaust. The good old days. When there was some national cohesion. Or so we thought. It was an illusion. There was always division. With modernity and desegregation it rose up. 

Now division is everything. Hate. And everything is a show. All politics, no policy. As a show it sucks. Republicans choose lunatics as a display of contempt for governance. Not our government, but the idea of cooperation and a common good as a whole. Libertarians do this to you. 

A return to a state of nature. They favor savagery since they're already on top.

Butterflies Are Free to be Terrorists and Murderers

I thought I would try making something up as outrageous as Republicans to see how it feels. I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know once I figure it out. 

The Fugitive Wall Law

Republicans are obsessives. Obamacare was an unextreme law passed fairly. But it helped average people  and, to the extent it didn't, it was because of Republican obstruction and sabotage. Obstruction befrore it was passed and sabotage after. 

It raised taxes a little. On rich people. Did that destroy the economy as Republicans claimed it would? Of course not. On the other side of the equation, when Republicans want something they will do anything to get it. Fuck the law. 

So it is with the border wall which has huge symbolism and emotional, psychic investment. A symbol of division and hate, if it weren't obvious. But this is old news. They've been doing it for decades. It's more flagrant now.

More confrontational and aggressive. Take Doug Ducey. Sure he wants a wall. But it has nothing to do with anything real. It fulfills psychological personal, political needs. So he's gone combative and rogue because it's in vogue. 

Illegal, in other words. Daring the feds to come after him. Back in the day the Fugitive Slave Law showed what liars the racists were. States rights? Not for Yankees. When northerners tried not to enforce the law southerners went nuts.

They were always reactive. So Ducey is lining up shipping containers to make a wall that will not work but it will have bad environmental consequences. He doesn't give a shit. They care only about themselves, the crazy fuckers.

Truth Social Swamp

Truth Social is turning out to be such a handy indicator of conspiracism and criminal intent you have to wonder if it isn't an FBI front. Maybe Trump is the deep state. Or being manipulated as a magnet for all the worst elements and domestic enemies. 

God knows it is working. 

Stare Decisis No Carpe Diem Yo

The Supreme Court deemed voting rights protections no longer necessary. This unleashed a flood of activity proving otherwise. Oops! No matter. Among ideologues the ideas in your head are everything and all that matter, especially when the ideas are shared by people some of whom are enforcers. There was talk of impeaching John Roberts among Republicans when he failed to overturn Obamacare.

Like, the next day. They don't tolerate dissent well. All must be on their terms, democracy being a lot of sentimental and impractical woke nonsense. In that spirit the Court is about to rule against affirmative action, based on the same fantasy. Again, never mind that the whole recent history of the country has been of a struggle to undo civil rights and equal protection. They have access to higher reasoning.

From Catholic schools and traditions. Surely some of them had some Latin. All those mottos and stuff, et tu and all that, to say nothing of the Latin shorthand used among lawyers. Stare Decisis, for example. They've confused that one, though it came up in some or all of their confirmation hearings when they weren't being accused of sexual assault and such, with another that's not a legal term, I don't think.

Carpe Diem. They carpe all over, not wanting to waste time in case a couple of them suddenly croak. Croak away, I say. Alito and Thomas, especially. No redeeming qualities. Speaking of redemption, don't these authoritarian brutes believe in that? Some higher accountability? I don't think so. It's another lie and scam, their supposed piety, up there with rising tide. I hope there's a judgment day.

Are they in for a surprise. Sua culpa, boys. They have a lot to answer for.

Fame Retardants

Elon Musk has reminded us what a cruel and insatiable master the attention monster is. Being the world's richest man wasn't enough. Eyes on him. What else can it have been? An addiction to risk? 

Maybe. I don't know. The attention economy has no possible master. It's its own thing but the addiction to attention causes people to try to contol a void. To manhandle vapor. To contain the world.

Obviously, a vain hope but addictions demand the impossible. To be master and slave in the same relationship. To grovel in control. The addiction is a false facilitator or intermediary, not a thing.

It promises something but it has nothing to give. It is transactional. A lie disclosing a lack. You have this need. It promises relief. Fulfillment. But it's a lie. A projection and false hope. A scam. 

Attention can't make you whole but it preys on the craving. A craving for love. But there's nothing there to love in attention mode. All the energy goes one way and dissipates. Of course it's a market. 

As such, a public good. Subject to regulation. A bad word in some circles. But regulations allow markets to work. We must therefore apply fame retardants. Or have continuing massive dysfunction. 

Sanding Sponges

I'm going to take it for granted Republicans are big sponges, sucking off the government as a show of contempt, one of many, together with the sabotage, but it's the abrasive aspect I want to highlight. Is it necessary? I mean, is the asshole part productively destructive? 

This is a good question when we consider the apparent death wish of anti-environmentalism, their fiscal insanity and love of discord, and their religious faction's warm feelings about Armageddon and the end of the world. I think the asshole thing is tactical but not strategic. 

They are highly paranoid. Historically paranoia confers short term competitive advantages but results in a huge meltdown in the long run. Hitler and Mussolini turned around their economies with authoritarian edicts and political muscle. But we know how that played out. 

Murdered Chicken

One of my friend's chickens got massacred by a hawk despite being too big to carry away. The hawk ate her on the spot. This made me think of Newt Gingrich, who believes this is as normal and acceptable among humans as any other species. I disagree, thinking there's an alternative that evolved under the heading of 'civilization' but mightn't we honor Newt's views in his case and take his fat ass out? 

In any event, he's too big to carry away so he'll have to be dismembered, towed or otherwise extracted and he shouldn't mind since he's so obviously physically inferior, having sucked off the government he so despises his whole life. He is beholden to us and fair game to do with as we please, I believe, according to the principles he espouses, that power is its own justification and the rule of law relative.

Twat Buys Twitter

Seized by optimism or a bout of mania Elon Musk has a new toy. What a deal at $44B! I don't think Musk wants to create chaos or knows what he wants or intends to hurt people. But he doesn't exactly give a shit either and chaos might occur as a consequence of his fun, the flexing his money muscles and his doing whatever. He's rich, and purportedly a genius. 

We should stay the fuck out of the way. 

The thing to note and know is that the whims and desires of a handful of ultra-rich people matter more than the lives of the rest of us, even collectively, because they are better than us and were chosen by God. Most of them are in some way crazy but don't mind that and say your prayers because they are going to do whatever they want, no matter what. 

New Deal to Raw Deal (the Stacked Deck)

I think it's clear enough the 'New Deal' will be an age in American history but equally clear it ended with Johnson's attempts at its expansion. The ensuing Republican backlash could be called the 'Great Screwing' if it would fly in high school history classes. DeSantis and some Texans would need to be immobilized first, though, since they won't allow any criticism of their side's determination that privileged white people never be discomfited or caused to question or even perceive their benefits, the better to preserve them. 

Death of the Dream

We all know people for whom the dream was realized but an essential point was its accessibility. That part is dying. Republicans are killing it off because they believe in exclusion and privilege. 

Englishmen and BDSM

Let's not let the Truss launchpad explosion obscure that the Indian bloke is a certified Thatcherite sadist and possibly a promoter of caste. Again Britain and America reflect one another, with Trump making anyone who isn't a drooling goon look good and various Cheneys (take your pick, war criminal or reliable battle-ax) appear to be fans of responsible governance. Clearly the respective voting populations have a problem with pessimism and a penchant for pain -- up to a point. But when you hand over mandates for arbitrary punishment to fatalists and people of detachment and privilege with an enormous dollop of self-interested egotism the safeword might not work. Still, I recommend we start screaming it as loudly as possible. What was it now? Julie Andrews? Or do they think we're in a Gilbert and Sullivan thing, with 'he is an Englishman' resonating the rafters and a guy, a stand-in for the working class, in his undies on the rack? No, it's real life. And there might be a point of irreversibility in playing brinkmanship with doom. 

Catholic Crazy Fucks

Somebody help me out here. I can't determine if Catholic schools or Catholicism itself is responsible for all the crazy asshole Catholics in the conservative nutcase movement. Fox News, below the Ailes level, was highly Catholic. I mean, I don't have to go into examples, they come to mind so easily. 

What gives? The authoritarian bent of Catholicism itself is too facile an answer but it doesn't make it wrong. On the other hand, I look at the parochial schools and especially the sports and wonder if that isn't it. In a larger way, though, the fascists understand the to appeal to the masses of 'smoke and bells.' 

Glitter and obfuscation. Entertainment and deceit. Distraction and subversion. This is as Catholic as it comes, using the 'lower' things for 'higher' purposes. Screw abstraction. Make it concrete. Don't give the rabble explanations give them enemies. Give them relics and superstition. Give them a show.

Stereotypes can be somewhat true. They are in this case. People sold their souls for power. Sold them cheap. I read a sci-fi book years ago and hit a place where there was some amazing anti-Catholic bigotry. By John Calvin Batchelor, to show how clueless I was that it still took a while to sink in. 

Venomous bigotry, portraying Catholics as degraded drones and sheep. Who are the sheep now? Batchelor's Calvinists have farmed out the intellectual heavy lifting and rationalizations to Catholics, to look at the Supreme Court, but they're all corrupt and idolators of the golden Trump calf. 

Calf and ass. That golden ass, let's say, that they bow to so religiously . . .

Rise of the Super-Rats

I usually look at percentages. But in comparing historical rogues it doesn't work. What percentage of the population did some authoritarian get killed? One is too many. None is okay, but leaders and people with power are supposed to respect life. To save lives. To enhance lives. To enable rewarding, productive and fulfilling lives, and not to be vultures, parasites and crooks. If they are vultures, parasites and crooks we must disempower them. 

By any means it takes. The world is not for their exclusive enjoyment. It's not their playground, to trash it if it gives them pleasure. It belongs to all of us. Or, more accurately, we have it in trust. We are stewards and caretakers, or we should be.

It's All Relatives

Humanity is a family. I'm not kidding. If we don't care about one another, all of us, it's beccause we hate ourselves.  

When in Nome

It will be a cold winter in more places than Ukraine. The world is growing darker. Authoritarianism is the latest thing, it seems. Human ingenuity and resource exploitation have enabled better lives for many but, is it only that we have further to fall? Is that why people are so fearful, that some balance of insecurity is needed or people make shit up to be afraid of? I recall Bill O'Reilly raking in millions hawking the 'war on Christmas' to his followers. Fox News promotes a diet of fear. And people are eating it up.

West of Eden

The sun is setting on a lot of stuff. The worst is not knowing where it will end or how badly. The uncertainty. You can understand people want to get it over with, like addicts wanting to bottom out, craving the ditch or death. Existence for them endless suffering. Though they're not agents in this but victims, not masters of their lives but slaves. 

American Gothic

We're staring at the gargoyle. A face full of Goth. Why the hell? Republicans want it that way. More so, they're there and they insist we join them, in their horror show. We insult and demean their sense of salvific urgency by wanting decent lives for everyone. 

Screw that, they say. If God wanted it we'd still be in Eden. So it's an insult to God as well, a flaming heresy. Salvific urgency isn't fixable or ignorable, but existential, ending when we die and face God. They have a death wish. A craving for annihilation. For all of us. 

That's their religion. A religion of greed, suffering, death and endless insecurity. The country will be a haunted house with real threats, they demand, the latest an election that promises to end our lives as we know them and, with a little luck, life on the earth. 

Go 'Bama

The black players on the Alabama football team should take a game or two off to catch up on their criminality. Surely they're too busy with practices and all to uphold the levels of crime their native impulses drive them to. Tommy Tuberville knows this. He's coached many young black men. 

Tuberville is an expert at motivation like any highly successful coach. He's motivating people now. Bigoted white voters. To get out there and support the old-fashioned strong-arming and suppression of minorities. Especially black people like the guys who won him so many games at beautiful Auburn.

Among the Aborigines

Viewing the cast of Republican candidates and assorted establishment functionaries do you sometimes feel you're looking back in evolutionary time? Those eyes -- Kari Lake or Paul Gosar, maybe -- peering out of a cave. The indescribable anger, fear and irrationality. And they are driven to lead. 

We Been Cheated . . . Been Mistreated . . .

In my days of writing satirical skits I always had a chorus of southern white boys in drag. Hula skirts, boas, all kinds of kitschy clothing. Transvestite like. Hairy legs sticking out, bad socks and boots. Original music would be good but in lieu I imagined variations on popular songs. The one suggested by the title, for example, a takeoff on Linda Ronstadt . . .

Tubular Balls

I wonder about Republicans and physical malformation, if there are physical counterparts to their mental deformities that are somehow connected. Americans alive today are among the most fortunate people ever. Why, then, would you spend your life trying to destroy it or make it your mission to screw your fellow citizens? There's plenty to go around. 

Something must be bothering them. Something they can't put out of their minds. They're tortured in some way. So, I surmise, maybe a higher percentage of them have hidden physical defects, leading to nagging insecurities and persecutory fixations. They can't relax and enjoy life. They have to stir shit up. Maybe they have chronic existential worries. 

You know, unquiet minds over their fate after death or whatever. We know, statistically, recent trends favor ill-educated and possibly ignorant voters as a bigger share of their base. Brain deformation would straddle the physical and mental realms, adding in emotional instability for good measure. The problem, in any case, is all too apparent.

The Once and Truly Fucked

I know it's hard for Yankees to understand why lower-class southerners seem to want to fuck themselves. And why, then, they seem to want to fuck everyone else. I can fill you in. When you've been fucked by God you're really fucked. You're fucked with finality. 

This is why these poorer white southerners resent people who try to make their lives better. That, and since the idiot Yankees instituted desegregation, they can't be un-fucked without blacks being un-fucked, thereby increasing personal intimacy between the races which is against the will of God and stupid and anathema, for reasons that can't be explained. 

Calvinism did this to them, Extreme, fundamentalist Calvinism. They are sinners and God is pissed. God is always pissed because creation is imperfect and He made it which doesn't make sense but wouldn't you be pissed? I mean, what a mess! We're all stuck in it. 

So, Armageddon is the obvious way out and something to be desired. And that, friends, is the thinking of the people who are running everything. And you wondered why we're in trouble. It's a miracle we made it this far with such a cultural inheritance. 

Trump's Presidential Library

I'm thinking, where do we put this, Riker's or Bellevue?

Go Fuck Me

I'm starting a 'Go Fuck Me' service for Republican politicians, operatives, and right-wing hacks and functionaries generally to help them raise money the Trump way, by deceiving innocent people into supporting your corrupt lifestyle. Alex Jones, a remarkable but all too typical Trump supporter and astonishing piece of shit, gave me the idea by fundraising off a well-deserved conviction while he was being prosecuted and sentenced, and while he was continuing to bullshit everyone, deny his culpability, and attempt to hide his assets. I think that's fraud and another crime, but, never mind. 

Republicans Aghast at Biden Decency

Republicans, with moral exemplar and Trump humper Sean Hannity in the lead, are appalled at Joe Biden's caring and loving recorded message to his troubled son, which they aired as a matter of national security concern and caring Christian kindness. They want to snuff out every instance of empathy as it arises in case it should take hold and spread, knowing it is the sort of thing that destroys civilizations. 

The Constitution, á la Carte

Our Constitution is all á la carte or a smorgasbord. In Republican hands. And they control the High Court. Mostly foreign food now. Fascism, authoritarian religious cultism and racist, apartheid segregationism. 

They Bwoke his Bwidge

Trump and Vlad, what a pair. So sensitive to slights. Donald's grievances are everywhere, as it would be if you only think being king of the world is good enough for you. Vlad, on the other hand, is a bit of a badass. But a princess, at times, too. And they bwoke his bwidge. The Ukrainians bwoke his bwidge. So he's pissed and bombing shit in a tantrum. 

Wanker Media

Republicans today announced the formation of a new organization to coordinate the various dissolute strains of conservative media on thematic principles, Wanker Media, LLC. They acknowledged the problems with consistency that arise under a regime based on MSU, or Making Shit Up, which is their core tactical outlook and modus operandi. 

At most levels inconsistency is a good thing and has served them well by creating chaos and confusion not only about the interpretation of observable reality but observable reality itself using denial and distraction. The problem, they were finding, is that younger 'conservatives' were turning out to be legitimately insane after having been raised on bullshit. 

This is one thing with religions, which have evolved for the most part not to self destruct, but the new conservatives were exhibiting an identifiable death wish, and not just individually but for the culture at large. They were scaring the rich people who control the party, who of course were fine with eliminating the surplus population' generally.

But even that needed to be done with structure and discipline, as the traditions of starting wars because you have a bug up your ass demonstrate. There are ways of getting millions of people killed that leave rich people essentially unscathed. The new young conservatives don't seem to understand this, desiring an unheard-of level of social deconstruction. 

In Trump one can see how the means of deconstruction became an end, when he built those huge failed casinos in Atlantic City, for example, becoming king of a pile of rubble and debt. This is not what America's oligarchs have in mind, to be sure, to rule over a massive, money-eating failure along the lines of a Bush or Trump administration. 

Old Yeller

If Trump has to make such a nuisance of himself, issuing threats and hurling insults all over, couldn't he do it a little more quietly? 

Vlad Enablers

We'll never know where we might be without Bush's military adventurism and Trump's soft spot for autocrats. Explain it to me, and the rest of the world while we're at it, why Putin shouldn't think he can behave the way we do? We might believe we're exceptional. Why should anyone else think that when we behave like lawless idiots and spoiled, privileged amateur world leaders and dilettantes?

My Favorite Autocrat

Who's the Right's favorite dictator? Firstly we must consider if this means the Trump camp, or the lunatic business wing probably best represented by Tucker Carlson, or the religious nutballs whose leadership is more decentralized and diffuse. The last group breaks along Catholic and Orthodox versus insane evangelical lines. Evangelicals want the world to end in fire and fury, God's version of 'shock and awe' in Bushian terms. There's a cornucopia of crazies on the right these days. 

Among the MAGAs Kim Jong Un is the favorite because he's so entrenched and his family stands to rule North Korea forever. Did you notice how Trump's degraded followers fancy a multigenerational dynasty? So, there. Un it is. Putin wins among the corporate elite by familiarity. Though Carlson plays the religious card as well we know he's only using the troglodytes. For whom he has immeasurable contempt. Bankers and all love kleptocrats as much as they hate competition.

They want to print money. Nothing is better than having control over an ostensibly representative government. The favor of the religious elements is spread about. Help me out if I've miss an autocracy or two. They see aspects of what they love in Iran, Afghanistan, Hungary, Poland, Turkey and even Italy. The thrill they feel at the possibility of another Calvin-in-Geneva situation is almost sexual. My God, the repression. The sublimation. The projection. The cruelty and bigotry. A return to torture. Again we see how Bush was a harbinger of so much that was to come. 

Millions of lives destroyed and all in God's name. Too good to be true! I mean, these are hopeful times for power hungry madmen and their followers. So much to applaud and the possibility of nuclear annihilation increasing as we speak, just as God wanted it and ordained. 

How To Stop the War

Somebody shoot Putin in the head. And the rest of the world, especially America, should notice how high the costs are of unaccountable, irresponsible leadership. Presumably, it wouldn't take a bullet to stop Ayatollah Trump. But, in any case, his revenge tour must be stopped. In whatever way it takes.  

Fuck Florida

Let Florida clean up its own hurricane mess, as the price they pay for electing garbage like Ron DeSantis.

Trump Sabotages Pipeline

Think of how nice it is to not have Trump in power with so much crazy stuff going on in the world. He's capable of anything. Especially now that he's under the pig farmer's spell.  

Asshole Juice

Asshole juice is rising among Republicans. I don't mean stuff's leaking out of their anuses. Who knows, though, since buttholes are one of their many fixations. But that, with an election upcoming, they're going nuts with accusations and attacks. 

Cheapshots by the dozens. 

Once upon a Time in the Midwest

This is a story about how farmers became a crop. And it's instructive because the trend has continued. Farmers are famously individually powerless in the marketplace, being close to an example of 'perfect' competition. Historically they've banded together or been backed by the government since food is essential and agricultural markets are inherently unstable without some structural support.  

And farming is essential unlike whatever it is, let's say, that hedge funds do. Enter Republicans, who hate 'the little guy.' With typical arrogance and self-serving political motivations agriculture secretary Earl Butz reinvented modern farming under Richard Nixon. An 'oil shock' had threatened to send food prices up which Nixon didn't want for political reasons. Butz argued for agricultural consolidation. 

'Get big of get out' was his motto. He believed in big farms. Farmers weren't relevant in the equation. Electoral prospects were. And transferring profits up to the corporate level which Republicans akways do. Consumers are another, parallel, case, individually powerless but with massive influence in the aggregate. The competition for their allegiance, their purchasing power, is normally intense. 

But not when all choice is removed in a system that favors consolidation. Another arrogant Republican, Robert Bork, actually FOR monopolies, writing a book on it. Cheaper shit for everyone! But  the point wasn't cheaper shit it was disempowering consumers and higher profits. Businesses hate competition. Any rational business wants to print money. So they invest in influence. They kill competition.

If influence is available for sale they're buying. Under Republicans everything is for sale. Now consider Haley Barbour, who invented modern lobbying--the market for influence--as much as anyone. Consumers have lost their power and become a crop, milked for profits like cattle until they die. Fertilized and harvested like crops, powerless over their destiny, servants of corporations and slaves of capitalists.

A Modest Proposal

I'm concerned about the vulnerability of Washington to nuclear attack. Someone could set off a device in a truck or float it up the Potomac. We wouldn't even know who did it. The place is indefensible. President Biden should declare an emergency or martial law, especially given the problems Putin is having, and immediately move all the branches of government and essential bureaucracy into a remote area.

Representatives and the Supreme Court justices will have to live in tents, temporarily, until new infrastructure is built, but it's a small sacrifice to keep the country safe. And the military is well-practiced in setting up such facilities, notably in deserts, wastelands and rough country. Meanwhile, this will be an extraordinary opportunity to pass legislation outlawing lobbying and the buying of political influence.

No doubt our representatives will wail and cry the over the loss of their opulent dinners and high living. But that's not what they're there for, they should be reminded. Additionally some heroic Democrat could then divert the Potomac through the city after some rains to cleanse it of the stench of corruption. Wash it clean. We'll be left with Washington as a city of museums, monuments and educational centers.

A place where Americans can learn about our democracy and appreciate the extraordinary good fortune we have had. Especially since by then the survival of our republic will be ensured, unlike now when corruption rules everything. I don't see how Republicans can object to any of this. They say they're the party, above all else, of national security. Unless, of course, they've been lying about that too. 

Trump Signals Allegiance to Pig Farmer

In a recent speech Donald Trump has signaled adherence to the online QAnon Philippine pig farmer cult. QAnon casts the once and future president in the role of savior which apparenty appeals to him. Consider that, as far as protecting Americans from another Trump reign, and clipping his wings in the meantime, the Twitter ban has done more for us than Congress ever did. That's how helpless we are.

RINOplasticity

Remember, authoritarians normally purge their own ranks first, not that disloyalty is an issue or matters because it's about making clear the risks to those who are left once the cleansing is over. And it might be a Year of the Long Knives, instead of a Night, but you don't want to be on the receiving end of the kind of hurt they dish out. 

No way. Part of that is for it to be arbitrary. That way the fear never loses its hard edge. So Trump, the cunning piece of shit, is throwing 'RINO' around as though it means something. It does and it doesn't, since it's Trump's will or whim at any certain instant, and we know how consistent that is. That's why it's called authoritarianism.

DeSantis Squanders Tax Dollars

Ron DeDantis has squandered the money of Florida taxpayers by flying around immigrants in private/chartered planes. Rail with cattle cars would have been much cheaper. Or, tractor trailers like those used to move livestock and chickens. Ron's political progenitors figured this out so there's no excuse. Speaking of which, if Ron really hates these immigrants, many of whom are fleeing instability caused by us, a much as it seems he can dig huge pits and shoot them so they fall in or gas and burn them. 

Look to your roots, Ron. In the hate movements of the past. No need to reinvent it. And no wonder DeSantis wants to whitewash history. He has a friend in forgetting.

Disaster Comparedness

Let's compare Republican and Democratic ideas of disasters. Republicans think Obamacare is a disaster, though it has largely succeeded in spite of being compromised and sabotaged by Republicans. Noted humanitarian Marco Rubio, for example, who thinks he should be president, slipped something into a bill that defunded the 'risk corridor' and caused all kinds of problems for Obamacare.  

Heaven forbid we take care of people. Democrats, speaking for myself, think George Bush was a disaster, for lying us into wars which he then botched beyond belief because the only constituencies that matter to him, big money and evangelical nutcases, wanted to make a killing and witness the Second Coming, respectively, Bush exploded a whole region of the world, the Cradle of Civilization.  

He got hundreds of thousands of people killed and displaced over 30 million. I stand by my assessment. Mass murder and incalculable human suffering are disasters. Obamacare is not. 

In the Shit

Donald Trump is more scared than ever that his criminal days are numbered. He's more frantic and enmeshed in his delusions--old classics such as grandeur and, recently, the Philippine pig farmer drops, droppings or dung spread about under the QAnon brand. This pig shit postulates an upcoming 'storm' in which heroic Herr Donald declares martial law and stages a mass hanging of Democrats and maybe a Republican or two like Mitch McConnell who are deemed not to have been accommodating to Trump's demands to lick his anus which were so successful among Republican representatives.

Now, what is it with Republican fixations on anuses and shit? This is very primal and it has it roots in the American South where, if you think back, the northern victory in the Civil War and especially Sherman's March to the Sea were termed a form of rape. It's crucial to understand this is not about the old southern fear of big-dicked black men having sex with white women who had alway craved them 'some of that' but the homosexual rape of southern white men such as McConnell and Lindsey Graham. The word is Graham might not mind but that's another story. A light bulb should be going off.

The Republican obsession with homosexuality? Bathroom activities? They can't not graphically envision these private, constitutionally protected activities because of secret desires and fears. Remember, southern white men routinely raped black women. The black men, who were strikingly physically superior to the Boss Hogg characters of the Old South, were kept in check by violence and threats of violence where they were brutalized and bullied, to say the least. These are the origins of the incredible festering fear. And the need for total control and domination, especially of minorities and women. 

And now, through their persistent, behind the scenes, illegal activities to undermine the American state, we are all living in the land of nullification, the old southern dream of a lunch buffet of laws from which you pick and choose. This right does not apply to Yankees, since they didn't have slaves and don't need it, as we saw with southerners crying and wailing like babies when northerners tried not to enforce the (actually unjust) Fugitive Slave Act. Republicans get to improvise and do whatever they want, like the Confederate traitors. The 'rule of law' is meaningless. Unjust power is everything. 

The Barre Seid Institute

I don't understand, if he was proud of his intended legacy, why someone didn't name the new institute created entirely with a single massive bequest by Barre Seid after him. While they were at it, why not have the institute's name reflect its purposes? Something like, 'The Barre Seid Memorial Institute for Fucking Over His Fellow Citizens and Promoting Hate, Lies, Division and Minority Rule.'

I know, it's a little wordy. But at least it honors the organization's source of funding and the role it will play in further disenfranchising the majority of American citizens who don't want what 'conservatives' are offering and so are therefore being deprived of the right to have a say in their governance by a dangerous cabal of fanatical Republicans determined to have their way no matter what. 

Why Me?

Something I love about Trump is, since he's so infantile, he exposes the soul of conservatism, a philosophy of human variability that rejects pluralism, adaptation, and the idea of the existential value of human life. In the normal curve of populations they were born in the tail of excellence, they think, and already so fully evolved, so what good is change and what do we do with all these inferior people? 

They spent their lives trying to figure it out and expect us to support them while they do it because they are, well, so superior. The inferiors are also useful as cannon fodder, in addition to keeping food on the  table, which conveniently counteracts their propensity to reproduce recklessly.

The prolific and interminable wars started by righties, I mean.  

Trump, who slithered into existence very rich and whose only talent in life is belittling other people and defiling and desecrating everything he touches, is also a Social Darwinist but he's so incurious he doesnt't engage in their usual round table discussions dedicated to figuring out, why me? Why was I born so superior? There's an unanswerable question. And a roadmap to a life of circular reasoning. 

They beg the question, in the old sense, by assuming something not in evidence, that they are in fact better. Again, hail Trump!, because he assumes and asserts his superiority in clear proportion to his lack of it, so it's all about compensation for insecurity, feelings of worthlessness, and the disappointments of dealing with an imperfect world. Trump's 'why me?' arises from his sense of persecution. 

Of injustice.

How can they be so mean? So mean they don't instantly bow down and worship him and give him everything he wants? Any complexity Trump exhibits is in the multifariousness of his arrestedness. He's simultaneously a child, an adolescent, and everything in between, but nothing approaching adulthood. He's a gullet. A digestive tract, bellowing and shitting his way through life, the ultimate taker. 

Reign of Toads

It's still a shock to me. And, I think, to most Americans, how many of our fellow citizens were closeted criminals. Trump brought them out of the woodwork. We assumed there were shared values and a core commitment to the rules and a modicum of tolerance and good-will. But, no.

It was an illusion. Culpability becomes an issue. I'm against the 'insanity' defense because it muddies the waters and raises unanswerable questions. Someone who commits a crime should be found guilty. Then, competency, compassion and suitable consequences can come up in the sentencing. 

If there were compulsions or delusions in play it makes a difference. We are there now. We are there with an entire political movement openly engaging in illegal acts. Where to draw the line? If some Trump toady commits crimes for Herr Donald, by order or inference, how guilty is he? 

The Manson Family is the model. Which, it is to say, it's a judgement call. Various factors must be weighed and balanced. The 'scales of justice' analogy is apt, but it's harder with the Trump movement. Layers, and so many of the actors are insulated. Evil Stephen Miller had his own lesser crime cult. 

A professional racist and hate czar, he was responsible for terrible acts of cruelty, but couldn't have done it without Trump. It would be hard to hold him accountable, which counts. Trump must be held accountable. He and his close associates who committed obvious criminal acts must be jailed. 

The rest is a judgment call. Miller wasn't a drone. Many of Trump's underlings were. He was a separate locus of evil authorized and empowered by Lord Sauron, aka Trump. But most of the Trump movement consists of toadies. They'll do opposite things on different days if Herr Donald orders it. 

Fealty is everything. In that sense they are less guilty than Miller but practical aspects of the prosecution will win out. So, the toadies get busted and Miller goes free. Sorry, it's probably the best we can do. I know it's not right. It's irritating as hell. But Miller can be found guilty in the 'court of public opinion.'

Spat on in restaurants and such. 

He can be made the pariah he should be and scorned. If we come to our senses. Or if, I should say, the people who have any sense and care, who still constitute a (slimmer than we thought) majority, regain the power and restablish the rule of law, a term I don't even like but it's all we have. 

Deliberately Failed States

Let's say you're a person who only cares about himself. To an unbelievable degree. It's not that you want other people to die, necessarily, but they're just not real to you. There's no proportionality or balance. So, for example, it's more important that you get your way in every little detail of your life all the time and feel powerful and important than that other people have enough food to eat and aren't starving. 

Now. let's say, having extraordinary drive and maybe a bit of an inheritance from a driven daddy, you get rich as shit. You truly have more money than you can make sense out of. What entity is there remaining that is threat to your desires? The government. Only the government can possibly constrain you or require you ever comply with anything, notwithstanding you have the usual psycho adolescent egotist yacht, island, and planetary conquest fantasies. And by that I mean even other planets.

Your egotism is so infantile, boundless and regressive it results in a neediness that is never assuaged. You can never get 'there' because there is no there there. There is no sense of self independently of the neediness--the bottomless imperative to feel a certain way, important and significant, at every possible moment. What you hate the idea of, more that anything, is someone telling you what to do.

Nobody tells you what to do. Back to the state. The government. It has no legitimate function, in your mind, other than to serve your interests, which, politically, is not a particularly good selling point. But you have enough money and determination it doesn't matter. Even elected officials can be bought, it turns out, so you buy some. A dystopia ensues. A perversion of government. All based on (your) lies. 

Yes, it's all justified and rationalized. They want freedom. But they don't specify of what kind. They want smaller, efficient government based on business principles, a conveniently anodyne and vague objective. These are sorts of indirect lies. Because you're lying partly to yourself. But you win. You 'principles' become the norm because you pay for that to happen. And the freedom looks like slavery. 

It looks like slavery to average citizens because locking in your power requires diminishing theirs. Or so you think. But somewhere, deep inside, in your guts, you're frightened. Something in there knows security is impossible in isolation. Security is only possible through cooperation. We're looking at a deliberately failed state now, a perversion by any standard. It serves the long-term interests of no one. 

Welcome to the libertarian perversion of a free state, in which we're all slaves.