The Perfection of Projection

I never saw or understood it until I ran into a hard case. Then it blew my mind. And I began to see it everywhere including in myself. Now I'm in the middle. Like racism, the problem is that it's normal. Normal to trust the familiar and those who are like you. And to be suspicious of the unfamiliar. The true sign of racism, which I define broadly as treating anyone according to anything other than standards of behavior, is when familiarity doesn't result in fairness. In allowing people the benefit of the doubt.

Projection results from denial. Not owning stuff. Thinking you're better than or above that, like being human and flawed. So racism, with its irrationality, identification, and tribal, emotional components is prime material for projection. Both projecting racism and projecting within a racist framework. Projecting onto people you irrationally hate or fear. Those who are less at odds with themselves and so less prone to projection have trouble seeing it in others because they project their relative innocence onto them. 

So there's that, which has frustrated the hell out of the Democrats who have seen for decades how insane Republicans are but can't get the party, as a whole, to react appropriately to the threat. Too late now. But I think it's still important to understand the perfection of the mechanism. The 1:1 correlation when the right-wing nutcases get fixated on something and it becomes a 'talking point' becase they're doing it. And because it's unconscious it's guileless. All this shit they're putting onto Democrats is true of them.

And that means we're fucked. To an unknown degree and for an unknown duration. The thing is operating now beyond the reach of those who created it for their selfish ends. So the 'libertarian' Koch monster, a franken-philosophy, has escaped from their think tanks and is loose. They fear it themselves, so more than ever they're directing the beast at Democrats though they are the ones who screwed the people who've been duped into being libertarian predator drones and serving the interests of the rich. 

This is not a drill. This is not a game. This is not a test. We're in a fight of good against evil. When they say Democrats are traitors and have no standards and are irresponsible and hate America and want to destroy it they're describing themselves. Everything they say about Democrats is true of them. They're telling us who they are. And they're absolutely fine with getting millions of people killed so rich fuckers can have more money. The religious fanatics love the idea. Of an apocalypse. It's totally insane. 

Diane Arbus

I've never understood the controversy about Diane Arbus. It seems clear to me that she is a Goth. She was highlighting elements of the macabre and grotesque in everyday life because they're a part of everyday life and if you don't integrate them you don't have stability. This is Freudian and Jungian and archetypal and Greek mythical and all that. 

If you don't acknowledge and integrate the 'lower' things they rise up and take over. Run things. They're not really lower just things. In individuals and societies the 'higher' things must rule or you have chaos. Like we have now. Arbus grew up gritty, no matter her "privilege" and being a child of the American era and its crazy suburban postwar optimism. 

Arbus is about boundaries and sensitivities and sensibilities. My guess is Arbus couldn't keep stuff out. That she had boundary issues because she couldn't defend herself. That she saw stuff others didn't see and couldn't stop seeing it. She was forced to look.

She tried to reset her own circuits. And it can't work for a person like Arbus in a society that can't own its shit. Because Arbus defaulted to openness. When she let her guard down she was open. She saw it all. And it pissed her off and made her hurt. And how do you balance out a consumerist Eden? You reach out into the hinterlands of Eden, into the dark.

To the grotesque. Because it's always there.

The Vicar of Wokefield

Democrats have been serving a strange master. You wonder if they are masochists. I think they misunderstand the terrain. They keep peddling old electoral points. Though they seem to be holding their ground if you step back the truth emerges. They've lost to an epic degree. 

Asses were kicked. 

They've been crushed, disenfranchised and banished from the lands of political potency into the fields of feckless spectatorship. They've been retired or their values have. Still, they continue to screw up in the same way apparently never asking themselves if they should try something else.

Just try it. Because they're losing to goons. People who aren't even American. Who don't accept anything like the initial social contract. Yet they say they're originalists. The founders were rationalists and pragmatists, to a fault. Not cultists. That practicality is banished with the Democrats.

Democrats represent the true, flawed traditions of America. They have to ask themselves, given where their political tactics have gotten them, if they should rethink. First they have some pride to swallow, to see how badly they've been beaten. Then their party and the country might be reborn.

Arming the Unborn

The defenseless are most in need of defense. Especially when they're known targets and under deadly attack. How does this not apply to the pre-born? Therefore, they must be armed. The weapons will be miniaturized and introduced via existing surgical methods. 

Any practical difficulties are easily surmountable. Morally this can be nothing but right. Mothers considering abortion will think twice knowing their fetus can blast its way out of the womb. The assumption is, after a few grisly episodes there will be no more abortions. 

Word will get out among mothers. Abortion is not the way to go. A fetus defended is a fetus preserved. And self defense is a constitutional right. The womb a home. Stand your ground. Questions of fetal competency and informed decision-making might be raised. 

But they are overridden by the right to life. Once born that new life is on its own. Because it is God's way. One of many sinners in the hands of a sociopathic God that condemns His own creation. Power has its privileges. Life is a prison sentence that must be endured.

If God intended it to be nice we would still be in Eden.

Freda's Last Stand

Freda Black's closing argument in The Staircase was the turning point I've argued since I saw it. The bitch was, in her authority as a state employee, lawyer and officer of the court, saying to the jury that your hate has a place here. Is appropriate here. Was admissible, so to speak, and applicable. 

So it was about permission. 

Permission to bring that stuff to bear. The jury's 'disgust' wasn't relevant. Their bigotry and prejudice and dislike of the person weren't relevant or appropriate. In fact, it was the jury's responsibility to rise above all that. They didn't. And influential Republicans are all-in on permission. Permission to hate. 

Freda died in the ditch, more or less, like the piece of shit she was. But don't let that make you feel it was a fitting outcome or justice. It should make us sad and in complicated ways. People like Freda drag us all into the ditch. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And mostly they can't help it. 

As much as their behaviors seem composed, organized and sickly coherent it's a compulsion. They're sick. But why we would let these psychos run the show I don't know. Apathy, maybe. Or frustration or feelings of powerlessness. I understand. Perhaps we think we will get away with it.

And I don't know how to stop it myself, so who am I to talk. 

Oh, of Course

Trump's vanity and need to be the center of attention were enough to explain his trip to New York City for an indictment holiday. What a drama queen! But, of course, we see the point now. To raise money off of it. Say what you will, Don-boy knows a good scam when he sees it. A sure thing, this is. He understands his supporters are incredible suckers. 

60,000,000 Maniacs

I wish this were the name of a band. It's not. It describes a faction of the American voting public.

Spucklerization

Spucklerization is when the lowest common denominator effect results in something looking like the Spuckler household on The Simpsons. The only thing worse is when you have more than one group descending to this level in which case you inevitably have a feud. You might end up with one anyway. Spucklers are usually armed, easily manipulated, and inclined to conspiracy thinking. 

They will attack unprovoked and spontaneously believing it's self-defense because they're so utterly incapable of understanding anything and just generally nuts. The United States, you will note, has been completely Spucklerized. Republicans needed Spuckler votes so they played to their ignorance which inflamed and reinforced that ignorance and then they played to that resulting in a downward spiral. 

Spucklerization is a horrible fate. They reproduce like rabbits. Between that and susceptibility they are worthy voter prey. They are not only against birth control and family planning they want to deny these to everyone else. The reason is unclear. It seems to have something to do with religion. Don't ever try to understand Spucklers. You will never succeed and you might get depressed and despair.

That is, despair over our common humanity. Association can only result in bad outcomes, possibly even contamination. You might think you're safe but Spucklers can instantly become violent and threatening over nothing, which is to say their delusions. You might then justifiably become fearful yourself. In this it resembles rabies or vampirism. If they bite you you might become like them. 

Avoid association at all costs. And pity the poor Americans. They are living in a mess of it.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

How, you might ask, does so-and-so not notice the broomstick shoved up his ass? It must be magic. Magical levels of distraction and diversion. Fox News enters in with their hocus-pocus. And the Koch Network (more behind-the-scenes) with their miraculous money wand and smokescreen.

Poof, no healthcare. Poof, stagnant wages in a raging economy. Poof, average citizens at one another's throats for no reason but to occupy them with lies and bullshit while the rich ravage the country. 

Thus the working class, enough of them, vote for the broomstick up the ass. They've been living with it for so long. A heavy dose of hate is deployed in the deceit. Still, the broomstick hurts. As for the bedknobs, they pertain to the women and another kind of occupation. But we won't go there.

It's become clear enough without spelling it out, especially in Texas and Tennessee and Kentucky and such places. What self-loathing, or displaced hate, lies behind McConnell votes? In his state even the people are fried -- completely fried Kentuckians. Hate-fried, with a side of law slaw.

A legal system chopped to shreds, useless to the people it's supposed to protect. 

What Assholes

There appears to be no established term for a group of assholes and it's trying my patience not having one in these days of the Republican hegemony and onslaught. Hey, 'hegemony' or 'onslaught' might work. An onslaught of assholes. How about a tirade. A tirade of assholes. Anyway, this has just occurred to me. I'll work on it some and get back to you. 

Waffenpoofs

J. D. Vance is forming an a cappella group of Yale Republicans, my sources say, called the Waffenpoofs. The idea, of course, is to own and irritate liberals. That is all they care about. It has been established that their long-touted 'conservative values' such as the rule of law and fiscal sanity are a sham and front for a huge power grab devoid of any decency and fair play. Still, they have managed to wrest control of our society and skew it unrecognizably to the right so they are in a festive and celebratory mood though our sitting president is the epitome of evil and the Senate somewhat screwed up. 

So, an a cappella group of 14 (a traditional number) with Yale connections and solid nutcase credentials is in the works. They will all be slung with assault rifles (hence the clever 'waffen' prefix) and might shoot up the audience at any time, a reminder that life is short (and getting shorter in America) and that one should strive to have principles and vote Republican not that these are in any way consistent but that's authoritarianism for you. The repertoire will of course extol the deeds of their idols, like Iran-Contra, starting the Iraq War and causing the '08 financial collapse with deregulation.  

With a lot of spin, no doubt, since these were catastrophes. Most of the songs, however, will ridicule Democrats and be rife with suggestive language and innuendo about how they are traitors and deserve to be killed, but that is normal Republican fare as part of their effort to uphold standards. Do they have nothing better to do, you ask, than defiling a light-hearted and innocent pastime? The answer is no. They live to own the libs. And they are bitter. At places like Yale it's assumed there's a link between being smart and being a Democrat and liberal and rational and caring and tolerant. 

What presumption! Sadly, Stewart Rhodes will not be in on it since he's in jail for trying to overthrow the government. But Steve Mnuchin and Wilber Ross are on board. John Bolton and Ben Carson are considering it. None of these people can sing but neither did they have any business as civil servants as they showed in the Trump fiasco. They have only enormous drives to advance themselves at any expense to other people, and ideally at the expense of other people, the guiding ethos of Trump's life. Josh Hawley, another fresh face and avowed theocratic crank, will lead the chorus along with Vance.

It's Worse in the App

By worse we mean better. I'm talking about the new Republican guide to channeling your money where it will do the most harm, now out in an app. There are so many choices, and many are basically street dealers who might be pocketing a lot, like Steve Bannon. The big boys don't need the money. Though all corruption serves the cause, disempowering average citizens, it's all good. 

Only better if effectively directed.

They are awash in money. Unbelievable amounts of money. And never satisfied. What kind of an idiot wants people who can't afford it to have healthcare? This is interfering in the free market, never mind that the markets couldn't be less free if they were under direct governmental control. Corporations control them, of course, as it should be, with government as a front. One of many. 

Corruption isn't a failure of government it's a philosophy of government. 

Neo-Nazi Flees New York

Marjorie Taylor Greene has fled New York and what a shame. Our conspiracy-minded girl was piecing together some evidence and its compelling implications, that she is llving through, and now participating in as a leading figure, a turning point in history.

There she saw the Koch Concert Hall and, oh my God, made a connection. We have these two families of German extraction that have come together, Kochs and Trumps, to save America from itself and make America great again just as Hitler did for the fatherland. 

Consider the confluences. Weathy sadistic daddies named Fred that trained their sons to be killers, kings and, above all, winners, equipping them to do so with piles of cash. These fathers were really sick fucks but they have achieved the final goal of immortality.

They left us sons so fucked up and dehumanized they are without lives of their own, independent personalities or consciences -- predator daddy drones. And the name Koch resonates with a hero of MTG's, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald. 

Who was known as she-wolf.

What an appellation! Marjorie so wants to be a she-wolf. Anyway, after hitting the thrift shops looking for memorabilia made of human body parts Marge received much disrespect while innocently expressing support for our designated savior and führer, Herr Donald.

But it was a relief not to have to worry about Jewish space lasers for a while, assuming they wouldn't attack a community so full of their own. Be reassured. Marjorie isn't going anywhere. She was on 60 Minutes! And she's all over the Goebbels News Network. 

We better get used to it. Liberals, airheads and flakes call the kinds of eerie experiences Marjorie had in New York (she has them all the time) serendipity or 'synchronicity' or déjà vu or some such bullshit. Conservatives call it destiny. And Marjorie knows she is its child. 

Kill a Koch Today (Not Really)

With the Republican talk of Democrats being traitors and pedophiles and 'what they used to do to traitors' and all I wanted to see if a germ of truth can be saved from the bottomless cesspool of their delusions and conspiracism, which are underwritten by the hate and fear wing of their movement.

Speaking of which, wouldn't those people be the real traitors, the Kochs and Murdochs of the scheme, who stay in the background, relatively, but have turned the country into an ungovernable mess so they can make more money and have more power? We can't go around wantonly killing people, I know.

But what's the next best thing? Complete and total disempowerment. Think of how it might be if Fox News ceased its broadcasts. If the entire Koch network, with all its tentacles, were shut down and the lackeys of the rich removed from Congress and lobbying disallowed and fair voting guaranteed.

And Citizens United thrown out the fucking window.

My God, the images that come to mind are Edenic. We might have a country again. A recognizable social contract. Civil relations among citizens and reasonable and fair returns for work performed and contributions made apart from inherited wealth and cascading profits for the fortunate. 

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