Fetal Attraction

Republicans, among their fixations, have a thing for innocence. Not in a good way. They can't cope with it since they're basically insane people who think creation is a shithole, love a delusion and kindness for suckers. What, then, do you do with a baby.

Human babies, I've been told, are helpless for a weirdly long period having to do with the bipedal thing. With walking upright women's pelvises changed in ways that made it harder to have babies. Evolution selected for earlier births so human babies are all premature. 

This is a horrifying thing to contemplate. Evolution is a bitch. Women were dying disproportionately in childbirth because it served broader evolutionary ends. Though of course it would have been slower than we can comprehend but there's a reminder there.

About how risky childbirth was until recently. And Republicans are fucking with that now, a related story. Anyway, the combination of innocence and innate (to them) guilt manifested in a baby blows their minds. So they attack innocent people over it in this case Democrats.

In every case, Democrats. This is because they are nuts. They are shorting a circuit, one of quite a few. And so we get Pizzagate. We get all kinds of crazy shit. It has nothing to do with us or reality or life or anything outside of this sick internal battle going on with them. 

It goes on forever since in real life the transition from babyhood to something else is long and riddled with opportunities at arrestedness. You have to wonder if this isn't the appeal of Trump, who's completely schitzed out on this front. On the one hand, he isn't toilet trained. 

On the other, he's big and unsupervised. This is why we have prisons. Plenty of supervision there. But we see here how Republicans are beset by a huge internal battle and inhabit an unintelligible world of conflict. Which they are compelled by psychological forces to manifest. 

Voilà, and we have modern America, the land that makes no sense. The most fortunate people in the history of the world and we're destroying ourselves over nothing. Imaginings. And it should be said 'evangelicals' could be substituted for 'Republicans' anywhere here. 

Because those lunatics are driving the insanity. They will destroy everything if we let them. We must do whatever it takes to disempower them politically. Honest elections would work but good luck with that. They bought the Supreme Court for just this purpose. But, whatever it takes.

Or we're all totally fucked. 

Fuck Them Up the Ass PAC

I'm so tired of the lies.

Republicans have won so completely it doesn't matter anymore but, just for the anti-Orwellian hell of it, I wish they would name a PAC or two for what they're actually trying to do. Freedom's just another word for fucked up the ass, I guess I'm saying. 

Why are they still trying so hard to win? Because it's not a game. They can't win permanently as long as we're still alive, it's beginning to dawn on them, and they want that permanence. The multi-generational victory any true autocratic nutcase desires.

They can't escape death, yet, but they can hand down the reich to a new generation of psychos like Trump daddy and Koch daddy did, the evil-in-overdrive pair who've ridden their kids like the loser, half-human pawns they are all of their lives. 

A kind of immortality, no?

We chose to let them run everything. Not that it was any more of a choice than theirs. Prisoners envy you your freedom. They can't escape their compulsive prison of hate and fear so they want us in there with them. Psychos want it all. To be antisocial party animals. 

With no consequences. And to never have the party end. Frat boys forever! It's that simple. Which can't happen without massive subsidies. Daddy's checkbook. A credit card someone else pays. That we pay. With our lives if needed. College Republicans started it. 

Rove et al. They gave us the America we have now, a horrible fraternity of aging, inebriated bro's reliving the glories of shooting beers and fucking drunk girls. Real freedom is death so, not to worry. It comes for us all. Ergo, let's live like the biggest pigs in history. 

If that sounds good the Republican Party is for you, and their Take Back the Frat PAC, or whatever the fuck it is now, because it's nothing but antisocial insanity that will get us all killed. And it's probably too late to matter. But it's so fucking tiring.

 

Chutes and Ladders

Democrats take the ladders. Especially minorities. Republicans take the slides. Especially those who were born rich. This game is biased as hell.  

Say It Ain't So, Joe

Democrats are parental partners with an addicted, mentally-ill, violent and abusive spouse. Republicans aren't only a threat to the most vulnerable people in the country they're a threat to everyone. They're a threat to themselves. 

Biden is going to let them off the hook, on the debt ceiling, as though conciliation hasn't failed a thousand times before. And as though Biden hasn't learned this lesson himself many times. Or failed to learn it. Say it ain't so, Joe!

Avoid the Draft

Trump is about to start bellowing again. The 2024 election is getting closer. He has nothing else to do. He's a businessman, they say. 

Really, a crook and a scammer. He's turned running for office into a business and a scam. No, not right. Republicans had done it already.

Trump has simply supersized it. Plastered his name all over it, in gold. Done it more openly, brazenly and tastelessly than anyone before him.

Because he's an idiot and a goon. But my advice to you is to avoid the draft. The awful bellowing of hate and baiting of every kind of resentment.

Too fucking toxic. Build your defenses now. Plan ahead. Because it will be a fucking torrent, stopping only with his death or disability.

May God make it so. 

Losing Shit vs. Losing Your Shit

This is not as easy as it sounds. With the mental deterioration that comes with age losing shit is normal and not a sign of sickness. Sometimes you find something by chance or by remembering or maybe not.

Losing your shit is surprisingly similar. The fog might lift. You might be sharp again for a while. Recall and being articulate can come and go. By the time a trend emerges you might be too fucked up to know. 

Eat Shit and Live

Shit-eating is the road to salvation. This Trump-Republican formulation asks that you sell your soul for success. Since when, you ask? Since the old Republican aristocracy of privileged ersatz aristocrats and rich social Darwinists sold out to the troglodytes for votes.

And it's like vampirism or rabies. They pass along the infection.

The Southern Strategy it's called. Trump is the king of belittling people. It's the only thing he's good at -- the art of the insult. Getting people to eat shit. Over and over again. It makes him feel like a big man. White Catholics, for example, helped vote Trump in. 

What did he do? 

He appointed Callista Gingrich, whose qualification was adultery, Vatican ambassadress. Her nation-destroyer husband tagged along. I mean, that's pretty great. He handed them a plate of shit after they supported him and apparently they said fine. No problem.

I'd like to point out this is evil. This is how evil gets done. They're setting up a bureaucracy of evil, incorporating the US government as much as possible, so they can do evil while limiting legal exposure. But that's changing. They're beginning to own the evil.

Revel in it. And there's only one entity ever behind buying up souls.

We've Won!

Try telling that to American rednecks. You will never convince them. Americans are probably the luckiest people in human history. Way up there, anyway. But rednecks still feel like losers. They still are losers. Because of what they are. Their traditions, phobias and beliefs.

Which, among a long list of sins and stupidity, include racism, militant ignorance, unassuageably suspicious natures, hair-trigger tempers, and viewing violence as the first and most honorable option when you disagree with someone. In other words, they have finally won.

They've turned America into a redneck shithole. Trump is the redneck king. The biggest loser. Trump is the redneck agent of revenge. Through Trump they will destroy every last thing that's good in life and drag us all into the gutter. With them. And they still won't be happy. 

Because rednecks resent having been born at all. 

A Johnston County Conversion

I moved south, to Chapel Hill, for graduate school and saw quickly they were still fighting the Civil War, 'down there' as they say -- a stereotype with truth to it. Only later did I comprehend it in its depth and perversion. After many trips to Johnston County, known for its Klan sympathies and backwardness, for my work I saw another layer of lawless rebellion. That they were still fighting the Reformation. As a product of Scots-Irish bigotry and belligerence, I surmised. Because life lacks meaning without hate. 

By grace alone you are saved, they say, referencing a Catholic straw man, one who believed you could buy your way into heaven with indulgences. They saw Catholics as idolators, beset by superstition. Catholics did weird shit in their rituals with babies. Queue the QAnon. Order up some Pizza-gate. They make stuff up, embodying a confluence of militancy and a desire to be drones. Henchmen. Brownshirts. Enforcers. They are submissives with a belief in the inevitability and transcendence of violence.

In the sanctity of bullying and strife, essential activities of honor cultures. 

In the service of hierarchy and exclusion. Pick a date for the emergence and formation of the Scottish and Scots-Irish mind. Enter the time portal. Stand amazed. Those attitudes persist undiluted and stronger than ever, from determination, orneriness and a need to feud. They have taken over the most powerful country on earth, elected goons and charlatans, and are going to blow it all up. There is no why. As distant, irrelevant, retrograde, anti-Christian and insane as it all seems it drives the events of today. 

Meet the rednecks who are about to get us all killed.

Treason Caucus Moves in to Kill

The House Treason Caucus, and a rogue and mentally unfit former president, demand an American default through conditions they know are insulting and impossible. They represent the antidemocratic, antebellum coalition of unfettered capital and racism, the Confederacy reborn. 

God help us all. 

I Am Superior Ergo

Again and again you find the awakening of individual 'conservatives' hinges on one thing, the belief that some people are just better than others. At an existential level. I think that perspective has gotten the better of Musk lately as he begins to suspect what a worthless clown, opportunist, suck-face and incompetent unevolved character he really is. Denial drives him now.

Musk had the sense to gong-show himself out of Twitter so maybe he'll get a grip and stop the embarrassing behavior. Sometimes these aspiring aristocrats get into a loop where their arrogance and aggression play out well for a while. Certainly this was the case with Musk. Trump was a fuckup from the beginning but his daddy bailed out little Donnie and kept him afloat. 

But notice with a formal aristocracy -- royalty -- where it eventually evolves. The need for constant reassurance. And a fucking amazing inconceivable boatload of it. Prince Charles has been crowned. Look at the ridiculousness of that mess. But $250M should get you something. The waste is incomprehensible -- the insane subsidies it takes to maintain the illusion of superiority. 

It is that unnatural. It is that big a lie. So, why do non-aristocrats support this system? I think it takes an unnatural coalition and convergence of interests. Because I believe in humanity in spite of all the evidence we are a shit species, a terrible and unfortunate evolutionary accident that will destroy itself out of stupidity. And by thinking we're an aristocracy among the species. 

We want to think we're special and more than animals. We're not. In that respect we're all Musks, running from the truth of ourselves in a panic of denial. Consciousness, that defining human attribute, is nothing. Only a memory of a memory. Memory squared. This confers nothing. No special status. In fact it's an evolutionary disaster. Consciousness drives people crazy. 

The conservative reflex is destroying us. 

We are part of a system. Fuck it up and we're goners. Is it too late? It was always too late. We weren't adaptive. Consciousness wasn't a natural result of natural selection. It enabled us to live but not live well. Not to live in harmony with nature. Hence the stories of a fall of man. Of an earlier Eden. Of another realm of perfection and immortality. Because this world makes us nuts. 

Perfection or Bust

Calvinism will get you killed. Calvinism wants to get you killed. The watchmaker's god is impatient with creation. This is not a watch! That's to say, people are so annoyingly corporeal and grubby and error-prone and damn if they don't end up rotting in the ground.  

We can avoid that distasteful fate by burning them alive, at the stake, thank you. Isn't it better? Directly to something kind of ethereal? But God didn't create the Calvinist god or reveal or somehow manifest that angry entity. Herr Calvin did, the fucker. His legacy endures.

In the hatred of life. Being born is a prison sentence for Calvinists. Creation a shithole. God a sadist with a bad sense of humor and no sense of justice or nothing recognizable as such in the shithole. Therefore, trying to make life fair, nice and not shit is an insult to God.

Put that in you pipe and smoke it. And light it with the fire of burning heretics. 

Evangelicals and America's Corporate Elite

Dedicated to the idea that some people are simply born better than others, as a matter of destiny and the will of God. 

And you don't fuck with that. 

McCarthy Plays Asshole Cheapshot Card

That is, he's playing himself. 

Death of a Nation

With North Carolina's slide into political barbarism and stupidity we're reminded of that once reassuringly semi-rational and progressive state's legacy of racism and conservative fear-mongering about the threat of disorder. Meaning, the unthinkable enfranchisement and empowering of blacks and lower class whites against the planters and landed gentry who once dominated the state. 

Surely golf scores will rise unacceptably among the country club white folks and standards of graciousness and civility will decline precipitously as the rabble take over from their betters. Where's Thomas Dixon when you need him? Never have the good, church-going white folk been so persecuted and victimized by the forces of incivility. On the other hand, no one needs the Klan now. 

Their descendants have co-opted and taken over the political system in North Carolina with the help of boatloads of money from other states. The Rebels have risen again. And not only in the famously regressive deeper south of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond and assorted Huckabees and Duck Dynasty knuckle-draggers. The whole country is going south. To shit and to hell. 

Warped Court

We have a Supreme Court with a majority that's been manufactured by private entities or cabals to further their interests. They've ensconced judges with grudges and agendas that overpower any commitment they might have had to interpret the law in an unbiased way. Assuming the capability was ever there.

Fair play is not their forte. They might be cradle crazies. Pre-cradle, in their gestational personhood.

It's a grudge court. A warped court. A court of grievance. A court of vengeance. And a court of arrogance, anger and fixations on imaginary wrongs. Imagined wrongs have clarity and endurance. Real wrongs are appeasable. Imagined wrongs have no ground in reality to erode their (imagined) justifications. 

Nothing to wear down, wear off or be forgiven. They exist in the purity and perfection of the imagination. 

I want to secede . . .

I mean, not really. 

I'm as American as buying shit which I love to do but when you find yourself fantasizing about a long-term suicide pact with a group of friends who understand the track we're on the way I do (as a fucking suicide pact but one being enforced on us) maybe it's time to evaluate.

I've been here before. I'll be here again. Feeling helpless and threatened and vulnerable and indignant and frustrated and wanting to get past it and succeeding a lot of the time but so incredibly tired of being in a society ruled by assholes, It's so wearing. How to deal? I have no answers. 

But alone is not the way. And I do virtual. I read. I write. Just knowing there are people out there who, though our voices have been disempowered, think like me means something to me. It's a communion to me. A communion of the caring. A congregation of decency. And I love that. 

But I so want to get away from the crazies.

None Dare Call It Coincidence

Income and wealth inequality are the great social evils. Or they result in all the great social evils. Have it whichever way you want. And Republicans stand for nothing else -- now it's impossible to deny. They want to increase inequality and screw the little guy. 

Ergo and ipso facto they are fucking evil. Pure fucking evil. They enjoy being evil. Evil results from them as a direct consequence and emanation. They exude evil. They embody evil. They manifest, secure and procure evil. The harbor evil and are its harbingers. 

Let none dare call it coincidence or a byproduct or accidental or incidental or say it's not their prime directive, categorical imperative or life mission and so on or whatever. Lives must be ruined. They are there to fuck things up and fuck people up. Anyone but those in their clan. 

Their clan of fellow evil-doers and sociopaths. They say Trump is transactional. And what kind of transaction is that when you enjoy putting people down and fucking up their lives if they don't kiss your ass? Even if they do kiss your ass. Sick, sick fucks. 

Whole Bureaucracy of Bullies

You see these movies where a strong man fights and beats a bully or bullies. Sometimes beating a whole bureaucracy or organization of bullies and sometimes it's not a strong man alone but a leader or coalition or army or whatever. The good guys don't always win but usually or it's ambiguous. 

The archetypal bullying organization and spree is the Nazis. What sense does it make to say anyone won in that instance? Hardly. It never should have happened. Once you go there everyone loses. And it's happening again. In America, which defined itself as the anti-Nazis. All they were we weren't. 

At one time. But not now. Bullying rests on power disparities. Hard to say, I think, if the Nazi model depended as much as it seems to have on one man but I don't know. The American example does not. Trump might be a personality cult but he's a shit-bloom on a thriving plant full of buds.

Hitler might have been the whole plant. He dies and it's over. I don't know. With Trump I feel sure the movement goes on without him in some horrible form heading us in the direction of Putin, Orbán or a similar horrible fate. Think about it. How far and fast we have fallen. Then think again. 

Because we were never what we thought we were. Maybe we weren't that bad but we chose not to see. We were at the great American frat party with kegs upon kegs of petrol. At best we didn't drink much but we were all there. In the basement and bedrooms horrible shit was going on. There were rumors.

We ignored them. On balance. Settled for a reassuring rebuke to a Nixon or Nixon-like character. Bonfired a guy to feel better and moved on without owning our part in it. All of that shit has caught up with us. All the bedroom rapes and basement antics. And I have no idea how it's going to play out.

But it is an emergency. This is what its like living in the middle of an emergency. It doesn't look like it does in the movies, from the outside. No perspective and the perspective is hard to get and how to thwart it depends on the perspective and probably a lot of luck. What were doing is not working.

That's the starting point.

Blood in the Water

Kristy MacColl was killed by some rich asshole piloting a speedboat irresponsibly and where it wasn't allowed. Let's be clear. Donald Trump, his MAGA movement and the rich people behind the Republican takeover of the American government stand for this. Getting people killed and walking away.

Ruining lives for fun and profit.

It might not happen as dramatically as MacColl's death but everywhere they go there is blood. And, for them, continued riches and impunity. The big push now is for impunity. Lose that and we lose the whole game. They can do anything. Having witnessed Trump do you doubt how that will look? 

His retribution tour will culminate in carnage. 

The Eternal Question

Are assholes born or are they made? We have an opportunity to answer the question because there's an absolute epidemic and explosion in the population of assholes going on in America. That part of the investigation answers itself. Some assholes are made.

They come about due to circumstances. The percentage of assholes isn't relatively fixed as would occur if it were genetically determined. No, there is an observable element of contagion. On the other hand, it's inconceivable to me that assholes are eradicable as a class. 

Some are born assholes. Or born-again assholes. In any event in them it's effectively innate. Again I appeal to observation. I have known assholes who were obviously born that way. You can tell when you're an adolescent boy. Assholes love cheapshots.

They must win by any means it takes. And winning while beating up on people is better than not. Triumphalism is a given -- no graciousness in victory. Not that it's really victory. They never finally feel whole because they can't. The void within them is too great. 

The emptiness vast and incurable. 

Laws and other standards, right on down to courtesy, convention and etiquette, try to make the world better and safe from assholes. But it's hard because assholes have huge pathological drives. Again, because the void within is so great. They are basically vampires. 

Trump Church Death Cult

The MAGA movement isn't political. It's a religion and a cult at that. An authoritarian death cult. The more outrageous and disconnected from reality something is the more strongly it will be taken up and defended. As a point of faith. Like Q drops, which are pig farmer poop. 

And they regard those as revelation.

Ridiculousness is a good thing. Disconnection from reality is good since it suggests it comes from God and creation is shit anyway so making sense in this world is actually bad. Believing in what cult leader throws at you as he ramps up the craziness is a point of honor and a sign of devotion.

A weird testimonial and witness. 

To untruth. It means you are saved. Or more likely to be saved and fuck-all because it was predetermined anyway so it doesn't matter how you behave. And the sooner we all die and the saved are separated from the rest of us and transported off to their reward the better, as far as they're concerned. 

They will happily destroy everything.

Nothing to Crow About

Of course we are learning that corruption isn't a byproduct or incidental or a sideline for Republicans it's their philosophy of governance and life and the universe and everything. Either under the guise of religious fatalism or Social Darwinism corruption is the fundamental mechanism that separates the wheat (them) from the chaff (us) because there are unavoidable winners (them) and losers (us) in life and it is predetermined so it isn't really even corruption in the usual sense but God's will. 

It's life. So, there. And fuck you while we're at it. 

No congratulation or celebration should occur among responsible people for uncovering this cesspool, even if it results in a measure of accountability. Because it wasn't hidden in the first place. And any accountability is a drop in the ocean. Clarence, oh, Clarence. Forget the exposure of his conveniently profitable associations. Consider the damage already done. Corporations are people. Guns are godly and useful in the final liberation of mankind from the bondage of corporeality and sin. 

We are fucked. To an indeterminate degree we will have to endure what these lunatics have in store for us. Love one another and say your prayers, to the spirit of Christopher Hitchens if it must be, because we are in for a bumpy ride. If we're lucky. Otherwise it's right off a fucking cliff. Republicans will lose some of their own. They're fine with that. All's well that ends in Armageddon. Or in a world with a handful of Putins and legions of dupes and cannon fodder and a lot of AI and few paid enforcers. 

Industrial Complexes

Republicans love complexes. Industrial complexes. Because they want power. Firstly militarily, the complex model. But wherever outsize profits are possible a complex is coming. Finance. Medicine. Real estate. Hell, farming, which is highly ill-suited to their kind of consolidation. But they like shit big. 

They are Bond villains. Total nutcases. In the movies they lose. But that's in the movies. Don't count on it. They say the good guys won in WWII. Nobody won. Once that shit happens everybody loses. Americans were just lucky. They weren't bombed and invaded. But they're being bombed now. By Republicans. 

And they're making money at it. So don't look for them to stop. Because they own everything. It's up to us, collectively. 

Co-respondents' Dinner

Never to be outdone in the quest for attention Trump has announced he's holding a dinner at Lair-a-Lago for his associates who might be on the hook and implicated in his crimes. The Kushners will coordinate. As you will imagine, there are more candidates than can fit. 

So they'll also sell Trump tokens or amulets to ward off investigations, and recommend rituals where people place Trump altars in their homes, sold separately. There the guilty can pray for Herr Donald's re-election and the torrent of preemptive pardons that will ensue.