Stop the World He Wants to Get Off

Here's a fantasy for you. Donald Trump has an awakening. A come-to-Jesus moment. A real one, not the bullshit pandering for evangelical votes and pretending he stands for something. Besides himself. 

He drops the con. I don't believe it. That it might happen. I probably wouldn't believe it if I saw it, he's so habitually, compulsively false and insincere. But I'll try because my equilibrium is fucked.

I'm worried sick. Really. There was a story once -- a book, play and movie -- about a guy who lived only for himself and took everything for granted. Finally, he saw the light. What a wonderful thought! 

If nothing else such a reverie reminds us how far gone we are. How fucked we are. That this treasonous piece of shit stands any chance of reelection. When he should be shot. After a fair trial, obviously. 

Bikini Overkill

Absolutely everything in America gets fucked up by puritanical utopians. Feminism got fucked up. It immediately went from a good thing to a crusade and got co-opted by power-seeking, masculine bullshit and the consumption machine.

But punk-rock feminism was great. Fun and angry and really challenging to the system, but with some compassion. Some amazing shit and they just about didn't get co-opted. It was inclusive and democratic and free. The things that make the white guys uneasy. 

Everything gets comromised. You can't be an American without implication. Artists can still stay true, but they get mediated by the system. Everything is a commodity. Including people. You can't breathe in America without that shit. It's in the air. 

What men had got defined as what was worth having, in the case of feminism. But what men had and wanted and strove for was the problem. Punk feminism was feminine. And pissed and strident and fun. And human and vital and noisy.

Noise is good. Make some today.

I Tackle Palestine

I think I understand how the protestors in support of the Palestinians feel. That the status quo is against them. That the status quo involves inexorable movement backwards -- the loss of lives and lands. It's not a static status quo. And they don't feel heard.

They feel that Israel and Jews in general get a pass because of the Holocaust. Which they had nothing to do with. So they get emphatic and belligerent because they feel helpless. Helpless and unheard in a situation where they are always moving backwards. 

Wouldn't you be pissed? And act out just to try to get people to listen to you? 

Hedge Your Bots

Bots are people now. And as more bots get in the game they're rubbing elbows with themselves, bot on bot. People can't compete with them. Not at what they do. So there will be layers of bots. Tactician bots and worker bots, like managemant and labor. White and blue collar bots. Bot bureaucracies.

Enter AI, whatever the fuck it is. Being incorporeal is an advantage. Inhumanity is an advantage. I smell evangelicals. They've always hated 'the flesh' and despised their humanity. And taken it out on us. So they empower rich people to prey on all of us. More inhumanity. They teach it in business school. 

It adds up to greater concentrations of power. More and more until it implodes, as it will from it's own gravity, an unsustainable, mindless black hole of greed and a vampire economy. It used to be you could only die once, when life was more coherent. Now some people, the winners, have many lives.

The rest of us, many deaths. In any case, time to hedge your bots. If the bots are on your side you will need vertical integration. If not you need damage control and an escape plan. And good luck with that. 

Beyond Meathead

There's a hedge fund or private equity kind of guy out in my neck of the woods. What is it with them? They're rich as shit but still compelled to keep nervously doing stuff. Stirring stuff up. Trying to prove their manhood, is my thinking. This person is positively Muskian. 

A mini-Musk, I might propose, lording it over the locals. And ... why? He buys up land, clears it, nuking lots of beautiful trees, adds overdone (and poorly designed) stone entryways like it's some English royal sort of enclave or something. He put in a shooting facility -- skeet. 

I'm awaiting the fox and hounds thing or whatever. I can't imagine what is next. What can these people possibly have left to prove? But look at Musk. So insecure and needy he has to constantly cause trouble and throw his weight around. God save us from these rich guys. 

Interview With an Umpire

I'd like to interview our Republican Supreme Court justices -- grill them, really -- to find out what they think about being instantly proved wrong about voting rights and abortion and some other things. Their side proved them wrong about voting rights by immediately jumping on the opportunity to screw people out of the right to vote in a partisan -- racially unequal -- kind of way. The exact states that were covered under the Voting Rights Act for having a history of screwing black people. And some others with Confederate refugees who relocated after getting their asses whupped. 

And their abortion ruling is leading to unintelligible law. If it's up to the states it's not a constitutional right but nor, presumably, is it constitutionally prohibited. So their boys are now pushing for a national prohibition and not through new law, though I'm sure they'd be fine with that, but by arguing that stuff already in the constitution applies. That's how I understand it. This is arguing from conclusions. They want to outlaw abortion so they come up with reasoning to do it. Bullshit reasoning. Rationalizations. As they did with gun rights. To reward rednecks for voting for Republicans. 

They said they would call balls and strikes. They didn't say they wouldn't be biased, bigoted and partisan about it. Clarence is behind the plate. Harlan Crow is in his sky box watching Clarence, his boy, do what he pays him to do, protect the interests of the super-rich. The thing is, the justices don't give a shit. They're ideologues and bullies. We can all fuck off. There will be no interview. They answer to no one. The dream of all criminals is impunity. Immunity. To be a law unto yourself. These Republicans make the law (what a feeling of power!) and they don't even have normal consciences. 

Live Baiting

I hate baiting. And Republicans do it constantly. They have no morality at all. 

Evangelicals Have This Right

No, I haven't converted. But I bought a new dishwasher. And I think -- God, we can't go on this way, using up and throwing out this consumer shit like there's no tomorrow. Evangelicals have a plan. 

No tomorrow. Fuck tomorrow. Let's get everybody killed. Destroy everything. And in this they're right -- it can't go on. Beyond that we differ. I love life. I love humanity, nature, the world and creation. 

And dogs. I love dogs. Evangelicals hate it all. Maybe not dogs, but ... collateral damage.

Pure spirit, that's what they want. A bunch of souls, maybe with incorruptible bodies, floating around in space somewhere. But no more of this awful imperfection. They're going to blow it all up. 

Mortality puts an edge on everything, I'll grant that. Corruptibility, the way it plays out, where anybody can die of cancer or another misery, for example, might not be my favorite. But life is what it is. 

I don't think it's our place to pull the plug. Presumptuous, to my mind. But evangelicals want to see the end times. I think life is a miracle. They think it's a catastrophe. A huge mistake. 

And they will have their way. Destruction is easy. But I'm going to stick with wonder at the miracle of creation. As long as I can. Thank you, friends, for being here with me. And I wish you well. 

A Fair Shakedown

What constitutes a fair shakedown? Republicans might be wont to wonder. What's enough? When are average people disempowered and screwed enough? The answer is never. Once they might have thought so. That was another generation of Republicans. 

The new crew is scared they'll be found out. They ask themselves, perhaps in some subtle, unconscious way, what they would do. What they would do if they realized they'd been suckered, lied to and shafted for decades. They would want to kill the fuckers. 

Kill the fuckers that screwed them. But there's no such thing as a fair shakedown. Republicans told themselves anybody who wasn't completely selfish and willing to do anything to win was an idiot and a sucker. That those people deserved to lose. 

That would be us. 

Pooches are for Screwing

What good is the opportunity to crash and burn if it isn't explored occasionally? Thus we see the need to tempt fate. To explore limits. To challenge authority for the hell of it. 

This was supposed to be done, and the issues resolved, in adolescence. When adults do it it's from arrestedness. From having not grown up. Like those running the Republican Party. 

This is the eminent domain approach to idiocy. Use it or lose it. And Republicans are about to cause us to lose it. Flexing their meathead muscles they're going to take us all down. 

Inadequacy in the New Testament

Being inadequate and bring bad are different. Christians should to own inadequacy because it's not corruption. Corruption is different. Being corruptible is different. 

And sins of error and inadequacy are different from sins asserting that life is unintelligible. Christ is the Logos, without which life is unintelligible. Intelligible, with Christ. 

Intelligible, in the way of beauty. By uninspired reason life is not intelligible. People are inadequate at that. Which is where faith comes in, making up for our inadequacy. 

Short on Truth

The news from Scamalot is bad. Truth Social is tanking. Everybody knew it was a lie. But could Trump make money anyway? After all, he's always made his money on image. 

Trump was corporate vaporware. Everything was always based on Trump vapors. Which does't bear too much thinking about. Like everything Trump, scrutiny is not allowed.

Apostles of Treason

Evangelicals have a new niche. They're winning the culture wars so it's about consolidation. Stuffing their values down the throats of their enemies. That is, their fellow citizens whose rights they are supposed to respect as part of a social contract which benefits them enormously. The responsibilities of that social contract don't suit them. Like, respect, tolerance and compromise. They are out to win. By any means.

By illegal means, since they're in a hurry and they answer only to God's -- not secular -- law. They're traitors and parasites, in other words, enjoying the benefits of a society while being its irresponsible members, sucking off the stability and success provided by others. The stability and success they are destroying. They vote for Trump. They support voter suppression, gerrymandering and intimidation.

They are traitors. 

Evangelicals and Revenge

I'm going to take the evangelical drive for death and destruction as a given. As an observable thing. And I'm going to say this is about revenge. Revenge against God for having been born. 

Wow Trump Looks Like Shit

Trump finally looks as deranged as he is. He always looked nuts to me but so did Reagan and Bush so what do I know. But Trump looks terrible. Like the madman he is. 

There's no way to wind this thing down.

There's no way to wind down the vampire economy. It will have to crash and be killed. Keep the wooden stake handy. A big one.