Practice Makes Imperfect

Which is as true of lying as it is of hate. You have to be taught. You have to learn. Practice. And Republicans have an infrastructure to teach you, including hate radio and Murdoch's media. 

Lie Like a Dog

JD Vance has learned to lie like a pro. And attack like a dog. Not most dogs. I love dogs. But a dog Trump might have. The Roy Cohn of dogs. So Trump does have a dog. A trained attack dog. JD Vance. 

The Carnage in Their Heads

Trump's campaign is ending on cries of carnage. That there's carnage out there, that we need to be afraid, and that only he can fix it.

But where's the carnage? I don't see it. Lots of Hitlerian echoes, too, at MSG. Where's the world economic meltdown, that empowered Hitler? 

Where's the massive hit to national welfare and prestige comparable to the German loss in WWI? We have some stagnation, that's all.

The 2008 downturn, created by Republicans, was bad. The Great Depression, caused by laissez-faire Republicans, put Hitler in power.

American southern racists informed his genocidal designs, the other half of the coalition running America. Big money and big hate. 

But where's the carnage? Losers have long memories, the American South for the Civil War. And big money always wants more. 

They are the carnage. The rebels have carnage in their heads. They were crushed. The rich -- class warriors -- want to win. 

The federal government is their Yankees. The rich want to destroy it because it's the only thing that can resist their lust for power. 

There's no carnage. Only the carnage in their heads, and their desire for carnage. And Trump is the king of the losers. So that makes sense. 

But they made it all up. 

The Inversion Is Upon Us

And I mean upon us. On our backs. The 'military industrial complex' has won. The government, over which we have at least some control, is owned by profit seeking entities. The institutions don't serve the people anymore. People serve the institutions. And those institutions regard the people as a threat. And will until the electorate is fully disempowered. We're almost there. 

Miller's Meteoric Rise

Stephen Miller traces a familiar path on the right where promising sociopaths take off like rockets, going back to a nasty group of College Republicans who first took over their national organization then aimed for the stars. They didn't have to struggle. Their lack of decency wasn't a problem -- it was welcomed in the party of presumption and contempt. And by rise I mean right to Reagan, on top of the world. 

Nothing stopped this low character crowd. They drew in money. They delivered votes. They rode the wave of corruption to lobby land, where the money flows like water. Rove, Atwater, Norquist, Ralph Reed, Abramoff and others, unified by their ambition, militancy, mean-spiritedness, hatred of the rules and fair play, loathing of Democrats and love of playing dirty. Above all they were pieces of shit. 

Truly horrible people. But they were useful. Only that mattered in the new Republican Party. The WASPs weren't gone, but overrun by the hooligans. Gingrichers. The upstarts captured the nation. Because money mattered more than anything. The guardrails were gone. Traditional ways of doing things disappeared. Respect was the lost. For everything. The old guard joined in. Propriety went out the window. 

Trump's Madison Square Garden rally was a culmination of this. With Miller channeling Josef Goebbels perfectly. And the crowd loved it. As they were stripped of their power and reason. By a weasley little piece of garbage. 

Riders on the Shitstorm

JD Vance took to lying like a duck to water after a rough start. He's better at it than Trump. More coherence. A product of on-the-job training, I suppose. Vance takes the false witness thing to a whole different level. The commandment had to do with an instance of lying, or maybe a little spree.

With Vance lying is existential. He incorporated it into his being. Lying isn't something he does but what he is. He's living the lie. Now, 'witness' as I understand it is to see something, not to relate it, in its most essential and primitive meaning. Testifying or relating comes in later. I think Vance has experienced a transformation. The inverse of what the Bible had in mind. He deliberately killed off his soul, under the influence of Trump. Hence the majestic falsity. I thought Trump was satanic but not Satan. 

He's too disorganized. Not Vance. He isn't failing in his witness he's testifying in his defense of Trump as an affront to God. He's not pulling a fast one. He's challenging God. God's authority.  

Chris Christie said Trump didn't have his shit together enough to collude with the Russkies. What Christie left out was that Trump certainly wanted to -- crime enough. I think Vance might be Satan, not a person of petty ambition. Not of opportunism. Possessed, at least. Vance's religious circle has been embracing pious irrationalism, praise Jesus, including exorcism and an intense and somewhat disconcerting preoccupation with the possibility and evidence of pure evil. Virgins getting hurled into volcanoes and stuff. 

See 'Rod Dreher' on this. So, anyway, Vance isn't so much providing false testimony, per se, he's trying to invert reality, the devil's work big time. The Logos -- Christ, in my understanding -- is what Vance is challenging. The Logos is intelligibility. The idea is, without Christ life is unintelligible. Life has no meaning. And with Vance life is unintelligible. Listen to his recent shit on YouTube. The boy's a warrior, I'll say that for him. His mind is squirming like a toad, so to say. He's the killer on the road. 

With a killer's certainty. Now, being a believer in forgiveness and the other kind of transformation I have exorcism in mind for Vance and not the volcano. Especially assuming he's not a virgin though he is showing a compulsion and fixation with such matters especially on the vaginal end. So -- benefit of the doubt -- let's suppose that he has a dick and isn't just one. I think it will be apparent in the exorcism if he is in fact Satan and not only a disciple. We might be in the end times, according to some of Vance's allies.

The final battle. 

Good, evil, total Star Wars stuff. And I think Vance is very definitely on the dark side, because of the lies. Remember, he isn't slipping up here. He's trying to dethrone reality. And in the service of Donald Trump, an obviously ungodly entity. They're all concerned with the morality of other people, always a bad sign. And purity. They want purity, which I personally think is more in the purview of God. But they want to purify us at their hands, which is messing with an individual's responsibility for their own soul. 

Their own salvation. Vance and his peeps should look to their souls, and leave me to mine. Each to his own. I'll say this ... I fear JD Vance. He's a man of hate. He has a persecution complex, coming out of Yale Law, presumably a beneficiary of the same affirmative action for rednecks and would be overthrowers of governments program as Stewart Rhodes who's in  jail where he belongs. Whereas Vance is running around lying his ass off in an unbelievable display of ass-licking subservience to Donald Trump. 

Lord Trump, whose ambitions he intends to overtake. Trump's ambitions are as parochial as they come, his own enrichment and aggrandizement. Vance wants to change the world. To reinvent it in his conservative, supposedly Christian vision. There's nothing Christian about it. He's a warrior, trying to take over and take what's not his, like Satan. Or maybe he is Satan. His ambitions and egotism are that grand and his moral blindness that immeasurable and encompassing. Our lives are nothing to him. 

Immiseration for the Masses

There' a Republican slogan for you. One with some truth to it. 

Midnight in America

Can we see the line from Reagan to Trump? Many people can. Reagan's promised morning has played out. It was morning for millionaires. The rich now live in eternal light. Average citizens in darkness.

It's always morning somewhere, as they say. Billionaires have bought time. They've bought the clock. They have more of life, because they wanted it. They've bought everything. They've bought us.

Whether we were selling or not because they bought the system. We came with it. Well, fuck.

Reagan was a racist. They're all racists. Racism means privilege. Undeservedness. Getting what you haven't merited. Republicanism. More importantly, racism is not getting what you do deserve.

What you are owed. Your rights. Racism is based on anything other than treating people according to standards of behavior. Because it's the only reasonable standard. We can't judge essences. 

Character. Not unless on the basis of behaviors. So claims to salvation status, as with evangelicals, are racist. A scam. They're better because they said the magic words in a revival tent. To some crook. 

LIke Jimmy Swaggart. Not to Jesus. If it had been Jesus they would have been filled with love. They're filled with hate. Rich people think they're chosen as well. By fate. By Darwinian mechanisms. 

So we're all eternally fucked in relation to these superior people. Self-declared superior people. It must be nice. Meanwhile their latest savior is spreading hate like no one before him. And he might win.

Either way, it's midnight in America. If we stood for anything we wouldn't be within a mile of this shit. 

The Real Reagan

I remember going to D.C. in the Reagan years and seeing a guy out with a life-size cardboard figure of Reagan with which you could be photographed. I passed. 

But I remember thinking this was the real Reagan. A prop, a cutout and a facade. A stand-in and stooge. A Hollywood set with an elaborate front and nothing behind.

I'm going to go with this.  

The Courage of the Convicted

Trump inherited so much money he could have sat on his ass. And been richer than he is, as has been shown. But he ends up in dire straits. As a matter of compulsion. And as he is today.

And it's not an addiction to risk. Maybe secondarily. He's bringing the world around him into compliance with his internal reality. Of being so incredibly tiny and worthless and vulnerable and unlovable. 

Of only being able to get what he needs dishonestly. Or by force. And by lies. And the world he's bringing into compliance with his internal mess is now, well, the world. A country, at least. 

His pathology is swallowing up everything in its path. People in non-delusional bad circumstances can relate to him. No matter if theirs too are exaggerated. Like America's working class. 

So they vote for this piece of shit who represents the party that destroyed their lives and will destroy them further. I didn't say it made sense. It doesn't to mentally and emotionally healthy people. 

Our Brexit

This election is our Brexit, a chance to see just how stupid we are. It's at the behest of a party that calls itself conservative but is really a bunch of selfish assholes who don't care about anyone but themselves. 

Protection Racket

Trump is such an infant. Totally primal. He lives from one minute to the next. Does he feel fed and full? Is he comfy? An infant in a grown-up world, however. 

So his wants are a little different. He must be at the center. Constantly reassured. What's more reassuring than being surrounded by people who will die for you. 

Don't underestimate the power of the Secret Service detail and the perks of the presidency. That he wants to stay out of jail is a thing but abstract for Trump. 

Everything he does is much more primal. If he was capable of planning he wouldn't be so under threat in the first place. He simply needs to feel at the center. 

And that someone around him will die for him. That those around him are consumed with him. Which he didn't get from mommy. Bush wasn't much better. 

He had the 'nobody home' look in the eyes. Like his mother drink when pregnant. These are the leaders Republicans offer up now. As a show of contempt.

Because it's all they have to offer. 

The Joy of Flaming Wreckage and the Appeal of Trumpism

Trumpism goes back to the sacrificial instinct. Virgins and Volcanos. We must appease the gods or they'll smite us. And we have a toasted virgin deficit. 

We haven't kept up. So those that subscribe to this thinking like Steve Bannon and other catastrophists love the idea of an age of transformative carnage.

Wouldn't that be cool. Mass killings or die-offs or what have you and by any means. Flood. Famine. Fire. Mutant rodents. Nuclear holocaust. It's all good.

Musk is Out of His Mind

Musk and Thiel and many similar tech high achievers are on the spectrum or have a talent/problem with abstract brain function. Which correlates with Empathy Deficit Disorder. Which I just made up but it's real anyway. These are the last people in the world you want running a society. 

Free the Radicals

Democrats are accused of being radicals and commies and socialists and traitors and baby killers and satanists and every other thing in the book when they have more in common with Reagan than today's Republicans. Not that Reagan wasn't a piece of garbage. 

A stand-in and puppet for the forces of corporate greed and for the vanity of the rich and the desire to have an easy life and be thought better than everyone else. There has never been a viable far left in America. Barely a left at all. Because we're all leftists already. 

It's our political inheritance. 

Our constitution is a leftist manifesto. So we're all conservatives. Called on to preserve the revolutionary founders' call to democracy, decency, and a government of compromise, conciliation and inclusion. Of fair play and opportunity. The founders were radicals. 

The founders were revolutionaries. We're asked again to find our inner radical. To stand against tyranny and authoritarianism. Who's being taxed and exploited to pay for the follies of a rich, increasingly idle inheritor or monopolist class? Average citizens.

It's time to revolt. America's conservatives aren't conservative. That's a lie. A talking point. Bullshit. Propaganda. They're aspiring tyrants. They must be stopped. Free the radicals! We must free the radicals within us to save our system from destruction. 

It Must Not Mean Anything

Avowed Nazis are turning out and turning up for Trump. Finally, a candidate who represents THEM. A political soul-mate for racists and authoritarians. A Mussolini for America. A Franco for the fatherland. But it must not mean anything. 

Not really mean anything. We're not Nazis. We could never be Nazis. Like in evangelical religion, behaviors don't matter. Salvation status matters. It's all that matters. And good works won't get you there. Only saying the magic words,

'I accept Jesus as my ....' 

Alakazam, you're saved! And saints persevere so it doesn't matter what the fuck you do after that. God forgives all. You're home free. Saved and shit. And home is heaven. 

You're impatient to get there. Because life is shit. In comparison with perfection. Creation is full of imperfection. God's creation. Which is a conundrum. So we won't go there. One tribal cult, one identity movement, is as good as another.

And they all support Trump. He's obviously saved and chosen and was destined because, well, just look at him. He's rich and he never did a decent thing in his life. So it has to be God. God put him there. Not the idolatry and heresy of good works. 

Welcome to the island of lost souls. 

Rednecks versus Decency, Life, Progress, Prosperity and Joy

Rednecks hate life. So it's an enormous annoyance to them if other people find it pleasurable and meaningful. They try to stamp that shit out, including all justice, mercy and decency. Because their perfect god is an asshole that created the world as a hunk of decaying garbage, temptation and sin for some inscrutable reason. Some people are saved, by the way, and others doomed to hell in the only outcome that matters and nothing they do can change it. Life is torture and God made it that way so it should be shit. Everything good is an insult to their god. Hence Trump. They want to destroy everything. And they hired Trump for the job, because he's well qualified. Do you see they sense of it now? 

Trump Praises Arnie's Arsenal

After wowing Catholics at the Al Smith Dinner in New York City with his character, morality and decency Donald Trump carried on to Pennsylvania where he courted locals by praising native son Arnold Palmer's endowment. Evidently he had a big one.

Trailer Mix

Another Trump administration, with Vance in tow, would mean the values of the trailer park element of white southerners in charge. That's Trump's base and most essential voting bloc. The rest of us will be thrust into an especially hideous episode of Jerry Springer. With nukes. Jerry Springer with nukes. Thanks, Republicans, you pieces of shit. 

Give Me that Old Time Religion

or I'll shove it down your throat. 

Evangelicals are such hypocrites. They insist on a highly individual path to Christ. How is that compatible with shoving your beliefs down other people's throats? And they insist that salvation is entirely individual -- that no group membership or identification or sacramental hocus pocus or raft of good works will get you there, but they're obsessed with the morality of others and the society as a whole. What are they afraid of? Their own corruptibility. Their own weakness. Their own unacknowledged sinfulness and perversion.

One Nation Under Trump

Say what you will, about what Trump represents. We're all living in it now. The shithole is here. 

Start the Steal

Republicans fired up their steal machine, determined to win no matter what. It's no Brooks Brothers Riot, though that crowd will be there. This is a redneck feud. Nothing is off limits. Certainly not your family. Certainly not your job or anything else. They think God is on their side. And theirs is a vengeful God. 

Trump's Time on the Cross

This isn't a presidential election. It's a lottery or auction. Competing marketing blitzes. Content doesn't matter. But that's been going on for a while. 

The newer aspect is monopolization. Monopolization means you're printing money. The monopolization of politics means you're printing votes. 

Heads they win, tails we lose. Monopolies are substates. Once these accepted the system that created and sustained them. More or less. 

Now, not so much.

They seek a takeover. Highly leveraged. This is with our money. A corporate coup, disenfranchising us and financed by us. Pure perversion. 

And led by an aged, demented, incompetent, viciously single-minded and self-serving nepo baby who's portrayed as the biggest victim ever. 

Their savior has been nailed to the cross. The resurrection is planned. We have a Passover Plot. But nobody is going to thrust a spear into Trump. 

This thing might work. No matter, anyway. They've found an heir. Better because he's worse than Trump. Vance. More destuctive potential. 

Which is all they care about. All they're good at. The annihilation of the government so corporations can loot and plunder indiscriminately. 

And we are like cattle or crops. To be used and harvested or slaughtered, as our lords would have it. No rights. No recourse. No justice.

Magical Misery Tour

What sick religions do is strip all the meaning out of life and then ration back to you just enough to make it livable. Barely bearable. Because they're about control. And against freedom, individual attainment of salvation, and any form of conscience. 

Life is a miracle. Rightly perceived it's magical and a source of wonder. The only magic conservatives have to offer is turning everything to shit. 

Rescue Me

I'm besieged by rednecks. The whole country is besieged by rednecks. Parts of the world are besieged by rednecks, to the extent they're entangled with America.

Rednecks are stupid, predatory, proud, backward and belligerent. They're unfit for self governance. They need masters to keep them in check. Ideally, multiple masters.

Give them freedom and they'll throw it out and opt for servitude. Serfdom. They turned Christianity into a fatalistic identity cult, in which they aren't free at all. 

Their soul's destiny was set at birth. Once their own serfdom is achieved they demand everyone else serve their same sick lords as a show of submission and fervor.

JD Vance was already rich. But he had to have a master. Sorry, masters. So he has Thiel, Trump, and a perverted, authoritarian, fascist form of Catholicism. 

And he's after all of us. We must all be brought to heel. Adhere to his precepts. Worship his gods. Kowtow to his kings, Trump and the lords of capitalism. Conform and obey. 

Or they will crush you. While being servile. My God these are sick people. Give them something good and they'll trash it. Friendships are supplanted by feuds. 

The way of the redneck is destruction. No wonder they love Trump. 

His Cheating Heart

Wow, Trump doesn't know how not to cheat. Just like, having a choice between making money while destroying someone and making money while not, he would take destroying someone. I don't think he enjoys it in the normal sense, because he's not normal, and there's nothing normal about enjoying destroying someone in any circumstances. 

But it makes his fragile ego feel a little more secure, I guess. I don't know. And, in his world and that of increasing numbers of Republicans the feeling of exercising power is a reward, no matter the consequences. We're all inconsequential in this. They're asserting their right to do wantever they want with impunity no matter how it harms anyone else.

Deprogram or Deport

The germ of truth in Trump's mania for deportation is that somebody deserves it. Trump voters. MAGA maniacs. If they can be deprogrammed and reeducated to be responsible citizens in a democracy -- to stop destroying it -- we'll let them stay. If not they're gone. 

Mark All as Red

Who are the commies here? The people supporting Putin, to begin with. The commies as we've known them have turned out to be fascists. And Republicans have turned out to be fascists. 

Power lust is the commonality. Consolidation of power into the hands of a few. Or of one. A belief in the inevitability and transcendence of the class war is at the essential core of communism. 

And the belief that class warfare results in unsustainable concentrations of capital. Republicans believe in class warfare so they're trying to win. They've achieved the consolidation of capital. 

To a ridiculous degree. They're the commies. Everything else is secondary. Coming up with a system that prevents class warfare from occurring and getting lots of people killed is the point.

What that system is, and how extreme, is not essential. It's up for discussion. Up for testing, perhaps. Trial and error. But Republicans want the class war. And we've got it. And they're winning. 

Because the other side isn't even fighting back. Many on the side of those being abused are implicated and working against their own interests, as dupes or paid stooges. But that might change. 

The Friends of Destruction

I have made it my goal to try to get through to innocent Democrats how inconceivably fucked up southern white people are and especially white evangelical Christians. Hurricane Helene is instructive. They love this stuff. Tragedy, disaster, the hand of God at work. Suffering. Man, they love suffering. And they don't mind much if it's their own. 

Whatever happens it's God's will by definition. Or it wouldn't have happened. So there. This is fatalism and it's tautological as hell. A world without meaning. Shit just happens. And then you die. Since salvation is predordained your behaviors don't matter. Though there are signs. If you know how to see them. Wealth is a sign of God's favor. 

And it's better if you're an asshole. That means you haven't engaged in good works like the doomed Catholics who are all going to hell even if they're on the Supreme Court and voted for great sadistic shit. War makes for strange alliances. And evangelicals are at war, With the world. Because creation is shit and nothing but temptation. 

It was some cruel, incomprehensible joke on the part of God to trap our wonderful, pure souls in this world. The pre-born are actually better. Being born is a big step down. The further you get from independent life with it's nagging responsibilities and sinfulness the better. Death is purity. So evangelicals want to destroy the world.

 

And that will be God's will and intention as well. 

Enhanced Injustice

Evangelicals love injustice. They find natural disasters reassuring. They're actually excellent at helping out  when shit goes south. However, they consider injustice the model for the things we can control as well because it appears to them to be God's way. Their God is a dick.

So they want life to be arbitrary and mean and unpleasant. That's there social model. And it's how you get to Trump, the guy who fucks up everything he touches beyond belief. 

Stranger in a Strange Land

That's called being an American, lately. We're either never who we thought we were or we've been invaded and conquered. Some of the former, maybe, but mostly the latter. The Confederacy has won the Civil War, in the end. American apartheid never left, but the government's back in support of it. A racist dystopia is the choice that's been made.