A Fundamental Difference

Identity movement people, let's say Republicans, criticize others, let's say Democrats, for their allegiances, immutable accidents of birth and arbitrary associations. Democrats criticize them back for their behaviors. Even our criticisms are different. 

Democrats say Republicans are racist because they are, to the degree they are an identity movement and it's not about behaviors. So Republicans want to destroy or eliminate you when you fault them. It's a huge deal. They go annihilationist.  

They want to you gone. Democrats want you to behave. When we call Republicans Nazis, fascists and totalitarians, which they are, they can stop that and we'll welcome them among those who believe in rational, representative governance. 

Which is our legitimate tradition. They call themselves patriots when they're traitors. Christians when they're heretics. Decent human beings who uphold standards, values and traditions. They are none of those. It's a scam and a power grab. 

You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Healthcare

The fatalism and self-pity of the country music crowd will translate to the losses they're about to suffer at the hands of Republicans. They'll suck it up, not to say Democrats can't win some of them over, but they'll go fish'n and hunt'n and carry on. Mostly they are responsible citizens -- except when they vote.

The same perverse individualism that makes them think getting shit on is normal means they'll vote for fuckheads forever. And don't tell them they're fatalistic and self-pitying. They don't know what fatalism is but it'll sound bad to them and 'pity' won't ring right in any context so they'll try to beat you up. 

I, Bacterium

I didn't choose to be a bacterium, I tried to live a good life. And individual bacteria are innocent. But my colony has gone nuts. The medium was the message -- the growing medium, I mean. I guess it was our niche on the earth. We were told we could choose our fate, handle the responsibility. 

Or we were called to do that, I should say, given the opportunity, as we were, and able to use our capabilities to advantage. To be sensible and humane. We didn't listen. I'm exhausted. We're worn out, and we did it to ourselves. Needlessly, I choose to believe, with what limited choice I still have.

I think we had a choice. Exponential growth is a bitch. We chose compulsion. So we're no different to bacteria, hurtling toward annihilation. But we're aware. Some of us. We see the insanity of it and it's enough to make you mad. This wasn't meant to happen to beings who could foresee it. 

Support Your Local Tariff

Trump's tariffs are taking a bite out of consumers, as we knew they would. Further pain and suffering await. Trump is going to destroy everything. He's a fuckup and a compulsive criminal. Those supporting him and in line to succeed him are worse. Vance is honing his savior persona, which can be used to justify anything. Because, like all of them, he doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. Extreme individualism and the drive to win have destroyed us. 

Make Your Bed. Don't Beat Off. All Will Be Well.

Jordan Peterson's formula for saving young men doesn't seem to be working. I think because it's within the Calvinist model of life. Calvinism strips all the meaning out of life and gives you back just enough to stand it or maybe a little less. If so, sorry about that but it was God's will. 

Or, tough shit. Calvinists are His holy representatives and apply the same model to money, not to go soft on the needy. They exploit the shit out of people then mete back just enough to keep you alive, if you're lucky, and expect gratitude. That's empire and authoritarianism for you.

God Loves Hungry Kids More

Evangelicals, through the divine agency of Donald Trump, just took food out of the mouths of kids and gave the savings to rich people so they can be richer. This is so those kids can receive the outpouring of love they deserve from God because God loves hungry kids more in their suffering and need. 

If God had wanted them to have food they would have had it. The government has no business messing with the will of God in the matter. This has nothing to do with the Civil War, slavery, desegregation and hating the federal government for kicking their asses, by the way, evangelicals want you to know. 

Trump Steals Lunch Money

With SNAP cuts going into effect evangelicals are celebrating. Those undeserving little shits won't be wasting our money anymore as is the will of God  and the savings will stoke the economy supply-side style in the hands of billionaires where it always does the most good. WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE uprooted again! Let's hear it for the new evangelical age ...

Paulson Shorts Accountability

John Paulson succumbed to Epstein's temptations, it seems. Maybe he sought it out. Either way, if it happened, and I suspect it did, it's bad. Accountability is going down. 

David Brooks is a Bigot

David Brooks is a bigot. Racists are supremacists. Brooks is a Brooks supremacist. A race of one and a Brooks bigot. He thinks he's better not as a white guy or whatever but as David Brooks. He's a social Darwinist and an authoritarian. And he's too proud or prejudiced to own it but wonder after the debacle of the Bush years which he supported and now Trump who he reviles but it's too late ...

American Carnage

Trump needed American carnage so he found it. He invented it. Nothing was wrong only the usual problems any society has and tries to deal with though ours were worse. Still not that bad but worse.

Worse because of Republicans. The problems were largely created by Republicans. They were made worse by Republicans. And they were lied about where they didn't exist and made up by Republicans. 

Republicans use carnage to justify their violent impulses and authoritarianism. Republicans love crime. They are criminals who want to win. They distract you from their theft and direct attention elsewhere. 

Onto the petty stuff, so they can steal you blind while you're looking at some smash and grab at a convenience store, probably perpetrated by someone whose life was destroyed by Republicans. 

No good job because of Republicans. No healthcare because of Republicans. No security because of Republicans. Our problems were created or worsened by Republicans. Then they used them to take over. 

Interview with an Umpire

Interviewer: Many people, including legal scholars, have accused you of overseeing the obliteration of the rule of law in America in favor of a totalitarian, authoritarian state. How do you respond to that?

John Roberts: I don't give a shit.

I: Could you expand on that?

JR: I had to pretend I cared about the law and the Constitution and endure years of humoring liberals and legal academics but I despise them, especially liberals, and think they're idiots and unworthy of having any say in how we're governed. I have enormous contempt for average citizens. I think they're sheep. Wouldn't you say I've been proven right? 

I: I'm asking the questions here. Do you not care at all about the law? 

JR: Fuck you. Don't ever talk to me like that again or you'll wake up in the worst jail ever and be waterboarded for the hell of it. That's legal now, if you didn't notice. I don't have to answer to you or to anybody. Why do you think I wanted this job? I helped steal the 2000 election for a moron but he could be managed to advantage by the real power. Reagan was another prop and tool for those same forces. Nixon was a loose cannon by our standards and went soft on the commies and you saw what happened to him. We kept Obama from accomplishing anything. He had to hang his hat on a fucking healthcare bill. Mitch McConnell, who actually thinks he has some power, was useful in curtailing Obama but he's not an insider. I mean, look at the guy. And Trump? My God, what a piece of shit. 

I: More, please ...

JR: Look at what we did to Clinton. He governed like a moderate Republican but we still had to teach him and the liberal establishment a lesson. Do you think it was legal the way we pursued him, fueled by Mellon money and boundless determination? How do you get from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky? Not legally, I'll tell you that. We made it open-season on Clinton. That's not legal. Now it's open season on anybody we disagree with so I say again, mind your manners. We know where you live. You have a family, don't you? 

I: I don't appreciate that. 

JR: You're not supposed to. Get a clue. This is pure authoritarianism. This is what it looks like. You have no rights at all. Nobody ever did, really. It was always a ruse that served the interests of the wealthy. We were playing the game as it best suited us and for the long run. But everything has changed. When we needed cheap labor we got it. Unlimited cheap energy, we got it. Unions were a joke. Sure, we couldn't treat workers like slaves anymore and have them die in droves from black lung or whatever but we still made out like bandits. Trump thinks he's a deal-maker. What a joke. We perfected it ages ago. Start out at twice what you want and fall back by 20% or so and say the other side, representing the rabble, drove a hard bargain and walk away with an unimaginable win. It was pure exploitation. Do you think it makes sense to burn through the world's irreplaceable oil reserves like there's no tomorrow? 

I: Aren't you a Christian of at least a Catholic? Don't you care about anything? 

JR: My God, you're dense. Religion was part of the thing. Part of the scam. It helped us, enormously, to keep the 'common people' in check and happy and grateful to have the bones we threw them. Opiate and all. Do you think we're close-minded or ideological? We have no ideology, at all. We use whatever works. Pure power lust, because we deserve it. That's what it's about. And it's all changed now, because of technology. We don't need to humor anybody anymore. That's why I can talk to you like this, because I have all the power and you have none. You live at my tolerance and pleasure. Don't forget it. We will mostly let average people live -- we're not totally without scruples -- but they better behave. We have unimaginable power. Surveillance tech. Killing whoever we want like in a video game. Send in a little drone and blow your house up. With your whole family in it. It's fantastic. 

I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be able to quit playing this game and pretend we care about anything but ourselves. I'll give you time to digest this. It's been fun. Feel free to contact me again. I can't believe how great it is to not have to pretend anymore and exercise unlimited power without restraint. Go in peace and be thankful I don't feel threatened by you because I could kill your ass but I'm a softy by the standards of my peers.

Vance, Patel and Leavitt Use School Shooting to Reinforce Republican Talking Points

Of course they would lie and use the shooting to reinforce Republican talking points. Other countries have far lower rates of shootings though rates of mental illness and disturbance are relatively the same. The shooting was not terrorism or anti-Catholic. And Kash Patel is an idiot, an asshole and a Trump toadie who is participating in terrorism himself. But with Republicans it's partisanship politics and lies all the time. They didn't come to govern they came to destroy. 

Plato's Plutopia

I wonder if Plato foresaw the possibility of a government, one highly effective at destroying itself, stumbling into an inverted version of his ideal in an act of revolutionary reinvention. I'm not sure it was Plato's ideal but it was probably thought of as efficient in its attempt at specialization and putting the right people in appropriate hierarchical roles and having it work. 

Republicans have achieved efficient destruction, but destruction is easy so let's not be too much in awe and understand that an evolved and expansive machine devoted to plunder can still be stopped by the right wrench in the right place at the right moment and before it's too late -- before they've decentralized like a franchise from hell and the terror organization they are. 

Like Al Qaeda. They're destroying the government on behalf of the Confederacy and rich fuckers. We need some of that infrastructure and capacity intact when we get it back. They know this and are working hard to fuck it up irreparably. We had better get our act together and stop it. We need there to be something left to save. I think it's still possible but not by much. 

The Last Big Thing

AI is the last big thing, the technology that heralds the end of humanity and civilization. I'm not sure it was even good while it lasted. We were always in Eden and always choosing the apple. Enough of us, anyway. For those that didn't it could be good. The stories that convey the urgency of salvation aren't temporal, nor are they about an afterlife. Heaven and hell are here and now, and we chose to take the miracle of life for granted, sought power, lost our humility and fucked it all up. 

Bring Me the Head of Abrego Garcia

Stephen Miller, a member of the Trump crime family, has mixed up Kilmar Abrego Garcia with the title character, Alfredo Garcia, in a Sam Peckinpah movie. THAT Garcia is a criminal, gang member and thug. Consider that Abrego Garcia is not, as far as we know, a gang member. Nor is he in the 'Epstein Files' or under suspicion of being in them which is a more serious matter so attention should be directed there and at the release of those in a complete, unredacted version to a bipartisan committee or other responsible and secure entity before anything else and after which relevant material might be published and further investigations and prosecutions undertaken.

The Death of Trump

Trump might die, and sooner rather than later according to some people who say his swollen ankles and other signs point to a man in serious health trouble. I think people can live a surprisingly long time in terrible shape. We should still address the unbridled joy and ecstasy that would attend the death of Donald. It might be like overfeeding a starving person and inadvertently killing them. 

Trump is such an unimaginably awful and destructive piece of shit the rebound effects from being freed from him might be more than people can handle. Can you imagine, never having to endure again the utterly vile stuff that pours out of him day and night? And the damage he does. My God, the damage. But then we would face the headless monster of MAGA. And JD Vance... 

Mundane Matters

When you associate with Jesus every day and are expecting the end times it's hard to focus on mundane things like the millions of people you're getting killed. You delegated that. And what does it matter when those poor souls are only getting to see Jesus before you (or not) so you're kind of doing them a favor. Evangelical Christians are distracted, blinded by the light of Jesus's presence. They have a known personal relationship with Jesus, of that they are certain. But they can never be sure about you. 

Trump Thugs Are Coming to Your Town

But, be reassured. Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize and, we have recently learned, to get into heaven. How bad can it be? 

Exit Stage Right

Wow, the Trump admin just got its clock cleaned in Alaska. Trump can't admit he got owned and made a fool. And there are those around him who can't either. How far into the privy council do we have to go to find someone who says fuck, this is ridiculous? And how far to get to someone who gives as shit? 

Miller and Vought are projectiles. Susie Wiles has to wipe the drool from Trump all the time. It's her job, she does it constantly and she knows Donnie has spit himself again but she's not there for anything else. A professional Civil Service is supposed to be there to look out for the country's broader interests. 

Trump fired them all because fuck the country. Trump is supposed to be there for the same reason but he can't comprehend it -- non compos on that count. Bessent is a class warrior. Who knows about him. He's there for the money and to preclude an uprising of the plebs. Ditto Lutnick and probably Witkoff.

I'm just asking. Because I don't see anybody in a position of influence and who isn't hopelessly compromised and conflicted and who gives a  a shit enough to try to do something. All the damage control mechanisms have failed. They have made a job of it. Our country has ceased to exist. 

It's Time to Get Out

Out of what? Out of where? I don't know, but's I think it's time to get out.  

Posse Kardashiensis

Posse Comitatus is a right of non-interference, initially a concession to southern states to impede the use of federal force against them wanting to establish an apartheid substate. I think it would have happened anyway, they were so determined, but now the South has risen up and taken over in Washington and they want to use federal force against state authority. 

Of course. But there's more to it. Everything is personal with Trump, so we have non-interference based on him, the rights of celebrity, to do whatever they want. Fucking period. Trump's erosion of norms is massively destructive to the rule of law, and he's being used by people who want that, but with Trump it's narcissistic individualism, pure infantile egotism. 

The Expurgated Epstein Files

Tell me how we're going to know the Epstein Files, if we ever see them, haven't been doctored to protect the guilty. Trump is never going to show us anything that's incriminating to him. 

Triumph of the Shills

We should have known that when America went fascist even its villains would be pathetic and losers among that class of losers. They would be fucking bureaucrat bourgeoisie fascists. 

This Is It, Folks

People picture themselves in a battle as though it's a competition and it's scripted and you're doing something that at least makes you feel like you have some agency when, in reality, most of those who get killed never knew what hit them. A fighter-plane 'dog-fight' comes to mind with the drama and a mano-a-mano scene and a victory on one side but evidently most of those who get shot down don't even see their attacker. 

They get jumped. In any case, the point I want to make is that Democrats are expecting a drama and a battle and certain script and they've gotten jumped. They have no idea what's going on. Republicans have overwhelmed them and they're in denial. The news out of the White House is that Trump isn't running anything. He's being stage-managed by Miller and Vought and a few others and it's worse than we can imagine. 

Trump is riding a wave and he's delusional and his handlers are having him do stuff no one in their right mind would do on the assumption they'd be remembered for it and he does it all. The man's a total fuckup and an imbecile. Everything is in slow motion as we experience it but it's a democratic kill-shot. It's a coup. A takeover. Conquest, and we're being ravaged and pillaged. Our institutions are being burned to the ground. 

Fatuous Libertarian Disease

I had an ongoing thing with an undergraduate philosophy professor about pragmatism. Dewian pragmatism. I couldn't tell if he believed in it but he had done his dissertation on Dewey so there we were. I thought the philosophy's main selling point was that it was hard to refute -- a good philosophy for a troll. The professor was a nice guy and I had no idea about Dewey, so, no aspersions. 

But I thought pragmatism was tautological so I smelled a rat. The way to make something irrefutable is not to say anything. Hence my feelings about libertarianism. I smell a scam. Freedom is good! Okay, have your lawyer draw up something and I'll sign it. I'll stipulate, freedom is good. And then I note that most of the 'libertarians' I know are from privilege and I have questions.

Whose freedom? Because I think they mean theirs, to the exclusion and diminishment of mine. And in my observations, let's say, of the self-styled libertarianism I find where I decide to look for it in the wild, in the policies and actions of the Trump administration, they mean their freedom, at the deliberate expense of mine. They're even compromising my freedom at no seeming benefit to themselves.

Unless you count disempowering me as a benefit, as they apparently do, and then meanness might come into it or an irrational, compulsive aggression driven by fear. Hence again and I come to originalism, Supreme Court version, another scam. I see it's irrefutable and able to be redefined and reinterpreted on the fly to suit their desires. And I observe they're doing whatever the fuck they want. 

Hence one last time and I come to people calling themselves 'Christians' and 'patriots' and I call bullshit. It's not like saying you're a Methodist or a citizen, they're putting themselves above us which is, I think, evidence against the thing they're asserting. Prideful, at least. That wraps up my investigation for now but stay tuned for more horrible right-wing crap. I'm sure we're not done with it.

The Corpse Flower of Conservatism

Conservatism occasionally blooms and the horrific stench attracts the carrion flies that are its pollinators. Flies like Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Hegseth, Kash Patel and others are drawn irresistibly to the smell of shit. It's all to do with procreation, spreading the conservative disease.

There is No Redoubt

We're in the last battle. Will the Yankees or the Confederacy rule? 

Always, in the past, the South has had its redoubt. They lived in their slave states, trying to take over the country from there and making a few good runs, but it never worked and they returned to their plantations. Or, an apartheid substate after getting their asses plastered in the Civil War. 

But they never gave up. Now, after desegregation, there is no redoubt, no racist haven to which to return. So the country must be remade into a racist refuge, an evangelical theme park and a white safe space. We're going to be one country at last, it appears on the terms of the Confederacy.

Inbreds Out and About

In today's news Arkansas inbreds Tom Cotton and Mike Huckabee made their mark, Cotton by ordering up an investigation of Jack Smith and Huckabee by being the jackass he is on a Mideast trip and by carrying on being a shithead once he got back with the renewed attention his negative contribution to saving starving children had earned him. 

Watching Evangelicals Eat Ass

They think they're eating God's ass, a strange concept. 

Sixpence None the Wiser

We see evangelicals using and ripping off God. Does it matter? They think not because they're on God's side. On the ground the act is justified. Mere tactics. Incidental stuff. The severity of the sin is nothing to the benefit. God isn't hurt by it. And are they not chosen, saved and redeemed? 

Ripping off their fellow citizens, those sinners, is nothing. Dominion applies over them. But what does God require? And everything matters in the context of creation. LIKE ripping off your fellow citizens to the point of wrecking their lives and getting them killed. And lying like there's no tomorrow. Evangelicals might believe there's no tomorrow, by the way, but rather the Second Coming. 

Everything matters to people, among people and in a human context. Evangelicals are hawking and pawning their souls. But aren't they the pre-saved, let alone in the position of God, free to judge the salvation of others? God's standards are explicit enough, and sixpence matters among people. 

Maybe not much but it matters. And God's standards matter, so ripping off God is more than meaningful, it's desecration and heresy, not because God wants for anything but because of what God requires, not a 'personal relationship' with Jesus but as seen in how we love one another. There's lots I don't know about lots of things, but I doubt God likes being played for a sucker.

Do Not Eat

I'm grasping but wondered if we stamped or tattooed 'Do Not Eat' in big letters on Trump's ass if his cabinet and functionaries and the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court might stop paying homage to Trump by eating his ass. It can't be healthy. And it's clearly bad for the country. 

I would like some help on the graphics and the layout of the words in relation to Trump's ass-crack though I was thinking about huge letters straddling the crack. Or maybe have 'DO' straddling the crack and 'NOT' and 'EAT' below on either side since real estate probably isn't a problem. 

We're not talking about a toned ass here. Then there's the issue of implementation. We'll need an insider. I wonder if Melania can be turned. All she must care about is money. I can't believe anybody ever loved Trump, he's such a pig. Or we could clandestinely equip a toilet to blast ink on his ass. 

Again, I'd be happy for help with this. Worst case we could project a huge image of Trump's ass with the message on some venue where it's impossible to ignore, though we're dealing with addiction, ass addiction, and the prognosis I understand is poor because the degradation is so great.

Mental Fundamentalists

Fundamentalists are going mental. Trump has them tied in knots. They're literalists and Trump isn't literally literate so it's gone into the realm of faith. 

They're trying to faith-heal the country, praying over it and shit but changing the laws as well to shove their inarticulate values down our throats. 

Inarticulate because they're authoritarians. An authority, like Trump or God, can change its mind. They think Trump is transcendent, if you can believe it. 

What Did He Not Know and When Did He Not Know It

Donald Trump seems to not know a lot about Jeffrey Epstein. And not know a lot about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. I want to know when he did not know. I expect it was pretty recently. 

Cultist Tulsi Gabbard Mines Alternative Facts to Pass Competitors in Presidential Upsucking Extravaganza

The headline says it all.

I Am a Contextualist

Because I don't think anything is intelligible out of context. 

The Diabolical Awards

I've become aware there are clandestine awards in the White House for excellence in lying. I think they're weekly but they might be monthly or bi- but not that kind of bi- since they're against that kind on paper and in principle but who knows what they do when we're not looking. My understanding is that Kayleigh McEnany -- no, sorry, that's the old one -- Karoline Leavitt is disqualified from competing because it's formally her job to lie so that would be unfair. Anyway they're called the Diabolical Awards.

And the winner the 'diabolos' for that period. I assume diabolos because 'devil' was a little too direct. The details are unknown to me but we can assume they have some fun with it the way secret societies usually do, festivities and adornments and regalia and maybe a little fun-poking and food and noshes and maybe steaks and shit -- I mean these are Republicans. I picture Stephen Miller as permanent emcee so he's likely disqualified as well apart from everybody being scared as shit of him. Jeez, he's a creep. 

I assume they work it out with handicaps or whatever for the rest whose jobs involve varying degrees of necessary falsification. Of course Trump is disqualified because he's absolutely the greatest at everything he does and would win every time as at golf if he were allowed to be considered, 'compete' not being the applicable term because Trump does everything at such an insanely high level and so effortlessly and without even paying attention, just as with his innumerable business deals and successes. 

This award is like the 'salesman of the month' thing you see with some goober on a plaque at a car dealership but one would hope with more taste and gravitas in some form. The taste thing is a bit fluid now though they still turn out in suits and dresses as an informal uniform but it's hard to dodge the issue of Trump's appalling taste. Republicans make up for any possible propriety gaps with sheer compliance which makes the awards interesting because of the interplay of utter submission and inventiveness. 

I'll report more on this later if my source doesn't get discovered and eliminated, I hope with some specifics about awardees and how they get roasted as part of the proceedings and what they do if the reigning diabolos falls out of favor with Trump over an unintended slight. NOBODY deliberately crosses Herr Donald these days. Keep in mind all those subtle and not-so- messages intended as intimidation apply in-house as well and they're all scared as shit all the time which is thought to enhance creativity. 

A Seat at the Table

Republicans, it turns out, have a different idea of having a seat at the table. For them it doesn't mean belonging or having a voice and being acknowledged, it means a seat at a gambling table. They want a lottery -- winners and losers. That's bad enough, because it's arbitrary and inhumane, but the way they have it planned they're the house. They win no matter what.

Why Fascists Love Fossil Fuels

Because you can blow shit up with them.

Staggeringly Evil Bill Passes Senate ...

with some Republicans still screaming 'not evil enough!' 

Bessent Owns Class War

Scott Bessent, in an offhand moment and aside, owncd the Class War, pointing out that Democrats didn't stick it to the rich when they could. 'Yeah. you had your chance and blew it,' he was saying. But we didn't have our chance in a fair fight because this was a guerilla effort on their part and subversion. 

And Bessent wasn't working for the government, for us, when we missed our chance so it's different. You could say it was his job previously to look out for himself, according to Republican doctrine and their ultimate good of greed, but it isn't his job to look out for himself now. It's illegal. It's abuse.

If we have our chance again he needs to pay. He's exploiting a position of trust for personal gain. Their world divides into purely selfish people and suckers. One day the suckers will have to assert themselves because the rich want it all, down to your existence. They've made an end to era of rights. 

Bedraggled

So I'm thinking about a new version of the Faust story, à la 'Bedazzled' but without a denouement, titled 'Bedraggled.' Republicans have me wondering what's it's like to sell your soul and it was worth so little, because the market is flooded, that there's no real drama and then it just drags on fucking forever. And you crave anything -- glorious victory and world domination or some cesspool of sex and money and gluttony and having servants fawn your ass OR even total failure and a great car crash kind of ending with you as the car or at least in it but with the drama you're due and entitled to because you thought it was an act of consequence to sell your soul and it turns out it was nothing. You were totally inconsequential. I mean, look around you. The market is flooded! What did you expect? You sold your soul and got nothing but a massive heap of ennui. Congratulations, you idiot, and let it be a lesson, to someone, since it's too late for you now, you loser. 

Roger, Dodger

Draft dodger and career criminal Trump, who thinks public servants, including the military, are losers who couldn't cut it in the private sector, has suddenly become a fan since the military is one big-ass toy. So this is about Trump's mojo, which he is missing and trying to find. And nothing says mojo like blowing shit up so Trump is identifying with certain airmen and trying to use them when he's flown everything he's been in charge of right into the ground. Right, Donald, keep looking for your manhood. That activity is causing you to fly a country into the ground, with extensive collateral damage, and you'll be remembered as the worst president in history, you unbelievable fucking idiot. 

Conquest and Plunder

Now that Donald Trump has flushed $45M or whatever of taxpayer money down the toilet on the worst parade ever you would think his supporters would get a clue but of course not. They were already in a cult called the Confederacy. They were already in a cult called evangelical Christianity. Thump, always an active but lazy piece of shit, doesn't know what work is. He doesn't know what life is.

But he knows his audience, who are in the colosseum of conservative media enjoying the bloodshed and Trump is going to give them more. And there's an edge on it because they could end up fighting for their own lives, plucked from the stands into the arena. It's happening en masse as the budget bill of abominations works its way through Congress, impoverishing people into utter helplessness. 

The bill is nothing if not bold. Where is the money going? Don't ask. Where else, but to the already rich. A startling provision will initiate the greatest real estate grab in American history, the selling off of a huge chunk of the national trust of protected lands. Absolute plunder. You think your middle class neighbor will get a cottage out of this? No, and neither will you. But you might lose your health care. 

Eventually, if not right away. Because they want it all. This is conquest. And plunder. 

Cannon Law

I've been a hostage. I know how it feels. Trump is it. The Republicans are it -- thugs, society-rapers, hostage-takers, bullies, defamers and murderers. Soul murderers. Destroyers of innocence. Haters of civilization and decency. 

Modern civilization needed to be wound down. It's unsustainable. But not through national suicide, violence and catastrophe-baiting. Not by seeking apocalypse. Not by playing brinkmanship with a genocidal end to everything. 

We need a humane revolution. A new pact with nature and a reconciliation. A redo on dominion. A rebirth of true reason rooted in the realities and limitations of creation, not the cannon law of Trump and his his mafia goons.

Trump Runs Amok

Little Donnie Trump, scared as shit as always, is lashing out in every direction after being manipulated into a corner by the evildoers he assembled around him to shield him from the realization of what an incompetent and worthless piece of shit he is. He just can't win. 

Having an unbelievable opportunity to become a beloved and brilliant president after having cut through the constraints of a calcified political system instead he finds himself, yet again, in the shit up to his eyeballs because he's such a moron and hopeless incompetent. 

Paradise Looted

Paradise wasn't lost it was looted.

Ambition

I'm so sick of ambition. Sometimes I read something I think is good and look up the author and they've been all over the place, trying to stay ahead off the curve. And I feel like I've been had, a little.

Tiny Dick Concerts

While trying to put NPR out of business the White House has announced a new line of concerts to be held in the Oval Office and called the Tiny Dick Concert Series. It's designed to complement the big, patriotic wing-dings to be held at the Kennedy Center which Trump took over as though it was an invasion. 

Behind the scenes the concerts were suggested and are being planned by the Mojo Preservation Initiative that was formed to counter Trump's insecurities, massage his ego, and reassure him of the potency he never seems to have actually had. Trump had to go begging to daddy repeatedly after he fucked up everything and then continued to blow it through numerous bankruptcies and other humiliating episodes. 

After his father died little Donnie inherited incredible amounts of money but was only able to survive by turning to show business, his real estate work being a failure. As we know, Donnie is a massive congenital clown and fuckup. The concerts are designed to smooth over the disastrous early months of his presidency and generate good will as he crashes around, per usual, and smashes up everything like the fool he is.

Bogus Individualism

Individualism is always bogus. The people who seem most independent get there by being socialized in some way. Maybe in a good way, maybe in a bad way. Sustainably or destructively. 

Good socialization knows it's socialized. It's not in denial. Bad socialization is in denial, by thinking it's been victorious in a darwinian process so fuck you and the social contract you rode in on. 

The Great Brain Robbery

Souls disintegrate in the presence of Trump. But brains still function. Memories may be intact. Reason, discernible if divorced from reality. Because these brains are enslaved. Enslaved to Lord Trump. 

Sympathy for the Dictator

Little Donnie Trump has rediscovered his métier in the Middle East and done some bro-bonding there. Among the heads of the NATO countries he looked lost, out-of-place and uncomfortable. 

In tyrannies he comes alive. Little Donnie is a born tyrant and dictator. But not yet a man. 

Die! Fuck You! Die! Fuck You!

The Republican budget is taking shape and it's called Die! Fuck You! And it's message is Die! Fuck You! 

Fire Hazard

Apparently, the most influential persons in the Trump administration, when they're letting their clutch out on their day after god-knows-what-kind of breakfast they devour, crave fucking up some lives. They want to fire some people, especially if those people are helping other people, thereby producing a multiplier fuck-up effect and maximizing the destructive potential of their day, at the end of which they can now go to some exclusively MAGA nutcase watering hole and rub elbows with other sociopaths and tell tales of the lives they've destroyed and speak longingly of the end-times the evangelicals crave when Jesus will scoop them up and take them to heaven where they belong instead of on this shit planet.

DOG'D

Is Elon Musk's Department of Government Depradation using the government to prey on average citizens or is Elon himself preying on the government? The situation is dynamic but it's both. Underlying it is a power grab. 

Planned or compulsive? I don't know, but Elon is reducing the government to a lackey organization for the rich and using it to disempower and plunder average citizens. And he and his droogs are dogged and determined. 

Fade Into Him

Trump absorbs people. They lose their souls. They lose their independence and identity. Trump is the void, not so much pure evil but the loss of the distinction. In Trump there is no good, no evil, only Trump. 

Nothing there and no room for anything else. 

You can't make sense of meaninglessness. Trump is meaninglessness personified, the anti-logos. The anti-Christ. Evangelicals love him because they associate him with prophecy and the Second Coming. 

Right.

Hide Those Beatles Records

Russell Vought and Stain on Humanity, his band, are taking the country by stormtrooper. They're still fighting the Civil War so if you think John Lennon's smart-ass remark is old and forgotten you're wrong. Losers have long memories.

And southern evangelicals are America's losers. They've been wrong about everything. The wrong side every time. It's no different now. Herren Vought and Vance are coming for you. And your Beatles records. You better hide them now. 

Dictators Without Borders

Rich fuckers are trying to initiate a world government of rich fuckers. All the power to them. The capabilities of the surveillance state were already scary. And the new robotic warfare. Add AI to that, whatever the fuck it is, and if it doesn't scare you you're not seeing it right. Musk is obsessed with data for a reason. He's nuts but his vision is pure. A vision of total control by superior beings like himself.

Modest Musk

Elon is way too modest. And blindingly arrogant. He's so blindingly arrogant there's no connection in his head between his actions and their effects. And there never will be. Brace for impact. The worst possible person is in a position to do the most harm. 

Black Like Us

Southern, white American idiots have voted themselves down the river and it's beginning to encompass larger swaths of innocent citizens who will unjustly pay for the stupidity and immorality of the racists. Racists want the plantation owners to protect them from the masses of colored folks, like the old days. 

The morons have united themselves with the minorities, becoming functionally black. They are now black and brown, turning themselves into parts of an expanding, multi-ethnic, increasingly disenfranchised and disempowered underclass of losers. Never underestimate the stupidity and indecency of rednecks. 

Alien Enemies

With perfect consistency Trump and his flunkies reveal what they are and what they're doing in what they lay on others. They label simple immigrants 'alien enemies' to make them subject to imprisonment and deportation. The real alien enemies are Trump and his supporters, because they are the Confederacy.

And we're witnessing conquest, pillage and plunder. They're salting the fields of democracy. They're trashing the infrastructure of freedom. They're dismantling the 'rule of law' and equal protection, to make democracy irrecoverable. Toast. Ashes and dust. And, if we get in the way, us as well. Ashes and dust.

Almost Infamous

Trump has almost reached the end for which he is destined, utter self-immolation. I feel like Paris as the Nazis pulled out. He'll want to burn us down but will he succeed? 

Truth About Deportation

Republicans hate competition. They hate fair play. They love privilege. And nobody outworks the people they want to deport. Those immigrants are truer to the American Dream than any of us. They want to work and take care of their families. So Republicans hate them. Because they make Republicans look bad. 

The Apocalypse is Now

This has been understood and we would not listen. Maybe I should say we couldn't hear it. The lines on madness from Apocalypse Now are appropriate because they want to burn down the house. Trump is going where the power is and that's with his base. We're still looking at this from a rational, Enlightenment place and it doesn't work.

The Southern Strategy has played out and Republicans have won with over 50 years of systemic race-baiting. Heather Cox Richardson is the most familiar source on it but there are others, both journalists and academics. Republicans saw that if they added the Wallace votes to what they had they could win. All they had to do was sell their souls. 

I have a short list of articles and videos (Bill Moyers and American Experience and Ken Burns, for example) that get at it, not as analysis but as observation. There's no analyzing this. 'Everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face' doesn't apply to Democrats. Democrats keep getting hit in the face with electoral results and they don't learn. 

And it's too late now. The madness is upon us. 

Accountability

America has lost. Forget accountability. There's going to be no more accountability than in a storm. Sturm, if you will. The burden shifts to accounting, documenting the Republican destruction of America. 

Two Genders

There are only two genders, Trump and Musk. All rights and power flow from them as determined at their discretion according to your usefulness to them or at their whim which may change. The rich have always controlled the world but as intelligence and technology increase and certain resources decrease things must change. You've never had any rights but human beings are a resource like any other. 

Things are becoming more overt and critical because the world, the earth, is being used up. Their are no more frontiers but don't tell Musk that. He envisions Mars as the ultimate yacht riding the space waves. Trump and Musk, the pinnacle of humanity as determined definitively by competition and natural processes, have rights exclusively. Women are there to have their babies, as nature intended.

Other men exist to serve them, their lives having no other meaning. Challenges to this authority are not permitted. We are reaching the carrying capacity of the planet and things are about to get real. Resources can't be wasted humoring useless beings. Be grateful the logistical problems involved in eliminating people are significant or most of us would just be gone. So, live every day like it's your last. 

There was never any God. God was a useful innovation to enable order, hierarchy and dominion. Look at it, you fools. Do you think this being really exists? God served the purposes of consolidating power and preserving order. Trump and Musk are the complementary poles of power, reduced to its essence. Gender as it's usually construed is a real thing but secondary to power. Everything is secondary to power. 

It has always been about power and its concentration and that is reaching a natural climax, reduced to oneness in an electrical-like duality. Make it triune if you will, with an unholy spirit of dominion, it doesn't matter. The point of AI is efficiency. Surplus humans can and will be made redundant and eliminated, according to a ruthless energy/productivity/usefulness accounting. This is Musk's area and task. 

He didn't come to redeem humanity but to destroy it. Redemption was another useful delusion, a placebo in doctrinal form. We were all guilty of being born and that condition is only cured by death, of which Musk is now the master. Trump, god the father, is the source from which all power emanates because he is the most arbitrary and uncaring, which is godliness. You'll notice 'religious' people buy into this. 

They buy into it the most readily and resolutely revealing it's a delusion because it's in complete contradiction of their purported beliefs, proving the usefulness and efficacy of the hoax. It was just another scam. There's still some shit to play out with China and Russia but with the advent of AI it can wait. The American locus of power should win out but whatever happens it will have been inevitable.

Everything might end in nuclear conflagration anyway but that would be fine, a return to purity. It was always about power and energy anyway. None of the rest of it was real. We made it all up. 

I'm Puzzled

Crosswords, and some other activities, are saving my butt now as the world go to ruin.

There Go I

I don't know about you but I was taught it as a kid and I remember concluding that people who suffer suffer for all of us. And not only in a 'there but for the grace of God' way. They bear a burden for us more directly and specifically but also more generally. Specifically in that the burden fell on them but generally because these burdens are arbitrary and unintelligible except at the level of larger social groups. I was never a utopian. There was never going to be a Salk vaccine for everything, I thought. Suffering and difficulty are a part of life. We're mortal. We age and our bodies break down.

Somewhat maddeningly a part of us, a kind of consciousness, stands separately from that, an observer part. There's still a child and an adolescent and a young adult running around in all of us, in layers, as an aspect of healthy personality development. If that's gone it's unrooted and not healthy. If someone gets stuck in adolescence or some phase or state it's not healthy either but arrested. If this outlook is taken on deeply it changes everything. Competition can still make sense but in a circumstantial way. People aren't winners and losers they win and lose and that's incidental in the larger scheme.

Individualism, again, is fine within limits but people are unintelligible in isolation. Some hierarchy is okay and differentiation is good but within limits. We only make sense collectively, but collective associations enable individualism. Persecutory, antisocial impulses result from individual self-hatred or existential anxiety over being alive and mired in an absurdity common to all. Real justice is only seen and encountered collectively but of course that depends on its being sought individually in its application of the principles of fair play and interpersonal graciousness and generosity.

High levels of individual ambition are pathological, antisocial and hallucinatory, in that they don't own interdependency. But societies are ecosystems and odd drives can and should be harnessed for the benefit of everyone. Again, a matter of balance, which is where utopianism and dualistic and unintegrated ways of thinking fail, from a loss of dynamism and integration. Paradox is an encounter with human inadequacy. Being unwilling to accept something as true because we can't reduce it to analytical sense within our reason is wrong and destructive. So-called 'powerful' models exist by abstraction. 

That is, by removal from the human situations outside of which everything is meaningless anyway. And meaningless is not good, which should go without saying but power-seeking has a love of unreality and, as a means to an end, meaninglessness. Power-seeking is the attempted theft of life. Financial capital is human preserves, your life in a jar on a shelf. And a good thing if it's used properly, like food that is saved to get though winter. And we are always in winter, just as we are always in spring and summer, another thing that is only intelligible at a balanced levels of abstraction and immersion. 

Abstraction and analysis allow us to achieve things, empathy and immersion to use the achievements for a common benefit. Balance seems to be a hard political sell, in the time of Trump and Musk, because that's already a puritanically abstract and pathological place. They can't see beyond their limitations which is both a failure of imagination and a failure of humanity. They've dehumanized themselves, but it's wrong to attribute intention to that. Intention matters, but so does effect. Intention is judgeable, as inferred from behaviors, but no need. The effects and behaviors are plenty enough. 

And the place they're in is so pathological it defies comprehension. They can't be said to have intent because they're too sick, candidates for quarantine and isolation. Limiting their opportunities for harm is an emergency. It's a crisis. It shouldn't have gotten this far but a big segment of the American voting public is also sick. And it's contagious. We must stop them. Circumscribing or ideally eliminating their destructive opportunities is essential because destroy they will. With abandon and without compunction or ever looking back. I think we need charismatic leadership. And I see nothing. 

Son of Scam

We're looking at generations of lies among Republicans. Families, phyla and genera of lies. Classes and kingdoms of lies. The lies evolve and mutate, displaying a level of adaptability. We need an entire taxonomy of lies. An encyclopedia of duplicity and deceit. An OED of Orwellian redefinition, in which the starting point is the assumption that the truth is a lie and facts are fluid. 

Whose interests does this serve? Those already in power. We forget that the 'news' is what's new and not designed to be coherent. It's streaming content. By coherent I mean the story within or beneath the 'news.' The trend or trajectory. The story. The story as in WWII. American media took sides. Victory and defeat. We won or lost or what happened within an assumed or stated context. 

The rich people are waging a war on America. They corrupted and bought the Republican Party, dragging Democrats along to a degree. Fox News presents a story. A huge lie of a story. The opposite of the truth. There's nothing comparable on the Democratic side. Democrats think it's beneath them, and giving up, to become so utterly partisan. So they continue to lose influence. 

And this is a war, a second revolution, and Democrats are losing at the expense of the truth and constitutional and moral authority. 

Oval Office Ambush

Ukraine's Zelenskyy bravely walked into the Oval Office biker bar yesterday perhaps suspecting it might be difficult or having seen Macron's gentle correcting of Little Donnie Trump on his own playground but he got fully smacked down and rednecked. Maybe Zelenskyy doesn't comprehend the degradation of American rednecks and it's hard to fault him. 

Trump's base is evangelical, redneck America. 

Most Americans don't comprehend rednecks and these are their people. They've been living with this shit forever but it's one of those things that's hard to believe, that people can be so utterly degraded and devoid of decency. It's hard to believe even while you're witnessing it and that's what many Americans were feeling being faced with such a display of incivility. 

I, however, have made a study of rednecks and Zelenskyy was lucky to get out of there without Trump and redneck-in-waiting JD Vance pronouncing him out-of-order and sentencing him to be shot on the spot for daring to not instantly kowtow to Trump and kissing Vance's ass as well. Rednecks think it's fine to shoot people, like Captain America in Easy Rider. 

And America is a redneck nation. Somehow the values, if I can call them that, and the mores of the worst people in the country and possibly the world and possibly in the history of the world have become the standard. This is the revenge of the South for the Civil War and desegregation. Tuberville is as representative as anyone, but watch out for Vance. 

Vance is the real fucking deal, a veneer of various things but underlying it lots of lies, foremost because it's rooted in the Lost Cause myth, even in Kentucky which was very much not Cavalier country. But, rather, a Scots-Irish shithole of serfs and servants whose main characteristics are belligerence and subservience. Vance might be a butler but he's a killer.

He'll kill to defend the class culture of which he is a part and in which his role is utter subservience and submission. This is about order for them. They are pure authoritarians because they fear disorder more that anything AND they believe human nature is shit, being extreme Calvinist evangelical nutcasese and basically snake handlers. We're handling snakes.

We're all on their program, tempting fate, and we're gunned up to the gills, trigger happy and incapable of living life without conflict. There has to be a feud. Also they are impatient for the end times and judgment day. They want it now. Hence the snakes, but the actual end times, with the whole world blowing up, would be great. America is being run at this level.

If you don't like something you just shoot it or beat up in it, vigilante style ...

 https://youtu.be/t7ds3LTekTA?si=5wDBe8v67dIHOOcH

President Musk, I Presume

Elon is doing the real work while the toddler king twiddles his thumbs. Trump screams for attention and gets it being reassured he's the center of the world while the power behind the throne fights his imaginary battles resplendent in glory. Bodies are everywhere around him and he's only getting started. 

On the Seventh Day He Rested

But Trump will be back to destroying the country tomorrow. 

And They Call the Wind Uriah

Trump's followers, acolytes and flunkies constitute nothing but a big Trump fart and gaseous emanation. Swamp gas, as it happens, since Trump didn't come to drain the swamp but to fulfill it. And Washington, accordingly, is a world of Heeps, a cesspool of the undeserving groveling for power, acting like pricks when they get it, sleazing the maidens and befouling the place with their presence, leaving us wondering whether to call the hazmat people or a priest to get it disinfected. 

What am I saying, they're still in occupancy. As Heeps, they will have their day and then fall. Push it too far. As for us, we must regroup and conserve our strength. Our opportunity will come. The Heeps of the world, like Hegseth, are fundamentally weak. Usurpers of power. Evil magicians who know the magic words -- racist innuendos, intimations of violence and other dark insinuations. They manipulate. They coerce. They position themselves to seize illicit power and rule. 

But we will stop them. With their help, because they always push it too far. For now the Heeps have won. Their leader is a supreme Heep, running a gladiator school for slime balls and reprobates. He too will fail. They will fall under the weight of their corruption and degradation.

The World is Trump's Toilet

Donnie is like the little kid that wants everyone to come into the bathroom and tell him what a nice potty he made. 

Welcome to the Confederacy.

I agree with George Lakoff's model of country-as-family and his idea that Republicans subscribe to the strict father, hierarchical authority version of the thing. The point I would make is that it's now the mentally ill and abusive father model courtesy of evangelical Christians because this is their view. Now, you might think that surely most of their families don't have mentally ill and abusive fathers and that this is good because it means they can come around. That their support of Trump is aberrant. 

Bad news. It's not based on their families and their experience or how they think families should be it's based on their conception of God. The God of fundamentalists and evangelicals is an asshole. Cruel, arbitrary, and unpredictable because He is unknowable, only to be experienced kinda mysteriously through grace in an instant of surrender under the watchful gaze of Jimmy Swaggart or Kenneth Copeland or some such charlatan and lunatic. So, this is bad news because God is inscrutable, immutable and perfect.

And, not to be questioned or fucked with under any circumstances. So, so is Trump. Trump stumbled into this role. They will never come around and Trump can't only not do anything wrong but they love him because he's mentally ill and abusive. For this reason historically the South has been an asylum. We have supported them at a loss and not expected them to meet normal standards, notably constitutional and legal standards up until desegregation, and so it was stable under those conditions.

But then came desegregation and this was fucking with God. So, again, just like after the Civil War, they regrouped and fought back any way they could. And, guess what, Republicans were willing to feed them all kinds of suggestions and veiled promises of a return to proper hierarchical authority in which blacks and minorities and women were back in their place. That's where we are now and how we got here. It was called the Southern Strategy and it worked unbelievably well. Welcome to the Confederacy. 

No Fault of 'The News'

The News is not supposed to be your education. It's a disaster as a substitute for that. It becomes nothing but noise. Even if a particular article is informative and teaches you something. because they have to move on. That's why they call it news. 

Hegseth Proves a Goon Right Out of the Gate

He was chosen, the idiot, for his value as an insult. Herr Hegseth owned being a loser and a sucker by participating in the charade. So it all worked out. 

An Introduction to Evangelical Christianity

This just got a whole lot easier. The cruelty and ignorance of the Trump administration is a perfect reflection of evangelicals' values. They have made him. Evangelical Christianity = MAGA. 

I might have been wrong ...

Previously I argued that resistance to Trump is futile, meaning open resistance. I argued for passive resistance and taking care of vulnerable populations, and for positioning and preparing ourselves for the inevitable crash and cleanup, because it will come. I felt open resistance was for the professionals, mostly lawyers. Sue the shit out of them in every venue and in every way. 

With maybe a little guerrilla activity on our part, but forget the marches. They enjoy your pain. I felt open resistance would worsen the harm to vulnerable people, with Trump and team lashing out more. I failed to see the depth of the fixations -- their fantasies of persecution. Especially Herr Donald. I thought they would be pleased with their glorious victory and a little risk aversion would kick in. 

Or, simply revelry and celebratory smashing-stuff-up, like a junk car at a frat party. 

I was wrong. It's all 'flood the zone’ with real cruelty and destructiveness. And the professionals, again mostly lawyers, are in danger of getting lumped in with us in their helplessness against the tidal wave of garbage. Their professionalism assumes 'the law' stills prevails in places and pockets, and it might not. Welcome to hell. Nobody can be expected to resist under threats of personal harm. 

Especially when it appears you'll simply disappear beneath the waves, without accounting, and not be around for the inevitable crash, the cleanup, and rebuilding, when you could be useful. The level of indeterminacy is daunting and disconcerting. There's so much we don't know and can't predict, but Trump and his minions have issued a 'halt and catch fire' command on the government and society.

In fact, it's unclear how broad their target is. I don't think they know, being afflicted with denial, compartmentalization and rationalization, but they could be after civilization generally. Don't let the insanity of this cause you to dismiss it. Remember how involved they are with destructive archetypes and fantasies. Evangelicals are steeped in a longing for the end times. 

Catholics, at least, like Bannon and a majority of the Supreme Court justices, seem to own a conscious desire for apocalyptic reinvention and to be less driven by unconscious forces. They represent the pinnacle of rationalization for which ability and training Jesuits were rightly renowned. They could and would argue anything, 'ad maiorem dei gloriam' and all. But God doesn't enter into this.

I think it's the other guy at work. 

Our Rights Just Went Precarious

Trump is asserting his lawlessness. This is incredibly serious. Remember all the talk of Democrats being scum and traitors? And remember the talk of declaring a national emergency and maybe instituting martial law? These don't sound petty, and it was assumed, I think by most folks, or at least by me, that it would be about immigration or something that at least exists. 

It would still probably occur under that justification or one similar but then what? Trump could do anything, and he's showing he recognizes no restraint. He thinks that not voting for him was treason, for example. He's obsessed with it. It's a huge deal to him and disqualifying for the rights of citizenship and even human rights. He doesn't recognize any of it. 

As Sure as There's a Hell

Donald Trump is heading there.  

Arrogance, Drive, Entitlement: The Making of Musk

You'll notice there was nothing in the title about intelligence. Nothing about talent. What can really be attributed to Musk? That could in any way justify his compensation? A willingness to take risks. A rich boy's willingness to take risks. 

See under 'entitlement.' In other words, privilege. In other words, too big to fail. In other words, another nepo baby and soul-brother of Trump and Bush, who owe everything to inheritance. And I don't mean genetic, as Musk would like to think.

Where do you think his interest in genetics comes from? The conviction, or hope, or assumption, or insecure belief or please God do let it be true, that he's actually a superior being. He needs so badly too believe he's a superior being.

The richest man in the world. He's the richest man in the world! And he's still trying to prove his worth. What does that tell you? That he knows his worth. Deep down, he knows his worth. That he's worthless. Useless. A taker, not a maker. 

And a scared little boy, pretending to be a man. 

Sir, I have Trump's prefrontal cortex on the phone ...

And it says it's being held captive, by 'a lizard.'

We have to assume Trump's prefrontal cortex exists and is functioning, this side of an MRI indicating otherwise, so it must be under house arrest or something. It's a hostage. Also I think we can infer this because Trump is now surrounded by hostages. A whole country of hostages. Hell, a whole planet. 

The lizard is in charge.

The lizard brain has recreated the state inside Donald's skull in the world at large. The severity of the complex and pathology, as indicated by the number of hostages, shows it to be the most extreme ever seen. Trump's brain blew the curve, in a bad way. Big lizard in there. But we must attempt contact.

It could destroy the world. We may have to kill it, and Trump might not survive, but this is life and civilization we're talking about. The existence of one man can't stand in the way. He's already gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed, by his inhumanity. This can't go on. We'll send in the probe. 

Or try the trance. Hypnosis. But something must be done. 

Republicans Are Going to Destroy Everything

But they're working for God so don't worry. 

Disgust-o-Meter

My disgust-o-meter is failing me. Maybe I need a new one. The one I have can't measure what's going on. 

Musk is Artistic

I keep hearing Musk is artistic as though this absolves him of something. I like to think I'm artistic, by temperament. I collect art and have joked, at times, that if I ever get sent to Betty Ford it will be for buying art. I love art. I buy art when I shouldn't buy art. 

When I can least afford it, for example, as a way of saying fuck it.

And I try be creative. We're told that Musk has created stuff. Name me one thing. Besides money. Somewhat out of thin air. I have a very broad definition of artistic. Crazy broad. I think we're all artists -- that we create our own lives. But some of us suck at it. 

Wait, they're saying autistic. As though that, again, absolves him of anything. If he wants to plead being nuts, let him. I won't plead for him, and make excuses for these pieces of shit. Nothing absolves them. To me guilt is one thing, culpability another. 

I make that distinction on the fly. Run with me. But we should decide if someone committed a crime, without considering mitigation, and decide separately if and how they are held accountable. And Musk and Trump are functioning criminal operations. 

Especially Musk's boy Donald. Do we see how insane it is to make excuses for people while they're still at it? Job one -- stop the crime. Artistic. Autistic. Mommy didn't love him. Daddy was a dick. I don't care. They're hurting innocent people. First, stop them.

The Appliance

Trump is a tool. If you read about how The Apprentice came about you will know. It saved Trump's sorry ass. And now all the underlings are feeding him stuff. They have claimed Biden has been a prop. 

A tool of forces in the background. But what they did was coherent. Even the stuff I disagree with was intelligible. We have a new game going on. Trump the tool. The Appliance. It should be a show. 

I think it is a show. 

Cellulose Heroes

Cellulose heroes never feel any pain. Cellulose heroes never really die. I remember going to D.C. in the Reagan years. Somebody was hawking photos to the faithful with a cardboard Reagan.

The actor president. At least he was in the movies. In B-movies. Now we have a reality guy. But cellulose heroes never feel any pain. And they never really die. We, however are expendable.

Episcopal Bishop Begs for Mercy

An Episcopal bishop, herself probably a D.E.I. hire, has asked Trump for mercy in an admission of the end of the rule of law, as Herr Donald and family looked on in contempt. There's a new Zeus in town. 

Thunderbolts ricochet around. Keep you head down, or go to the temple and plead for the indulgence of higher beings. Subdeities vie for influence and fight to have their way. Even they answer to Zeus. 

Who are we to resist? We are nothing. 

All hail Lord Trump! The bishop, in her defense, asked for mercy for others. Though she looked kind of gay. Maybe even trans. Proud Boys, Oathers and such are taking to the streets. Man she is brave. 

She should sign an affidavit of compliance with the new order. An article of submission and obedience. To be safe. So should we all. You can't keep your digital head down. And the beasts are hungry to be fed. 

Pickle Balls

Trump and the other guys trying to preserve their pathetic patriarchy are forgetting that it has to be dead. On a shelf or in a museum. Salted, pickled, sugared or embalmed. 

They're trying to embalm their balls while they're still alive. Anything alive is essentially dying, which drives them nuts, out of infantile egotism. Culture and institutions persist, to a degree.

Some idiots like to slap their names on things, so they can keep striving after they're dead, which is kind of sad. Love is what you leave behind. Mostly they have none of that.

But, whatever. I'm okay with their pickled balls on a shelf somewhere. In fact I'm good with it, because they'll have to be dead or neutered, and perhaps their patriarchy with them. 

And that will mean the end of the harm. Or some of it. For a while. And harm is having its day, yet again. 

Trump Casts His Eye

Let's take a look inside the mind of Trump. Not that he thinks, in the usual sense. It's more a matter of perception. He casts his eye. What does he see? 

He sees opportunities. Opportunities for taking. Weakness is an invitation. To take shit, hence his dictatorial bent. Powerlessness is an invitation to plunder. 

Our relative powerlessness. His power makes it possible. The disparity is the point. And it's huge now. And they have no conscience at all. Plunder it will be.

What Does It Feel Like

To be such a piece of shit.

I want to understand. To ask Republicans, but they're not very reflective. So we'll have to try to imagine. And I'm having a hard time with it. 

Don't Track Yourself

If you don't know where you've been they can't know either. Or, so you'd like to think. But maybe it's better not to know where you've been or what they know about you. Maybe it will make the info they have on you less useful, since we apparently can't do anything about that info. 

We're assets to them. Or the info is. We can degrade the value of that info, by behaving unpredictably and by not buying shit. It won't matter but, still, what the hell. Fighting back a little will be good. But don't degrade the value of that info too much. I doubt it's possible. We must consume.

And if we go negative on them, in our value as consumers, they might declare us dead-weight and  kill us off. If you don't think that can happen you're not paying attention. It's already happening. With healthcare, a human right turned into a commodity. Our rights have been commodified. 

Regression to Mean

These are the prerogatives of power. The prerogatives of a certain kind of power. If you can you take people's shit. Healthcare form the elderly, Food from children, Greenland from Greenland. 

You take stuff before somebody else does. Because they will. Thinking otherwise is for sentimentalists and suckers. Don't be a sucker. Get a gun. Protect your shit. It's the way the world works. 

Now you're a Republican. Welcome to the party. 

All Hail Lord Trump

I think the inauguration needs to be done differently. To have Lord Trump take an oath while breaking it makes no sense. It's the opposite of 'performative' in the way it used to be used, accomplishing the violation of the vow by its utterance. 

But what to do? We can't brand it a coronation. Maybe an investiture, in which Don dons some ceremonial robes and a miter and shit. His hair is practically a miter. He might take to it. In any case having him swear to uphold he law is ridiculous. 

We'll have to tone that down. Or not have him swear to anything, though I can't quite imagine it. It's highly appropriate that the Supreme Court is formally implicated, anyway. They've been as involved as anyone in this coup. Which is what it is. 

Or we could keep it simple and alter the traditional oath by replacing 'so help me God' at the end to 'so help me Satan' out of respect for the truth. I like that idea. Keep it simple, and avoid dishonoring the decent, loyal people of the country. 

All Tomorrow's Potties

This is the Donald Trump story, about the little boy who couldn't stop shitting himself, but carried on because he was so rich and it didn't matter. Except to the people who had to clean up after him.  

The Night They Drove Old Dickhead Down

Trump's time will come. Sooner or later. One way or another. He carries the seeds within him. Of his own destruction. With collateral damage. It's all he's good for. The Lord of Shit. And his own shit will take him down. Retribution is his, but not in the way he thinks. It's coming for him. 

The Last Temptation of Trump

Trump's time on the cross is coming to an end. No longer will He have to endure the stupidity and lack of understanding of inferior beings. But why must He die? He so wanted a normal life, but was called by fate to greater things. To be a savior. Even Trump must live out his destiny. And then return to heaven. 

To be with His father. In relation to Whom he is indistinct. Distinguishable but one. Independent but inseparable. Trump the Father and the Son are of one being, and their will is performative, in the proper sense, in that it is accomplished in its conception. As was Trump's life, because it is the will of God,

Wealthcare for All

Trump's second term is going to be about wealthcare. Republicans know that all the good in the world follows on the creation of wealth. How wealth is allocated and spread through the system is determined by laws of nature. These laws are as certain, predictable and irresistible as those of thermodynamics. 

The effects of these laws can be thwarted of course, but, why? That only results in a misallocation of resources and inefficiency. We must work within them. Messing with the results is like messing with God. What's the use? It's morally wrong and inhumane however it plays out. Evangelicals know this. 

As a corollary and complement to the nature of salvation in which God, being a dick, has predestined humankind and individual humans to a certain fate with foreknowledge and it is simply not to be questioned. Questioning it brands you a heretic and an apostate and requires you be stopped.

By any available means. 

The assumed efficiencies of the financial markets are as inscrutable as salvation, and are a kind of salvation, so don't even think about it. God's justice is beyond our reckoning so shut the fuck up. If free markets mysteriously create whole layers of seeming exploitation between you and the care you need that's just life. Be reassured, it's part of God's plan and your destiny by definition.