The Devil Wears Nada

The devil operates in stealth mode. We personify Satan but Satan infests his victims and co-opts them. Turns them into agents and drones. The devil wears nada. The devil isn't incarnate. The devil is a force. Look for him in the people around you. Having said that, I think Trump is hiding horns under the hair. 

Barbarian Bathos

They can't hide it. For one thing it's a compulsion. They say it's patriotic, unifying, bipartisan and blah-blah. Is that a joke? It's one cheapshot after another and an exercise in tyranny. And what is it, really? The consummation of the privatization of the federal government. Of the country. 

Republicans are the Confederacy. They own the country. Private equity firms buy companies, strip them of assets, saddle them with debt and say go and God-bless. They skipped the last part. They are throwing a gargantuan party with our money, an orgy of corruption. And not only for July 4th. 

It's going on all the time. It isn't ours anymore. The country isn't ours. It's theirs. They own it. They own us. We can wonder who they are is but screw that. Is it the richest 1%? One richest tenth of that? 

Name your torturers? They're the NPCs, mindless agents of destruction. Musk didn't find them. We found them. Smashing our doors down. They were hard to miss. It doesn't matter. What is a cheapshot? Kicking at people who can't fight back. Sound familiar? We are all brown people under ICE.

Not one nation under God. How will it be characterized, decades from now? Really, think about that. Because we're inside of an explosion and this is what that looks like, an explosion from the inside.

An epic failure and shitshow of enormous proportions but it doesn't matter. The coup, putsch, takeover, conquest, sacking, demolition, usurpation, whatever, but I wonder how it will be remembered anyway, Trump's mind-blowing graft and grift? The ICE surges? Everyone knows more are coming. 

A long summer awaits us. At the same time, it's over. It's done. Our country is gone. Law, values, integrity, traditions, up in smoke. We've somehow handed inconceivable power to people whose corruption, venality, dishonesty and cruelty defy description. Or they seized power. It doesn't matter. 

Trump staged our funeral. A orgiastic wake at the end of a looting, in true barbarian fashion. 

We can't go back. Forward, folks. We are the generation that failed. Say it's the boomers if it makes you feel better. It doesn't matter. The torch has really been dropped this time. The country is dead. Those that carry what it once was in their hearts will have to unseat the false heirs and traitors. 

And start over. It wasn't even rational by business standards. They settled a grudge. They're punishing us for the Civil War and desegregation. So they will leave nothing. Salt the fields of democracy. Make it impossible to build on the ruins. Where there was integrity, now cowardice and dishonor. 

Resurrect something, people. Acknowledge what has been lost, like a three-generation link that is broken when an abusive, addicted wastrel wrests control of the family estate and trashes it. We are the sons of liberty. They are the destroyers. What we're witnessing in Washington is utter disgrace. 

Conquest. The aftermath of conquest. The celebration of a glorious victory. Really, a party for a bunch of pigs. The worst frat party ever. Let's own it, what's happened. And move on. 

The Force Is With Us

Why don't they just call him Lord Vader. Darth would do. Republicans are under a spell. In a cult. Part of a robot army. Call in the exorcist.

Almost Hell

 We're heading for Hell. Not there yet. The suspense is killing me. 

The Bell Tolls for Us

This had to happen. If we didn't know it before we know it now, that America has an undercurrent of evil going back to slavery, racism and a creed of greed, a religion of money and power that grew in parallel with Pentecostal Christianity. We never dealt with it. Those forces have risen up and are running the show. Calling it evil is not exaggerating. It is evil. They are evil. We, the opposition, hesitate to say it but we can because we are not tribalists and an identity cult. Which means we criticize behaviors. 

They can became un-evil. Someone can't became un-black or un-brown. That's the identity cult. We are being forced to own our evil. That's good. Canada is a model. Scandinavia is a model. Hell, the rest of the traditionally western, European countries are models in comparison with us. We made it easy. Trump is evil but he's sick. He's a compulsive. Non-compos by a normal standard. Lord Vader, Darth Donald, still a tool. We need to deal with the Death Star. The fatalities are rolling in. The bell is tolling for us. 

The Umpire Strikes Back

John Roberts has overthrown America's democracy. That battle has been lost. But the dream lives on. The forces of evil will be beaten in the end. 

Conservative Industrial Complex

Conservatism can't be separated from money. It isn't an ideology it's a business. It isn't a political philosophy it's a scam. It doesn't have an economic model it has justifications for exploitation.

Conservatism is the result of aristocratic desire. The desire to be at the top. The desire to stay at the top. The desire to have everything ordered your way to be revered and taken care of. To feel special. 

Conservatism is all lies. Conservatives want generational wealth and arbitrary authority that survives them. Authority that's structural and that they can pass on to their heirs. Hierarchy and inheritance. 

The Coddling of the Conservative Mind

Trump has exposed the scam of conservatism. They inhabit the upside-down. Where rugged individualists, the leaders and producers, need to have everyone get out of the way and yield. Though supposedly strong and unstoppable they must be unimpeded in their plunder or everything will fall apart. 

In the upside-down the most powerful people, the super-rich, aren't rewarded enough and must have more. The dominant religious group, Christians and especially conservative Christians, are persecuted. They are disrespected and denied free expression. They must have recognition as the state religion. 

White people are subject to prejudice. They are threatened and everyone else must go. Money and power, which conservatives already have, are their own justification. By divine right or natural law, take your pick. The status quo, which favors conservatives, is sacred. It must not be challenged. 

The law and prisons protect these interests from the rabble. That underclass, most of humanity, are a burden. Sometimes a nuisance. They are tolerated if required for their labor or as soldiers or servants and enforcers, but they are otherwise disposable. Technology is making them useless. 

They had better behave and revere their masters or they will be eliminated. God is on the side of conservatives and probably a conservative Himself. Times have changed, it's hard to say. But power is an expression of divine will, in the way the universe is made. Play your part or you will be removed. 

The News Today, Oh, Boy

The world is burning. America is shit. Trump is getting rich. 

Trump Ruins Nation's Big Birthday

Fantastically spoiled, vindictive narcissist Donald Trump has ruined the nation's big birthday. He did everything wrong but mostly it was partisanship and his huge, pathetic, insatiable ego. No one can imagine him behaving otherwise. It is who he is. 

Go Fourth

Trump's July 4th festival is as it had to be, a celebration of America's demise and the triumph of the Confederacy. Private property defined the Confederacy. Black people can show up to public stuff. 

It was always about exclusion. Trump's turnout, and everything else, heralds the new way. Nothing is ours. It's theirs, the people who own it. The people who own us. Every day it's more literally true. 

The Last Temptation of Trump

In evangelical minds Trump surpasses God because he is manifest. As manifest as they come. God is abstract. Evangelicals claim a 'personal relationship' with Jesus, as though that's in the Bible, but does Jesus have a Qatari 747? Fuck no. Is Jesus a crypto billionaire? I don't think so.

Trump is manifest. He's the most manifest person ever. Un-fucking avoidable. Combine that with the abilities of evangelicals at discernment. They know a Jesus man when they see a Jesus man and Trump is a Jesus man. They know it's accomplished through their acquaintance, the Holy Spirit.

They are confidants since evangelicals have been saved. Evangelicals know Trump will triumph over temptation because he has. In on Oscar Wilde kind of way, we might say, but still. Trump has conquered temptation, by having no conscience. That is his superpower. Which is convenient. 

You can do anything, being beyond sin. It's good to be God.

It follows that Trump is the Second Coming or something. Evangelicals challenge us, prove otherwise. The Trump Deportation Inquisition goes on. He is without sin, by design since he is God or God's hand and herald, an agent of purification who has had salvation bestowed on him. 

Trump is a fisher of men. He kills those that won't bow to him, on authority from God. Your local evangelical church can explain it to you. Or not. ICE is standing by. You didn't think they would stop with immigrants, did you? You weren't listening. You weren't paying attention.

They are not fucking around. God is on their side.

Who are the idolators now? Who is enslaved to superstition?

I knew Catholics were accused of idolatry and superstition by some Protestants. Of being degraded and undignified. Of misunderstanding how God had made us, as reasoning beings, and of what God wanted and expected from us, as reasoning beings and uniquely as an element of creation. 

Who are the idolators now? Who's superstitious and degraded? Who is bowing before a charlatan and a buffoon who clads everything he can get his hands on in gold and has grifted his way through a life of preying on everyone he could, sometimes apparently for sport. Those Protestants. 

People need balance. They need reason and they need a place for story and imagination. The senses must be engaged. Those Protestants were deprived of Christian art. Rich religious experiences that were emotionally and humanly satisfying. So they fell for shit. They fell for Trump. 

And they fell from grace in the bargain. Since it's a bargain they made with the devil. 

The Confluence

Build it and they will come. The virtual prison of Calvinism, believing life and creation are a shit interruption in the existence of your perfect, pure, immortal and immaterial soul, argues for a physical manifestation as a reflection of God's goodness. Hence a Republican incarceration fixation. Hence the love of prisons, brutal and arbitrary detainment since it embodies God's perversion, in sticking you in a body in the first place. 

God's way, in other words, is the path of cruelty. To keep sin in check, I suppose, and to curb fleshly desires. We're incarcerated in creation so why not. Why not jail everybody. And why not drill down, define it and refine it so there's an ecosystem of incarceration. And nothing else, with wonderful hierarchies of pain and persecution. Anybody thinking about what might happen if, by some miracle, rational, decent people get control again? 

Mike Johnson's nightmare. He's pissing his pants over it. Why? They all deserve jail. He knows it. So, back to the question, what do we do when, what, maybe a third of the country ought to be in jail, both for past transgressions and because they will never stop with the criminal intent? They walked away at the end of WWII, many committed Nazis and war criminals. They walked from the Civil War, too many traitors and racist assholes. 

Where did that get us? Same shit all over again. 

What would be justice for perps Miller, Vought and Trump? There would need to be thousands of each of them, punished and tortured forever. Still not enough. This applies to the Republicans in Congress. They created the mess, made themselves convicts. Sentencing is superfluous. They convicted themselves. I don't have an answer. Justice can't be had. Mercy hasn't worked. That's where we are, assuming we have an opportunity to do anything. 

Loss of Composure

I lost my composure for over 50 years. It was a hell of a realization. I don't know where you go from there.

Live Hate

Republican hate is going live, less processed and more immediate, overt and aggressive. We have a true Nazi outbreak on our hands.  

Nobody Is Going to Want Any of Trump's Shit

Reading a little about the artifacts of the Mughal Empire, including such as the Taj Mahal, made me think of course about Trump's physical legacy, in buildings and grounds, and how it will be utter shit. Nobody is going to want it. We will have to tear it all down. 

Poor Conservatives

Near to the core of the conservative scam is their persecution complex. This is connected to the FEELING and belief they are inexplicably, arbitrarily and irreducibly better than everyone else. So they should always get their way and be showered with rose petals while trammeling us.

Nothing in their environment should make them uncomfortable. Evangelicals and rich people both believe in this, in the one instance having been chosen and favored by God and in the other through Social Darwinism, also a kind of godly favor, so we should let them have their way.   

United States Disproves Existence of God

The implosion of the United States is epochal. We're proving, finally, that humanity is hopeless. In the past the excuse that competition for resources and a struggle for survival caused all the conflict and horrible behavior was plausible. Not in the case of the United States. 

The most fortunate country ever is destroying itself out of stupidity and a hatred of life. Not interpersonal or tribal malice but a contempt for existence. One-off, irreproducible circumstances of insane good fortune haven't produced a more kind and just society. It's produced pigs.

So it was never circumstantial. The murderous wars and barbarity were chosen. Societies could have opted for cooperation. And they did at times but it always ultimately got used for competitive advantage and wanton destruction. We know it because America is doing it now. 

Summer of Hate

We had a summer of love, years ago. I predict 2026 we will be the summer of hate, courtesy of Donald Trump and Republicans. Fight against it, people. It won't be enough but do it anyway. Practice love. 

Fertility Cult

I can't imagine anything having to do with JD Vance not being sick. His marriage must be sick as shit. Vance believes in wives as submissives. If Usha is a helpmeet and submissive it's sick as shit. If she isn't what the fuck is she doing with him? 

And she's pregnant. I suspect that's Vance being fertile as a show of something, for the cultists. He's in a cult and fertility is a part of it. This is some sick shit. Usha is a Hindu. It's possible they faint or fall over in the face of evil as peaceful resistance. 

Like a possum, total passivity. Good luck with that. It has never worked but nothing has. Sometimes evil wins. Innocent people die by the millions. The perps mostly go unpunished because there is too many of them. When evil wins it's a contagion. 

A City in a Hole

America isn't a city on a hill and a light unto men but a city in a hole and a blight. 

Magic Carpet Ride

MAGA is stoned on hate. High on persecution. Ripped on resentment and addicted to aggression. Hallucinating threats. Tripping on denial and projection. 

That shit runs on emotional rocket fuel. It's unsustainable as hell. You have to take something, ingest something, to get there and keep ingesting it to stay there. 

The cure is to pull the plug. Shut down Fox News and hate radio. If corporations are virtual citizens they can be incarcerated. Removed from circulation. Isolated from the general population to protect it. 

It should go without saying but if the laws of a country can be construed or interpreted to allow its destruction from within that interpretation has to be wrong. 

Trump Is Algae

Sometimes it's obvious. When evangelical Christians get hysterical over 'Sharia Law' as though that's likely to replace the American legal system it's because they're in direct competition. Evangelicals want a totalitarian theocratic state. 

Similarly with Trump and algae. 

Trump is a mindlessly reproductive entity spreading the brain software virus or bacterium of MAGA. We've seen how it explodes in populations that aren't inoculated with the ability to think critically. So Trump is terrified of algae. 

Trump Destroys Reflecting Pool

When you're as fucked up as Trump messages emerge from the unconscious and have to be deciphered and interpreted. Recall that in the story of Narcissus the mirroring is a reflection, his reflection, in water. And the Washington Monument, an obelisk, is basically a big dick.  

So there's something going on with Trump and his dick. Or, and this is where interpretation comes in, the dick might represent Trump, at possibly different metaphorical levels and with a range to it. We know he's sick, physically ill, but they won't tell us what's going on. Prostate, perhaps? 

In which case treatment might have shrunk his dick which was probably hard for him to see anyway because of bloat. Or it might be the usual thing with Trump, that he's fucked everything up again unbelievably, so that's another insult to his manhood, maybe more devastating. 

The whole world is watching him flail around. After insulting Italy Trump was branded 'coglione' which Wiktonary translates as idiot, fool, dipshit, and dumbfuck, the primitive meaning being 'ball-sack' which I like though there's much material there to be mined. Italian insults are rich. 

Anyway, Trump would be unconsciously destroying the reflecting pool to avoid confronting challenges to his manhood. He's trying not to see his dick so he can maintain some swagger in his mind when in fact he's failing spectacularly. Stay away from the reflecting pool, by the way.

Trump has become unbelievably sensitive about it. You might be arrested. It equates to seeing Trump naked and possibly full-frontal as though anyone wants that. We just want him to go the fuck away. The whole world wants him to go the fuck away, but we'll see who he insults today. 

Trump Meets His Asshole

Trump can out-asshole anybody. Or so we thought, maybe, come down to it. Trump's a pussy asshole, a nepo asshole and derivative. He didn't earn it, but was born into it. Opportunistically. 

How hard was it, with the Trump millions and his cold mom and asshole mentor daddy, to achieve asshole supremacy? Netanyahu is something else, the real asshole deal, as Trump is finding out.

But He's Our Piece of Shit

Trump is destroying the country. He's getting millions killed. This isn't irresponsible governance, we're way beyond that, but deliberate destruction. Republicans are nihilists. They believe in nothing. I would say fuck them to hell but they're already there. And they want the whole world there with them. 

That Sinking, Stinking Feeling

Think of how many times Donald Trump has realized he just really fucked up. God only knows if we include private humiliations. I'm thinking of the public ones. And it's happening again. 

All over the place. Hormuz, meet reflecting pool. Trashed economy, meet racist rampage. Looming epidemic, meet astonishing national debt. Healthcare crash, meet inconceivable inequality.

Little Donnie is going to die one of these days, sooner I hope. His legacy is assured. 

Making Algae Great Again

All Hail Herr Donald! Success after success. Donald is compiling a record of such horror no one will ever be able to match him. 

Trump Spends Billions Blowing Stuff Up and Celebrating Himself While Americans Suffer

That's the headline. The mainstreams can't do it. Billionaires are buying them up anyway. We might be really and truly fucked. Donald and Republicans and the super-rich have destroyed us. 

When "Law-Abiding" Means "Loyal to Trump"

When 'law-abiding' means 'loyal to Trump' the game is fucking over. 

Two out of three?

Rape and Pillage the World

The Trump Doctrine, rape and pillage the world, takes shape before our eyes.  

Disintegration

I've settled on "disintegration" to describe what's happening to the USA.  

Carpe Data

Musk and his crew of nerds and incels stole our data. Isn't that a crime? 

The South Has Won. For Now.

I see an opportunity here, in this cage match shit and the July 4th festivities. A chance for America to own what's going on. To rename and rededicate ourselves to the causes that defined us from the beginning. 

We were never one country. Many concessions were made to get the southern, slave states on board. Our founding documents were idealistic but they allowed the south to have its shithole. To be degenerates. 

So it was a compromise. Then a war was fought to free the slaves because southerners were hotheads, assholes and horrible bigots. The North won because the south was a hellhole of ignorance and spite.

The outcome was as it had to be.

But now southerners are having it their way. The shithole is back. The racism is back. Violence, oligarchic government, inconceivable corruption, guns fucking everywhere, it's all back. Let's make it official.

Get honest about it. Rename or rebrand the country, as the case may be, "The Confederate States of America." I know, THE UNITED STATES OF TRUMP. Then maybe he'll be happy and stop renaming every little thing he comes across. Whatever pleases (him) them. 

It lets me off the hook. This isn't us, I want to say. I can fight, an honest fight, to reclaim the country for decency and constitutional governance. What they stand for against what we stand for. No more lies. And the Confederates can own their shit, for once. 

All the hate and bigotry and racism and violence. Let America and the world see what they are. Because it isn't the United States of America. 

Waiting for Godawful

And we thought ennui was bad. Being tortured by Republicans is way worse. 

CSA!

I want one thing, to change the name of the country to The Confederate States of America. Because it's honest. It's what we are. I would feel so much better. And, if the country ever reverts to its original identity, we throw out everything the illegal and illegitimate Trump regime has done. All of it. 

Because that's honest as well and a reflection of the truth. 

The Greatest Bankruptcy

Donald Trump's life and career are ending in his biggest bankruptcy ever, the entire United States. It will be King Donald's crowning and appropriate achievement in a life of sickness and destruction. All we can do, apparently, is watch in horror because Republicans in Congress will do nothing. The Supreme Court, stacked with partisan hacks, has enabled him. Evangelical voters and others with grudges against the country, Donald's backers in the redneck imperium, support him. Millions suffer and die for nothing. It is Little Donnie's spoiled destiny and the culmination of evangelical Christianity's hatred of creation, revenge for having been born. Which is what they share, self-hatred and destructive drive. 

Trump Tyranny Finds Its Footing

Actually, they've lost their footing, more than ever, but they've always had a problem with balance. They stand on our necks. Which is precarious but it works for them. Because they're tyrants. Their footing is standing on us and they're doing the best they can. 

I Am Convinceable

I have a lot of opinions, many pretty mainstream and some definitely not. Some loosely held, others entrenched. But almost all of my opinions or beliefs are subject to change. That's the way I am. I am convinceable. 

I'm a Republican and I'm Here to Screw You Until You Are Dead (and Even After)

Republicans have nearly broken through into honesty, into telling the American people they don't give a shit about them and will take all their money, give it to the rich, and take away everything they've worked for their entire lives. All of it. In the end they'll put a match to your money and security. 

They're doing that now. 

They have so much the money means nothing to them. They want you not to have it so you can't fight back when you realize you're completely fucked. They want you so screwed you won't be able to do anything. Down to the level of food. Simple healthcare. Down to the level of your votes. 

We'll be stuck with them as our feudal lords. They're doing it already. Citizens will die and be picked up on the streets like a dead deer. A recession or depression? Do nothing for the rabble, the dead wood. An epidemic? Good luck. Look at what they're doing now. How did we think it would happen?

They can't run for election on "Fuck you go somewhere and die." Right. Fundamentalist evangelicals would still vote for it, many of them, because they believe in authority and hierarchy above all and because their god is an arbitrary asshole and life is a pit of sin and we're better off dead.

Speaking of evangelicals, Republicans want us screwed in the afterlife as well. Not that they believe in it, the afterlife, which is why they want the money and power now. Fuck the afterlife, but it's a useful construct to have us pre-screwed. It fires up the "base" and demoralizes us, the opposition. 

It's a Privilege to be Eaten by You

Some of the anti-vaxxers died for their beliefs under Trump I, elements of MAGA so indoctrinated they were prey who thought it was a privilege to have their brains eaten by such magnificent predators as the idiots whose advice they followed. Will they ever snap out of it? No, I'm here to tell you. Not soon enough to do any good. 

If You Have No Standards Whatsoever You Will Feel Better About Yourself

This is the guiding principle of MAGA, to feel good about yourself by forcing a comparison with shit. Donald Trump is the shit.  

As the World Burns

We're living in a Republican soap opera, with exaggerated characters and overblown plots. The old envy the young and begrudge them the opportunity to live, having fucked up their own time striving for position and buying shit trying to be happy. They chose inauthenticity. Now there's no way out, they're waiting around to die and they're taking everything with them they can. 

Down on Him

Little Donnie Trump's birthday bash is having problems with entertainment. All the better acts are pulling out realizing what a partisan satanic hell-fest it will be. They'll get down to a core group of degenerate acts, I expect, then go in-house. They're in a war, a culture war, so allowances have to be made. 

I don't think it will be so bad the cabinet and some others will have to do dance numbers in drag the way the Brits used to do lacking the USO and Bob Hope, I guess, but you know they would do it. I think it will come down to Trump. Trump will perform. What true MAGA can ever get enough of him? 

So he will sing. What else is new? He's a fucking entertainer. 

I'll allow him to have help. Make it a duet with a female singer. Only fair. The song will be important. It must convey the right message, the essence of Little Donnie since this is, after all, HIS FUCKING BIRTHDAY and don't you forget it. The song I have chosen is 'Down on Me' à la Janis Joplin. 

We all know Donnie is the most persecuted and maligned person ever. Who, once in the presence of his stupendous and historic greatness, can not want to bow down in homage? BUT IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Can you imagine? Some deluded souls fail to kiss his butt the moment it is offered for adoration.

It is noted Donnie wants his ass kissed every hour of every day, birthday or not, with ass-vigils kept at night and so on. At the same time he is established as the greatest person ever to live, the culmination of creation AND evolution, to cover the bases, and the only person in the world that matters. 

His persecution complex is justified. So we're looking at a 2-3 hour rendition of 'Down on Me' with improv and audience participation and multiple entendres and shit. The Republicans in Washington are down on Donald in another way entirely, also noted. Now, we've seen how Trump rambles on.

The audience always loves it! 

So none of this will be a problem. And, this being LITTLE DONNIE'S BIRTHDAY, anyone trying to leave or looking bored or whatever will be shot or put in that UFC thing and beaten to a pulp by some ICE goons. Because IT IS HIS FUCKING BIRTHDAY. And don't you dare fucking forget it. 

Don't Be a Statistic

Too late. We don't have a choice anymore.  

The Shit Show

The Shit Show, the reality program in which Donald Trump plays president, is in its second season. The ratings are huge but two-thirds of the viewers are hostages. You couldn't pay them to watch it. They had to be compelled. 

Days of Future Pissed

We pissed away the future. That's an accomplishment. We pissed away the inheritance of others before they had a crack at it. No wonder the youth of the country are disgusted. 

Message in a Butthole

With so many Republicans spending time up Trump's ass I wonder if they're leaving secret messages there. Cries for help. Hell, maybe reflections and travel notes. It's worth taking a look. You do it I'm busy. 

A Fecal History of the Trump Years

The hypothesis here is that Donald Trump is arrested prior to being toilet trained. His entire life is going around shitting on everything. He doesn't know he's doing it. When you're born as rich as Donald, people clean up after you. Lawyers, banks, businessmen. And, of course, daddy Fred Trump. 

Treatment Resistant Oppression

I've run it through a model and gotten a diagnosis for America. Treatment Resistant Oppression. In spite of a system designed to prevent class exploitation and internecine struggle we've fallen into it. Or inadvertently created and encouraged it. Okay, we're fucking Puritans and it had to be this way.

Trump Liquidates and Loots US

It was his destiny. 

Don't Worry About Me, I'll Be Alright

And when I say that I mean I might not be alright. 

The SBC and Me

My formative encounter with this, the SBC and its corruption and racist proclivities and foray into politics, was in a famously Klan county in North Carolina that was also heavily Scots and Scots-Irish. It was by then a commonplace that southerners were still fighting the Civil War. I came away concluding that, even before that, they were just fighting. Period.

But the Reformation foremost and before the Civil War. Their outlook was bigoted and belligerent. They need antagonism. They had a straw Catholic that thought it could buy its way into heaven with good works. And indulgences. Characteristically they overcorrected, and since they were fatalists and considered wealth a sign of an upright character being wealthy and not engaging in good works suggested a higher state of holiness. This was mostly after desegregation and was intensified by the dissolution of the USSR when they lost a focus for their hate.

Must have hate! So they turned on Democrats which captured hating on black people. It became a religious crusade played out through politics. And, it's unbelievably arbitrarily authoritarian. They retreated into the worst elements of their tradition. The authoritarianism captures the sexual weirdness and abuse because it's about power and privilege. Nobody tells a white man what to do except God, and that's not institutionally regulated but between that person and God. 

Voilà, abuse. Sexual abuse, and mistreatment of every kind. As a matter of principle. 

Rednecks Reject Massie

Kentucky rednecks have rejected Massie. What does it mean? Meaning isn't a recognized currency in Kentucky. Forget it. It's a dark fucking place.

The Dowry of Anne Frank

If it can't be monetized it doesn't exist. Stories aren't community property anymore. Shit's been privatized.

Bubba Trump Ballroom

Bubba Trump Ballroom having funding problems. Bubba Trump having his own problems. Ballroom must be built! Or Donald make boom. I know, Donald already make boom. But he make more.

The Frog of War

Tell me Donald Trump isn't the most astonishing piece of shit you've ever seen. And so, what do we do? We put him in a position where he can hurt people. Lots of people. Kill people.

And what does he do? Hurt people. Kill people. And now he's started a war. Find me a bigger piece of shit than Donald. I dare you. Donald is as low as you can go. Basically a Groyper. 

Making him a frog of war. Trump plays to the worst elements. He wants their support. But he's too much of a coward to own it. Which makes him the worst of the worst of the worst. 

Pax Trumpicana Looks a Lot Like Hell

Trump's promised age of peace and is a mass of violence, war, misery and slaughter. He's staging a cage fight at the White House in celebration of his birthday. Everywhere you look he's created suffering.

Is Trump Ahab or the White Whale?

Moby Dick is the American story. Trump has to fit in somewhere. He's both. Trump is Ahab and the whale, his own obsession. He'll spear himself one day. And they'll both die, Trump and the darkness within himself he can't own or allow to live. 

The Conscience of a Conservative

I remember reading a book by a Jesuit, a philosopher I think, who said, basically, there are higher and lower elements in both individuals and societies and the higher elements must run the show. Note this acknowledges the existence, as a given, of the lower elements. 

Even in a society. That’s defining some members of the society as lower elements. I’m fine with that. In that respect I’m probably conservative. BUT I THINK IT’S CIRCUMSTANTIAL. Not existential. As an ethical matter we all have the same rights. I think this for several reasons.

The critical one is that people are incomprehensible in isolation. We exist as a group, as a species and as an aggregation. Not intelligibly as individuals. Individualism is subjective, obviously. Experiential, and valid as that. But try reproducing individually. Without another person. 

Without cooperation. It’s just about possible these days.

Musk might try. But it’s not a recipe for anything human. Incidentally, I’d argue that Musk is not human. He’s fundamentally sick. But that’s another story. Liberals, or progressives, or whatever I am, believe that, as a matter of accountability and intelligibility, we are all equal. 

Conservatives believe they’re existentially superior, that they have rights you don't have. American conservatives are typically social darwinists or religious exclusionists. Both are fatalists. Social darwinists believe they are superior as determined by competition. They won. 

That they outcompeted everyone else so they’re better. Take that. Religious fundamentalists believe they were arbitrarily chosen by God by predestination, so take that and fuck you to hell to those that weren’t. Election is arbitrary in that it’s above our ability to understand it. 

I point out that this is against the express terms of our constitution, as it concerns one’s citizenship and legal rights and as a political matter. As it concerns us as a polis. Secondly this is expressly and definitely unchristian, for some people to say they’re saved and you’re not. 

Conservatives, the social darwinist faction, don’t have consciences. They have drives. Aristocratic drives define conservatives. Privilege. I don’t deny they might be superior in some respects, I deny that makes them the boss of me. And exempt from the laws of the commonwealth.

I don’t exist at their pleasure. This group of supremacists is of course a minority. But with the intent to rule and turn the rest of us into serfs. So they lie, at an industrial scale, and try to exert leverage. They try to turn the tables by claiming we need them, not that they need us.

It’s all a fucking lie. They can think whatever they want, but stop lying about it. And if you’re in a democracy or claim to be a Christian play by the rules. Instead, for example, of trying to overthrow our government and reduce our religious traditions to blasphemous bullshit. 

ED and FOP

Two career tracks are available in Trump's administration at this time, the Epstein Diversion track and the Friends of Pedophiles track. The latter is higher in prestige and might require a donation to the Donald Defense Fund to get on but yields greater access to Herr Donald and possible financial rewards. 

Remember the diversion part. For all the fantastic mess being created by Trump never forget it's about Epstein. The ED track is loaded with lackeys and younger associates many just out of college, typically Patrick Henry or Hillsdale, and they are the foot soldiers. Cannon fodder, if it comes down to it. 

Trump Show, Season Two: More Murder and Mayhem!

The killing in season one was nearly passive, as Donnie got his footing in his important new job. He's president! But as a murder show it sucked. An epidemic didn't make good drama, though Donnie is estimated to have gotten over 400,000 people killed, a pretty good number, watching old farts with comorbidities die in a massive mess of hoses and tubes with a ventilator and shit, well, what a drag! 

The highlight was the idiot anti-vaxxers that passed, out of devotion to Donnie. Those morons believed they were actors like Donnie, I guess, and that they wouldn't really die. SAD! But that's the thing about the Trump Show, people really die. It's a snuff show. Season Two has been better. They're blowing shit up. Beating people in the streets of American towns and cities. Tormenting citizens in all kinds of ways. 

It's a much better show this time. Herr Hegseth, Trump's man of war, saw some poor souls clinging to a boat and said 'kill them!' What a man. Donald himself, it's said, loves nothing more than to see the films of the strikes. He started a war, he likes it so much. But they fought back! My God, the nerve. They messed up the plot. The whole thing is stalled now. But if there's one thing Donald's good at it's stirring shit up. 

So, stay tuned. That's the whole point, isn't it? 

Finding Out Is the Fun Part

At least if you're a Republican. Because they're the ones that fool around. We're the ones that find out. 

His Word Is His Bond (Markets)

I wonder if anyone is telling our compulsive idiot leader where he is heading. Maybe he thinks his will can shape anything, or that he can squirm out of any kind of massive failure and bankruptcy, where we know he has had practice, but he's also been the author of his own catastrophes before and gone into kiss-up mode. He seemed to be there with Xi and he took plutocrats with him to run interference. 

It all reeks of weakness. Donald has had to grovel before but he does it differently, looking down his nose at you while he's at it. I'm not a psychologist but I think I understand compensatory posturing, which rests on a kind of thermodynamics of the psyche, an inborn accountability that's in effect of you're not a psychopath and maybe even then. It suggests Donald knows he's a worthless piece of shit. 

By the laws of conservation or karma. 

He creates desperate circumstances for himself because, confoundingly, it's stabilizing to him. He's such a wreck inside externalizing it gives him an opportunity to fight that battle. Laws and customs, down to the level of etiquette, are supposed to enable societies to function with such people because they are inevitable. You keep them in line and try to channel their shit or jail them if they're bad enough. 

Trump should probably have been jailed but with the right kind of pushback earlier who knows. Money can insulate someone from almost anything and it did with Trump. Why, this leads me to ask, would a society empower such a piece of garbage? Averages should apply and keep it from happening. There has to be a mass psychological injury. Like, let's say, a Civil War. Americans are figuring this out.

Too late. The damage has been done with more to come. Yes, they want to destroy the county. Look at the electoral results just in. Trump is still getting his way in places. I think we need to understand it to react appropriately for once if we have the chance to run things again. They're fighting a war. Against us. People are shocked at these deep-south states attacking voting rights. I'm not shocked. 

Talk about bond markets and interest rates is fine but it's in the realm of expertise and they're pulling us out of there. What does expertise mean if it applies to destruction? And we're heading there. Nobody cares about it when the real suffering begins and Americans have forgotten what that's like. So we're playing brinkmanship with seriously bad shit. Maybe biggest case of FOMO ever is in store. 

I say this out of respect for the bond markets. Not as sexy as stocks but I believe they're the thing you really don't want to screw up. And little Donnie's baggage could take us there.

Where Have All the Fuckheads Gone?

All Republicans now. Republicans have cornered the market on fuckheads. Or they're working on it. When will they ever learn?  

Golf and Grovel

Air Force One has lugged Trump to China like the huge baby he is. He sucks his thumb and grovels before Xi. He's so depleted America he can't do anything. And Taiwan is on the table.

China wins. The USA and Russia destroy themselves. The smell of bankruptcy is in the air. This time little Donnie has bankrupted the whole country. While enriching himself. For now. 

Escape from Trumpatraz

We're all Trump's prisoners. Even his supporters, because they're his dupes. How do we escape from Trumpatraz?

Future Proof

Republicans are ensuring our country has no future. We're future-proof. Also known as being fucked. They're redefining future-proofing like everything else. Like truth. Like freedom. Like justice. 

They rely on a fundamentalist, evangelical base to stay in power. Evangelicals want to see the end times so it works out. Together with 'disaster capitalism' and 'creative destruction' our future is assured.

We don't have one. 

Please, President Xi, a Little Favor?

Woke up this morning with the fantasy that Xi would arrest Trump on behalf of humanity or say he had a medical emergency and stick him in a room somewhere. Maybe then use him as leverage against Vance, the immediate acting president, and the Republicans in Congress, demanding we stop fucking around and follow our own laws or declare ourselves an officially authoritarian state and be done with it.

What would those Republicans do? 

Say please keep him for a bit and make sure he's okay he's been a bit off lately? Then what? Try to institute some kind of intelligible interim government? I don't think so. They would be jockeying for power, trying to get pardons from Vance, protecting their fortunes any way they could, and trying to guarantee their personal hegemony forever. At least the pretense, that we aren't already completely fucked, would be over.

That's how far gone we are. The world would be so relieved if Trump were somehow stopped. Like Democrats, but much more understandably, they've never been able to comprehend this block of fundamentalist religious sociopaths we have. But behold these scumbags in Alabama and other states capitalizing on our rogue, politicized Supreme Court's latest farcical voting rights ruling.

Just a thought experiment, of course, but it leads me to believe Democrats as a party are incapable of dealing with this. They can't mount a coherent, effective attack on an administration that's nothing but a rolling coup or even criticize it in a way that sticks. My conclusion? The only way we get out of this is charismatic leadership. Anybody. A fucking Martian would be fine. And I see absolutely no one.

Befits Charity

Conservatism is about privilege. Privilege is about getting something for nothing. Conservatives are making the case for charity, for them. Not because they need it but because they want it. They think they deserve it, no matter what they already have. Is it any wonder they lie all the time?

They've Lost the Plot

The plot was democracy. But, don't worry, they've found another one, authoritarianism, the version of it known as white supremacy. Everything old is new again, even Nazism.

Pesky Blighters

I have a dramatic series in mind documenting the Trump Crime Family's thefts, manipulations and nefarious activities modeled on Peaky Blinders, the excellent British show about an Irish gang that makes the sniveling cowards of Trump's version look like the pathetic lightweights they are, using the status and power afforded them by their government positions to bully and abuse people with no such leverage. 

They aren't even respectable villains. They stink at it, parading their insecurities around and lording it over the locals, trying to prove something, that quest for their elusive manhood or a hint of character. Real crooks don't allow such things to interfere with maximizing profits relative to risks. Now, Trump and his cronies are stealing incomprehensible sums, I'll give them that, but it looks bad on the risk front.

They're blowing up everything. A Valentine's Day Massacre a day, seems to be the reference quality, with allowances for their access to WMDs. Yes, those WMDs they were worried sick about. We knew THEY had them, of course, a privilege supposed to be earned by a capacity for restraint and reserve. Self-control -- not a known character trait of Donald Trump, a bawling infant if there ever was one.

Our derivative culture has coughed up a raft of derivative rogues, a derivative resistance that can't stop them, and is suffering a derivative decline almost certain to culminate in a derivative collapse. We can't even fuck things up properly or with a little plot and style. We suck infinitely. But let it be said we suck with impressive collateral damage and mess. Imperial and colonial collateral damage and mess. 

We were never supposed have those aspirations, the imperial and colonial type, so maybe we're getting what we deserve even if we backed into it.

Society for Destructive Anachronism

Donald Trump is going medieval on the world. 

Fires, Floods, Plagues, and Famines

Fundamentalist Christians want to see some Biblical shit happen. Fires, floods, plagues and famines appeal to them. So 30% or so of Americans still support a madman. They see it. They like it. There are no internal checks on it at all. They're out of their fucking minds. 

America, a City on a Hill

And a blight unto men.

America is becoming a Calvinist dream state, a city on a hill. A light shining forth, the beams of the bonfires of witches and heretics, and of the self-immolation of fundamentalists striving for perfection. Looking up, they assume guidance from heaven. They don't notice there's nowhere to go but down. 

Threat Brain

Threat Brain (TB), a Republican affliction of imagined danger, also known as WMD Delusion or Invented Antagonism, varies inversely with the Actual Threat (AT) according to rational risk assessment. It might not be a linear function but run quickly to infinity in the reasonable near absence of threats though this is hypothetical since there's always something to be afraid of. 

The only known remedy is death. Once someone is dead there's nothing left to fear but no one has been able to report back on this. Mystics maintain fear can survive death if the spirit is still shackled to its corporeality by guilt. Republicans thrive best in the presence of real, immediate existential threats. This is thought to be an evolutionary anachronism, and a potent one. 

Possibly the most potent evolutionary artifact, with natural selection favoring suspicion and paranoia over millennia, the survival of the craziest and most naturally belligerent. Republicans are believed to start wars because of this. All the origins of the wars of the past must be approached with skepticism for this reason, more so because the mechanisms are unconscious. 

Republicans are always sowing the seeds of discord in subtle ways. Recognizing that Republicans are a rogue branch of traditional European conservatism, Threat Brain still seems to be a conservative project, it's supposed because of privilege and entitlement. Privilege and the resulting assertion of arbitrary superiority and station mean conservatives think themselves targets. 

Field studies indicate a projection of their own jealous, arrogant, entitled, presumptuous, acquisitive, reactionary, and persecutory predispositions. They expect others to be like them, prone to unprovoked attack. Threat Brain can't be eliminated it must be contained. By its nature the assumptions of privilege apply to a minority. Be on the lookout for leverage and alliances. 

By these means they attempt to take over, achieve total control and unlimited power. When that happens we are fucked because the same suspicious mechanisms aren't assuaged they intensify. In their minds they have more to lose, further to fall and they're more vulnerable than ever. They will never see they bring that all on themselves, a case of self-fulfilling expectations

The Story in Their Lies

There's a story there. We know it, that Republican lies are revelatory. Not to say endless and sick. They're especially harmful lies because they're designed to hurt people at every level. I don't mean every economic or social level because they go after the most vulnerable. I mean they have a whole system of lies. 

Those lies attack the same people, from rather trivial deprivations to getting them killed. Overwhelming force appeals to monsters. Bond villains fantasize about it. Unlimited power over everything. Everybody. Intensity and scope. They're going for it all. And there's no rhyme or reason. They're just sick. 

Do the Myth

I understand 'do the math'. I support it. But it's a tool. People don't live math. Math helps them live. People live stories. Do the myth. 

The Giant Sucking Noise That Is Texas

The extraction capital of the world. That's Texas. They think they're strong and independent. Texas men, anyway. If they were they wouldn't be so touchy, reactive and sensitive about being told they're not all strong and independent. That they're anything but real men who hunt and fish and rule their women, benign or brutal, it doesn't matter. 

Build a Better Basket

Elon Musk is a basket case. Maybe a basket savant, I don't know. Let's put him in an institution, a prison or asylum, and see what he can come do. That would be fine with me. His murderous, destructive stint at DOGE has earned him that. And give his money to the poor. Fucking all of it. 

The Rat Revolution

Rats. The rats are running everything. Cannibal rats. They eat their own kind. They spread misery and disease. They're always nibbling. Infiltrating and nibbling.   

The rats haven't fled a sinking ship. They mutinied. They gnawed holes in the ship and sabotaged it until it was could be commandeered by them, innately inferior elements. 

Republicans are the rats. They'd rather rule in a shithole than exist in a nice place because for them nice isn't an option. Nice is unnatural. Life is shit. Creation is shit. 

So let it all be shit. Republicans want everything to be shit. With them in charge. When they're in charge everything is shit, because they're destructive, so it all works out. 

Self-fulfilling expectations. 

Dinner Out in Washington

I'd like a main course of responsible governance with a side of entertaining intrigue. Hold the plunder and sociopathy. And in an earlier review I heard you had a massive roach running the kitchen, à la Proust. I assume that's been corrected and is no longer the case. If not we're leaving and will burn down the place down on the way out. Restaurants shouldn't be run by roaches.

Lonesome Dotard

This is the saga of Donald Trump, a boy who can't get any respect. A stranger in his own land. A king and hero unappreciated and maligned by his people. 

He thinks only of his constituents. His subjects. Do they love him as they should? With the love he craves and needs? No. They refuse him his ballroom. 

It is nothing! In the scheme it is nothing. And he is taunted, mocked and abused. He does everything for his subjects. They are lucky to be ruled by him. 

Dotard Days

Remember the innocent days of a fat North Korean fuck trading insults in an admirer's spat with a certain fat American fuck?

Notes From the Pit of Hell

Trump therapy -- your personal issues fade as Trump's engulf the world. Trump's baggage can take us all down. And a big chunk of creation. Jesus died for our sins. We must die for Trump's sins.

Hence he's the anti-Christ. Christ took on humanity's imperfection, corruption and sinfulness, in expiation. Trump unloads his inhumanity onto everyone else. Then he tries to burn us all at the stake. 

We'll Always Have Paris

It's over. Whatever it was -- the good, the bad -- it's done. There's a war on, if you haven't heard, no matter that only one side gets it. 

So we can't go back. No USA as it was. Don't accept that? Wake the fuck up! Because if we don't we're less likely to keep the dream alive. 

We carry it within us. The other side doesn't. That's reality. There's a fucking war on. Getting by and going along isn't good enough. 

Bluto Is President

A lot of Europeans turned loose on a continent of unexploited natural resources isn't a model for anything. It doesn't result in culture or a civilization but a frat party, not that it hasn't been fun. But it's over and the boys aren't getting it.  

Ants Will Inherit the Earth

I was out moving some stones around and ants are everywhere. They will surely inherit the earth. Then I realized Republicans are a species of ant. Individuation matters for nothing. There is absolutely no disagreement in thought or deed. Human beings supposedly endowed with reason and free will sacrifice that and utter the Republican line with absolute predictability and a unanimity of practice and purpose. The same language. The same message. Joe Biden blah blah.

What's observably true is not true. Trump didn't say or do what he said or did. He has an IQ greater than Einstein and plays quantum chess. Anything bad, Democrats did. Anything good, we did. The colony is everything. The Republican colony, whatever that is, a fair question since they've thrown reality out the window. Defenestrated it. It's a mind virus. Another implication is that Trump is a queen, not a king, and somehow connected with reproduction. He spreads the mind virus. 

And, to be clear, I am in no way disparaging ants. They are fine and industrious creatures. They cooperate in meaningful ways and their behaviors make sense. For ants. I like ants, but not fire ants. Not a fan of those. And Republicans most remind me of that breed. Insanely reactive. Aggressive as shit. They must have evolutionary baggage. Humans, in any event,  are not supposed to be ants so this is a mutation. A mind mutation. Or a contagion. A contagious illness of the brain. 

A brain disease. More on this important insight and public health concern is to follow.

Trump Wasting Disease

Trump is wasting everything. He's a disease. 

The Anti-Christian Worldview of Evangelicals: Into the Shithole

Their idea of Christianity, and the avowed understanding of it among evangelicals, is that it's the worldview within which everything works, under Christianity's status as the revealed truth as conveyed in the Bible. This sounds academic. They might insist the point is just Jesus but, same thing. Except they believe stepping outside their system to describe it invalidates the description because life is a matter of faith, not of analysis. There's no stepping back. Life apart from faith is invalid. That makes me wonder about all the talk of evangelization in the Bible -- why bother, just kill them. 

So it applies to governments, of course. These are Christian or they are invalid. Whether evangelicals think illicit governments should be converted or destroyed is unclear and might depend on having a critical mass of Christians available to run the government. Because if not it is invalid. Evangelicals buy into nationalism because it's in the Bible. Tribes and nations appear, so they are part of God's plan but note the interplay of power dynamics and Christian principles. My reading would be there's nothing supporting merging the Roman Empire with Christianity but it happened anyway. 

Who knows how evangelicals find what they find in the Bible. It seems selective and distorted to me. I say Christianity is not their worldview -- that they have another worldview and that their Christianity is subsumed to that. That worldview is a deranged, racist, uncompromised authoritarianism. Which is incompatible with Christianity and democracy and pretty much anything other than living in a shithole of violence, competition without rules, and basic barbarism. They're extreme Calvinists in that respect, and their most fundamental belief is that life and creation are shit.

Everything arises from that. So it's useless trying to understand who they are and what they're doing. They're insane. They simply must be stopped. Or, welcome to the shithole. The shithole isn't entirely bad. Mostly it's arbitrary as hell. No overall justice -- that's for the afterlife, where most of us are fucked. Kindness and decency exist, in pockets and places, but these are like theme parks, artificial environments cut off from the horrors of life for the enjoyment of the elect while they await rapture or the Second Coming or whatever, I think even they are unclear how that plays out. 

Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein doesn't get paid to shut up. And it shows. 

The Full Monty Cristo

With Trump coming unglued and his administration reeling from his desperation and stupidity they are talking about turning to male striptease to keep the party going. Along Chippendales lines. It makes as much sense as anything they've done, and who wouldn't love to see Miller, Vought, Vance, Lindsey Graham and all the others gyrating and taking off their clothes, to say nothing of Donnie himself. As a Christ figure Trump can do no wrong. So his base will certainly stick with him. 

Doctor Who-the-Fuck

Doctor Donald. He is what ails you. 

Trump Zealots Going After Everybody

Trump's administration isn't an administration but a monstrous, mutated thing. The human beings in it aren't humans. They lack integrity to an incomprehensible degree. They don't do their jobs. They don't fulfill their roles. They are the system and they aren't, since they're killing it off. 

Nothing is intelligible or makes sense. The administration is an abomination. Horror movie material. Blindly attacking everybody and everything. All the old ways, the semblance of constitutional governance must be destroyed. It must be destroyed. It must be destroyed. It's a zombie thing. 

Fire Up the Ovens

They're using preservatives. I know they are. And anti-upchuck alleviators. Coming at it from both ends. Concealing the stench of the Republican death machine and the corpses they leave scattered AND inoculating the troops so they can't smell it or convince them rotting corpses smell okay. 

Portray it as renewal. That's the ploy. Death giving way to new life. In reality an emerging dystopia of brutality, inequality, arbitrary authority and compulsive, preemptive retribution. No real enemies? Not a problem! Invent them. The perps are zombies and vampires. Creating more or their kind.

It must get worse, they say, before it gets better. A purge. We've reached the burn time. The time for fire. Random killings are slow. Dehumanized, distanced, individual murders prepared the ground. For mass slaughter. Too many impure elements. They must be eliminated. Democrats. Iran. Brown people. 

Dirty people. They must be removed. God's purity must be restored. That stench can't be masked or concealed. It's too huge. So fire up the ovens. Ready the big bombs. Nukes, maybe.

Things That Go Trump in the Night

We think the nightmare can't get ay worse. And it always does. 

Nationalize SpaceX

We paid for it. Time to take possession. 

Time Has Come

The Republican Party made itself into something to attract certain people. Estranged people, bigoted people, confused people. People who felt left out, unseen, disrespected and abused. People with grudges, suspicions and resentments. 

Then they trained them. Lied to them. Led them. Cultivated hate. They validated all their worst ideas and impulses. Yeah, you were right. The cards were stacked against you. Other people had unfair advantages. You were screwed.

And they were. By Republicans. Who created all the dissatisfaction, and compounded it at every opportunity. Then they exploited the hell out of it. They played all the 'little people' off against one another. This was a marketing campaign from hell.

There are implications -- we're probably fucked, at least to the point of needing a crash of some sort to pull out of this. A reckoning. A crisis. The thing Republicans are best at is blowing stuff up, it turns out. Their economic program is boom and bust. 

They'll do it again. Last time they were ready. They're always ready. They have an infrastructure of lies. The lie cloud. A worldview of insanity. Plans and proposals, on the shelf, ready to go. And a cure-all -- cut taxes on the rich. Shovel them money. 

Democrats had nothing. They have nothing. No vision for the American people. I know it's hard fighting lunatics. It's hard when there are hostages. Still, no excuse. Let's try to be the fuck ready this time. That system that creates drone warriors? 

Shut it down. What does this mean? Fox News and hate radio. Shut them down. Close the mass of Republican anti-American subversive organizations. Yes, their 'think tanks.' And the Supreme Court, at this point. Got you there, didn't I. 

BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY. There's a model for this. Fucking Trump. He just does shit. We can do that, if we have the opportunity. And the will. Trump invents emergencies. We have one. Trump is the emergency. He's destroying us. 

Nobel Peace Pacifier

Turns out, Little Donnie Trump wanted the Nobel Peace Prize as a pacifier. And he didn't get it. Now Little Donnie Trump is gonna blow shit up.

It's Too Late

It's too late for the American left to own its shit. The right is in full possession. 

My Exceptionalist Myth

My family had its own exceptionalist myth. We thought we were special. I thought it was normal and that everyone felt that way. And the story wasn't arbitrary, not like we were chosen. We thought we were exceptional because we had standards. Because we were nice. 

What's wrong with that? Blindness, if the story is too extreme. Blindness to what other people go through or might be going through, the seeds of being inadvertent assholes. I never enjoyed hurting anybody. I was appalled when I knew I had. But that has to change behaviors. 

Or it doesn't mean anything. Grownup empathy is different. It doesn't only operate in restricted ways in space and time. It works across space and time. It has immersive aspects and abstract aspects. Elements of justice added to mercy. Wisdom, one hopes, and some intelligence. 

The Destruction of Decency, Humanity, Reason and Restraint. Call it the Destruction of Civilization.

The Republicans and Trump are winning or have won, a perfect realization of the victory of redneck/evangelical values. We'll be noble savages again, I guess, in their vision, with all the suffering and slaughter that goes with it.  

The Garden of Eden

The message of the story: sin is the loss of perspective. We were living in paradise and got obsessed with the one thing we were told we couldn't have. Still, we didn't lose paradise. We lost the ability to live there without doing the work. 

We're still living in Eden. The struggle we're faced with since the Fall is to see the world correctly as a miracle. A thing of wonder. What do with think the admonition to be like children is about? Or the lilies of the field? To remain in a state of wonder. 

Representative Death

Kentucky's Senator Mitch McConnell is a corpse. He's a representative corpse. They hoist and wheel him around. He represents death. The force that wants death in the world. That wants the world to die. 

Call it Calvinism. Calvinism is one of its forms. A form that hates life so much for its imperfection and decay it craves death. Call it Satan. Call it Trump. Call it evangelical Christianity. They all want death. 

The Easter Up-Fucking

Maybe this will be remembered as the Easter Trump lost his shit. Or lost it over some line since Trump was born having lost his shit. Evidently his parents misplaced it, prenatally. Or bequeathed him the lost-shit gene. Or willed it on his ass. But it's some seriously lost shit. World-altering. And none for the better. 

The Wisdom of Clouds 4/20/2016

We need an Aristophanes, and we need a chorus. We are too immersed in ourselves. News sources ought to amount to a collective chorus but they're too implicated. 

The agent of implication is money. Money is the problem: too much money in private hands. America should have poured money into public works and social welfare.

We should have shamed Scandinavia, as our wealth increased. And why not? Racism, to begin with. And a vain, irrational, narcissistic cult of individualism. 

Oh, you Clouds, sing about us and our Sophistry. We are unwise:

See how they Spin

yet All in Vain

Reeling in the Wind

the Sons of Cain

Slayers of Brothers

And Mothers

they Want more

what a Bore

you'll have More 

more of Gore

you Fools, the Violence

will Return to You

Are we our brothers' keepers? Well, yes.

My Answer

Liberalism is more fully an integrative and adaptive approach, which conservatism is supposed to be as well but with an emphasis on and respect for traditions and established ways. So the problem is extremism and polarization, in which case either approach can become reactionary and self-negating. Normally this occurs through utopian and puritanical impulses, more naturally coming from conservatives. They are also more likely a minority in a democracy though I understand both Bismarck and Disraeli saw extending the franchise wasn't a threat to the right because many workers and lower class voters would choose what they would perceive as the stability of conservatism.

Utopianism can infect the left as well, but most often under duress from the right. 'Wokism' is exactly that. In my experience conservatives are much more prone to confirmation bias. That's natural since they're more on the side of preserving an existing order and suspicious of change and adaptation. Confirmation bias is a harder fit for liberalism's moving target of adaptation than conservatism's fixed target of protecting the status quo and existing order. I'm an instinctive conservative who ended up on the left because I didn't see Republicans, in the American example, as conservatives at all. Which I think happened because America's constitution is ragingly progressive. 

So all Americans were called on to be conservatives in the sense of preserving that original liberalism thereby crowding the conservative space and forcing those identifying as the right into an extreme and reactionary posture fighting against constitutional norms. Fighting against the law and for overthrow of the government, in other words, to the degree the government is true to America's ideals and the core, liberal beliefs embodied in its laws and traditions. This is playing out now as people claiming the mantle of conservatism wantonly destroy American society and constitutional governance. Or, if that's actually conservatism, it's nothing but the rationalization of animal drives. 

Fuck Fuck No

Fuck Fuck No is a browser for the apocalyptic age. The enshittification age. The age of frustration, rage and disempowerment, with the devaluation of average citizens and the loss of leverage among everyone but the super-rich to the degree of disposability. 

We are expendable. The new browser will give you actual truth and real information, none of which will be reassuring. The actual truth is that we are fucked. Real information will still be useful but, longer-run and bigger-picture, our lives have been nullified.

We are fucked. Ransacked, beaten, robbed blind and plundered into inconsequence. Helpless. Keep your heads down. Leave if you can. American society is uniquely inhumane, with inconceivable wealth reaching an impossible crescendo of concentration. 

Patriarchy

I don’t know anything and never been to Europe but American feminism is different, I think. It went puritanical like everything in America. Leftism generally went puritanical and utopian, strident and judgmental, and it cost the hell out of the left.

Who wants that, constantly feeling watched over, unwhole and inadequate? So, the patriarchy, which I’m convinced is compensatory. Men are compensated by society for their weakness and vulnerability. They were given power to console them, to invest them in something other than death, and to keep them from acting out. 

Patriarchy is a function of a deeper problem, I believe, the absurdity of being alive. Women are fundamentally more grounded, including in a chthonic kind of way, and fundamentally stronger by being more able to achieve a harmonious existence within nature whereas men too often want to fight against nature and mortality. 

Which never fucking works. So civilization is about constraining and channeling men’s dominating and destructive impulses. Borrowed (power, petro) energy made this harder because men wanted to own it. Ownership is fundamentally wrong and illusory. The sicker the culture the more focused it will be on property rights.

In healthier and more harmonious cultures, though they may offer significant protections for property, it will be still be understood, as a cultural matter, as a kind of stewardship. The guy at the gym wanted to own y’all. Kicking him in the nuts would have been one way to negate it but it’s risky and inflammatory. 

The reaction of the other women is another way of disempowering him and contributing to disempowering the whole mass of this shit but the striving for power and security-through-domination instead of security-through-cooperation is a perennial problem. American white women voted for Trump three times.

That’s support for an especially addicted, abusive, arbitrary form of patriarchy. I got on board with feminism early though it troubled me that it seemed insulting to the American midwestern women I grew up with who were mostly one generation off of farms but in any case generally tough, productive and nobody’s patsies. 

I got on board with feminism because of nukes and industrialized slaughter as represented by the Holocaust. But Israel is now another example of the perennial problem of everyone getting compromised by patriarchal impulses relating to historical cycles of tribal wrongs and not being able to break those cycles.

I agree with you about accountability. I think it must be at the societal and cultural levels. If that works then these interpersonal instances and transgressions get instantly processed as sad and desperate attempts of losers to assert themselves. Which, if it’s socially reinforced, gets us to the sociopathy of Trumpism.

Complicity

We continue to try to come to terms with what Republicans are doing within a framework that accepts the American constitutional system and its traditions and that's okay, as a point of reference, but that's not where they are. We can't have it both ways. If we're going to apply that framework we have to call them traitors and revolutionaries because that's the implication. More than that, it's an obvious conclusion. An observation, with no need for analysis or explication.

We should be making the case, constantly and coherently, that they're traitors caught red handed subverting and hijacking the government for partisan and personal ends. This case should be made by our representatives in Congress, anlways and openly, or we're accepting THEIR frame of reference and we're compromised before we open our mouths. If we pretend they're working within the system they're openly and obviously destroying we're complicit.

Trump the Peacemaker

Please ignore all the beatings, death and destruction.  

Trump Shits the World

Little Donnie Trump is living his best life and realizing his destiny. He's shitting the whole world. But it's all good because Donnie is the only person in the world that matters. And the rest of humanity collectively doesn't add up to Trump in importance. Trump is God on earth. 

Light My Pyre

America chose Trump. Trump is death. America chose death. America is dying. 

Look Homeward, Asshole

As is obvious now America has a problem with being unrooted and lacking in cultural depth and sophistication. Which sounds unambiguously bad but it means being tapped into some primal shit that produces experiences that addicts and artists are prone to have because they are more in touch with their id. Or something like that. In any case Trump's America is pretty clearly in love with the primal shit. Americans are primitives. Primitives with nukes. And incapable of questioning that and rising above it. Because they've got massive Calvinist baggage. 

I Found the WMD

The WMD is Trump.

The Manchurian Capitalist

Rich people have created a class of capitalist bots and stooges, brainwashed actors serving the interests of big money at their own expense. Or, they serve because they prefer being slaves with proximity to money and have some identification with it, being themselves capital, than serfs tilling the fields who's interests are at odds with with those of the super-rich. 

Life Prohibition

Prohibition is the way of the puritan. Life is an irredeemable cesspool of sin and a pit of temptation so you make sin illegal. Yeah, they're fascists. 

Fuck freedom. Except as a buzzword, tagline and marketing thing. Puritans -- perfectionists -- are selling is death so they have a branding problem. 

Here, have some death. That doesn't go over. Not with the normies. So they lie their asses off. Say that the forces of oppression are on your side. 

That they will only hate on the people you hate. Right. Sure they will. But what they hate is life so try to contain that. Their hate has no boundaries.

You're in there somewhere. 

Chivalry Is Alive

Chivalry is alive among Democrats. They defer to the white women among them. Not because the white women are right but because they're women.  

An Incoherent Truth

People can choose a system of coherent lies over an incoherent truth. Not that they love the lies but there's an art to presentation, and truth imbedded in a bad story that isn't intuitive or doesn't resonate can lose in spite of itself. Lies can be reassuring because reality sometimes sucks. Art is a kind of lie. 

Not enlisting art on the side of truth compounds the problem that systems of lies have more latitude. They aren't tied down the way truth is, to reality. Using art for truth isn't slumming. Average citizens aren't philosophy students. The Church understood this. Democrats apparently don't. So they lose. 

Save the Sensibilities

Democrats saved their sensibilities. Apparently it's what they cared about. Because while they were doing that they lost the country. And the people to whom they lost it have destroyed it. 

Assy Kissy?

Trump offered Iran his normal conciliatory kiss-my-ass-and-I-won't-bomb-yours deal and they have refused it, not understanding American ways. Americans claim to be religious, especially Trump's supporters, but all they really give a shit about is money, power, and retribution for the Civil War. 

Iranians are religious, whatever you think of their beliefs. They take religion seriously, are in some ways actually humble, and wouldn't dare presume on the prerogatives of God in a way reflecting sectarian and schismatic interpretations of their foundational document, the Koran. Unlike, let's say, Baptists.

So when Trump said 'Assy kissy?' the Muslims basically passed. In a way I feel for Trump. His evangelical supporters were so quick to kiss his ass and his administration has been purged of all but ass kissers so it feels normal to him. Subsets of shit-eaters and anus-lickers man Trump's bureaucratic elite. 

They rule in Trump world. Shit eating appears to be an unfamiliar among Muslims but they have dietary practices and restrictions somewhat like the Jews. Maybe that's why American Jews continue to vote decisively against Trump. Evangelical Christians, by contrast, eat shit at the drop of a hat.

Cowboy Junkies

All these Republican white men think they're cowboys of some sort, with the delusion addicts have. But They buy their mojo at gun shows or in other ways and fill their energy tanks on the petro mommy tit. 

Kiss My Ass

The ass-kissing imperative informs Trump's entire psychological makeup and view of life. Ass must be kissed. So it's America's foreign and domestic policy. Get your ass kissed when you can. Kiss ass when you must. Play the averages and never look back because you leave nothing but wreckage. 

Rich as Shit

I know what you thought. I did too or that's how I got there. But I want to live in a country where it makes you think of food first, or anything other than some fucking tech bro. 

Instant Pharma's Gonna Get You

Knock you right on your ass. Karma is on vacation. 

Surprise!

Donald Trump, Mister Central Park Five, loves blowing shit up and killing people. Surprise! I don't think he especially likes killing people but he doesn't care. Those videos, through. Things going boom. Donald doesn't do people. Not being able to make sense of himself he can't make sense of anyone else. Inanimate is more his style. Inanimate stuff doesn't get uppity and try to assert existential  equality and shit like that, when Donald knows everyone in the rest of the world added together doesn't matter, not in comparison with him. 

Vague

So much language, so little communication. So much engagement, so little engaged. My new fashion magazine, Vague, will spill into cultural criticism. Republicans, avowed haters of 'moral relativism' and modernism, are intent on fighting declining standards and ambiguity of any kind, but in a bifurcated life where good is definitive and the word means nothing. Good is definitively what they say it is. 

They're absolutists, not contextualists. Their world embraces no gray areas, but the world is gray. It's pixelated, little definitive islands of black and white, many tiny examples of right and wrong, good and evil, that add up to nothing. That add up to shit, because life is unintelligible. Stepped back the pixels disappear. All is gray. No morality. Rather, arbitrary authority -- rule by violence, force and decree.

Liberals didn't know what liberalism meant. They're finding out, as it's being defined against its opposite, compulsion and intolerance. Liberalism got hijacked like everything, and pixelated into analytical ooze and froth, compromised and corrupted by selfishness and greed meaning more for them, the already-haves who wanted for nothing, and less for everyone else. Step back. No right and wrong, a morality of manners. The little things must be right, a perfection of the parts adding up to horrors. 

Perspective is everything.

Republicans were always relativists. Big picture relativists. Relativists of the macrocosm. Liberals were relativists of the microcosm, the freedom to choose how to live within a community that provided context, latitude for self-expression, love and security. And accountability, which Republicans couldn't stand. They wanted to be predators. Without the risk. Predators in a rigged game. Rigged by nature, rigged by God. The same thing, because power is its own justification, life is shit, and nothing means anything. 

Fratwa

Pete Hegseth has issued a fratwa against the Islamic State of Iran from his office at the fraternity Delta Omicron Delta, of which he is head. Delta-O is an offshoot of Kappa Kappa Kappa which is headquartered somewhere in Mississippi. 

Slumdoge Billionaire

I say we go after the billionaires, Musk first. He's the richest, he's nuts, and he got hundreds of thousands of people killed, did all kinds of illegal shit and thinks it's fine.

Nobel Piece of Shit Prize

Yielding to Trump's insistence on having an award and from fear of being bombed the Nobel Committee has instituted the Piece of Shit Prize to placate Trump but Trump couldn't come. He was busy bombing the shit out of Iran so he sent Mike Johnson because Johnson is basically out of a job. Trump usurped all his powers and duties with Johnson's acquiescence and approval. 

Johnson offered the Committee a preachment on how they're all secularists doomed to hell and on the red heifer project to help fulfill prophecy and usher in the end times as is God's will. Johnson said he was in touch with God on a secure line so not to worry. Also that the end times would be wonderful on balance at least for those who are saved so not to worry about that either. 

Over Where?

Over where? Over where? 

Send the word, send the word, over where? 

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

And they have no idea what they're doing over where

Man of Action

Donnie is a man of action. Or so he thinks. Actually he's an actor. 

And not a man at all. 

Nobody Is Minding the Store

Republicans were against regulation and responsible, effective government because they always wanted to loot the place.  

Bin Laden Has Won

The United States is engaging the world on his terms.

Bible Wrap

Service members participating in Donnie's war on Iran are being prepped with biblical justifications, a mantle of end-times ideology and Christian nationalism with layers of insane shit because these folks live in the matrix, an incoherent fantasy and mishmash of patriotism and Pentecostal beliefs and an alternative reality of lies. They've been hijacked by the rich and turned into killer drones. They'll die for the lies because it's all they know. There's no point reference for them outside of the lies. 

Even the Corruption is Corrupt

Wait and see. Trump's latest gambit will blow up in his face. He'll screw his partners in crime, the way he always has. He's not even a reliable, competent criminal. And he'll get lots of people killed. He doesn't care. It makes him feel like a big man. 

Donnie and Bibi Make Boom-Boom

I wonder what Donnie did. He seems so desperate. Bibi has a better excuse. But he's still desperate. 

Full Metal Blankie

Trump thinks he's impervious. But his defense isn't an impenetrable shell it's a security blanket. 

Moron Makes War

Or is he more a madman?  

Riders on the Stürm

What can we say. It defies description. We went from being defined as what the Nazis weren't to being Nazis. Overnight it seemed, but that can't have been the case. We had a Nazi contingent all along. A minority but they somehow took over anyway. The way the Nazis did. It will be our own version but it's getting entrenched. Fast. I fear it's unstoppable now. 

Always the Outsider

The world's richest people, certainly the Americans, are mostly on board with Trump and the Republicans' pillaging of the planet. It's their playground, apparently, and we're appurtenances. We're playthings, hirelings and furniture. Maintenance people, maybe. 

But somehow they're outsiders. Outsiders no matter how much power and control they have. How can this be? It seems to be structural, persistent and assumed. I think because they are in fact outsiders because they're parasites. They're like a crime cartel or mafia. 

Trump Goon Infests Olympic Celebration

Trump goon Kash Patel crashed the American hockey team's gold-medal, locker-room celebration. It will be remembered. Of all the people in the world to let in there. Maybe a dentist. Kash gooned it up as a clueless, low-character guy might but not one in his post, one would hope. Hope not when it comes to Trump goons. The Olympics were looking good up until then. American team diverse as hell. A little politics from the athletes. Vance got appropriately booed. The summer games are going to be a mess. 

ICE Olympics

Trump must have hated the Olympics. All that feel-good inclusion. Actual competition without cheating -- anathema. I remember one outburst then he went quiet. 

My sources tell me Trump and Noem and the usual suspects are planning an ICE Olympics of real men throwing down on some ingrate immigrants. 

And throwing down some of those ingrate, brown-skinned, supposed illegals. Throwing down, as in smashing someone to the ground, is an event. And handcuffing. 

Choking and head-smashing. It will be like a rodeo. Brown people chased around an arena and subdued and manacled, roped and handled like a calf or other animal.

The grand finale will have to involve children. Maybe a bunch, 50 or so, turned loose in the arena and competitors on horses chasing them around with lassos.

Vlad the Entertainer

I mean Trump. Trump the salesman is Trump the vampire. A salesman with no product is a scammer, a predator and a parasite. He hawks inhumanity. No conscience, no worry. Become a drone. A bot.

Trump is the end taker -- of life. An undertaker. He kills or enlists converts into gangs of sub-vampires. He set these legions of blood-sucking murderers, his satanic hoard, on the world. And made a show of it.

Fade into Me

Trump's message is lose your soul to me and you'll be free. Yeah, free from your humanity. Free from your conscience. Free from being free. 

Consumers of the World, Unite!

You have nothing to lose but your shit. 

Bad Bunny Revenge

Everybody loves Bad Bunny. Everybody despises Trump. So he's going to bomb Mexico. Bomb somebody. Makes perfect sense.

Once Upon a Time in the Shithole

Trump is too old, but I think somebody is coming after somebody the way Charles Bronson came after Henry Fonda in 'Once Upon a Time in the West'. Too much evil has been done. Whoever made that movie, wrote the plot or whatever, saw some shit coming. 

The Bronx Boomer

Trump's a boomer. And he goes 'boom!' He blows up, with varying degrees of collateral damage. This time we all go 'boom' with him. That's his legacy. 

Hero of the Battle of Epstein Island

Donald Trump, lover of honors, awards and accolades, is hereby declared the Hero of the Battle of Epstein Island by the American Association of Pedophiles, Perverts, Sex Pests, Child Pornographers and Pigs for his successful thwarting of the prosecution of the persons involved in child rape with Jeffrey Epstein. 

Elect Me

Send me to Washington as your representative and I'll stand up and tell all the Republicans in Congress they're treasonous pieces of shit. I'll encourage all my Democratic colleagues to do the same. I will no doubt be censured and probably expelled if I keep it up. But what difference will that make? 

None. Our votes mean nothing.

Forced to defend myself I'll offer proof they are treasonous pieces of shit, assert First Amendment rights, and argue that it's impossible to capture what's going on in the country without such language. I will never back down. If I get booted out I'll insist on a replacement who will do the same thing. 

They want a fight. Let's give them one. For a change. 

Trump in a Tutu: Messages from the Unconscious

(this was written in 2020)

I believe that messages from the unconscious appear in dreams and in waking images that arise without any obvious stimulus. I also believe that some people have integrated primitive, unconscious drives into their lives in healthier ways and with less resistance because they are more open to it and because they believe those drives to be less shameful and, to some extent, even good. 

Fundamentalists and puritanical utopians are more likely to practice denial and frustration because they think that matter and "the flesh" are inherently base and sinful and only capable of leading one down into a pit of sin where they frolic with Satan. I, on the other hand, think that matter and "the flesh" and attendant frolics therein are good and part of a healthy emotional and spiritual life. 

Politically, the puritanical crowd has won the day and so denial is our prevailing ethic and assorted variations on toe-tapping behavior are the result. The puritanical utopians are in a hopeless quandary only resolved by dying, their release from the miasma of the material world. In the meantime they struggle horribly with the bonds of their humanity and imperfection and frequently run astray.

They are stuck in a body and existence they despise and so, when they fall, they usually fall hard into all kinds of sinful behavior, the baser the better, and learn nothing from it. They have no compassion for their own humanity because they hate it and even less for that of others because theirs is as apparent to them as their own is not. This is a sick-ass and self-destructive approach to life. 

Trump represents this unintegrated id and so it's understandable that he would provoke strong reactions in the underlying consciousnesses of others. He's stirring up some dark stuff. So I will begin a list of images occurring to me that seem to capture something essential about Trump, though they resist explication and understanding. I will list those here which seem symbolically true:

1. Trump in a tutu

2. (please add to this list)

Conservative Conundrum

I wonder what our Supreme Court justices think now they've finally gotten their way and been proven completely wrong about the things they supposedly held dearest. They killed voting rights and affirmative action and Roe. Our politics is hopelessly corrupted by money. The country is riddled with guns and the horror of their abuse. There's fantastic inequity in the administration of the law. The executive branch runs amok, revels in corruption and is routinely involved in 'extrajudicial killings,' i.e., murders. 

How do they feel? This is the conservative conundrum and why they must never get into power because they DESTROY EVERYTHING. So the key is for conservatives to not forget this and to remain outsiders, WHERE THEY ARE PARASITES, and not have everyone see that their ideas are utter horseshit. Conservatism is a scam. I'm not sure American conservatives failed at this. They might have been hijacked, by the rednecks to whom they sold their souls for political power. The rednecks believed them. 

Because rednecks are so fucking stupid. So those idiot evangelicals came knocking and demanded the crazy shit they'd been promised in return for their votes. Voilà, the country is turned into a shitpile. Almost overnight it seems but it goes back to 1968 when Republicans looked at the racist morons who voted for Wallace and thought these are our people, ignorant and bigoted as hell. Let's talk racist code to them, forget the blacks, and we can win. What does Minneapolis look like? THE SOUTH.

Masked, racist goon squads supported by the legal system are terrorizing and persecuting people of color. Rejoice, the South (a proper noun now, like the Confederacy) has risen again and is finally setting the country back on God's holy path which was interrupted by the fucking Yankees. Their glorious and just system was defamed, dishonored and destroyed. Southern white men, together with their old allies among greedy capitalists, are having their long awaited retribution and the Confederacy lives again.