A Very Convenient Jesus

It's one of the most confounding things I've ever encountered, when I recognized that intelligence could be mechanically associated with some very bad stuff, which is to say fear, because primally fearful people can exhibit overdeveloped intellectual abilities in response to the fear. They have incredibly inquiring minds because they never assume that what is on the surface is reality.

In fact they assume it is not, so they dig deeper in search of the truth, usually coming to rest in a place which justifies the fear, that being the only real thing for them. This is hard to detect, because the stuff piled higher and deeper on top of the fear is very nearly impenetrable and, like most everyone I know, I admire intelligence, a reasonable prejudice in so far as that is possible. 

The other impediment is that the fear is usually unrecognized in proportion to its severity. The more fearful people are the more likely they are to be unaware of it, that is. If it's wholly beneath the threshold of awareness their lives are unconsciously consumed by the fabrication of threats, since the fear is easier to tolerate when it has a focus. Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your lives it will creep. The edifice of rationalization on top of the fear is usually internally consistent and highly evolved, the weak point being the false premise of the fear. The edifice is also defended to the death because primally fearful people are irrationally and erroneously operating on the assumption of impending annihilation. Normally they themselves go on the attack.

Thinking that they are under attack, of course, which they aren't initially, but then they are in response to their own aggression. It's dizzying to think about it. I better admit it, against my will, but I got started on all of this when I googled something innocuous and Ann Coulter popped up in the results, first in line. And then there was Ted Cruz in the news. Evidently he's brilliant. 

How do you explain these people? It's as though they're in a psychological submarine, trolling in the murky waters of the unconscious, a submarine which can never surface because of fear. There's an autistic aspect as well to this in the enormous element of isolation in their ideation. They are also usually incapable of empathy and don't appear outwardly fearful.

Try to make a Disney movie out of this. It's the antithesis of innocence, and yet they're probably not responsible because of the delusion. They're mentally ill, but I say that knowing that there's a catch underlying the insanity defense. If you have to be crazy to kill someone then no one can be held responsible for killing anyone. I prefer to decide first on the crime and who did it.

And then on broader culpability. The crimes of the Coulter crowd are approaching another threshold of comprehension. Like a light-year, you can't get your head around the damage they've done. All of South and Central America, destroyed by us. The Middle East, wrecked by us. The world economy, on the ropes because of us. The natural environment, reeling from us.

Is it any wonder Ann and Ted won't open the door an inch on admitting any fault in relation to anything? The weight behind that door is immense. It also means that their religious convictions, out of which they make so much, are a sham, just another mechanism of defense against the imaginary threats. The self righteousness and obliviousness have real utility.

Their Jesus doesn't care about Muslim lives, food for children, care for the elderly, hope for the poor, or anything other than their own aggrandizement and increasing wealth and power. What they have there is a very convenient Jesus, but they can't honestly believe in the existence of God at all. If they did then they would really have something to fear, judgment day.

Cui Bono

There's so much uncertainty in the world, it's good to return to simple, proven rules whenever possible in finding one's way through things, one of which is: who's making out here? Not smooching, obviously, though there's that angle as well, but getting rich and benefiting in other ways.

I think I remember once, in reading the Church Fathers for a class--it was another life--running into some axioms for judging true and false prophets or preachers. Two indications of unrighteousness: they steal your money or sleep with your wives--reasonable sounding criteria.

If a little sexist. Luckily there's an easy answer to this, the issue of self interest, in our situation. With the advent of Reaganomics we were repeatedly reassured that the Republicans weren't intending to institute the greatest upwards redistribution of wealth in the history of the world.

Well, they have accomplished that anyway, and damn efficiently, one must say. What's truly remarkable is that they can deny it at all--that it has happened or that they caused it. It has happened and they caused it. J'accuse. They've convicted themselves through their defensiveness.

Why would they bother if they weren't guilty? I will vote for any Democratic presidential candidate who will insist on enforcing this charge. And I here propose a new marginal tax rate on the rich, 110%, branded "confiscatory plus," to help right the wrongs. They've had their party. It's time to pay the bills.

Beans and Rice

The great leap backward is being fully implemented in North Carolina, with pools and schools, as always, the first items of concern for the privileged white people of the South. These were the most urgent issues after desegregation, for visceral reasons.

Pools were never a problem. You close the public ones and send your kids to private ones. Similarly the push for privatization everywhere now is not about efficiency but exclusion. Schools weren't as easy to get in hand but the necessary forces are now in place.

It's turn-back-the-clock time for the schools and it will simply have to play out. Nothing can be done to stop it, and I have other things on my mind following the violence in France. The terror is something we have to begin to take seriously and to really comprehend.

We should be preventive and not only reactive and responsive in relation to terrorism, and understand it deeply and at the molecular and atomic levels, initially with some soul searching and the owning of our own inner terrorist, whatever that may entail.

The problem is that it feels good to be part of a group with a mission, and to believe that you are unequivocally right and that you are justified by God and will be redeemed and sit at the right hand and all that shit. It has to be an incredibly powerful experience.

To get people to blow themselves up, I mean. And to overcome the misgivings that must be there because they are, in fact, wrong in their understanding of their own religious precepts, as we are rightly reassured by respected and informed authorities.

Are we really so far removed from this ourselves, I wonder. The Klan was a terrorist organization. I think that is beyond arguing, which means that a third of the US was ruled by a group in no way functionally different from the Taliban, as late as the 1960's.

And of course before that the slave states were in even worse shape, though the terror was institutionalized and so there was no need for the underground, guerrilla aspect of the thing. So to this day there are memorials all over the South honoring terrorists.

What a thought, but it's indisputably true that defending the South meant defending slavery and therefore the terrorism which sustained slavery and segregation. Man, that's sobering, because it's so close to home and recent and so much a part of our history.

It does mean that all those Confederate memorials should be destroyed and that the South should finally own its shit, if we are to have a consistent and credible stance in opposition to terror. We could use the Stone Mountain memorial for bombing practice.

If we don't how can we really condemn the people who practice terrorism. They have a thing for schools, too, I remember now, and are all about remaking education in their own countries so that it's in line with their religion and the will of God, as they see it.

Just like the guys in charge in North Carolina. Damn, it's so discouraging to think that, but my friends who encouraged me to write told me this would happen, that writing things down would force you to think things through and sometimes take you to unforeseen places.

It's time--I decree it--to decompress from this unpleasantness with a beer and some savory Southern food, spicy beans and rice. May we all eat well tonight, it's my wish for you, and survive this insanity our country is going through, with the help of God.

I Am Waiting

I keep thinking that the defenders of torture, those patriots, lovers of Jesus and self-appointed guardians of truth and the Constitution, will one day raise the question of the morality and rightness of the practice, and not only argue for its effectiveness.

I'm still waiting.

A Loaf and a Fish, If We're Lucky

I have decided to brand the Obama crowd THE ACHIEVERS. Until they get a clue and ask for my help in making all those important decisions I'll have to work on impressions gleaned from the best available sources, which are crap, the fourth estate having been crushed into pulp by the business interests.

The information available to us is just terrible, but I think the people shaping the policies are, like Obama himself, smart kids whose identities are entirely invested in success within a certain context, which is to say that it's all about them. It's not about us or the country or the world or the planet or rightness.

Look at the cult of efficiency, a good example. The US produces food with incredible efficiency, when viewed myopically, and then throws 40% of it away and people are hungry at the same time. Where I come from this is called crazy. In Washington it evidently passes for success or is at least acceptable.

Obama and his team put points on the board in such a way that it looks good on paper. The end for them is a great report card, graduating with distinction and from an ivy league school, of course. It makes them feel good about themselves. Meanwhile our country is being destroyed and utterly stripped of hope.

For people who need it, anyway. It's probably unfair to say they don't care but you have to hold people responsible even if they're only enablers in the franchise of doom. I'm sick now so I have to go. Every time I get sick, though, I'm reminded of how vulnerable I feel about aging in America.

In the land of plenty of insecurity, I suppose I mean, and I'm in way better shape than most people in my health and finances, but who wants to worry at all. There's no reason whatsoever for people in a country as wealthy as ours to have to worry much. It's a failure, with a big grade of "F," for the policy people.

And it's an inversion of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, reducing plenty to poverty. They manage to depersonalize this as though it goes no further than a graph or spread sheet or some power-point bullshit, but we're talking about hunger and food here. Oh, Bobby Kennedy, may you appear to them.

Plague them in their dreams. May they see the disgrace of hunger and hopelessness in the new America, our sharecropper society, and not get shot before they can fix it.

Overcooked

I apply the principle of "al dente" all over the place. It works for me. Rules are good but they only get you so far. It's best to stay engaged with the processes and be willing to make decisions on the basis of incoming information.

Immediately the idea that more is better falls apart when you use the tooth. One of my ongoing gripes is that aging white people finish their lives in their biggest houses ever, after the kids are gone but before the retirement villa.

As though it's some kind of flourish or crescendo in relation to their existence, that is, when it's really just dumb and wasteful and doesn't make their lives better in any healthy way. And look at the mess our government is in.

It's overcooked into indescribable nothingness, burned beyond recognizing or reduced to an undifferentiated mass. I want to apply the tooth--not me personally, but you know what I mean--to bite on Boehner and McConnell a bit.

Or we could throw them against the wall and see if they stick. I'm sure we'll decide to turn down the flame on the money pouring into the capitol from private sources. Fucking jet fuel, that's what the stuff is. It's way too volatile.

You can see it in the restlessness of the new majorities. They're boiling over. So let's just turn down the flames, people. Are you with me?

Leftovers: The Brokers' Banquet

I just woke up early from a vivid dream, which I conclude, unbiasedly, is representative of the new reality of our society, the broker's paradise. In it the working people--I am one--are allowed at the end of a banquet to have a go at the leftovers, which are enough to feed an army of adolescent boys, but there are no plates or utensils. 

Wait, I've found a few paper or plastic ones the size of a small saucer. I grab them and walk around the buffet struck stupid by the amount of amazing food remaining. I'm so stunned I don't feel hungry anymore or even resentful, just frustrated and disgusted at the waste of the capital partners, who have so much more than they can consume. 

But they would rather see the leftovers thrown away than used because that's the way they are, greed incarnated, which--an interesting word--points to the brokers' own eventual end, to be consumed by death, as with us all. They must be in denial of that but it doesn't matter because my reservoir of feeling is entirely taken up by sadness at their insanity.

They are nothing more than animals, sophisticated meat, without an aspiration to be better because they have been so well rewarded for their predatory drives. What else can be said, but behold them with wonder, and from a safe distance, though there are crates for such creatures and we would be well advised to use them.

Begging the Question

As I understand it this phrase is misused all the time. It means something along the lines of assuming information not in evidence, stuff not proved. It's a logical fallacy, "petitio principi" in Latin, discovered by people who cared about logic and reason and argumentation and the truth. Neurotics, that is.

Too much of our internal energy has been allocated to the intestines for digestion, it would seem, and there isn't enough left to tackle the truth and other such naggingly abstract topics, and what does it matter anyway. The whole point of our existence as a species was to master the world and we have pretty much done that.

So it's time to relax and kick back and enjoy the fruits of our good fortune. But, you know, I'm neurotic and I can't let it go, that anachronistic concern for reason and reality, due to a faulty upbringing, no doubt, so I wonder what the elephant is in the bathroom taking a shit. The elephant, the false premise, has got to be fear. 

We assume there's something we need to be afraid of and that, even if there is, it's somehow productive to live in a chronic state of fear rather than dealing with the scary things above-board and rationally. So we argue about how to deal with the threats on the assumption that there are threats but there are not threats in evidence.

Prove to me that there are. How many times over do you have to be able to destroy the world before you feel safe or what the fuck good does it do you, having enough nukes to annihilate the entire solar system, or at least all of the planets. We might as well get rid of the whole arsenal, an interesting idea. We could bury it in Alaska.

We could then try to live in peace with our fellow humans or even bribe them into submission and still come out ahead. It turns out, though, according to my sources, that the rest of the world is pretty fed up with us. And scared, since it seems that we think it's our right to attack anyone we want whenever we want.

Interesting, to think that we are the thing to be afraid of, even the thing for us to be afraid of, and that we should be afraid of ourselves. I'm heading off now to try to neurotically get a handle on that and consider that it might be a mechanism or in some way true, that the fearers are to be feared. You can be my bot.

Help me grind it out by processing all the info, that is, be a bot for truth. Better than bots for fear, I think, or bots for war, though I believe that bot-hood generally is not the way to go. People can and should do better. It would help if we could get past the fear. Let's work on that. Oh, no, I just remembered the elephant.

The plumbing, now there's something to worry about.

They are NOT Neutral

There's something about neutrality that weirds Republicans out. They believe in polarity, partisanship, and blackness and whiteness. They are against ambiguity and uncertainty and ambivalence. I guess it keeps them up at night if they feel that neutrality is on the rise, or anything other than the clear delineation of sides.

They toss and turn in their beds if there's an uncertain moon arising. They are DC. Keep that alternating shit away from them. It sounds kind of bisexual to them, I suppose, but the world is full of it, all kinds of ambiguity and uncertainty. It seems to be the norm, at least wherever there's stability. Are they unstable, our conservative friends?

I think not. They're not unstable but destabilizing. They have opted for certainty in an uncertain world to reassure themselves but it's not reality and what do they care. They care only about themselves. The rest of us can take a flying fajita, if I got that term right. The instability is all ours. It's their gift to us.

Rising Tide

How did we get to be the old world? America feels old to me now and Europe feels young. Even the screwed-up places in Europe and Asia and Africa feel young in comparison with us.

I guess that's what we get for taking on the role of world parent. Am I wrong or didn't we do that voluntarily? So at least we should set a good example for the young ones, you know.

But now they all want to be like us, to consume stuff like there's no tomorrow, which, if we keep it up, will mean there really won't be a tomorrow. Food for thought, you would think.

Not, of course, if you're Republican. They are against it. Thinking, I mean. They believe in belief, which sounds circular and ingrown and somehow incestuous, an idea involved with itself.

It's time for resolutions, as of today. A new year is upon us. Let's just resolve to do better, as a country. Lose weight, stop drinking and so on. Be kinder and gentler and maybe points of light.

All of that rings kind of familiar. I wonder who came up with it. I wouldn't want to unwittingly steal somebody's stuff. I could be sued for plagiarism. I know I didn't come up with "rising tide."

But I keep hearing those words in my head in relation to global warming. Was that the context, maybe, because the tide is rising on us all. Circumstances are changing. We should adapt, I suppose.

There are fireworks planned for tonight. I'll mull it all over while I'm enjoying that. I don't want to overreact out of urgency or anything. There's always tomorrow. There is, isn't there?

Sons of Ham

It's time the American people take a harder look at Billy Graham's empire, and an empire it is, what with its size, wealth and abundance, internationalism, paternalism, nepotism and adherence to primogeniture, as evidenced in the passing on of the organization to the founder's unworthy son, Franklin Graham.

For those who have seen poshness portrayed in film, the lives of the Grahams is instantly recognizable as a throwback to empire and nobility, no one in the family having made an honest living since the birth of Billy. They are also, as revealed privately, firmly rooted in traditions of bigotry and exploitation.

The innovation of Billy was not in purity or piety or even simple discipline, but in marketing. He is about ambition, which he would have us believe is ambition on behalf of Christ, but, since Billy and Jesus are indistinct in his own mind, the argument is specious. The family's incredible wealth betrays them.

As with many of these reactionary, retrograde people who call themselves Christians, their secret dealings show the truth. Billy's taped antisemitic outbursts and his behind the scenes battles against Catholicism reveal the inner workings of his soul and indicate who is in charge there. It certainly isn't Jesus.

The most fundamental aspect of Christianity, the sine qua, is that you must live for something outside of yourself, firstly Jesus. The rest follows, and is effortless once your soul is transformed by Jesus, though it may look odd to an outsider, since you are no longer selfish, grasping, greedy and mean.

The hallmark is humility. Contrast this with the Grahams. These crackers live like kings and carry on into the fourth generation, but it goes back beyond Billy when you consider his true father-in-Christ, Mordecai Ham, a renowned bigot. A big-shot bigot -- he was not obscure -- so you can look him up. 

Please do so now. All will be clear. 

It was with Mordecai's guidance that Billy found Christ, under Southern Baptist auspices, that group which renounced slavery as early as 1995, for the sake of appearances. Billy's ambition, addiction to power and striving for status are also most tellingly revealed in his glomming on to US presidents.

He loves that stuff. The son, Franklin, shows how a nobility degenerates quickly due to insularity and inbreeding, an inbreeding of pernicious and unchristian beliefs among the Grahams. Many traits alternate generations, I've been told, and you can see this in Franklin, who is so obviously a son of Ham.

As he demonstrates daily in his outpourings of ignorance. Franklin, if you read this, take the first step in repentance, lop off the offending hand, and you know what your weakness is. Sell all you have and give it to the poor. Blows your mind, I bet, to consider it. Maybe Jesus meant it, when he said do it, man.

Boom and Bust

The best way to understand the right-wing, Republican social and economic model is by observing predator-prey relationships in nature. Republican deregulatory policy results in boom and bust cycles due to over-harvesting and irresponsible exploitation of resources, human or otherwise.

by

Over-harvesting by Republicans, that is, of any available prey or surplus. Republicans are represented by the coyote in the bottom of the graph above. The rabbit represents the prey, obviously, but more importantly also illustrates that power disparities are crucial to the functioning of the system. 

Picture the rabbit with an Uzi in its grip and everything changes, which is why Republicans seek to consolidate power in their own hands while disenfranchising everyone else. They don't want fair play but easy prey. This is also why they want to have all the guns and drill through to China for oil.

It's all about power. So they insist on drilling the hell out of our own territory in the frantic search for more petroleum even though it's money in the bank, our bank, the bank that includes rabbits as clients, so there's the problem. The Republicans want it all, fearing the rabbits might fight back.

Once this is understood many things become clear. Why the Republicans pick on children, the elderly and the poor, for example. Why they send poorer, younger Americans off to fight in wars that don't make sense unless you have Halliburton stock. Why they sabotage and cripple the social safety net.

And it makes you wonder about their opposition to birth control. More prey? That would be primal indeed. Now I head off to work for my wages, in this Christmas season. You know someone told me, the other day, that there's a bounty on coyotes where I live. I wonder if that applies to Republicans.

Eve, Honey...

There are always unholy alliances on the road to minority rule. It's one of the reasons right thinking people go for democracy, because it's presumably not rooted in domination and exploitation, internally, as minority rule usually is which makes it immoral and unstable. And it makes sense that people would only give up their franchise by force or by the foolishness of taking it for granted.

Which, I think, is closely related to original sin, Eve having failed to realize how incredibly fucking lucky she was, probably while Adam was engaged in the Garden of Eden's equivalent of watching football on TV. Now I'm super curious to see how the Republican unholy alliance will play out, which should be interesting because they have redefined crazy to such a degree. They're off the charts.

Unholy alliances are an easy form of interference leading to illegitimate government in comparison with, let's say, a coup. Illegitimacy is what minority rule usually gives you though it's unavoidable in the face of extreme factionalism. Only a plurality is possible then, anyway, and it's more likely that the resulting government will be illegitimate. Alliances are unholy by definition when they're reductive.

When the town isn't big enough for both or all of the factions, for example, and when their militancy and self-righteousness rule out compromise. Does the name Ted Cruz come to mind? So the current Republican coalition is an affront not just to our democracy but to civilization in general. They are discontented with that. The coalition is unholy as hell and bent on destruction, the annihilation of everything.

They are against the basic mechanisms underlying civilization, the giving up of some power for the greater, long-term good. The Cruz crowd doesn't believe in it, the greater good and the long term. The long term is annihilation for them because they are religious fanatics. It's the Apocalypse. And there is no "greater good" in the land of the elect, so any appearance of legitimacy is a smokescreen.

They are God's chosen people. Try to argue with that. It's outside the realm of argument. It's experiential and exclusive and insane. Think on that and try to comprehend it because they're coming after us, the heathen and the non-elect, meaning Democrats and other unworthies. And their greatest ally is our complacency, the complacency of the majority, and this is a hard thing to grasp.

Because none of it makes any sense, that we should have to worry, being the majority and not insane but I'm working on understanding it sitting here on the sofa. Meanwhile, there's football to watch and Eve, honey, will you pass me another cold one?

Aloha, Obama

For Immediate Release: The American President, Barack Obama, is vacationing again in Hawaii, where it is said that he continues to look for his balls, having left them there in adolescence. They are not exactly coconuts, by all reports, and have proved to be hard to find. May you finally find them, sir.

It's too late to do the country any good, but maybe you will write a book on your epic failure with what you learn after reacquaintance with your manhood. Or, if your nuts continue to elude you, testosterone injections may be the thing, coupled with assertiveness training. I'm curious, though.

Why did you ever run for president? You have been a disgrace.

The Discreet Harm of the Bourgeoisie

I'm not against specialization, and I'm a fan of a well-differentiated society, one that looks like an ecosystem, but in the case of humanity it's important for people to realize that they are part of a system or they can engage in all kinds of antisocial behavior by accident, out of ignorance. Probably willed ignorance, but, whatever. The ignorance doesn't mean it doesn't count.

It's not a fucking video game. People can get hurt. A classic example is that of pacifist meat-eaters. You are killing cows by proxy, you want to say to them, you have a responsibility to ensure that it's done humanely, which is to say nothing of the killing of humans. People have to own even that or simply stop doing it. Now there's an idea. And torture, of course, soul-slaughter.

But they're immersed in ennui, the perpetrators--insulated, numbed. As people so often do they double down on a mistake, thinking they haven't done enough of the thing they shouldn't have done in the first place. And as they invest more in the mistake it becomes harder to own it and reverse direction, to the extent, sometimes, that it can only end in death, their own deaths.

The realization of the mistake and the wrong they've done is more than they can handle. They are not actors and autonomous entities but addicts, so it only ends in death and dehumanization or in the ditch. And it can happen to a whole society, evidently. Here's the point, it has happened to us. We think if we consume more it will make us happy and it never will. No way, white people.

There's nothing wrong with it, consumerism per se, I don't think, if it works in the system as a whole and doesn't throw it out of balance, but we're way beyond that. Way beyond. Beyond beyond, probably already in the ditch but we don't know it yet, the denial of the addiction is so strong. What's the solution? I don't know. I think individuals can change but a whole society?

That's a big boat. Remember, though, the talk Franklin Roosevelt gave which kept people from succumbing to panic and saved the banks? It makes you wonder. If the right person said the right things maybe we could escape the fear, the fear that if we give up the quest for more shit we'll be lost. We won't be lost. In fact we may find ourselves again. At least we might stop torturing people.

That would be good. I wonder if Dick Cheney believes in the existence of souls?

Rubes

America has become a Rube Goldberg machine. I love his stuff but he was also an engineer and the machines were an amusement and counterpoint to the engineering. My God, people, doing things in inconceivably inefficient ways is not actually good! I have to believe our current American political contraption is the equivalent of throwing virgins into the mouth of a volcano. 

Inefficiency as an offering to the gods of capitalism, at the cost of more than a few virgins. Maybe we should go with the virgins. It would mean fewer lives lost, by a lot, than what we are doing now, plundering the world, though I understand that some people find virgin-burning distasteful. Now I'm concerned, since I brought it up, that Republicans will want to add virgin-burning to planet-plundering.

They're so opportunistic and susceptible to suggestion. I'm sorry I ever mentioned it. Someone delete this post. Who has the keys to this thing?  Oh, darn.

  Dolores on the Road to the Volcano:

Hiccups

I'm so confident that guys like Dick Cheney will eventually be seen as hiccups in history, but I'm pushing for regurgitation. Throw-up. Right now. ASAP.

There was so much confidence after World War II that the world had functioned as it should while doing not that. That civilization had rejected the poison.

But tell that to the Jews. Better yet tell that to them as it was going on. It all worked out? The good guys won? It never should have fucking happened period.

Just as Dick Cheney should never have happened. He's an affront to the very idea of decency, and the existence of accountability and hope for humanity.

I give up. Whatever he is, I am not. He says he's a capitalist, a lover of freedom and democracy? Okay, I'm a fucking commie. A Marxist. Call me comrade.

Anything other than him. Join with me wherever you see this sign:

Selectively Weak Stomachs

All those FOX NEWS people consistently amaze me, they get so upset about the most trivial things. No humans were harmed, I say to them, in whatever it is they're ranting on about, like the war on Christmas or declining moral standards.

But they don't seem to care at all about the young Americans they sent off to get busted up or killed in their pet nation-building projects in the Middle East, or the millions of people whose lives were ruined by their bankrupt economic theories.

They have funny stomachs, for sure. It must have to do with their insulated lives and weighty salaries, so I recommend that they spend some volunteer time taking care of those veterans, or the homeless, or the disabled and mentally ill.

Other people do it and without any lasting ill-effect. Maybe, then, they will think a little about their beloved tax cuts, for the rich of course, in relation to the social services they so despise. Their mantra should be "more Santa, less Scrooge."

At least for the duration of the holiday season. It's all I dare hope for.

Experts at Assertions

With the release of the torture report Republicans are crawling out of the crevices to defend it. Torture, that is, and defender commander Dick Cheney is out in front, their expert as always in assertions which can't be proven wrong. If they ever teach a course on the difference between intelligence and cunning they only need to look to Dick.

Maybe he'll come to the class and explain it, if he can, or they can just study him in action. He's the master of deception and mischaracterization, ambiguity and dissimulation, but not miscalculation. He's shrewd as shit. A little poking and prodding would be interesting, as well, as we study the guy, now that I think of it. They say he has a tough hide.

So let's enhance that. Waterboard him. Force feed his ass. And I mean his ass. See how he likes it. Hang him from something, from somewhere. I like the sound of this. Think of what we might learn and not just about the mechanisms of depravity. He might actually tell us stuff. He says this shit works, the torture. And there are those nagging questions.

Hanging about as to the legality and constitutional compliance of half of what he did, to say nothing of the morality. So we can dig in on those assertions of his, all that annoyingly unprovable stuff, that he kept America from further harm, for example, and that 9/11 necessitated militarization and the creation of a huge new security apparatus.

As did that Reichstag fire, once. The Twin Towers calamity was not a calamity for Republicans. It enabled the realization of their fantasies of war and militarization and the consolidation of power and so on. It's the best thing that ever happened to Dick Cheney. How else could he have gone so far in turning America into a police state.

They Shoot Niggers, Don't They?

For the white people in the dance marathon of life, trying to keep going while knowing that the minute they stop they'll face the increasingly unpleasant reality of mortality, nigger-shooting can only be understood as a death wish, a perverted form of envy, reflecting white folk's desire for a simpler life such as they enjoy who are unafflicted with the white man's burden, the deaths of whom mean nothing, or at least not much. The burden of being a higher echelon of humanity, that is, weighs heavily on white people.

They have miles to go before they can sleep. The lives of black folk are envied because they are more immersed in the natural world, a subspecies of humanity closer to our collective roots, unaware of the cares of their more intelligent and evolved cousins. But white people don't understand that the ennui is all their own. It's probably mistaken association. To the extent that black people are different, as a class, they feel everything more. Maybe it's not mistaken or white people just don't give a shit to too great an extent.

Actually I think it's envy, purely and simply, black people being seen as nearer to the condition of humanity before the fall from grace. So black people are a standing insult to white people, since they are in some way closer to God, a standing insult in the same way Jews are to Christians because the Jews have a claim on Jesus the Christians can't have and so are killed with all kinds of invented justifications. This is so fucked up, though I wouldn't dispute that there are people closer to God than white people.

Godliness being associated with less in the way of worldly power, it seems, because all power is God's by right and can only be properly employed in the furtherance of His ends, which didn't include killing black people the last time I checked. White people just can't see black people as they are, both more and less like them at the same time, and so shoot them out of misunderstanding and fear. They are still, sadly, Puritans burning witches, the witches bearing the burden of their own unacknowledged darkness.

Grover at Burning Man

NIXON IN CHINA opened my eyes. Opera can be about current events. I'm now working on an exciting, new opera of my own, GROVER AT BURNING MAN. What pathos there will be, what weightiness and momentum, what utter inertia and ennui! It'll put the sturm in your drang. Evidently Grover really liked Burning Man. Ahhh, the spectacle.

I assume he actually went. Republicans are so quick to don fatigues for the photographs when it comes to the military stuff while some kid from Idaho, who joined the military because there weren't any jobs because the Republicans sent the jobs to China, gets his ass blown off defending Grover's freedom, but I digress. 

It's a good thing Grover liked Burning Man. You don't want to be on his bathtub list. And what's not to like, as Burning Man so perfectly embodies the aspirations of Republicans of Grover's type, to remain an adolescent forever--the eternal frat boy, living on the family's money with bluster and bravado, totally arrested. 

And challenging authority at every opportunity while embracing the delusion that they aren't implicated in anything. Will Junior ever reach escape velocity, the parents wonder, and grow up, finally, for the love of God, and quit sucking up resources like there's no tomorrow. And treating women like crap, as well. What greater freedom is there? 

All the benefits and none of the responsibilities. You just get born into it and it's one big ski vacation after that. Look at the presidential candidates these guys cough up, showcasing affirmative action in full flower. It's legacy land. You can see how Obama and Clinton would drive them nuts, since they actually did get there on their own merits.

Since they started out without the advantages of the country club crowd. They are usurpers, faux fathers, in the eyes of the Norquisters, who are still very much in touch with their fathers. It's where the checks come from. Or "daddiness," existentially, as it works out, there being some source of subsistence flowing out of Wichita or wherever.

Truly, they have made an art of living with access to tons of resources while not contributing anything. What has Grover ever done for anyone besides himself? An entire life sucking off the system he says he hates. Is it any wonder these guys are prickly and overly defensive? And crazy nuts about their opponents who did escape puberty.

The important thing is to maintain the privilege, by whatever means they can, while keeping the opposition on their heels by accusing them of all the stuff they're doing themselves, as they insist that they are the most independent and productive guys ever. Just like Grover, whose life in politics belies his avowed hatred of government.

What would he do without it? It's his sustenance. The Republicans refuse to cooperate with any legitimately elected official they don't like, meaning every Democrat, thereby controlling everything, and then blame anybody but themselves for the results. Satanic, really, but shrewd operating procedure if you don't give a shit about anything.

Now I'm a fan of Burning Man but someone should clue Grover in. It's a fucking vacation. It's not a model for anything. It can only exist on resources from outside itself, just like Grover, but that is the model. Hell, the Groverites have even got it structured so they don't have to tell you where the money comes from. It's a secret.

I guess it's understandable, though. Grover's life has been one long vacation. They say Ronnie Reagan got the movies mixed up with real life. A working person wouldn't make this mistake. So with Grover. A working person can tell real life from a vacation, but Grover can't because his life has been one huge, College Republican suck-fest.

The simple test is to ask if a way of life would work if everyone embraced it. This takes you in the direction of Scandinavia. That wailing was a tenor practicing the Grover part on an important song in the opera addressing this conundrum, "THEY'RE ALL FUCKING COMMIES, BLONDE COMMIES, BLONDE COMMIES WITH HEALTH CARE."

The song actually rocks, though I know you can't tell it from the title. I will say, in Grover's defense, if it's a defense, that he makes one hell of a subject for opera. The self-importance alone gets you there. Picture him singing with his mouth wide open and head thrown back, completely the center of his own universe. A buffoon, of course, to those who know him. 

It may have to be a comic opera in the end, Falstaffian, but with a touch of Wagner for pathos.

 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/my-first-burning-man-grover-norquist

SAPS

Self Aggrandizing Pieces of Shit.

No, Virginia, There Isn't a Santa Claus

And you had better get over it now. There is no free lunch. No school lunch. Probably no health care and a crappy education ending early or in an insurmountable mountain of debt. The job market is sketchy so say your prayers, Virginia. You're just an Irish ragamuffin anyway, aren't you? You're probably screwed.

If there's one thing the Republicans worry about it's unworthy people getting free shit. Indiscriminate largess. I qualify that. Needy, unworthy people. It's the road to bad habits, sloth, and unending sucking off the state. That's the prerogative of corporations and the wealthy. My God, I see it now. It all began with Santa.

How could we have missed it? All those so-called "underprivileged" Americans imprinting on Santa, expecting free shit forever. Obviously a commie plot to undermine America and weaken its moral fiber. This is worse than fluoride, rotting our brains, having hoards of people stuck in a state of spoiled dependency forever.

So toughen up, Virginia, you little wastrel. Where are your parents? Working two jobs each just to keep food on the table? Good for them. Make sure you tell them the minimum wage isn't going anywhere, so they better knuckle down. You say your school sucks? Well, welcome to Pottersville.

The new Republican America. Screwers and screwees. Which do you want to be, Virginia? Wise up. Get a clue. It's all about competition. For your sorry-ass class, anyway. The rich, now, are in high cotton. Behold them with envy, and get over that Santa thing. The Republicans downsized his ass.

And the elves's jobs went to China and they ate the reindeer. Sorry, Virginia, I don't want to be mean, but you have to understand how the world works. Good luck to you, really. You'll need it. And Merry Christmas.

Insanity Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

All I want for Christmas is for the Republicans to say they're sorry. For Iraq and the deficits and Katrina and trashing the world economy and destroying the middle class and so on. And so on and so on. This is my letter to Santa.

But now there's no miracle on any street. Except maybe Wall Street. And watching the gloating of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner as they slobber all over themselves in anticipation of the gutting of our democracy is a lot to handle.

But great imagery for those holiday cards. Maureen O'Hara was not my type. Jimmy Stewart I can handle. But Eva Marie Saint? Oh, to be Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. To be Cary Grant in anything. Now I'm not overly sentimental.

And I'm not that susceptible to unrealistic holiday wishes. Give me suspense. A mystery. I like to figure things out and I have. The Republicans did it. They're the bad guys. Hell, it's Christmas and I just really want an apology from the Republicans.

For all the mayhem and misery they've caused. It's not a wonderful life, for far too many Americans, to say nothing of the Iraqis. Unnecessary suffering on all sides, and not enough caring. And the Republicans absconding with everything, all the while.

Santa, are you there?

The Island of Lost Souls

Someone who writes, as I do, that everything has gone to shit should say when he thinks that happened as a point of integrity and as a reality check. And how and why it happened, maybe, a more speculative thing, which I will do here even though I try to avoid earnestness, because I don't want to write the sort of thing I don't like to read, but this illustrates a point: I assume my own fallibility. The Republicans do not.

Assume their own fallibility, that is. They think I'm wrong all the time. The pivotal year here is 1994. That's when the Gingrichers, the self-righteous, religious conservatives, came to Washington and ended what collegiality and decency there had been there, and transformed their party and Washington and now the country and the world, to a degree, through their need for certainty and quest for power, because they insist that they are right. They think that rightness is a state of being, not a matter of behavior, so you can be existentially right, which they are in their own estimation.

To the exclusion of everyone else. Southern voters tipped the scales on this but there are two main constituencies in the coalition of crazies, evangelical fundamentalists and Christian fascists. The evangelicals believe that each person is, in effect, their own church. They're the ultimate schismatics. Individualists to the point of self-negation. Religious solipsists, skeptics and pessimists. Atomists of the person. And no one can judge them because their subjective experience of communion with God is transcendently objective to them.

Everyone else's status on that front is unknowable and suspect, however. They are their own authority as channeled from God so they are very much against any other authority like, let's say, the Pope or some imam, and are opposed to the idea of universal human rights since these are wasted on the non-elect. The Christian fascists, including, especially, conservative Catholics, are at the other end of things. An absolute authority exists apart from them in this world in the form of an institution approved by God to which you must submit or you are in league with the devil.

You may not question or challenge this authority. These are anti-individualists, again to the point of self-negation. They are collectivists and corporatists. Unskeptical. Believers and adherents. A direct, personal approach to God and the assumption of such a connection is for them presumptuous and suspect, the distance being too great to bridge. Only within an earthly, institutional context can such a connection be regulated and deemed valid because an unsupervised individual might, simply, screw it up.

Someone like Jimmy Swaggart, maybe. The evangelical way is more left-brain, abstract and analytical. More masculine. They lose their humanity by abstracting themselves from it and associating themselves with God. In effect they think they're God, through close alignment, while living in a world that is material and therefore un-Godlike and crap, and so without legitimacy and unworthy of respect. They are haughty and imperious when it comes to morality.

The fascists are right-brain, empathetic and immersive. They lose their humanity through submission and obedience, the more traditionally feminine way, the dark side of which is that it is parochial and limited in its vision of inclusion. They are servants of God through submission to God's bureaucracies in this world, usually the Church and the Nation. And soldiers for God in the event of an attack, which they are quick to see erroneously because of their tribalism.

There is common ground in the two groups in the need for certainty, which means it is an attempt to escape from the basic conditions of humanity: powerlessness, ignorance and mortality. The fascist approach makes people effectively less than human by abdicating the responsibilities of consciousness and independence to an institution with claims to the certainty of truth, so they really are like sheep and will follow someone off a cliff.

The evangelical approach makes individuals out to be capable of escaping from uncertainty themselves and thereby becoming demigods. By claiming godliness in this world, that is, like Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson. They will lead you off a cliff. And do it again, if they survive. So both approaches get you to the same place, ultimately, dehumanization. You escape from uncertainty at the cost of your humanity. You are de-civilized, dysfunctional and sociopathic. Inhabitants of the ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, also known as the Republican Party, in a marriage made in hell, sociopathic leaders and sheep. What fun.

Evangelical fundamentalists clearly have the tougher time of it in order to make life bearable, since they live with enormous tension in a material world they deem to be inauthentic and shit. They make their existence endurable by establishing an ersatz community through salvation signs and by conferring personhood, the assumption of inalienable human rights and naturally occurring brotherhood being a nonstarter for them. The primary indicators of righteousness are wealth and code language, which they construe as evidence of salvation. But the fundamentalists are unavoidably dehumanized through the doctrines of Perseverance (of the Saints) and Predestination, which mean they are not free and so inhabit a world with no meaningful morality.

Within which their behavior, once they are saved, is irrelevant, thereby removing them from the world of uncertainty, which is to say, humanity. They also confer personhood, meaning salvation status, on non-personal entities such as corporations and countries. Everything becomes an issue of power for them and exclusion since godliness is only possible in this world through rejection of it and power is an attribute of God, the more arbitrary the better. The religious fascists only need to deprive non-adherents of personhood and thereby dehumanize them so that they can be mistreated and killed, in order to maintain normal social relations within their group, but in so doing they also dehumanize themselves, of course.

The fascists are much more likely to come around, though, because they at least have normal relationships within their defined group. Evangelical fundamentalists are profoundly dysfunctional and resistant to reform. They are cultists and may require deprogramming, so they should be written off in the short run. This means that from a practical political perspective the target groups for Democrats are white women and Catholics, assuming the Democrats actually want to win and stem the tide of insanity, but there is diminishing evidence of that.

In the meantime what we are seeing is an institutional example, in the Republican Party, of the efficacy of sociopathy as psychologists normally observe it in individuals. These people get shit done because they are unencumbered by conscience. You have to wonder why they can't accept life on the terms of its offering, but evidently they can't. Probably because of some primal, existential fear, which compels them to come back at it with certainty. Which is sadly unattainable in this life.

On that high note I leave you with warm holiday wishes for a peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A Faust Story

"Faust and the adjective Faustian imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term."
                          

                

It's hard to reconcile the ethics of John Boehner with anything. Except, perhaps, that winning is everything. This within a context of complete moral certainty and blindness because he thinks he is right and he is driven to win and when he does he is reassured of his rightness, a positive feedback loop.

As it was when he played football in high school at Cincinnati Moeller under Gerry Faust. They did nothing but win, which they had prayed for to God or the Blessed Virgin or the patron saint of ass-kicking. But, for anyone who witnessed the spectacle and debacle of Faust at Notre Dame, well, it was difficult to see the Jesus in that.

Gerry Faust, though, is sure that Jesus and the Blessed Mother had a hand in it all to this day. And John Boehner must have the same certainty, which makes it possible for him to carry on as a political thug with way more composure than Gerry ever had, at Moeller or anywhere. But Boehner is in fact Faust.

He has won just by getting into the position he's in. But from there it's all failure. Failed policies on every front. The record is as clear as Notre Dame's under Gerry-the-misguided, but that's not how they keep track. Partly because Jesus made it happen. Through the intercession of the BVM, surely, to whom Gerry is particularly devoted.

This is so medieval, I think, as I see the carcasses of working people carried away on their shields. And children and the elderly, dying because life's necessary resources are all spent stupidly, and in further consolidating wealth. Tax cuts for the rich! Did these guys think a little man with horns would actually approach them?

And make them an offer on their souls? It doesn't work that way. That's in the movies and plays and books, you idiot Reaganites. In real life it just happens, because you want something so much you don't see the damage you do to get it. Also with John and Gerry I think there's an authority angle.

You don't fuck with authority. Catholic sensibilities applied to our government and society, America ex cathedra. Always right, that is -- infallible. Boehner's evangelical allies come at it from another place. The institution stands in the way of your salvation. You want it stripped down to nothing.

An odd alliance. But back to Boehner. What do we do with the guy? He's just such an asshole. His high school football ethics aren't up to the job, I would say. Lo, Gerry Faust is now a motivational speaker. We'll bring him in. Perhaps, together, they can bend reality to their will. Gerry will recommend war, I bet. 

War is so like football, a game to be won, against Obama or the Democrats or some foreigners, like that foray into Iraq, maybe. Gerry, you ever think you might be wrong on this? That life can't be reduced to football and isn't, in fact, like football? Pray on that, please, but avoid those dastardly, imaginary WMD's.

This is the other aspect of the thing, apart from the religious self-righteousness. They have no idea what to do if they can't run something through the petty combat model. It's the only model they have. And the pettiness is important because in football you live to play again, more or less. But not if you're an Iraqi. 

Or, otherwise dead. Nothing petty in that. Or someone else whose life has been destroyed in another way by the Boehnerites. I guess respect for life has its limits. Meanwhile, all we can do is watch the Republican demolition derby. Someone will win, by their tally, but we'll all be way worse off in the end. 

See if they care.

http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/gerry-faust-on-mother-mary-and-his-days-at-notre-dame

Ersatz Everything

I think I remember from college reading DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA and the author, Alexis de Tocqueville, expressing alarm at discovering that the columns of our stately houses were made of wood. Now, if he were to knock on our democracy itself, he would find that it is fake--faux representative government.

I had such a moment as a kid encountering woodgrain Formica, a dishonest material, or an honest material forced into a dishonest representation of itself, anyway, commercial servitude. Color Formica up nicely and it looked good without the grain. I have it in my kitchen, a warm-green version looking like what it is.

Synthetic as hell. So now we've got this kind of government, imitation democracy. It's ersatz America, woodgrain, veneer. We're Naugahyde. Pleather. Inauthentic to the core. Democratic but not. Christian but not. Industrious but not. Independent and free but not. Everything but not.

Futurism

So I saw a painting yesterday evening which made me think of the precisionist works of Gerald Murphy. I hadn't thought about the Murphys, Gerald and Sara, in years, long enough ago that I was immediately reminded of how it felt not to be ashamed to be an American.

The good old days. There's always been that tradition, the one of the ugly Americans, the boors. I can deal with having a few boors on my side. Rubes. Jethros. Aborigines. People without respect and a sense of tradition and perspective. But we had good qualities as well.

Innocence. Optimism. Open-heartedness. Enthusiasm. Equanimity. Practicality. Inclusiveness. A sense of fair play. The Murphys were pioneers and not boors. Insiders because of their money. Outsiders because they were from immigrant families and Catholic. Not Brahmins.

An early example of what America could give back to Europe, once we had begun to become a power on our own, something good. I read about it in Wikipedia this morning. The Murphys invented sunbathing. Who knew. Or they were proponents of it and popularizers, at least.

I didn't know I was witnessing the end of this, as a kid. Our Golden Age, as much as we had one. And I read Toffler's book, FUTURE SHOCK, when it came out, as did everybody else. Also I'm aware of Neil Postman, who's opinions are still confusing to me.

They both wrote about change. The quality and quantity of change. I'm all for change for reasons of inevitability. It does happen and will happen independently of any desire to stop it. But you can't have it occur in good ways if you're in denial of it.

I think we have to work with it. And, man, are we ever failing at that. Thinking of the Murphys I remembered how I felt when I last read about them, in the 1980's, in connection with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, by which time I had misgivings about America.

And since then we have run entirely off the rails. It's mourning in America now. Sadness and a sense of loss are the only appropriate responses in witnessing the country's failure and degradation. You have to be suspicious when people say the sky is falling.

As did both Toffler and Postman in their ways. But it has fallen. Future Shock? The infantilizing of adulthood? Man, I don't know. Narcissism, maybe, as Christopher Lasch wrote about it. But it's so wearing watching it all happen.

If you care about the country and what it once supposedly stood for, which I do. And I'm uncomfortable saying that because, who am I, to judge. But judge we must. And I mean must, because we do it inevitably, by our acquiescence, if nothing else.

The people doing all the damage have no hesitation to judge. They insist they're right. But they're all lotus-eaters. The ultimate luddites. You actually live in the past, in your heads, forgetful of all else. This takes resources.

Hence their love of continuity and privilege and money. It's a virtual plantation. Supported by the industry of others, as it must be, in order to work. Maybe not, if they chose to live like the Amish. Don't hold your breath. They are oblivious.

And they're running everything.

Just Say These Words

No doubt Democratic congressmen are walking the streets of the capital silent and stupefied at the prospect of the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse of the new Republican majorities. A Zombie Apocalypse typified by the RYAN BUDGET, a thing fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of its creator, whosoever that may be.

You can't kill the budget because it is already dead. Get over that. The same is true of the whole Republican wish list of insanity. So, here it is on a fucking plate, you Democratic congressmen, the thing to do in the face of the zombie onslaught. Say these three things and keep saying them, until I tell you to stop, if ever:

1. THE REPUBLICANS CREATED THE DEFICITS
2. THE REPUBLICANS SENT YOUR JOBS TO CHINA
3. THE REPUBLICANS CAUSED THE RECESSION

If you should be pressed by someone you may add a little background, which I bet you don't understand or you would have been saying these things already, so stick to the script.

The deficits were created by cutting taxes and raising spending on defense and other crazy, wasteful stuff. Your jobs went to China because corporations want cheap labor and Republicans give corporations whatever they want. The economic collapse was caused by Republican-engineered deregulation, a la ENRON.

Again, you don't need to understand any of this. It's too late to do any good, according to my non-creationist, economist sources living in exile. But someday, when they examine the corpse of our country, it may help to determine the cause of death if this stuff is on the record.

How Many Fifths

Let's say that Sheldon Adelson is a man. I know he doesn't look like one but bear with me. Then how many fifths of a man am I, politically? A fifth of a fifth? No way. I'm less than that. Sheldon is a man's man, politically. But I won't stipulate to less than a twenty-fifth. It would mess with my mojo.

Not to complain, but isn't that illegal? And I'm a white guy. Maybe I'm collateral damage here, but the folks who put the money in politics won't say what they want, exactly, so it's hard to figure out. We could just give it to them and then they might leave us alone, and I could get my franchise back.

What if they want the country for themselves? Oh, I bet that's it. Disenfranchisement is the goal. Then they can do what they want, on the fly. If they control the system then the battles are all won before they're fought, and they don't have to worry anymore, and I would have to worry a lot.

Because I'm no Sheldon Adelson, politically. I bet I can take his ass in a fight, though. Where does he live? All over the place, you say? Trying to steer clear of me, no doubt. I'll kick his butt. Then I'll wind up in jail, probably a privatized one, the owners of which will give money to the same causes as Sheldon.

I'm having trouble figuring this one out. Makes you feel kind of impotent. Bad choice of words, there, I say to the women in the audience, but you know what I mean. Maybe Sheldon will give me a job, sweeping floors in the casinos. Sorry, Sheldon, I didn't mean to be so hard on you. 

Have a nice day, dickwad.

Peace in Our Time

The Democratic distaste for conflict has quickened the Republican lust for blood. There is no peace. There will be no peace. Only when the Republicans have bombed the homes of the people that matter will they care. Care enough to run for cover, laptops in tow, so they can amuse themselves and keep up with their investments.

As the bombs rain down. By the time they care it will be too late. It is already too late. To prevent the war. The war is here. But who will win? No one will win. Everyone loses. It's what the Republicans want. They must destroy everything. They are driven to destroy everything. They are compelled to destroy everything.

It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter how. We are fucked. Woe are we. Welcome to the new Republican millennium. The gods of destruction are among us. They have come. Watch in awe. They will bring the world to its knees so they can feel their power and revel in the wonder of their wanton destruction.

Imaginary Man on First

My brother reminded me today of something I had forgotten. We would play, when we were kids, baseball games in the street with so few people you routinely had to bat again while being on base, in which case there would be an "imaginary man on first" or wherever.

You could drive yourself in. Cool. So civilized, these games were. Never a cheap-shot. We played hard but fair, our neighborhood code, but I assume it was common among kids in the area, kids everywhere, civilization in miniature.

And we enjoyed one another's humiliations so much, in good humor, yet we were barbarians. Little savages, without conscience, in many areas, because we were unsophisticated, not grown up. So what is the excuse of the Republicans?

Are they not grown up, or what. Cheap shot after cheap shot. I'm so tired of it.

Home Alone IV: The White House Years

Mostly I write to please myself. To vent. And as an expression of frustration, I'm sure, but there's always the chance you will stumble onto something, an instance of insight, and I think I have.

The hardest thing to grasp, for me and my like-minded friends, is the lack of a conscience in our antagonists. The apparent indifference to suffering and death and the attendant obliviousness to all the systems that are supposed to make a society work.

Such as enjoying your freedom in ways that don't interfere with the ability of others to do the same. And we see this lack in people with whom we identify, to a degree. And who say, in fact, that they embody the ideal, the model of citizenship. Say it all the time.

While they don't seem to be channeling Charles Manson, exactly, they fall short of the standards we are supposed to share, in the estimation of myself and my friends. In reaching for understanding in such a situation I often look for limiting cases, the purest examples, extremes.

Then I interpolate. Move toward the middle. Use what's obvious in extreme cases to understand those less extreme. I posit George Bush as an extreme case. And Jesus, his avowed master and model, but possibly his antithesis. A foil, for our purposes. What does Bush most uniquely embody? What are his defining traits and characteristics?

In relation to Jesus, especially. And I speculate: boyishness. The worst of adolescent destructiveness and self centeredness. A lack of the understanding of connectedness and consequences. No social conscience. No sense of responsibility. Dependency. Defensiveness. Possibly the enjoyment of cruelty.

Not Jesus. But we elected this guy, twice, to the presidency, the office most likely to have elements of form associated with it in relation to the national ideal, in the second instance after he had proved to be stunningly incompetent and offensively aggressive, on the military front.

So maybe we, the electorate, embody some of the same traits, a generational case of arrested development. I wouldn't wish my fifteen year-old self on anybody, and I would have done a much better job of running things than Bush, as I was at fifteen.

But fifteen year-olds are supposed to be fifteen, fifty-somethings are not. So you are immediately in the arena of a Paul Ryan, an unintegrated self, ripe for supplanting with the ego or ideals of someone else. Borrowed integrity. Borrowed identity. Ayn Rand, in the case of Ryan.

Probably Dick Cheney, in the case of Bush, though, ostensibly, Jesus. And the void offered room for others at the same time. Rove, maybe. Bush's brain, reputedly. And Rumsfeld. A poker party of a personality. "I raise you an invasion." "Deregulate and call." "You can't do that!" "I just did."

A HOME ALONE situation in the White House with a delinquent kid in charge, and his criminal cohorts. A delinquent kid with nukes, operating out of a framework of decision-by-committee in which no one knows the other's intent, because they don't know it themselves. Not really.

A recipe for sociopathy. Their own motivations are a mystery to them, out of arrestedness and a lack of personal development. Something resonates with me here in relation to THE WIZARD OF OZ, a personality in pieces due to a lack of the development of its parts: courage, caring, sense.

A person unrealized in all aspects, in the case of Bush. Maybe that was the attraction to the powerful men behind the scenes. He's a clean slate of a human, someone without a hint of character or self-awareness. Suddenly, writing this, I feel fortunate. It could have been worse. He could have done even more harm.

Mr Jones Goes to Washington

We all know about Mr Smith who went to Washington. Don't worry, I won't tell you otherwise. But there was another guy, Mr Jones, who also went. You've never heard of him. He's almost virtual, keeps his head down.

He's a lobbyist, initially only in defense but he went everywhere from there. And I mean everywhere, even social issues once it was realized that certain people would pay you to put their ideas forward even if it didn't work.

And they would keep paying you once they realized it wasn't working, an income stream independent of results. No one knows why but it is thought it involves the deep human desire to torch something, as in "whole, burnt," some kind of sacrifice.

An offering, like sending money to Jerry Falwell. Ares Jones, the lobbyist, saw the synergies, the link between the social issues and the hard stuff, ideas and ICBM'S. This is in keeping with the shift to intellectual content as a basis for growth.

Ideas are everything, if you don't care about jobs. You can put manufacturing in a box and bid it out, which they did. China won. Now Ares in not partisan, not ideological, in the usual sense. The ideas aren't rooted in anything, just a means to an end.

But he is pretty partisan about money, because it gives you power. So I sent in the forensics guys to try to determine what was going on, accountants to do the early work, and some folks to examine the remains, if casualties were found.

Social scientists, because I don't believe that money goes up in smoke, hardly ever, though it may go towards something intangible, especially in the leisured class, since they have money to burn. So where did it go? Towards dismantling democracy.

The corpse turned out to be our country, which was always virtual anyway. An idea. An old, inefficient idea. You wouldn't think they would trash something so big, but it turns out they're internationalists, and super rich. It didn't seem like a big deal to them.

It did to working people. But money and power know no bounds. The Bain types are indifferent about liquidating a company. They can go either way, it doesn't matter. Only the money does. It's a small step from there to liquidating a country or anything else, if it is in the way.

The "whole, burnt" crowd is helping fund this for reasons as yet undetermined. The poorer folks who vote red, that is, who actually sent money to idiots like Falwell. Mr Smith is long retired. He made great headlines but didn't have much influence in the end.

Ideals don't motivate people the way that money does, I guess. Not normally. Money is much more primal, more addicting. Maybe everything comes down to that, ultimately, I'm not sure. But where is Mr Smith when you need him?

The Sorcerer's Apprentices

What a dream I had. The Republicans had taken over everything and the country was spinning entirely out of control. I have to say, it didn't feel personal at all. This was new to me. It used to always feel personal.

I cut my teeth on Jesse Helms in this regard. He was the first politician for whom I felt visceral loathing, super-personal. Since then there have been so many loathe-worthy Republicans I have lost track, so you learn to take defensive measures. Dissociation, that is, in order to dull the pain and awareness.

The danger of dissociation is that you can't understand what's going on well enough to counteract it, having walled it off. No normal person wants to go there. The interior life of Jesse Helms? Shudder. But someone has to do it, be a Van Helsing to Helms's Dracula, to protect us and ensure our survival.

I volunteered for this duty once in an effort to get close to Winona Ryder, but they wouldn't have me. I think she's really attractive. I see no one currently out there in the role, which isn't to say our Van Helsing isn't among us, looking like Anthony Hopkins or not. Will he please stand up? Maybe he's waiting for his moment. I sure hope so.

Meanwhile the Republican sorcerer's apprentices have let loose a raft of evil. It's impersonal in that they're screwups, weaklings, incompetents, and novices. They've stepped out of their appropriate role so they're kind of not responsible. They shouldn't have been entrusted and left unsupervised. It's a reign of error, not terror, but this could change.

Because there's no sign of a conscience anywhere. It's easy enough to loathe Mitch McConnell and his boys and the Boehnerites, they're so loathable, but why bother. In the dream I saw clearly that all these Republicans are like children, playing with forces they don't understand and can't control, which is scary as hell because there's a suspicion.

That the Master, the Sorcerer, won't come back in time to save us, or that he will but we'll already be screwed because in the bigger picture we didn't really matter. We'll still be functioning but really messed up, because our problems didn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Forced to give an opinion I'd say that this is the case.

So let's just have a party, an Irish wake, which is to say we'll look directly at our worst fears and thumb our noses at them and have some fun, with a lot of alcohol and good fellowship and sentimental singing. Anybody have a better idea? If not, it's on, a wake for America.

See you there.

Heavy Metal

Waking up early this morning due to the time change, I flipped on the radio hoping that the BBC would NOT be reporting on the impending American electoral catastrophe. Someone was talking about lead poisoning.

It was more interesting than you would think. Evidently lead can mess you up in such a way that you become a criminal. Immediately I thought of the Republicans, inhaling all those lead-laden fumes, what with their love of petrochemicals and combustion.

I don't believe much in discontinuities. There is usually some underlying consistency. Look at the sixties, all those folks calling themselves radicals and revolutionaries and it was the same old stuff, to my mind, people declaring themselves to be right and better than everybody else and unloading on the previous generation mercilessly.

And founding Utopian communities in a search for purity and self fulfillment, protesting the hell out of the war, all the while, though those protests pretty much ended with the draft. Suspiciously, I would say, though not to fault anyone. I didn't want to go, not to that war.

But on the war went. What I can't figure out is what has happened to my country since then. We used to be the good guys, or at least think we were the good guys. Okay, at least we aspired to be good. Am I wrong, there?

Now we don't seem to give a shit about anything, except maybe money, and we're correspondingly more self-righteous. Certain elements of it I understand, the Civil War angle, and the resentment revived by civil rights and desegregation.

That Southerners want to get the country back on the right path and have miscegenation punishable by death and so on, old fashioned values. All well and good but how did this outlook ever win the day, in the whole country, all that divisiveness?

And the incredible hatred of government and love of privilege, the violence, the defensiveness, the non-inclusiveness. And the touchiness and aggression, the sense of entitlement, all that stuff. Lead poisoning, that must be it. 

Again, I'm looking for the consistency. How did we go from good guys to jerks, so damn quickly? And this lead expert was convincing, that lead is a problem, and that it's in the systems of the people who grew up when it was around, more so than now, and is affecting their brains.

In a bad way. But she also argued that there is a generation in the pipeline unaffected by the lead, born after, especially, they pulled it out of gasoline. That they are peaceniks, that generation, which the Republicans sure as hell are not. May I live to see the day, when the peaceniks are in control.

I will support them. In the meantime what are we to do? It just so happens that I install Finnish saunas as a sideline. Some people think that you can sweat out the lead, no kidding, by using the sauna. In any case I will argue for the beneficial effects.

I want a government contract to install these and to get mean people to use them, starting of course with all those congressional Republicans, since the beneficial effects will be multiplied by their power.

It's only serendipity for me, that I would make a lot of money, and I want my shot of serendipity, like the Republicans, who propose all these tax breaks and military expenditures and deregulation while, serendipitously, getting rich as shit.

Reassuring us constantly that they only want what's good for the country and that they're very patriotic, not self serving at all. I want some of that, to the tune of the cost of one B-1 bomber, let's say. That's a lot of saunas.

And a lot of profit for me. I swear I only want what's best for the country. Will you support me?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615

Thom Thumb

There's a real possibility that North Carolina will be sending a remarkable, reactionary guy to the Senate in Washington to stem the tide of wasteful spending on nonsense like school lunches. But those outside the state may not know of the great exploits and adventures of Thom Thumb.

Whose determination and persistence have earned him the admiration of all who know him. His tiny stature belies his enormous will and pluck. He is the champion of minority everything. His minority, that is. Smallness, in size or numbers, is compensated for with tactical aggression and massive infusions of cash.

By means of which Tiny Thom has wrested control of North Carolina from an African element determined to loll about waiting for hard working, productive, European types to show up with a truck full of watermelon and fried chicken for them to eat. Naive, native Northerners will be kept from this fate by Thom when he exerts himself at the national political level.

So the whole country may be saved from sloth by Thom, and from the loitering masses hoping for free shit. This is the reality uncovered by Thom and his compatriots, they themselves having witnessed the enormous envy of the darkies sweating their balls off working in the sun while the the white folks knock down the lemonade in the shade.

And they understand all too well how all that ball-sweating has instilled in the laborers an unusual craving for shade and lemonade and the easy life, the realization of which would obviously destroy the country. Now Thom and his allies have managed to forestall all that by shifting the burden of labor to China and elsewhere.

But those people are getting the craving. It's a huge problem, which can only be solved by folks like Tiny Thom, who have themselves seen the envy in the eyes and understand its power. The craving must first be kept in check at home, later in the coolie countries currently under active exploitation.

All the while the search goes on frantically for additional resources, human or otherwise, to keep Thom Thumb in his accustomed and rightful place. The free shit stops with him. It must. No real reason, but Thom and his crowd got used to it. It would be so unfair to take it away.

Dear Ted:

Ted Cruz, you must abandon your iPhone. Burn it like a Beatles record. It's the only way to ensure you aren't implicated in the horror of homosexuality.

And, my God, think of all the other stuff you're implicated in, livin' in the USA, this place which you declare to be both God's chosen country and a pit of sin. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Where can you go, Ted, and see your values, your own moral purity and excellence, embodied in the society at large? You must clearly leave us. We are unworthy. But where will you go?

To the land of Sharia Law? Those people take their morality really seriously. They insist that it be embodied in the State. Oh, wait, I forgot, wrong morality. They're all doomed to Hell.

Ted, it's a dilemma. Only in relatively free, pluralistic societies is your religion the dominant one. Hold on, there's Vatican City! No, sorry, they're all going to Hell as well, the idolaters. Damn, it's a tough nut.

Oh, shit, I used a swear word. Did it again. Anyway, you must clearly go and leave the planet and be with Jesus, maybe move to Oregon and get euthanized. But your values don't permit it. Eureka, the army!

You join and volunteer for the most dangerous duty. You supported all that anyhow, the militarism. You can die and go to Jesus while fighting against rampaging Muslims and Sharia Law and all that shit.

And good luck to you, on the front lines in Iraq or wherever. I know you will be a brave dude and do your country proud. It can't be any worse than butting heads with the Democrats day and night.

Lunacy

Someone I know with inside information has revealed to me that there is a secret group drafting bills in anticipation of the day when Republicans can pass whatever legislation they want. This group, recognizing that America is indebted to England for its laws and traditions, has decided to revive the transportation of criminals, because it worked out so well before.

England not only got rid of a lot of bad elements but succeeded in founding outposts, later colonies and countries, loyal to the Crown, a two-fer. The new, American version will begin by colonizing the moon with convicts. They will be landed there and continue to be landed until they find a way to survive, then they will be granted statehood.

Critics contend that the entire colony will expire the instant the doors are opened on the landing vehicle, but the bill's sponsors believe this difficulty will only spur innovation, necessity being a mother, you know. Also it is assumed that very few people will arrive alive since they will mostly kill one another en route, being criminals and such.

Only good outcomes are possible, in other words, once you get rid of the people, and it's so hard to get rid of people these days, the planet and prisons being so full, a problem which has been vexing Republicans for years. Most methods of mass-elimination have been hard to implement due to legal restrictions and political correctness.

But Republicans contend that the moon is no more inhospitable than Australia, back in the day. A reality show is also planned. Cameras will be installed in the prisons and shuttle vehicles. Relatives will be interviewed to humanize the thing, since average people may have trouble identifying with the criminal element.

Halliburton has agreed to furnish all the necessary hardware and infrastructure in a no-bid contract as stipulated in the bill. In fact, the whole thing will be managed privately to promote free enterprise and efficiency. It has been noted, however, that Republicans are working very hard behind the scenes.

In order to get all their friends and relatives out of jail before the bill passes. You may want to do the same.

My Goodness!

Pirate and plunderer Mitt Romney himself has deigned to come to my state! America's elite is unhappy that Butler Barack, the guy who got hired to manage the old estate while it was engulfed in flames, has failed to do what they wanted. It was unclear to the underlings that Mitt and his wealthy friends actually wanted the old homeplace burned.

And it's still standing through the valiant efforts of Butler Barack. There's a lot of smoke lingering and the place is pretty charred, but it's recognizably the old residence built by some air-headed idealists named Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton and Madison. We all thought they wanted it saved, out of sentiment or as an artefact of the old ways, at least. So sorry, Mitt!

The estate was an entire functioning economy unto itself: made stuff, sold stuff, employed people, with lots of rituals and traditions. Oh, we will miss it, but Mitt and the mandarins have condemned it on grounds of inefficiency. There's old capital stock, outdated means and methods, and bad management based on some bizarre model called "Checks and Balances."

But what a great idea we now have! The old edifice and grounds are just perfect for a Halloween house, what with all the smoke and cinders and decay. In Chapel Hill, where I live, there's an enormous Halloween bash every year, a costume party which takes over the entire center of town, mostly Franklin St. That Halloween party is our model.

There are all these jobless and homeless people wandering the old estate in rags, unfortunate casualties in the new plantation economy. We will pretend they are in costumes from feudal Russia. It can only raise their spirits, make them again feel that they belong and have a home and some hope for the future, for the day, at least.

Mitt and his supporters will probably attend parties in the country clubs and gated communities, or just hang out in one of their houses, so our party should be earthy and informal and fun. There won't be rich folks running around dressed up in expensive costumes inspiring envy, I mean, and putting an uppity edge on everything.

Which is only right, since they have created a kind of parallel, doppelganger country of their own. Good luck to them all, that's what I say. I'm so pleased about the party I can't really fault them right now. So this is your invitation. Please come and remember, heavy on the despair and decay. Go goth, if you will.

When it comes to your costume. It's the new reality in America.

Why We F(l)ight

I've had two near-death experiences with crazy people. The first: my sister. She's dead now so I can write that. The second: a guy who was part of a surrogate family I had in the first year after my father died.

The lessons were the same:
     They are not culpable.
     They will almost certainly die crazy.
     You can't do anything about it.

In both cases I had sudden moments of understanding which are very vivid in my memory. I remember exactly where I was and how it felt. I felt amazement. Wonder.

And certainty about the fact of the mental illness and its trajectory. The understanding didn't seem to have an analytical component, it was experiential and observational. Just kind of "wow." Fucking wow.

I also understood that there was only one way to deal with it. Pack your bags. Any interaction with people living in that primal, archetypal place will be on their terms. You have to leave.

The last situation in the world you want to be in is to be stuck with crazy people. Which isn't to say you don't care about them. Or even love them. But they do unbelievable harm. I was stuck with my sister.

For about six years, once the crazy came. I figured it out about midway through, three years in. That it would never pass. We were screwed. I was a kid. I couldn't do anything about it. I got out when I could.

I got extricated from the other situation rather slowly and messily. I was pretty implicated. Because, I believe, there was an unwitting desire on my part to suffer. To work my way through some unresolved grief.

Who knows. There are people out there who will help you along if you want to suffer. But I'm back in that situation now, stuck with insanity. With the Republicans. How can I say this:

THEY ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS.    
  
We, the Democrats, are in a political marriage with lunatics. It's mass hysteria, of some sort. Or mass something else, an infectious strain of stupidity and fear.

That, to me, is observational, not analytical. If you don't agree, sorry. Go read somebody else. What's hard is that there is no way to get extricated. Not really. The only other option is quarantine.

Us or them. Ideally them, but I'd rather be institutionalized than stuck with them. In an asylum called the USA, maybe. We should at least get to use the name. They're the secessionists.

Their system should implode without people to persecute and exploit. People to take advantage of. So we try to shut them in. Let them live out their crap at their own expense.

We'll throw leaflets over the walls, just in case there are non-crazies stuck there. Or someone has a change of heart after watching a Frank Capra movie, or through mental mutation.

I am now leaving the realm of observation. What follows includes analysis and interpretation. Hypothe-..., hypothe-..., hypothe-.... Shit! Speculation. I'm going existentialist on you.

I believe that we are profoundly free. People have a lot of choice. I think we make decisions in our sleep. And from the moment we get up. French toast? The boiled egg? It could be anything. 

Not acting is not not choosing. We are choosing. Not to act, definitively, in the curious case of the Republicans. Choosing not to take an unambiguous stand in the face of a lot of terrible, destructive behavior on their end.

It's parallel to being the uncrazy partner in a marriage with an abuser. Not being abusive is not enough. You're there. You see it. If you don't stop it, or at least try, you are responsible. Possibly more so than the abuser, because they're crazy.

It isn't fair, but there are innocents involved. We have an enormous responsibility to children. And the powerless. Old people. The poor. The pregnant. Anyone with less power than we have. Anyone encumbered. Even dogs. I love dogs.

I was taught as a child that people who suffer somehow suffer for all of us. They bear a burden for all of us. There's an utter truth to me in this, because a certain percentage of people will have certain problems. It could have been any of us. Even me. Maybe it is me.

My father actually failed at this. He failed to get my sister out of the house, which he should have done, or protect us from her in some way. He couldn't do it. He was in over his head. If anything he cared too much and it incapacitated him.

He was a good guy. If someone were to ask me if I forgive him I would know they didn't understand. To even say there's nothing to forgive puts it in a context that's incomprehensible to me. It just happened. It's no longer happening.

That doesn't in any way absolve us from the need to challenge the Republicans on what they're doing and to try to stop it. We must do it. You first.

The Purple Cow Car Wash and Salvation Station

Wow. I just put a new business plan on KOCH-STARTER and the money is pouring in.

The idea is to have carwashes where you can simultaneously be baptized, bathed, saved and get a tan. Saved the way they do it at revivals, when you stake your claim to Jesus and are assured of salvation.

It's an environmental initiative. To conserve resources by washing a car and a human in one pass, and baptizing and saving said human from Satan's snares all at once, then drying the car and its owner with special tanning heaters and big fans. You reappear all spiffy and pure out the end of the specially designed building.

Picture the car wash. An anonymous guy on one side at a console, running things, looking through big plate glass windows. Jesus, or a facsimile thereof, in a similar space opposite, blessing people and waving his arms around.

The cars and owners move through, down the middle and out the end, assembly-line style. I picture the owners strapped to or splayed on the roofs of the cars, but there may be a better way.

What's cool about this is the baptismal angle. The salvation angle. Anybody can get a car washed. But you play the soul-cleansing for all it's worth. That it's a bargain because it's permanent.

Because God has taken up residence in your soul through an instantaneous infusion of grace, so it cannot be tainted again. Your soul. Not with God living there.

It makes me crave the cleansing just envisioning it. How reassuring it must be to know with certainty you are on the side of God, until you die. Then you are actually with God.

I can think now of so many remarkable characters in history who have clearly lived with this certainty. Mostly lunatics and fanatics and delusional individuals but that doesn't invalidate anything.

I don't know why not. It seems it should. But I'm trying to run a car wash here. And make some money, as God would surely wish it. And you can't do that with Charles Manson as a model.

Anyway, all this envisioning is helping me refine the design. Cruciform is the obvious choice, as viewed from above, with Jesus and the anonymous operator in the wings. And a nice gabled roof with cathedral ceilings and exposed beams.

We could go Baptist on the decor. Really spartan. Or Catholic. Baroque. Let's do spartan. The whole idea of a single, permanent, life-altering religious experience is way more Protestant. We'll sell indulgences to the Catholics.

And wash their cars, of course. At least they'll go to hell with clean cars, because by grace alone you are saved, not by good works. Look at all those Catholic commentators on FOX NEWS, poor fools.

Good work, indeed, but no ticket to heaven, because all those lies are just lies and sins without the infusion of grace. With it, however, everything you do, irrespective of what you do, is God's work, by definition.

Which is what makes the soul-cleansing such a deal. Such a steal. We'll have Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed there for the grand-opening of our first facility, the pilot project, just to reassure people that character is not an issue.

You will be clean, when we get done with you, no matter what a sleazebag you are. And a sleazebag you can stay. All the way to heaven. The enthusiasm builds within me. I can feel it, the calling, the mission.

The money. The infusion of money. Fuck grace. You see, that's it, right there. You don't have to care, not when you're doing God's work. Nothing else matters. Oh, Lord, bring on the money! See you in heaven!