What's Next for the Appendages?

Pay attention. An encounter with someone as sick as Trump is educational. Opportunities this visible and extreme seldom arise. Because of Trump public figures getting killed for their views or associations is now entirely possible. Mostly sad fantasies present themselves.

But, what would happen if Ivanka got shot? Mind you, this isn't wishful thinking only a mental exercise -- a simulation. Would Don-Boy care? Only to the extent that HE was diminished. People are appendages to him. Or, not. But they have no existence in-and-of themselves.

Trump inhabits a world of one. He is all of his existence. Nothing else is real. All "being" emanates from him. Give his goons some credit. They are picking up on something -- that this is god-like in its aspect. No matter that it's pure psychopathology. People are not gods.

Especially, Trump. 

Licentiousness

Trump will live on in his licenses. He issues them informally. He's done it forever. Everyone in his orbit is drug down. It's his life’s work.

Licenses to kill. Licenses to overthrow our government. Licenses to act on the hate and resentment he's fed on himself and inspired in others. 

Redneck Revolution

My objection to Hillbilly Elegy (the book) was that it was delusional. Hillbilly culture isn't lost it just stormed our capitol. Redneck values aren't in retreat. They have disseminated. The Confederate diaspora spread them everywhere. 

The American Dark Ages began with Bush. Bush signaled the evangelical, fundamentalist takeover. That meant ignorance. That meant violence. That meant making war on principle, and tribalism everywhere. A violent time is upon us. 

A Declaration of the Rights of Assholes

Assholes also have rights. Where would Jesus be without Judas? And, notice that in the Bible Judas is his own punishment. There is no posse of apostles to track down Judas. There is no inquest or assignment of punishment. Assholes are a fact of life. 

They will always be with us. 

It's the responsibility of those who can to protect the weak and innocent from assholes and not to empower them. Assholes shit all over everything but they challenge people to be better. Good people are defined against the standards set by assholes.

But you never let them run things.

Plunderdome

Maybe we need to isolate all of the capital obsessors. A big-ass fence. The lobbyists can fight it out in there for the booty. To make it interesting let's reduce the available resources incrementally to overall subsistence level, if that, as has happened to working Americans, in good part because of those lobbyists. Keep them in there and let them fight it out. See how they like it.

Sentimental Journey

I come from sentimentalists. I know the dangers. Sentimentalism can be a kind of denial. A failure to see the reality. We are beset by that now. 

The reality of it is that we have a flourishing Nazi Party in America. I don't fault anybody for an attachment to our, American, ideals.

I don't fault anybody for a sentimental attachment to their own experiences. America was the promised land for my family. But not for everyone.

And those people, the people with grudges, have taken over. They are a hate movement. And they think they are justified. 

They think they are justified to the point of doing whatever is necessary to reestablish white supremacy and their, Republican, racist hegemony.

Stop the Stealers

The only reasonable course now is to expel every member of the Treason Caucus from Congress, every elected representative who sided with Trump in trying to steal an election.

Trumphenge

Whitehouse is looking like Trumphenge . . . prehistoric . . . inexplicable . . . reflecting some kind of power or power dynamic . . . maybe useful for excarnation . . . are there vultures flying about? 

Both Sides Now

It's life's illusions we recall. We gave ourselves away. 

This Connotes a Coup

Lots of loose talk about coups these days. Words get used in different ways. The law is all technicality. I don't even know if there's a word for the spirit of the law but we're learning something about that -- that the technicality of it is meaningless without some kind of goodwill and informal commitment to its authority. There's a semantic field to everything. 

A range of meaning to every word. 

People are claiming to be the keepers of our legal Torah. Fundamentalists. Federalists. They don't dispute the existence of a Talmud but claim they have possession of the ark of truth so they get to decide all the issues. Reformers be damned. But, no matter how wise those original documents, the spirit of the law must be understood and applied independently.

 

Or, forget it. We are fucked. What is going on now might not denote a coup. Technically, I don't think so. But it sure as hell is an illegal attempt to seize power for minority interests. The coup conviction is there. The will of coupists is there. That's good enough for me.

Ted Cruz

Now we understand the beard. He's a Proud Boy. If not, maybe a Proud Boy wanna be. He wears it in solidarity. I heard his speech. It left me wondering what the meaning of the word "is" is. And, some other words. 

Trump Goons Invade Capitol

We needn't make a point of saying what this means. We know what it means. But we must insist that every Republican legislator shares the blame. None of them has taken a stand against it, as we watched for four years. Fuck them all.

Smoking Gums

We have the smoking gums now, a whole hour on tape of President Trump trying to wheedle and threaten his way into stealing an election. For those who demand smoke this is it. The fire is coming from Trumps's mouth.

Non-Work Ethic

Somewhere in my youth and childhood I got the idea that you find out what to do in life because it comes to you so easily. It makes some sense but I think I took it too far.

Brutes on the Ground

I guess Republicans deserve some credit for openly being thugs. No more hiding their inner Nazis. The fight is on but I think the pink hat people are unprepared.  

Asshole Ascendency Asserts Itself Again

Mitch McConnell doesn't give a fuck anymore. He's old. He's rich. He's an asshole, He's a traitor. He used to hide his treasonous intent away but treason is normal now. It has gone mainstream. 

No call to rest on one's partisan laurels, though, when you're as big a dick as Mitch. Mitch is plugging away for every bit of advantage in the middle of a pandemic no matter who gets hurt. 

To say nothing of the coup. Let it be remembered.  

Morons Make Wrong Decision Once More

What is right and wrong anymore? The White House is now sitting on half of the available doses of vaccine because, they say, they need it for the follow-up shot as though the manufacturers aren't still making it as fast as possible. 

I smell a rat. When hasn't Trump treated the nation's resources as though they aren't his to do with as he pleases? And what does he please? To feel like a big man. To feel powerful, effective and in charge. Trump wants to husband his power. 

Again, it's all about him. Trump is an unbelievably evil man.

Drain the Trump

Time to think about purging the evil of Trumpism from our government and society, But, how? 

The Age of Treason

Americans can't wait for time to pass judgment on the decades-long history of Republican treachery that has culminated in Trump, because it's ongoing and so destructive. Just this week Pat Toomey, Republican traitor of Pennylvania, sabotaged a relief bill in a horrible winter of pandemic to advance partisan aims. How many times have we seen this? Blackmail and sabotage playing off the genuine and justified concerns of Democrats for the lives of average citizens.  

Obamacare alone has inspired 10 years of insane opposition and dirty tricks, to a bill passed fair-and-square that benefits millions of Americans and has caused none of the larger-scale economic problems Republicans predicted. Of course they were lying. We were supposed to wait for "trickle-down" to kick in, I suppose, no matter how many people died along the way. They are still trying to kill it in the middle of the pandemic they turned into a monster with their wilful incompetence. 

It's time for some accounting and accountability. Mitch McConnell could die any day (but not from COVID since he's protected). I won't have him remembered as anything other than the loyal citizen he is -- loyal to the Confederacy. He hates America. He hates the version, anyway, that is a representative democracy that tries to take care of its citizens and live up to its promises. He wants the America of slavery. He has succeeded. Americans work longer and harder for less. 

And the rich, like McConnell, by marriage, only get richer.

Famous Anus

I'm not sure what I think about it but Republicans are owning their inner assholes to an unprecedented degree. They think nothing of openly engaging in treasonous behavior. Famous anus Bill Barr is moving on, though. I had a fantasy that he might immediately lead Trump away from Biden's inauguration in chains, irritated that his groveling before Trump, which was complete, still wasn't enough . . . 

A Dastard's Guide to Government Service

Become a Republican. The rest will come easy.

Wolf Shepherd

What does it mean when the shepherd is a wolf? Trump is the wolf-shepherd for his deluded flock. I think this means he is the devil. 

A Bridge Too Funky

Overthrowing an election was a bridge too funky even for Republicans, not that treasonous behavior hasn't become second nature for many of them. 

The Philosophical Idealism of Donald Trump

Donald Trump's existence is defined by (esse est percipi) attention. Philosophically,

. . . the “opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a world all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from being perceived” is inconsistent, “a manifest contradiction." If one construes ‘sensible objects’ as ideas of sense, and ideas are objects of knowledge, then having a real existence distinct from being perceived would require that an object be known (as an idea) and unknown (as a thing distinct from being perceived), which is inconsistent. He explains the source of the error on the basis of the doctrine of abstract ideas, a discussion which parallels the discussion in Introduction §10. (Internet Encyclpedia of Philosophy, on George Berkeley)

What is not perceived does not exist. The less something is perceived the less real it is, like kids in cages. Not only is existence contingent on perception, it is contingent on the ultimate mind, God, whose all-encompassing mindfulness determines and accounts for everything that exists. And, God is immaterial and the most existent thing there is, that on which we are modeled, at a high degree of removal. Our existence depends on perception, Trump's does not. We are shadows. Trump is the sun.

We can see that Trump, in this case, deems himself to be, or has mistaken himself for, God. His attention and acceptance is to determine the rights of every being, that is, the scope and limitations of their existence. People may be eliminated at his whim since the exist only at or by his permission, solicitude and pleasure. You can see that Trump's behaviors become immediately intelligible in this context, as does the devotion he inspires, as that on which the existence of everything else depends.

Therefore, when he declares elections to be invalid they are invalid, the "reality" notwithstanding, since it must be the mistaken perception of lesser beings. Houses, mountains and rivers are hallucinations if he declares them to be. He may slaughter people at will, or take actions that lead to their annihilation, because they depend on him for their existence anyway. He is not "worthy of" or in need of attention because he doesn't "need" anything, being complete unto himself, so any idea to the contrary is mistaken. Attention accrues and is due to him naturally because he is the source of all being. 

To the extent there is resistence to this it is a denial of reality and, additionally, apostasy and the work of the devil. All hail, Trump! Donald is not only our leader but the second coming of Christ. The only qualification is that, accepting this framework, if Donald is not in fact God he must be the Antichrist. 

Exile of Main Street

Main Street is gone, burned in its way like Atlanta. It was gone before the virus hit but the virus certainly helped. A new class of architects creates parallel little Main Street theme parks you can live in, halfway to Disneyland but Main Street is gone because it was democratic. It was available to everyone at least as imagined. It was available to everyone in our aspirations. Main Street is gone because those aspirations are gone and we are left with this, something beyond parody . . .

https://youtu.be/oowTOV5SHvo

Its Own Imperative

Finally, our politics gets down to something that is its own imperative -- animal activity. Self-preservation. Notice that this necessitates a threat. There wasn't one so they stirred it up. 

Paranoid impulses work this way. Primitively frightened people unknowingly create discord because they believe it's there anyway. They can't live without it. Trump has taken us there. 

We Are Probably Fucked Anyway

Trump or no Trump, we are probably fucked anyway. There are too many crazy people in America. This election shouldn't even be close. 

Trump in His Element

Donald has typically created the desperate circumstances he's always inhabited in his head. Little Donny is so threatened. He's so fragile. He's so afraid. Afraid of what?

He must fight and conquer. Conquer what? He was born independently rich. He thinks he's vulnerable. He thinks he's up against the wall. In other words, he's delusional. 

But he unwittingly makes his delusions real. Notice how comfortable he is fighting for his political life now. And how he seemed to relish his "victory" over the virus.

Don-Boy is totally nuts. 

Life at the Spahn (White House) Ranch

Anybody else notice how much Trump's tactics of compromising his subordinates resemble Charles Manson's? 

More Orange Than Ever

 The savior on the balcony is more orange than ever, and more dangerous . . .

He Is Risen

 Trump is risen from the bed and his worshipful followers applaud . . .

CukeAnon

QAnon is a clever attempt to displace the growing awareness that something is wrong and the suspicion of what is really wrong. They must dominate the information space with fabrications and faulty accusations because it has become harder to hide the real truth, that the “conspiracy” is coming from the other side. That is CukeAnon.

Functionally and symbolically the American presidency is important but not essential to the overthrow of elected power they seek. They lost to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, for example, but were able to co-opt or contain their presidencies. Yes, they are that powerful. Their functionaries are known as “cukes” among the ruling insiders, a strong explicit and subliminal insult. Their plants are effectively drones. 

They have the brains of vegetables but think of themselves as potent agents, innovators and real men, hence the phallic imagery. However, they are completely passive and unwittingly implanted in important positions. Phonetically “cuke” also resonates with “cuck” in another indication of the powerlessness and degradation of their dupes. The unwitting aspect is important. Conspiracies are incredibly hard. 

How do you control them? The vast majority of “adherents” must be unaware of their function, like bots in a computer scam network. Psychological warfare is employed. People with certain weaknesses or predispositions are lured in as “thought resonances” are distributed by controlled media. Ask yourselves — what does Fox News actually do? It disseminates disinformation. Fox is their most powerful tool. 

Even the Murdochs are probably unconscious administrators. They are cukes themselves though at an extremely high level. To crack the cuke network and begin to understand it you look at Donald Trump and George Bush, though Romney and McCain are also instructive. What do they have in common? Lives determined by privilege and powerful, wealthy fathers or intimidating family traditions. 

They are incredibly “small” people, contrary to appearances, but with access to the highest levels of power — the ultimate in stealth warfare tools among the “ontoligencia” as the true insiders are known, hinting at their methods in which they supplant more than the brains of their psychologically occupied underlings. They supplant their souls. From this there is no recovery. 

Someone like Trump seems like the ultimate agent or actor but he’s completely controlled by the underground forces of his psyche which the movement then hijacks for its purposes. He’s the most unfree person ever and so the most appropriate and potent vehicle for the forces of CukeAnon. At the highest levels it’s still not a formally conspiratorial but people with common interests acting in concert.

Why should they conspire when the risk of exposure is higher and their means and ends are thereby overdetermined? They can accomplish everything more effectively without conspiring because it is then almost impenetrably covert. They are only known by their accomplishments which are now so apparent a critical moment approaches, of locking in victory, after which it will be irreversible.

Obviously, the most ready converts to the cause are already compulsives — those who have previously “sold their souls” for the comforts of conformity, subservience and acquiescence. Entire groups, like evangelicals, come to mind and then individuals with insurmountable and crushing personal problems. The unconscious nature of it means that believers reveal themselves symbolically.

Their claimed concern for abused children is actually a concern for their own vulnerable, arrested selves — an infant’s inchoate fear that can only be assuaged by immediate gratification. Trump’s primal need for constant praise and reassurance is such behavior and driven by fragility. He MUST dominate and degrade everyone around him to try to make himself safe. It will never be enough. 

More on this later . . .

Trump Filtration System

Only the shit gets through . . .

The Defensive Aspects of Exceptionalism

There’s more to exceptionalism than parading around like God’s gift. There’s a defensive aspect to it. How do Americans explain that, when you cross the border into Canada, you’re in another world? 

They can’t. They won’t. They don’t explain it. They deny. Whatever WE are it’s better, BY DEFINITION. See how this fits with racism? Some people are better than others, de facto. Behaviors don’t enter into it. 

Armageddon? What’s Not to Like?

Kayleigh McEnany and the Arkansas inbreds have taken over press operations at the White House. Remember, these are public employees — paid by us. They keep their jobs at the pleasure and whim of the president.

But they are supposed to work for us. There’s a secret, though. They really work for Jesus. And Jesus is dying to come back. If everything resembles the end times they like it. Nobody says “end times” like Trump. 

Plague Store

Republicans have a captive market. It's us. And all they sell is plagues . . .

A Smashing Success

Republicans have found their wrecking ball. Nobody better than Trump . . .

Ass Licker Decries Show of Character

Ass licker and degraded Trump acolyte Mike Pence has criticized John Roberts for having signaled he might have a conscience. We don’t know if Roberts has one but the jury is in on Pence.

Days of Wine and COVID

I love my house. I love my car. I love my land and my garden and even my shop though it’s a store-and-lock now. I love my friends and my family. I love my dog and dogs generally. I love to eat what I cook and the opportunities I have to buy and cook almost anything. 

I love my memories. Most of them, anyway. I wish I could say “no regrets” but I have many regrets. I can live with it because I know how fortunate I am. I love the opportunities I have to read anything I want. I love outdoor showers and saunas (I have one at my house).

I could go on. This all occurred to me in a moment as I was walking out the door and through the carport to take a refreshing shower after working hard and I think I owe it to COVID. The virus has made me more appreciative. I am so fucking lucky. I hope it lasts. 

The Big Mistake

There might have been one big mistake Americans made, thinking there was some internal check on how low Republicans would go to establish their illegal, barbarous libertarian dream state. We know now. As low as it takes. There are no internal checks at all.

No More More

I think the virus is sending us a message. No more growth. No more more. We have to learn to live differenly. To live better instead of bigger.

Servile Row

How do we characterize the Republican brand these days? Dominance and submission have everything to do with it. They don’t understand you don’t have to live there. They don’t understand you can opt out and transcend it, that it doesn’t have to be that way.

For them there are only screwers and screwees. You have to be in one of those camps and, ultimately, everyone is a screwee. Again, Trump is instructive. He’s the ultimate screwer, it would seem, but look a little deeper and you see he’s more fucked than anybody.

He’s being screwed by a dead man, his daddy. There’s no escape. So you see it’s all compensatory. Republicans are trying to get even. They’re trying to feel better about themselves because they know they’re shit. Let’s take them at their own assessment on that.

Godspoil

How do you get to a Christian mega-slut like Kayleigh McEnany? And, how does shit like Kayleigh get to the White House? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. We know the familiar, evil, evangelical trajectory. They hate the imperialist Yankee government that ripped the slaves from their cold, dying hands and dared declare those slaves fully human.

Fuck that, says Kayleigh and her evangelical scum-brethren like Cotton, McConnell and the rest, who invade Washington and spend their lives defrauding the government as a show of contempt while actively working to destroy it. Clever bastards, they do it so openly. All the tools of deceit serve them well and none dare call it treason.

Heaven Can’t Wait

Dear God:
     
I know you supposedly created Donald Trump and I’m not going to ask why. Let’s just say that if your ways are inscrutable you blew the curve on this one. Please, take the fucker (excuse me) back. He doesn’t serve any earthly purpose.

To the contrary, he’s incredibly destructive. If you care at all about your creation please take him back. And, by the way and hoping not to be presumptuous, now would be good.

Your Devoted Servant,

James M Flanagan

Derided By Voices

Trump must have a little voice inside of him constantly telling him what a loser piece of shit he is. Why else would he need to always seek approval, demand attention and demean and belittle everyone around him?

On Booger Mountain

It’s so hard to grow up but most people manage it. Not Donald Trump.

Also, it’s normal to feel ambivalent about it but most people escape childhood and adolescence successfully. Trump elected to stay there, slinging snot and firing his spitballs of doom.

The Triassic Basin and Me

I live on the edge of the Triassic Basin and, because of the work that I do, end up telling people about it once in a while, that it’s an area of subsidence with weird soils because of all the muck that flowed in, gathered and grew there after it sank. It reminds me of myself.

I had been supported by a highly disciplined and structured educational system that was suddenly dismantled and removed to be replaced by something with no structure at all. I mean NO structure. They stopped teaching because it was too authoritarian. All the muck flowed in instead.

A subsidence had ensued, a void in me where all that information and structure and discipline had taken up space. I had a sticky mind and was emotionally pliable — impressionable, as they say. I became a mess, I would say ... a brat, a smartass, a budding degenerate and an occasional bully.

I was termed an “instigator” for stirring up trouble and thought it an honor, as adolescent boys of a certain set and disposition would. In the longer run I think it made me empathetic. I realized how much success in life, whatever that is, and how much of everything is determined by often accidental, circumstantial stuff or presumably well-intentioned bullshit.

The circumstances that created the racist mire we inhabit now are not accidental or well-intentioned. It’s vicious, deliberate, systematic, systemic ... and it’s producing exactly the results anybody would expect. The shit flows into the void. If there’s a shortage of shit we make sure the supply is replenished, watch the results and blame the people we’ve victimized.

This is an classic example of unloading — one group making another carry the burdens of their own corruption and insecurity and then putting a torch to them, a bonfire of the dark vanities that keep us from knowing ourselves and owning our natures. Why the resistance to self-knowledge? Suspicions about the darkness that’s there. Fear. Of course there’s darkness there.

There’s always darkness there.

The error is in thinking it’s exceptional, which originates in thinking we’re exceptional — that we’re more than we are and that the evil in us is therefore potentially epic. We’re all only human. There’s nothing epic about us except what we create in compensation for failing to accept our limitations and our insignificance. But accepting our insignificance is liberating.

We don’t become small we become who we are, as genuine and authentic as we can be. Otherwise we become monsters. There are monsters among us these days. We’ve empowered them. We’ve delegated our unloading to them so we aren’t even authentic at that. We’re internally colonized by wankers, too inauthentic even to be our own villains.

I will say this, we’ve found some first rate stand-ins.

Posterior Analytics

What is it about kissing Trump’s ass that so enthralls conservatives? Beyond the simple peck on the cheek, their equivalent of kissing the Pope’s ring, there are the true anus lickers, like Bill Barr and all these others we have seen who clean up Trump as he shits himself.

Trump is a shitting machine. Self-shitting is Trump’s essential mode of being. This isn’t what they do it’s what they are, beyond bodily function and into the areas of soiling symbolism. Trump is the god of defecation, arrested before he had learned to use a bathroom.

Totalitarian Perspective Vortex

It’s my wish that Donald Trump could see, just for a split second, what an incredible failure and worthless human being he is. Surely he would die of a blown mind or just creep off into oblivion  ...

Koch Monkeys Invade Capital

Some of the monkeys Charles and David Koch have trained for years to fight on their behalf have staged a protest in Michigan amounting to an assault on democracy, order, the rule of law and the notion that our nation is even governable. Before you object and say that such extremists are a small minority of our population or even of their movement consider that their organizational arm, the Sinn Féin to their IRA, has dominated American politics and the government for at least forty years.

Hand in hand they have arranged for its sale and bought it. They are exactly what our country now represents and they think it is okay to shoot you if you stand in the way of what they have unilaterally declared to be their rights. Not that it has been necessary. Those people in Michigan are the dregs, too stupid to see they have already won but they’ve been so manipulated and stoked with rage over the years it has to go somewhere. It should be used against the Republican establishment.

They are the “elites” who have screwed them. It’s tempting to thinks it’s a conspiracy but it’s not. As such it would be overdetermined. A conspiracy wasn’t necessary, only incredibly powerful people with common interests naturally falling into line and acting in concert. But, they needed mass support, troglodytes who would vote themselves down the river for trinkets and beads and a few tasty bones. The problem is the troglodytes are taking over. They have their representatives within the political wing, notably a faction of smarmy, degraded, ass-licking southern white boys. 

It’s the Southern Strategy, people. They did it right out in the open and even declared their intent before the saw, amazingly, that it was working and decided to go underground with the incredible cascade of lies and rationalizations we live with to this day. It was never anything but a frontal assault on democracy but we must forgive our fellow citizens for failing to see how bad it was. Try to put yourself in the place of someone who lives in a state of constant fear and hatred — and someone who has Fox on all day, encouraging them along. Mind warping. We are in incredibly deep shit.

Votes still count but it might not last. We need to get out there and get the job done.