Polling Error

When the polls are wrong about elections we find out. We don't with popularity polls, approval ratings and opinion stuff. Biden keeps registering as unpopular but he isn't trying to win favor. He doesn't play to the cheap seats. Or the hoodlums, like Trump. 

He's trying to undo a lot of Republican damage, the fate of Democrats since the Nixon years. I think people secretly love and respect Biden or love and respect the job he's doing. In any case, his government is pretty rational and free of psychodrama. 

And he's been productive considering that Republican cooperation in wanting a responsible government is zero. They want the government destroyed and replaced by business interests. Which is only possible with the support of fundamentalist religious fanatics. 

That would be a real dystopia. I assume we don't want that but there's no way to poll it. Do you want to fuck your government up the ass and ruin the country? Are you a demented traitor and cospiratorial fantasist? Sometimes I think polling should be illegal. 

The Madman of Mar-a-Lago

Any argument about Trump's supporters loving him in spite of his flaws should have ended. But now, with the madman of Mar-a-Lago no longer able to pack the Supreme Court with hacks and 'deconstruct' the deep state, choose your delusion, it's evident enough they love him because he's a deranged piece of shit and a wrecking ball. Think if how inconceivable it is that the lunatics who shot out a chunk of the electrical grid in North Carolina would be Biden supporters. 

A Putin-seque response is appropriate for the perpetrators. Life at hard labor in Nome or the closest thing we have to Siberia. Or, they could be shot for treason. I'd be fine with that. It's hard to argue it wasn't sedition and a premeditated act of insurgency. What's insurgent at Mar-a-Lago is a newly strong commitment to overthrow. Herr Donald has put a contract on our government. Of the Vinny kind, as the car guys used to say. Our country, ye olde unum e pluribus. 

 It would no longer be our country if he had it his way. It would be his.

The Mosh Pit

Musk has turned Twitter into a mosh pit. What that means I don't know. Good place to mosh now anyway. But where does that get you? And I like punk. But I'm not sure granting head-banging a ton of influence is particularly wise.

Sick Fuck

I thought Trump was in trouble when he came out with 'Ron DeSanctimonious,' It didn't sound like him. Maybe he has insult writers and someone else came up with it. Trump has an ear for an insult. It might be his only talent -- hard to tell when a guy is born that rich in America, because people will suck up to you, do business with you and marry you because you're rich. You never know if they're sincere. In Trump's case, he didn't care. Because he's not a normal person. He's a sick fuck. 

Mr. America

Okay, let's judge Trump like they do in one of the pageants he used to run.

Talent. Poise. Swimsuit. Overall appearance, including hair and in a gown. And he would have to be interviewed and give a little talk, maybe about how he wants to make the world better by overturning the last election and using the federal government to destroy the lives of those who resist him. 

'Let Trump Be Trump'

How's that working out for you, Republicans? They had their Night of the Long Knives, in painful slow motion. A loyalty purge. 

Then, a Reichstag moment. But in politics, as in business, Trump turns out to be massively incompetent. Thank God. More of a Mussolini.

But a führer is waiting in the wings. A number of them. Competing factions. The money is on DeSantis. His Nazi cred is high.

Meltdown at Mar-a-Lago

It's high noon. 

And Trump is shooting it out with himself. On Truth Social bullets boomerang. But Trump, reactive as ever, keeps firing. He's outwardly calling for a coup. Maybe not a coup, technically, since it's not modeled relative to the law, or its lack, or politics.

The model is business.

Call it an attempted hostile takeover. By a fantastically rich capital fund that believes in leverage--massive debt--to mitigate risk and maximize possible returns. It sounds like voodoo because it is. Risk has to go somewhere. Guess where. Surprise! Onto us.  .

All the risk is on us. Rewards to them. 

Republicans have this shit figured out. They've tested and perfected it in the private sector. But they want to own everything. Only the government, reflecting the collective will, might stop them. So they mean to stop it. And they have. They have this down.

The Plunderer's Guide to the Galaxy

Call me suspicious, but I don't trust these tycoons and their interest in outer space. Rapacious urges may be at work, insatiable drives and a longing for opportunities to have a shot at unspoiled territory. Virgin realms. Isn't this the lesson of America, how great it is to have a natural resources free-for-all? 

Free shit for everybody! 

Not for everybody, as it happens. Wealth has a way of accumulating at the top. And those people of ensuring it stays there. Even after they're dead. Maybe they feel awe and wonder looking up at the night sky. I don't know. But I bet Bezos and the rest feel a kind of lust. They wonder what's there to be had. 

By them. They want to make it theirs. 

Herschel Walker for President

Why are we messing around with this? The point of running Walker for the Senate is as an insult. A show of contempt. For liberals, the government, the country, the idea of America, and for life in general. Let's get it the fuck over with and have him run for president in 2024. If Republicans insist on having us in the ditch I'd rather jump. The only choice we have left might be whether to be pushed and dragged or to go voluntarily, they're so determined. 

Dreck the Halls

Conservative media is offering hate for the holidays. Hate the woke. Hate the gays. Hate the trans. Hate Biden and Pelosi. Hate antifa and the other made-up threats. Save the rich and screw the poor. Women, children and the elderly first. Not for the lifeboats. Sink them. Throw them overboard. Fuck them over and deprive them of security. And Merry Christmas from conservative media.

Burl Ives makes me violently angry.

Mostly, singing Christmas music. I can't help it. But he's dead. Maybe that makes it better. And he was great in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

Separately Unequal

Wealth inequality--which. is to say, inequality--is hard to reverse without trashing the economy and hurting everyone but it must be tried. Better to take the hit and rebuild than a slow decline. 

Quantum Trump

Everything is uncertain about Trump. Location, mass, movement. He's relative. Or, I should say, Trump is uncertain. A slippery character and shape shifter. You can never know where he is. Because there's nothing there. He's not a thing he's a fragment. He's missing parts. The ones that make you human. 

Muskian Shithole

Twitter is a Muskian shithole. It didn't take long. I've never been on it but I think it's a shame. 

Let's Make a Deal

I've had enough of Trump. He's running for president again to avoid prosecution and possibly jail. There's another way out. Cut him a deal.

He forfeits all his assets. We leave him $100M cash. He leaves the country. Hungary, Saudi Arabia and North Korea will be happy to have him.

Maybe Scotland. Scots love nothing better than battle and kissing rich ass. An odd people, the Scots. Wealthy Scots kiss their own ass, but that's another story.

Trump agrees to shut the fuck up.

That, or Rikers. He goes in with the general population. Okay, maybe Butner. Tell me why not, if  'the law' means anything. The kids go too, by the way.

The grandkids can return one day but they better behave. We'll be watching. 

I Invent a Religion

I follow a number of 'conservative' sites to keep my game up, a couple of which are Catholic. The misunderstandings there are rife so I'm inventing a new religion, a takeoff on Catholicism, which is right on many things. This will be a Catholicism that embraces the distinction between immanence and transcendence radically and in a new way. Meaning, no afterlife. No resurrection. No heaven or hell. 

And, no god. But, all God. (I foresee droves of converts.)

Transcendence is beyond space and time. We have no admittance there. It's a matter of faith. Immanence puts us in a place of necessary discipline and structure (that or chaos, the anti-logos) where we can glimpse the truths of transcendence and have them guide us, sometimes realizing the transformation. True spiritual traditions have to come to terms with this divide and dichotomy. They do so in varying ways.

Such as using stories (parables) or metaphors. 

For example, any talk of the eschaton is not about an event in time. It's about an event over time, our eschaton. Every day we live is one less day we have. This is not a parable, I know. I cite it because it's a huge mistake to take it literally. Put it in space-time. The point is to convey urgency in a situation that couldn't be better designed for complacency, apathy and ennui. Life. The point is that life is a gift. 

However mixed.

One not to be taken for granted. We live in an ongoing emergency, that of our mortality, which is hard to grasp. But the key is to grasp it well enough to live with love and joy while we can, as best we can, if not celebrating our mortality through radical acceptance, having a death-bed perspective all the time or as much as possible. The utility of end times talk is to convey that our lives are always ending. 

Slipping through our fingers. This same reasoning applies to everything. Literalism is heresy. In the Bible, or wherever there is truth. The Catholic Church was accused at one time of being stuck in the Middle Ages, a time of illiteracy. Right on. The Church had assumed the complete immersion of the laity in corporeality in an uncontrollable world, providing no abstract understanding to back up the rules. 

Take sin, mortal and venial. 

The Church gave us rules. No end of rules and lists. Which is insulting to people who can understand the abstract difference. That a venial sin is a goof and a mortal sin is denying that life is intelligible, a challenge to the existence of God, or even a direct denial of God's existence. Rules weakened the Church. And the delusion of purity in isolation or quarantine, in this case the purity of the clerisy, was in effect.

So the Church sowed the seeds of its weakness because the polarity is not there. Having a weak laity took down the clerisy which took down the Church, notably in the 1960s when literalism took hold. I miss the Latin which was a real loss but also a symbolic one. The Church had always rejected literalism, which is a structure of containment, and embraced symbolism, which is art, which is infinite if inscrutable.

Inscrutability or paradox is the idea, an expression or acceptance or embrace of human inadequacy and limitation. Maybe a celebration of insufficiency because, well, it's all we've got. It's all I've got. Party down. Back to that uncontrollable world. The big change is there, in control. The strides have been immense. So much so we're sometimes indignant when we can't control things. But then there's death.

We want this to be as convenient as possible. I want mine to be as convenient as possible, determining how it happens since I can't control that it happens. Thank God for morphine. A gift of God. Anyway, I can't fault myself or anyone for this but what have we lost? What have we lost in our resulting arrogance? I think the Brit aristocracy played polo to practice war skills when there was no war, an infrequent thing.

And hunting. I think we need to work to stay familiar with our limitations. As an antidote to arrogance. Humility becomes us. I've glimpsed the transformation and it's all love. The big embrace. And all humility. But nothing describes it. Which is what I'm trying to convey. It's a matter for art. Art, broadly, is uncontainable. Literalism, biblical or constitutional 'originalism' or whatever, are death and anti-art. 

As in the 'Antichrist.' Literalism is utopianism, perfectionism, hypocrisy and death. Death to humanity, kindness and decency. And, usually, actual killing since it makes life meaningless and nothing but a struggle for power and control in an ultimately uncontrollable world. We don't need an afterlife, a reward, to celebrate creation or feel good about life. We don't need a judgment day to behave.

Has it worked so far? I don't think so. We know transcendence because the seeds of it, as the good books rightly say, are within us, but needing some cultivation. We don't need anything else. Some discipline and an openness to inspiration are all. The head and the heart, working together and oriented to the higher things. None of the Bible works in space and time. Heaven is a state on earth. Not a state like that. 

You know what I mean. A condition. Containment is not a condition for love. It's antithetical to love because it seeks power. Containment of people, above all. Individually we're temporal beings. Maybe collectively, since we seem to be choosing to destroy ourselves. Because we're disappointed, presumably, about life. But that's a choice. And a bad one. Choose life. Create the day, as I say to myself.

It's an increment of time I can handle. Beyond that I often don't do well. Many people don't do well in this odd space-time thing we're stuck in because we all need help. And helping one another is why we're here. All we need is love. We want to think we're inherently different from animals. But we're as different as we behave. The good news: we can do it. It's not hard. Which is what's so sad about failing. 

  . . . (ongoing) 

 

Small is Terrible

So called 'conservatives' favor the consolidation of everything into huge combustible fireballs of tenacious gravity and inhuman capability, finally culminating in a single black hole or dark star of destruction. Monopolization, if you like, of everything and at all levels. Trump is representative. 

No light emanates from there. All the energy is inward until perfect entropy and interstellar unity is reached, in the perfection of death.

This is due to fear. At the core of conservatism is existential fear. Primal fear. It's the one irreducible thing, leading them to armaments, mobilization and attack. Preemptive attack. Justified, in their paranoid way, by projection. Of couse it's unconscious. Because they're sick. The sick fucks of the universe.

They will get us all killed, eventually. Meanwhile, maximizing misery will have to do.

I'm on Fire

There's nothing like fire. Maybe water. They're so cool. Wonderful when harnessed or we'll-used, but so incredibly indifferent. Fire is scarier. I'd rather drown than burn. We had a flood, reportedly, Noah and all. Now we're burning. By choice. Combustion, which we chose. Some passively but others, like evangelical Christians, want everything to burn. They think they'll be saved. 

Sucked up to heaven in glory. We'll all burn. Keep that in mind with the political discord. They want the world to end. In fire. And they want us to burn because they think it's just. We're not believers. The kindling is stacked all around and lesser fires are everywhere. But keep in mind they want this. To set the world on fire. And they're incredibly driven and running everything. 

Maestro Donald Conducts Overthrow Orchestra

Stewart Rhodes is going to jail. All this does is illustrate for me how it's a crime in America to be black or poor. Equal justice is a joke. Rhodes was Tex Watson to Trump's Manson. And that's before we note that trying to overthrow the government is now a franchise or sport. Maybe a sports franchise. A board or video game with real people and deaths.

They will get less time than a lot of low-level drug dealers, be called heroes and compared to Jesus and the Apostles and have admirers and groupies and cadres and cliques. From jail. We know those women who have a thing for inmates. There are women who have a thing for priests. A sexual fetish. 'Priest-fuckers' a Jesuit I once knew called them. 

I allow for fucked-up people. I know there will be crazies, sociopaths, and a percentage of every kind of mental abnormality. 'Abnormality,' I say, wondering what normal is anymore, when nutcases are running everything. Speaking of Jesuits, I recall a book by one that said there are higher and lower things in people. The higher must rule the lower.

Similarly for a society. Higher and lower elements. Where would you say we are with that? With a Republican Party that seems to function to find the biggest piece of shit they can and then slam him into office? Which they can do because they've gamed the system. Up to the Supreme Court which they own. They bought it. Like everything else. 

Justice is a joke in America. The Republican model for America is a family. A crime family. Dad is a drunken, cruel, authoritarian monster who can't be stopped. Country needs to head to the crisis center. We're being ravaged. Our political system is flexible for a reason, to allow us to do what we must to stop this kind of shit. We lack the determination. 

Throwing Mucus

The holidays are upon us again. Pandora is playing Christmas music on the system. The lights and ornaments are out and will soon be up. But the spirit eludes me. There is much hate in the land. A new fascist movement has arisen, internationally but as always America is the driving factor. 

Just as it was in the 1930s when American laissez-faire capitalists trashed the world economy and gave us WWII and the Holocaust. Their partners today, southern racists, were of course active then and influenced Hitler. Who knows to what degree but the racists and plunderers are back, wrecking everything.

They are giddy with the joy of destruction.

And, this holiday season, I want to extend to them a huge 'fuck you.' Fuck you and your children. Fuck you until you die, may it be soon. I will not offer the olive branch of cooperation. I will not offer excuses and rationalizations. Go to hell. Stick a tree-topper ornament up your ass and spin on it.

DeSantisland: A Hate Alternative to Disney

Just wondering if Ron DeSantis would put forth another message of hate and exclusion in celebration of Thanksgiving. He laid it on after the election, in particular attacking the 'woke mob' which doesn't exist. But since when did non-existence bother Republicans? They've been making shit up forever. It's what the party is for. And they want all their opposition to non-exist. To get out of the way.

Let their rights be fucked forever. 

DeSantis won by a lot. Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on in Florida. They've always had their share of rednecks. Rednecks are losers who resent everybody and own a lot of guns. Apart from that, I don't know. I suppose Florida has a lot of old people who don't give a fuck about the future. Maybe we should have voting restrictions on old people because they aren't invested in the future.

And they might have dementia so they vote for lunatics like DeSantis and Trump. Trump supporters should be excluded from voting since they support sedition and that's illegal. There must be a glitch in the system or they would all be in jail. A big glitch, because a constitutional framework can't include the means of its own destruction. Or maybe it can and all the rational people should spin off. 

Republicans want the government to be a corporation and corporations do this shit all the time. They morph all over the place. Opportunistically. Improvisationally. Floridians and Texans make out that yankees want to move there because they've trashed their cities with liberal values. But it's the weather. And the end of the relevance of the resources and know-how that built those cities up. 

And, that enabled them to support corrupt, spoiled states like Florida and Texas that never treated workers like anything but serfs. And black people and minorities like anything but slaves, inputs, raw materials and expendable stuff. They were expendable. Oh, for the days with darkies singing in the fields and giving up their women for massa's satisfaction. DeSantis wants to take us back to that.

As artificial as Disneyland but with a lot of bite. A theme park of hate.

Guess Who's Cumming All Over Your Dinner

It's Donald Trump, again. The great defiler is officially back. 

Cyber Stickup Deals

Buy this shit or we'll kill this dog . . . er . . . economy.

The Accidental Tsarists

I'm pondering, do Republicans know what they're doing or is it all brain-stem stuff? Animal drives. If they want a monarchy, why don't they say so? With talk of a reign of Trumps, one after another, this would be a real dynasty, not like the Kennedy and Bush jobs. More pomp. More circumstance. Lots of serfs scrounging around. And then, maybe, a revolution. 

Where Beagles Dare

Having put it off forever I finally read a first-hand account of the unbelievable shit-show of the Trump White House and I'm still trying to comprehend it. Clearly, for Trump it was a takeover. A leveraged buyout. The executive branch, and the country, for that matter, were his to do with as he pleased. It was up to others to rein him in if they could and, good luck, because he never met a law he didn't think he could break with impunity. He had never been a competent businessman, after all, only a snake oil salesman, a bungler, a rogue, a charlatan and a fraud. 

So Trump's end of it I can kind of understand. I defer to the wisdom of Animal House. The loaning of the Cadillac. The owner is told, when the inevitable happens, what did you expect? You give something nice to people who have no respect for anything and it will get trashed. Ergo, it's your fault. The part I can't understand is the ass-kissers, crotch-sniffers and anus-lickers. Almost all, for example, of the Republican elected officials in Washington. Among the vampires I'm sure it was higher. Among the lobbyists, arms-dealers, pollution-peddlers and so on, I mean. 

Washington is full of them. Even after WWII it was like a sleepy college town, with the federal government as the college. Eisenhower certainly saw the potential of the parasites and warned us. Beware the parasites. We did not heed him. Early on, it was bipartisan. But Republicans eventual bought the franchise on corruption. As an investment. And it paid off. As an investment. Oaths be damned. Legality and democracy and responsible government have nothing to do with it. They are in it for the money and the power. That explains the crotch snffers and anus lickers. 

So far, so good. I have progressed in my understanding. At an abstract level. Empathetically I'm still nowhere. I can't get there. Somehow I stumbled on Berchtesgaden. Hitler's hangout. So I researched it a bit and then I got it. How it must feel. The incredible high of the power. The seamlessness of it, since the feeling is with you constantly. Mark Meadows and the rest of them might have to eat shit to Trump but, what a small price to pay to be so close to inconceivable power. Weirdly, I don't think Trump feels powerful. Just isolated and scared. But he's a sick fuck. 

So the beagles flock to Berchtesgaden. I mean, Mar-a-Lago. Where they lick and sniff and try to follow a scent to a pot of gold and loll in the sun. I don't mean to impugn beagles. I love dogs. But, you get the point. Dogs are supposed to be dogs. Republicans are not. 

Just Asking

Entirely in the abstract, now that Trump is no longer president, I ask if someone with the opportunity would have been morally and ethically justified in employing the 'Magnussen solution' by blowiing his brains out? When he was president?

I mean, given what we now know? I pose this as a hypothetical, obviously, since he's no longer president. But it's worth thinking about. I stress, as Tucker Carlson so often has, that I'm only raising the point and not suggesting anybody do anything. 

Everything is art.

Everything is art. What we usually call 'art' is the good stuff. Or the stuff that tries to be good. Or the stuff that conforms to some category, like painting. But everything is art. Because life is entirely creative. 

Individual Wealth and Waste

I'm convinced that individual wealth must be curbed. It results in social distortions. On the other hand, I believe in a differentiated, diverse and even hierarchical society. I come not to abolish wealth but to diminish it. 

What Passes for Class . . .

among Republicans can be viewed in a clip of a 'Let's Go Brandon' chant at an LIV tournament with Trump, Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Greene enjoying the moment. 

Hackathon

Both Bush and Trump got hundreds of thousands of people killed, had adminstrations that ran on corruption and ill-will and, incidentally, they got into power in stolen elections and had negative mandates but did whatever they wanted anyway. Never mind. 

With Republicans taking control of the House though more chicanery enabled by a Supreme Court dominated by hacks, there will be plenty investigating going on. Of things the caliber of Hunter Biden's laptop, Hillary's emails and other imaginary scandals. 

Prince of Whales

Who comes to mind? 

You're Only as Fucked as You Feel

Republicans are extremely committed to their corruption. All-in, as they say. For the war criminals of the Bush years it makes sense. They could have gone to jail. They should have gone to jail. Probably too late now. It's not too late for the Trump crowd. The corruption in the Trump administration was laughable. In a dark, morbid kind of way since they, too, got hundreds of thousands of people killed. Americans, in this instance. Not that Americans didn't get needlessly killed in the Bush years.

The Trump boys did it with incompetence, ignorance, arrogance and vanity. Recall Trump's wanting a show of 'gratitude' before releasing supplies to suffering people, supplies that were not his and belonged to the public. What a lowlife highlight. And recall his considering whether those who were being ravaged were Democrats, who were disproportionately affected earlier on, or Republicans who were affected more later by being stupid enough to listen to Trump. A superlative asshole move. 

I'd say it's up there with Bush using 9/11 to put through a bunch of stupid partisan shit, like cutting taxes on the rich while burning through enough money to rebuild the country's entire infrastructure in the process of destroying an entire region of the world, accomplishing nothing and creating over 30 million refugees. Bush also crashed the world economy just like Republican laissez-faire capitalists did in the 1920s thereby empowering Hitler. So he caused the autocratic upsurge we see today. 

But Republicans are in denial. They're passing laws against truth. In Florida and Texas, for example, so white children will never learn what their daddies and granddaddies and on back did in the culture wars. They kicked some ass. And we see how powerful that denial is because we can't do anything that makes sense. Only make rich people richer. Period. Forever. End of story. That's what corruption is for. And the American economy. Rape the world, if you must. But the rich got to have more.

Florida Fuckups Dominate Race

Rick Scott and Donald Trump sabotaged their own party out of egotism and arrogance, resulting in an election favoring Democrats more than almost anyone expected. Having their heads so far up their asses they took risks offering little hope of reward but it scared people into voting for Democrats. 

We are accustomed to this from Donald, who got hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans killed with his incompetence. But Scott couldn't keep his mouth shut and followed Newt Gingrich down the hole of nearly admitting openly how he intended to screw his fellow citizens. Close enough, anyway.

Even if they couldn't articulate it American voters understood he was after them, out to take away every bit of security they have. Simply because he's an asshole. From a party of assholes. And a state ruled by assholes, the Free State of DeSantis, where they've taken the Gator identification too far.

My Net Worth

My net worth as a voter is supposed to be the same as Sheldon Adelson or Charles Koch, may they rot in Hell and die a horrible death, respectively. It is not. How many fifths of a man am I, then, I ask. We need a new denominator in that one, to capture the proportional difference in dollar reserves. And that, my friends, is American democracy. 

Congratulations

I want to congratulate J. D. Vance. He sold his soul and got something for it. So many others didn't get shit. Having mortgaged his humanity for votes we'll see how it goes for Mr. Vance. Will he hang in with Trump? Trump was standing right there, as he would have to be, when his own ego blew up in his face. Huge shit-splattering going on. Will Vance get splattered? Will he distance himself? 

We will see. But soul-selling is notoriously risky. Vance, anyway, has proven his own book to be bullshit. Rednecks are running rampant. Hillbilly culture isn't dead it spread. Gone mainstream. Whole country is an ungovernable feud--I wanna be a Hatfield!--and celebration of ignorance. Guns are every-fucking-where. People shoot one another for sport. It's the redneck way. And America. 

All Worn Out

One would think--I would think--that being an asshole takes lots of energy. Lots of drive. Lots of time and resources. Hate is not normal to be in all the time. That's not a natural state. It's exhausting. Exhibit A is 'conservative' media, a disinformation metaverse, and all the money and effort and ornery it takes to maintain the hate. All the stoking and stroking. These are business people. 

They want bang. Returns. So they fooled us into funding our own demise. 

When you get down to it they've found ways to make it pay, even. Kochists not only aren't regulated they cut their own taxes which they richly deserve to pay. The point is, the further you get from reality the more resources it takes. It's a rule in ecology. A monoculture, like a weed-free lawn, is the most unnatural thing imaginable. So it takes massive energy subsidies to make and maintain. 

And there's stability in diversity. Anything else is unstable as hell.

Same with the white hegemony. The white boy hegemony. Every blade of grass a white man. Women haven't been empowered the way we like to think. Mostly bought off, which I suppose is more benign than force though the religious wing sold their souls for certainty. We are the weeds. Democrats and minorities. 'They must be eliminated.' Very Vader-esque. But he's Luke's father. 

We too are in a genealogy of waste and destruction. Of harming nature which is suicidal and self-hating. We're implicated. Not as bad by a long shot as the Kochists but that's how they get away with it. They throw us bones. And we're so rich the bones are nice and meaty and fatty and great. We need a break. I don't mean a rest I mean we need to step back. The way we're living is crazy. 

Responsible people are creating a surplus that's stolen and used against them. Nuts.

A Disturbance in the Farce

The diapered dirigible of Trump's political charade is in trouble, leaking gas and needing a thorough ass-wipe and rebranding. Tie it to a mast for a while, Herr Donald. A mast at Mar-a-Lago. The neighbors will love it. Or we might be looking at a Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity! 

Mo' Ron

DeSantis is the real thing. His entire identity is tied up in hate. Hating his fellow citizens. What Democrats are DeSantis is not. As a point. We used to feel that way about Nazis. We understood ourselves as what they weren't. Now being a Nazi is fine among Republicans. Being a racist is fine. Being part of an identity movement is fine. Wishing your fellow citizens ill is good. Getting people killed is fine. 

So DeSantis and the Republican Party are an unbelievable fit. This guy is spitting out hate with his wife and children right there. And Republicans are SO worried about improper influences on children. DeSantis is a Nazi. When he says 'woke' we're talking about people. When he says 'mob' we're talking about nothing. The 'woke mob' doesn't exist.  But mobs exist among Republicans. 

They're replete with mobs.

Proud Boys. Militias. Capitol attackers. One-Percenters. The morons in Charlottesville that Trump loved. All the people who show up, often with guns, in groups to intimidate other people. Boogaloos. Oath Keepers. It's hard to keep up but the fascisti, being cowards, love to go out in groups and scare people. DeSantis went to Yale. He's more a Heydrich or Goebbels. Educated. Nicely turned out. Not illiterate.

Well spoken if hate is your thing. When he talks about the woke mob to begin with there is no mob. That's a lie. He's inventing threats to stoke fear and create hate. And, the 'woke' are doing nothing wrong, apart from not even being a group. They have rights like everybody. But not in Florida. According to Ron. Which should be illegal if it isn't but Republicans never cared, going back to segregation days.

The good old days. When America had apartheid. They like criminality. Selectively. 

The right kinds of criminals. Criminals who are on their side. Or who are rich as shit. After 9/11 Bush should have called for an end to anonymous international banking, tying it to money laundering and terrorism. Which is true. But tax cheats and arms profiteers and shady conglomerates are his peeps. Republicans love power. They'll do anything for power. And DeSantis is now their go-to thug. 

The Weekly Sack of Shit Returns

I gave up on my Weekly Sack of Shit series because it couldn't capture Republicanism. It was like heralding crushing one termite. Not only was it hopeless it felt counterproductive because it aided the illusion that something had been accomplished when nothing had. 

On the other hand, crushing that termite felt good. Thus this week I found myself wanting to crush the termite Ron DeSantis. I suspect he's a termite queen. A breeder. A propagator. And fertile, just the thing if you want hate rot. Because he's all about one thing, the hate. 

In that spirit I bestow upon Ron the award, for all the good it will do. I never dreamt Republicans could come up with a bigger piece of shit than Bush. I couldn't imagine it, a failure on my part. And they came up with Trump who we know blew the curve. Now we have DeSantis.

A normal person can't imagine the evil he represents. So he carries on eating our house down by breeding hate. He doesn't lower himself to the actual munching, it being beneath him. He has followers for that. But when you lean up against a structural member it might crumble. 

Voting, e. g. Without it the house falls. And it's the work of DeSantis or someone like him. 

McCarthy Hate Continues in Expected Victory

Kevin McCarthy, as immensely powerful as he is a piece of shit, won't let go of the hate. In his latest comment on the expected Republican takeover of the house he had to mention Pelosi, in a meme slur at this point, since gracious behavior in the new Republican Party is a sign of degeneracy. The total moral inversion this represents only continues to worsen. The bottom hasn't yet been found. 

Shithead Wins in Ohio

Unrepentant degenerate J. D. Vance has won in Ohio, cementing that state's status as a redneck hellhole. There are also many reactionary Catholics in Ohio so Vance, a convert, is appropriate there too. I read his book which was garbage. My Amazon review shows I saw through Vance's scam early. 

I'm proud of that. 

He's the cream, he thinks, who rose to the top but he's a turd that floats, a floating turd, too dumb to see that his Mamaw was bigoted scum. I saw it, when he didn't. Mamaw's line on Vance's sister's husband was 'he's a saint' which is, of course, her version of the old slur about the 'cult of the saints.'

A slur against Catholics. So Vance is a cultist. 

Several times over, taking it up the ass from Trump and Thiel, from the latter maybe literally. We don't know what went on in private. As Tucker likes to say I'm only asking the question. Other questions arise. How degraded will he be in action. Jordanesque, like another Ohioan? High bar, there.

Or low, depending on how you look at it. 

Pure Evil

Democrats don't want to say it but Republicans are evil. Republicans are saying it about Democrats but that's what evil does. It doesn't care. Their indecency is on display. We thought we'd escaped from the old stories. We could study them, cross-culturally and such, and see them recreated in modern versions. Like Star Wars. But they didn't pertain anymore. In escaping from want, to the extent we had, we thought we'd escaped from the demons within us. At least some of them. Were we ever wrong. 

It wasn't about want. Cruelty isn't about deprivation it's about fear. Maybe love deprivation, but, that's another matter. Technical sophistication has nothing to do with ignorance. Or real intelligence. They're on different tracks. A geeky 'genius' can be evil as hell. Maybe more likely because of his detachment and insecurity. You know the type. Tell me you don't have someone in mind. Anyway, as is often the case it happened slowly then in a rush. A tipping point or critical mass was reached. 

And it was a simple story. An old story. Selling one's soul. Republicans sold their souls for power. It's been written about. We watched it happen. Through the Southern Strategy. Play on race and get votes. Reagan did it and then treated Falwell like the useless, sick yokel he was. Bush was a turning point. A hopeless degenerate and congenital fuckup. Now he paints and collects his federal retirement check. Remember, he was an employee. It was hard to see through all the bullets, oil and arrogance.

They all played the race game. The racism game. 

And they won. So the devil is here to collect on that debt. As always the innocent and powerless will suffer. Are suffering. Have suffered. Republicans have the power but their souls are gone. It leaves a big hole. The souls are destroyed. Fragmented and obscured. Don't bother looking. But look at them. Just at them. The winners, still struggling for more because nothing is enough. Not when your soul is gone. How are they different from Darth Vader?  Where are our Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca?

I want to be Chewbacca. I kinda look the part. But that's another story. 

Pelosi Preview

The attack on Paul Pelosi is but a preview. As though we hadn't seen enough. Still, it's stunning. But get used to it. And, if it had been worse, if Pelosi had been maimed or killed, it would be no different. Sure, more cover-your-ass mutterings from Mitch or another piece of shit but they would be loving it since Democrats have been asking for it and deserve to be disempowered by any means. And retribution for past sins is fine. It's open season on Democrats. And Republican identification comes with a hunting license.

A Simple Desultory DeSantis

This guy is not an opportunist. Maybe to a small degree. He's a determined autocrat. An arrogant asshole. A born killer and absolutely committed to his mission, to disempower Democrats and establish a single-party state. Just like autocrats everywhere.  

He seems more organized and logical than he is. The consistency is in his drive and determination. In that sense it's a cohesive thing. Like an animal hunting. He's focused. Focused by his feelings of superiority and contempt for other beings. For everyone.

In that respect he's like Trump. He despises almost everyone. Those who dispute with him and the lowlies who serve him. He respects only power. Unrestrained power. Which he wants. Probably as president. Then he will ruthlessly crush anyone he wants.

But he's not inspired or inspirational. Rather, he's a drudge. An enforcer. In spite of his obvious ambition he seems to be working for someone else. I think he's working for the Force. Not that one but Darwin's. He thinks people shouldn't interfere with nature.

With its wonderful heirarchies and brutality. God made the world a mean, vicious, competitive, nasty and indifferent place full of suffering. It's an insult to God to try to make it nice. So DeSantis is fighting to make the world nasty and brutal and unjust.

In the name of God.

Dying for a Lie

Putin is getting a lot of his people killed for some very narrow interests. Possibly only his own. George Bush did a much better job of it. 

We Love Lunatics

Lucille Ball was too brash for me, However, I loved The Honeymooners. All in the Family I never watched. Couldn't get interested. Married With Children I never watched. I think I might have liked it. I'm not a fan of network TV, not even Seinfeld, though I know it's a matter of taste.

 

Put me in Guantanamo, make me watch most network TV, and I would tell you anything. Forget waterboarding, but that would work too. Use Baywatch. Sadist? Start with waterboarding. If it would save my family I might hold out for a while. I always hated politics. It seemed like torture to me. 

Most of the time. But when you score you score big. Civil rights. All of FDR. Preventing wars and nuclear holocaust. The good old days. When there was some national cohesion. Or so we thought. It was an illusion. There was always division. With modernity and desegregation it rose up. 

Now division is everything. Hate. And everything is a show. All politics, no policy. As a show it sucks. Republicans choose lunatics as a display of contempt for governance. Not our government, but the idea of cooperation and a common good as a whole. Libertarians do this to you. 

A return to a state of nature. They favor savagery since they're already on top.

Butterflies Are Free to be Terrorists and Murderers

I thought I would try making something up as outrageous as Republicans to see how it feels. I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know once I figure it out. 

The Fugitive Wall Law

Republicans are obsessives. Obamacare was an unextreme law passed fairly. But it helped average people  and, to the extent it didn't, it was because of Republican obstruction and sabotage. Obstruction befrore it was passed and sabotage after. 

It raised taxes a little. On rich people. Did that destroy the economy as Republicans claimed it would? Of course not. On the other side of the equation, when Republicans want something they will do anything to get it. Fuck the law. 

So it is with the border wall which has huge symbolism and emotional, psychic investment. A symbol of division and hate, if it weren't obvious. But this is old news. They've been doing it for decades. It's more flagrant now.

More confrontational and aggressive. Take Doug Ducey. Sure he wants a wall. But it has nothing to do with anything real. It fulfills psychological personal, political needs. So he's gone combative and rogue because it's in vogue. 

Illegal, in other words. Daring the feds to come after him. Back in the day the Fugitive Slave Law showed what liars the racists were. States rights? Not for Yankees. When northerners tried not to enforce the law southerners went nuts.

They were always reactive. So Ducey is lining up shipping containers to make a wall that will not work but it will have bad environmental consequences. He doesn't give a shit. They care only about themselves, the crazy fuckers.

Truth Social Swamp

Truth Social is turning out to be such a handy indicator of conspiracism and criminal intent you have to wonder if it isn't an FBI front. Maybe Trump is the deep state. Or being manipulated as a magnet for all the worst elements and domestic enemies. 

God knows it is working. 

Stare Decisis No Carpe Diem Yo

The Supreme Court deemed voting rights protections no longer necessary. This unleashed a flood of activity proving otherwise. Oops! No matter. Among ideologues the ideas in your head are everything and all that matter, especially when the ideas are shared by people some of whom are enforcers. There was talk of impeaching John Roberts among Republicans when he failed to overturn Obamacare.

Like, the next day. They don't tolerate dissent well. All must be on their terms, democracy being a lot of sentimental and impractical woke nonsense. In that spirit the Court is about to rule against affirmative action, based on the same fantasy. Again, never mind that the whole recent history of the country has been of a struggle to undo civil rights and equal protection. They have access to higher reasoning.

From Catholic schools and traditions. Surely some of them had some Latin. All those mottos and stuff, et tu and all that, to say nothing of the Latin shorthand used among lawyers. Stare Decisis, for example. They've confused that one, though it came up in some or all of their confirmation hearings when they weren't being accused of sexual assault and such, with another that's not a legal term, I don't think.

Carpe Diem. They carpe all over, not wanting to waste time in case a couple of them suddenly croak. Croak away, I say. Alito and Thomas, especially. No redeeming qualities. Speaking of redemption, don't these authoritarian brutes believe in that? Some higher accountability? I don't think so. It's another lie and scam, their supposed piety, up there with rising tide. I hope there's a judgment day.

Are they in for a surprise. Sua culpa, boys. They have a lot to answer for.