Bonfire of the Humanities

As we become the Confederacy again self destruction ensues. If white southerners had let up on black people everything would have been fine. It would have been great as blacks were allowed to enjoy life and make all the contributions they could. Which were enormous even with the oppression.

But, no. The idiots started a war that got them crushed. 

And black people were used for more than their labor. They were used to carry the burden of the darkness of puritanical denial. Calvinist denial, and its correlative projection of all of the humanity they can't own in their longing for perfection and utopia. They unloaded their shit on black people.

Then tried to make a bonfire out of them. A human sacrifice. We're there again, with the impurity they so dread (which is only human fallibility, imperfection, mortality and weakness) denied and unloaded onto Democrats, the new blacks. The new Jews. The new 'others.' The new whatever. 

Open season on us. The bonfires are burning again.

Over nothing. Human inadequacy. Pleasure and innocence. Fun. But denial makes the darkness huge. They hate innocence, thinking it a fraud. Unless you're dead. Which they crave. The blissful loss of consciousness. But nobody I know has reported back from there. The other side. Not to me. 

The enjoyment of life is an ongoing insult to their convictions. That it's shit, and a pit of temptation, sin and perversion, as the wonderful creator made it. I think it's the one thing we know we have. For sure. Creation. Life. We should live it and live in it. Immersively, joyously, as best we can.

And as long as we can. Time to get on with it. 

Fox's Friends

McCarthy's Republican House, if not the whole corresponding congressional faction down to the latest serf hired out of Patrick Henry or Hillsdale College, has become an arm of Fox News. A disinformation metaverse. A forest of lies and wildfire of fabricated allegations and ridiculous accusations.

They feed the beast. Democrats whine on endlessly about how it's all lies. Of course it is but that standard is gone now, so Republicans enjoy it tremendously. The reality of truth is so shot to pieces every indignant finger pointed at a flagrant falsehood contributes to reinforcing the fact of Republican domination. 

They have won. And it's the most disgusting shitshow of depravity the world has ever seen. Because there are no excuses. America's good fortune came with responsibilities. We were awash in resources. Life might have been hard at times but, certainly eventually, we had it easy. And the pigs rose up to rule.

Roll With It

Let's not forget how Republicans roll. Laissez-faire economics means boom-and-bust. They create financial crises. 

Then, they move in. The pressure is always on to disempower the government, thereby circumventing the will of the people.

But the really crazy shit they want to do is only possible in a crisis. Cripple or repeal Social Security? Not usually doable.

In a crisis, though, they will argue it's necessary, that we can't afford it anymore. Of course tax cuts we can always afford. 

After the '08 financial debacle they caused the big players who enabled it mostly walked away richer, after engineering their own bailout. 

How do you say, 'conflict of interest?' And right-wing extremism shot up. All is going according to plan. Create fear. 

Exploit fear. Seize or consolidate power. Fuck over the 'little people' so they can't rise up and kill your asses, which you deserve. 

Then, they move on. Leaving the wreckage for us to clean up. It will happen again.  We are on track. This is what they do. 

Republicans Cry Fowl

Republicans are claiming to be 'birds of a feather' that can 'flock together' as a constitutional right based on their beliefs. Accusations that those beliefs are racist or prejudicial makes an illegitimate judgment because no one can see into their souls, only God. Furthermore, any correlation with racial or other identities that adhere to matters of belief is incidental and cultural and nobody's business. 

This, of course, is the old freedom of association argument laundered and dressed up differently to be marketed as a justification for a new age of the exclusion of others from full participation in public life and their formal and informal disenfranchisement. Yet again, Republicans are arguing it's their constitutionally ensured right to think what they want, say what they want and so on. 

They say they can and should be able to decide for themselves what similarly self-determined groups of their fellow citizens they choose to associate with based on beliefs, habits or whims. If they have a religious belief in racial superiority nobody can say it isn't secondary to their insistence on personal standards and cultural correlations. Are Germans, Italians and the English not different? 

Of course, this doesn't take into account the rights of anyone but them and the interference with those prerogatives implied in their scheme. Everyone else can get fucked, and if they're stupid enough to buy into this scam it's their problem. Because it's not about individual freedom within an unbiased system. It's about power and privilege. They want the system on their side. To our detriment and exclusion.

The Great Charade

Oh, goodie, we're going to have another degraded reality show mess centered on Donald Trump but meanwhile the race is on to see who will be the first trillionaire and the rational betting is more about how far we'll go in seeing our democracy destroyed and how soon, not about whether it will happen. Because it's already happened to a shocking extent.

Trump's indictment is a sideshow. If something doesn't threaten the hegemony of big money it's a sideshow and nothing is threatening the hegemony of big money. Big money is getting bigger and bigger and our government is more and more owned by corporate interests. Trump's indictment is a charade. The little people are at one another's throats like never before.

In other words, the really rich people with all the power are getting everything they want. Don't celebrate Trump's indictment. We haven't even stopped going backwards. 

Haze From Turd Fires Consumes Country

An amazing haze from a Republican turd fire has covered the eastern U.S. with fecal smoke and ash. On Capitol Hill Republican representatives variously denied they were the source or, in the case of Lindsey 'Cracker' Graham, defended it as the result of the glorious bonfire of the bloated bureaucracy that has supported him his whole life while muttering other stuff about the deep state and emails and a laptop. 

Birth of Conservative Icon

Sunny White is set to join Kyle Rittenhouse, Ashley Babbit and George Zimmerman as a conservative hero and icon. She will no doubt be persecuted by the woke mob and progressives for exercising her constitutional right to kill or cause harm by predisposition, which she did beautifully by running over a young indigenous woman with her car. 

My Brush with Consequence

I always wanted to be inconspicuous. To belong. I think it was an ADD thing. I feared if I were put in charge of something I'd crash it while I was distracted. Or that if I were observed much I would be found out as a fraud. Up to a point I had no end of discipline and structure in school and I think I flourished, more or less, or in comparison with how I did later. 

Later, when the discipline and structure were removed, I crashed and burned. A single car accident, like running off the road, but I probably hurt some feelings and disappointed some people on the way. Here I chronicle that crash. And the compromised person that came out of it, crippled by shame, beset by doubt, and insecure. Insecurity's other side is arrogance. 

Can be. Compensatory arrogance. I did see and understand things other people didn't or couldn't. I don't know how. It didn't make me feel good or special or smart it made me miserable. I felt alone. Confused, isolated and indignant. How could they not see it? Wasn't it obvious? 

You can imagine how I've reacted to recent trends. Trump, the celebration and affirmation of everything awful. Everything shit. Too painful. Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. Not a win in sight. Which is why, no doubt, the assholes are obsessed with winning. Real winners keep their heads down enjoy it and work to preserve it. For Americans not to feel like winners is just delusional. 

This is not a chronicle of facts or events but of feelings. No timeline. Who needs it? I got fucked up and I stayed fucked up, even with the awareness of it. I'm aware of it now and it does me no good. Shame is a bitch. It feeds on itself. You're screwed up so you do screwed up things and feel bad about it and I never got past it. Shit happens. And a whole life can play out like this. 

Texas Asshole Incensed Over Missed Opportunity to Destroy World

Chip (is that his 'Christian' name?) Roy, a notorious traitor and asshole from Texas, is extremely upset about the debt deal. Another opportunity to destroy the country has been lost. How many more times will the Confederacy see the final victory slip through its fingers?

Nothing if Not a Worm

Please don't credit Kevin McCarthy with anything. He's slithered himself into a safe space. What was good for the country had nothing to do with it. Principles or ideals had nothing to do with it. Decency had nothing to do with it, only crude ambition. I regret calling him a worm. Worms deserve better. 

Fetal Attraction

Republicans, among their fixations, have a thing for innocence. Not in a good way. They can't cope with it since they're basically insane people who think creation is a shithole, love a delusion and kindness for suckers. What, then, do you do with a baby.

Human babies, I've been told, are helpless for a weirdly long period having to do with the bipedal thing. With walking upright women's pelvises changed in ways that made it harder to have babies. Evolution selected for earlier births so human babies are all premature. 

This is a horrifying thing to contemplate. Evolution is a bitch. Women were dying disproportionately in childbirth because it served broader evolutionary ends. Though of course it would have been slower than we can comprehend but there's a reminder there.

About how risky childbirth was until recently. And Republicans are fucking with that now, a related story. Anyway, the combination of innocence and innate (to them) guilt manifested in a baby blows their minds. So they attack innocent people over it in this case Democrats.

In every case, Democrats. This is because they are nuts. They are shorting a circuit, one of quite a few. And so we get Pizzagate. We get all kinds of crazy shit. It has nothing to do with us or reality or life or anything outside of this sick internal battle going on with them. 

It goes on forever since in real life the transition from babyhood to something else is long and riddled with opportunities at arrestedness. You have to wonder if this isn't the appeal of Trump, who's completely schitzed out on this front. On the one hand, he isn't toilet trained. 

On the other, he's big and unsupervised. This is why we have prisons. Plenty of supervision there. But we see here how Republicans are beset by a huge internal battle and inhabit an unintelligible world of conflict. Which they are compelled by psychological forces to manifest. 

Voilà, and we have modern America, the land that makes no sense. The most fortunate people in the history of the world and we're destroying ourselves over nothing. Imaginings. And it should be said 'evangelicals' could be substituted for 'Republicans' anywhere here. 

Because those lunatics are driving the insanity. They will destroy everything if we let them. We must do whatever it takes to disempower them politically. Honest elections would work but good luck with that. They bought the Supreme Court for just this purpose. But, whatever it takes.

Or we're all totally fucked. 

Fuck Them Up the Ass PAC

I'm so tired of the lies.

Republicans have won so completely it doesn't matter anymore but, just for the anti-Orwellian hell of it, I wish they would name a PAC or two for what they're actually trying to do. Freedom's just another word for fucked up the ass, I guess I'm saying. 

Why are they still trying so hard to win? Because it's not a game. They can't win permanently as long as we're still alive, it's beginning to dawn on them, and they want that permanence. The multi-generational victory any true autocratic nutcase desires.

They can't escape death, yet, but they can hand down the reich to a new generation of psychos like Trump daddy and Koch daddy did, the evil-in-overdrive pair who've ridden their kids like the loser, half-human pawns they are all of their lives. 

A kind of immortality, no?

We chose to let them run everything. Not that it was any more of a choice than theirs. Prisoners envy you your freedom. They can't escape their compulsive prison of hate and fear so they want us in there with them. Psychos want it all. To be antisocial party animals. 

With no consequences. And to never have the party end. Frat boys forever! It's that simple. Which can't happen without massive subsidies. Daddy's checkbook. A credit card someone else pays. That we pay. With our lives if needed. College Republicans started it. 

Rove et al. They gave us the America we have now, a horrible fraternity of aging, inebriated bro's reliving the glories of shooting beers and fucking drunk girls. Real freedom is death so, not to worry. It comes for us all. Ergo, let's live like the biggest pigs in history. 

If that sounds good the Republican Party is for you, and their Take Back the Frat PAC, or whatever the fuck it is now, because it's nothing but antisocial insanity that will get us all killed. And it's probably too late to matter. But it's so fucking tiring.

 

Chutes and Ladders

Democrats take the ladders. Especially minorities. Republicans take the slides. Especially those who were born rich. This game is biased as hell.  

Say It Ain't So, Joe

Democrats are parental partners with an addicted, mentally-ill, violent and abusive spouse. Republicans aren't only a threat to the most vulnerable people in the country they're a threat to everyone. They're a threat to themselves. 

Biden is going to let them off the hook, on the debt ceiling, as though conciliation hasn't failed a thousand times before. And as though Biden hasn't learned this lesson himself many times. Or failed to learn it. Say it ain't so, Joe!

Avoid the Draft

Trump is about to start bellowing again. The 2024 election is getting closer. He has nothing else to do. He's a businessman, they say. 

Really, a crook and a scammer. He's turned running for office into a business and a scam. No, not right. Republicans had done it already.

Trump has simply supersized it. Plastered his name all over it, in gold. Done it more openly, brazenly and tastelessly than anyone before him.

Because he's an idiot and a goon. But my advice to you is to avoid the draft. The awful bellowing of hate and baiting of every kind of resentment.

Too fucking toxic. Build your defenses now. Plan ahead. Because it will be a fucking torrent, stopping only with his death or disability.

May God make it so. 

Losing Shit vs. Losing Your Shit

This is not as easy as it sounds. With the mental deterioration that comes with age losing shit is normal and not a sign of sickness. Sometimes you find something by chance or by remembering or maybe not.

Losing your shit is surprisingly similar. The fog might lift. You might be sharp again for a while. Recall and being articulate can come and go. By the time a trend emerges you might be too fucked up to know. 

Eat Shit and Live

Shit-eating is the road to salvation. This Trump-Republican formulation asks that you sell your soul for success. Since when, you ask? Since the old Republican aristocracy of privileged ersatz aristocrats and rich social Darwinists sold out to the troglodytes for votes.

And it's like vampirism or rabies. They pass along the infection.

The Southern Strategy it's called. Trump is the king of belittling people. It's the only thing he's good at -- the art of the insult. Getting people to eat shit. Over and over again. It makes him feel like a big man. White Catholics, for example, helped vote Trump in. 

What did he do? 

He appointed Callista Gingrich, whose qualification was adultery, Vatican ambassadress. Her nation-destroyer husband tagged along. I mean, that's pretty great. He handed them a plate of shit after they supported him and apparently they said fine. No problem.

I'd like to point out this is evil. This is how evil gets done. They're setting up a bureaucracy of evil, incorporating the US government as much as possible, so they can do evil while limiting legal exposure. But that's changing. They're beginning to own the evil.

Revel in it. And there's only one entity ever behind buying up souls.

We've Won!

Try telling that to American rednecks. You will never convince them. Americans are probably the luckiest people in human history. Way up there, anyway. But rednecks still feel like losers. They still are losers. Because of what they are. Their traditions, phobias and beliefs.

Which, among a long list of sins and stupidity, include racism, militant ignorance, unassuageably suspicious natures, hair-trigger tempers, and viewing violence as the first and most honorable option when you disagree with someone. In other words, they have finally won.

They've turned America into a redneck shithole. Trump is the redneck king. The biggest loser. Trump is the redneck agent of revenge. Through Trump they will destroy every last thing that's good in life and drag us all into the gutter. With them. And they still won't be happy. 

Because rednecks resent having been born at all. 

A Johnston County Conversion

I moved south, to Chapel Hill, for graduate school and saw quickly they were still fighting the Civil War, 'down there' as they say -- a stereotype with truth to it. Only later did I comprehend it in its depth and perversion. After many trips to Johnston County, known for its Klan sympathies and backwardness, for my work I saw another layer of lawless rebellion. That they were still fighting the Reformation. As a product of Scots-Irish bigotry and belligerence, I surmised. Because life lacks meaning without hate. 

By grace alone you are saved, they say, referencing a Catholic straw man, one who believed you could buy your way into heaven with indulgences. They saw Catholics as idolators, beset by superstition. Catholics did weird shit in their rituals with babies. Queue the QAnon. Order up some Pizza-gate. They make stuff up, embodying a confluence of militancy and a desire to be drones. Henchmen. Brownshirts. Enforcers. They are submissives with a belief in the inevitability and transcendence of violence.

In the sanctity of bullying and strife, essential activities of honor cultures. 

In the service of hierarchy and exclusion. Pick a date for the emergence and formation of the Scottish and Scots-Irish mind. Enter the time portal. Stand amazed. Those attitudes persist undiluted and stronger than ever, from determination, orneriness and a need to feud. They have taken over the most powerful country on earth, elected goons and charlatans, and are going to blow it all up. There is no why. As distant, irrelevant, retrograde, anti-Christian and insane as it all seems it drives the events of today. 

Meet the rednecks who are about to get us all killed.

Treason Caucus Moves in to Kill

The House Treason Caucus, and a rogue and mentally unfit former president, demand an American default through conditions they know are insulting and impossible. They represent the antidemocratic, antebellum coalition of unfettered capital and racism, the Confederacy reborn. 

God help us all. 

I Am Superior Ergo

Again and again you find the awakening of individual 'conservatives' hinges on one thing, the belief that some people are just better than others. At an existential level. I think that perspective has gotten the better of Musk lately as he begins to suspect what a worthless clown, opportunist, suck-face and incompetent unevolved character he really is. Denial drives him now.

Musk had the sense to gong-show himself out of Twitter so maybe he'll get a grip and stop the embarrassing behavior. Sometimes these aspiring aristocrats get into a loop where their arrogance and aggression play out well for a while. Certainly this was the case with Musk. Trump was a fuckup from the beginning but his daddy bailed out little Donnie and kept him afloat. 

But notice with a formal aristocracy -- royalty -- where it eventually evolves. The need for constant reassurance. And a fucking amazing inconceivable boatload of it. Prince Charles has been crowned. Look at the ridiculousness of that mess. But $250M should get you something. The waste is incomprehensible -- the insane subsidies it takes to maintain the illusion of superiority. 

It is that unnatural. It is that big a lie. So, why do non-aristocrats support this system? I think it takes an unnatural coalition and convergence of interests. Because I believe in humanity in spite of all the evidence we are a shit species, a terrible and unfortunate evolutionary accident that will destroy itself out of stupidity. And by thinking we're an aristocracy among the species. 

We want to think we're special and more than animals. We're not. In that respect we're all Musks, running from the truth of ourselves in a panic of denial. Consciousness, that defining human attribute, is nothing. Only a memory of a memory. Memory squared. This confers nothing. No special status. In fact it's an evolutionary disaster. Consciousness drives people crazy. 

The conservative reflex is destroying us. 

We are part of a system. Fuck it up and we're goners. Is it too late? It was always too late. We weren't adaptive. Consciousness wasn't a natural result of natural selection. It enabled us to live but not live well. Not to live in harmony with nature. Hence the stories of a fall of man. Of an earlier Eden. Of another realm of perfection and immortality. Because this world makes us nuts. 

Perfection or Bust

Calvinism will get you killed. Calvinism wants to get you killed. The watchmaker's god is impatient with creation. This is not a watch! That's to say, people are so annoyingly corporeal and grubby and error-prone and damn if they don't end up rotting in the ground.  

We can avoid that distasteful fate by burning them alive, at the stake, thank you. Isn't it better? Directly to something kind of ethereal? But God didn't create the Calvinist god or reveal or somehow manifest that angry entity. Herr Calvin did, the fucker. His legacy endures.

In the hatred of life. Being born is a prison sentence for Calvinists. Creation a shithole. God a sadist with a bad sense of humor and no sense of justice or nothing recognizable as such in the shithole. Therefore, trying to make life fair, nice and not shit is an insult to God.

Put that in you pipe and smoke it. And light it with the fire of burning heretics. 

Evangelicals and America's Corporate Elite

Dedicated to the idea that some people are simply born better than others, as a matter of destiny and the will of God. 

And you don't fuck with that. 

McCarthy Plays Asshole Cheapshot Card

That is, he's playing himself. 

Death of a Nation

With North Carolina's slide into political barbarism and stupidity we're reminded of that once reassuringly semi-rational and progressive state's legacy of racism and conservative fear-mongering about the threat of disorder. Meaning, the unthinkable enfranchisement and empowering of blacks and lower class whites against the planters and landed gentry who once dominated the state. 

Surely golf scores will rise unacceptably among the country club white folks and standards of graciousness and civility will decline precipitously as the rabble take over from their betters. Where's Thomas Dixon when you need him? Never have the good, church-going white folk been so persecuted and victimized by the forces of incivility. On the other hand, no one needs the Klan now. 

Their descendants have co-opted and taken over the political system in North Carolina with the help of boatloads of money from other states. The Rebels have risen again. And not only in the famously regressive deeper south of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond and assorted Huckabees and Duck Dynasty knuckle-draggers. The whole country is going south. To shit and to hell. 

Warped Court

We have a Supreme Court with a majority that's been manufactured by private entities or cabals to further their interests. They've ensconced judges with grudges and agendas that overpower any commitment they might have had to interpret the law in an unbiased way. Assuming the capability was ever there.

Fair play is not their forte. They might be cradle crazies. Pre-cradle, in their gestational personhood.

It's a grudge court. A warped court. A court of grievance. A court of vengeance. And a court of arrogance, anger and fixations on imaginary wrongs. Imagined wrongs have clarity and endurance. Real wrongs are appeasable. Imagined wrongs have no ground in reality to erode their (imagined) justifications. 

Nothing to wear down, wear off or be forgiven. They exist in the purity and perfection of the imagination. 

I want to secede . . .

I mean, not really. 

I'm as American as buying shit which I love to do but when you find yourself fantasizing about a long-term suicide pact with a group of friends who understand the track we're on the way I do (as a fucking suicide pact but one being enforced on us) maybe it's time to evaluate.

I've been here before. I'll be here again. Feeling helpless and threatened and vulnerable and indignant and frustrated and wanting to get past it and succeeding a lot of the time but so incredibly tired of being in a society ruled by assholes, It's so wearing. How to deal? I have no answers. 

But alone is not the way. And I do virtual. I read. I write. Just knowing there are people out there who, though our voices have been disempowered, think like me means something to me. It's a communion to me. A communion of the caring. A congregation of decency. And I love that. 

But I so want to get away from the crazies.

None Dare Call It Coincidence

Income and wealth inequality are the great social evils. Or they result in all the great social evils. Have it whichever way you want. And Republicans stand for nothing else -- now it's impossible to deny. They want to increase inequality and screw the little guy. 

Ergo and ipso facto they are fucking evil. Pure fucking evil. They enjoy being evil. Evil results from them as a direct consequence and emanation. They exude evil. They embody evil. They manifest, secure and procure evil. The harbor evil and are its harbingers. 

Let none dare call it coincidence or a byproduct or accidental or incidental or say it's not their prime directive, categorical imperative or life mission and so on or whatever. Lives must be ruined. They are there to fuck things up and fuck people up. Anyone but those in their clan. 

Their clan of fellow evil-doers and sociopaths. They say Trump is transactional. And what kind of transaction is that when you enjoy putting people down and fucking up their lives if they don't kiss your ass? Even if they do kiss your ass. Sick, sick fucks. 

Whole Bureaucracy of Bullies

You see these movies where a strong man fights and beats a bully or bullies. Sometimes beating a whole bureaucracy or organization of bullies and sometimes it's not a strong man alone but a leader or coalition or army or whatever. The good guys don't always win but usually or it's ambiguous. 

The archetypal bullying organization and spree is the Nazis. What sense does it make to say anyone won in that instance? Hardly. It never should have happened. Once you go there everyone loses. And it's happening again. In America, which defined itself as the anti-Nazis. All they were we weren't. 

At one time. But not now. Bullying rests on power disparities. Hard to say, I think, if the Nazi model depended as much as it seems to have on one man but I don't know. The American example does not. Trump might be a personality cult but he's a shit-bloom on a thriving plant full of buds.

Hitler might have been the whole plant. He dies and it's over. I don't know. With Trump I feel sure the movement goes on without him in some horrible form heading us in the direction of Putin, Orbán or a similar horrible fate. Think about it. How far and fast we have fallen. Then think again. 

Because we were never what we thought we were. Maybe we weren't that bad but we chose not to see. We were at the great American frat party with kegs upon kegs of petrol. At best we didn't drink much but we were all there. In the basement and bedrooms horrible shit was going on. There were rumors.

We ignored them. On balance. Settled for a reassuring rebuke to a Nixon or Nixon-like character. Bonfired a guy to feel better and moved on without owning our part in it. All of that shit has caught up with us. All the bedroom rapes and basement antics. And I have no idea how it's going to play out.

But it is an emergency. This is what its like living in the middle of an emergency. It doesn't look like it does in the movies, from the outside. No perspective and the perspective is hard to get and how to thwart it depends on the perspective and probably a lot of luck. What were doing is not working.

That's the starting point.

Blood in the Water

Kristy MacColl was killed by some rich asshole piloting a speedboat irresponsibly and where it wasn't allowed. Let's be clear. Donald Trump, his MAGA movement and the rich people behind the Republican takeover of the American government stand for this. Getting people killed and walking away.

Ruining lives for fun and profit.

It might not happen as dramatically as MacColl's death but everywhere they go there is blood. And, for them, continued riches and impunity. The big push now is for impunity. Lose that and we lose the whole game. They can do anything. Having witnessed Trump do you doubt how that will look? 

His retribution tour will culminate in carnage. 

The Eternal Question

Are assholes born or are they made? We have an opportunity to answer the question because there's an absolute epidemic and explosion in the population of assholes going on in America. That part of the investigation answers itself. Some assholes are made.

They come about due to circumstances. The percentage of assholes isn't relatively fixed as would occur if it were genetically determined. No, there is an observable element of contagion. On the other hand, it's inconceivable to me that assholes are eradicable as a class. 

Some are born assholes. Or born-again assholes. In any event in them it's effectively innate. Again I appeal to observation. I have known assholes who were obviously born that way. You can tell when you're an adolescent boy. Assholes love cheapshots.

They must win by any means it takes. And winning while beating up on people is better than not. Triumphalism is a given -- no graciousness in victory. Not that it's really victory. They never finally feel whole because they can't. The void within them is too great. 

The emptiness vast and incurable. 

Laws and other standards, right on down to courtesy, convention and etiquette, try to make the world better and safe from assholes. But it's hard because assholes have huge pathological drives. Again, because the void within is so great. They are basically vampires. 

Trump Church Death Cult

The MAGA movement isn't political. It's a religion and a cult at that. An authoritarian death cult. The more outrageous and disconnected from reality something is the more strongly it will be taken up and defended. As a point of faith. Like Q drops, which are pig farmer poop. 

And they regard those as revelation.

Ridiculousness is a good thing. Disconnection from reality is good since it suggests it comes from God and creation is shit anyway so making sense in this world is actually bad. Believing in what cult leader throws at you as he ramps up the craziness is a point of honor and a sign of devotion.

A weird testimonial and witness. 

To untruth. It means you are saved. Or more likely to be saved and fuck-all because it was predetermined anyway so it doesn't matter how you behave. And the sooner we all die and the saved are separated from the rest of us and transported off to their reward the better, as far as they're concerned. 

They will happily destroy everything.

Nothing to Crow About

Of course we are learning that corruption isn't a byproduct or incidental or a sideline for Republicans it's their philosophy of governance and life and the universe and everything. Either under the guise of religious fatalism or Social Darwinism corruption is the fundamental mechanism that separates the wheat (them) from the chaff (us) because there are unavoidable winners (them) and losers (us) in life and it is predetermined so it isn't really even corruption in the usual sense but God's will. 

It's life. So, there. And fuck you while we're at it. 

No congratulation or celebration should occur among responsible people for uncovering this cesspool, even if it results in a measure of accountability. Because it wasn't hidden in the first place. And any accountability is a drop in the ocean. Clarence, oh, Clarence. Forget the exposure of his conveniently profitable associations. Consider the damage already done. Corporations are people. Guns are godly and useful in the final liberation of mankind from the bondage of corporeality and sin. 

We are fucked. To an indeterminate degree we will have to endure what these lunatics have in store for us. Love one another and say your prayers, to the spirit of Christopher Hitchens if it must be, because we are in for a bumpy ride. If we're lucky. Otherwise it's right off a fucking cliff. Republicans will lose some of their own. They're fine with that. All's well that ends in Armageddon. Or in a world with a handful of Putins and legions of dupes and cannon fodder and a lot of AI and few paid enforcers. 

Industrial Complexes

Republicans love complexes. Industrial complexes. Because they want power. Firstly militarily, the complex model. But wherever outsize profits are possible a complex is coming. Finance. Medicine. Real estate. Hell, farming, which is highly ill-suited to their kind of consolidation. But they like shit big. 

They are Bond villains. Total nutcases. In the movies they lose. But that's in the movies. Don't count on it. They say the good guys won in WWII. Nobody won. Once that shit happens everybody loses. Americans were just lucky. They weren't bombed and invaded. But they're being bombed now. By Republicans. 

And they're making money at it. So don't look for them to stop. Because they own everything. It's up to us, collectively. 

Co-respondents' Dinner

Never to be outdone in the quest for attention Trump has announced he's holding a dinner at Lair-a-Lago for his associates who might be on the hook and implicated in his crimes. The Kushners will coordinate. As you will imagine, there are more candidates than can fit. 

So they'll also sell Trump tokens or amulets to ward off investigations, and recommend rituals where people place Trump altars in their homes, sold separately. There the guilty can pray for Herr Donald's re-election and the torrent of preemptive pardons that will ensue. 

The Perfection of Projection

I never saw or understood it until I ran into a hard case. Then it blew my mind. And I began to see it everywhere including in myself. Now I'm in the middle. Like racism, the problem is that it's normal. Normal to trust the familiar and those who are like you. And to be suspicious of the unfamiliar. The true sign of racism, which I define broadly as treating anyone according to anything other than standards of behavior, is when familiarity doesn't result in fairness. In allowing people the benefit of the doubt.

Projection results from denial. Not owning stuff. Thinking you're better than or above that, like being human and flawed. So racism, with its irrationality, identification, and tribal, emotional components is prime material for projection. Both projecting racism and projecting within a racist framework. Projecting onto people you irrationally hate or fear. Those who are less at odds with themselves and so less prone to projection have trouble seeing it in others because they project their relative innocence onto them. 

So there's that, which has frustrated the hell out of the Democrats who have seen for decades how insane Republicans are but can't get the party, as a whole, to react appropriately to the threat. Too late now. But I think it's still important to understand the perfection of the mechanism. The 1:1 correlation when the right-wing nutcases get fixated on something and it becomes a 'talking point' becase they're doing it. And because it's unconscious it's guileless. All this shit they're putting onto Democrats is true of them.

And that means we're fucked. To an unknown degree and for an unknown duration. The thing is operating now beyond the reach of those who created it for their selfish ends. So the 'libertarian' Koch monster, a franken-philosophy, has escaped from their think tanks and is loose. They fear it themselves, so more than ever they're directing the beast at Democrats though they are the ones who screwed the people who've been duped into being libertarian predator drones and serving the interests of the rich. 

This is not a drill. This is not a game. This is not a test. We're in a fight of good against evil. When they say Democrats are traitors and have no standards and are irresponsible and hate America and want to destroy it they're describing themselves. Everything they say about Democrats is true of them. They're telling us who they are. And they're absolutely fine with getting millions of people killed so rich fuckers can have more money. The religious fanatics love the idea. Of an apocalypse. It's totally insane. 

Diane Arbus

I've never understood the controversy about Diane Arbus. It seems clear to me that she is a Goth. She was highlighting elements of the macabre and grotesque in everyday life because they're a part of everyday life and if you don't integrate them you don't have stability. This is Freudian and Jungian and archetypal and Greek mythical and all that. 

If you don't acknowledge and integrate the 'lower' things they rise up and take over. Run things. They're not really lower just things. In individuals and societies the 'higher' things must rule or you have chaos. Like we have now. Arbus grew up gritty, no matter her "privilege" and being a child of the American era and its crazy suburban postwar optimism. 

Arbus is about boundaries and sensitivities and sensibilities. My guess is Arbus couldn't keep stuff out. That she had boundary issues because she couldn't defend herself. That she saw stuff others didn't see and couldn't stop seeing it. She was forced to look.

She tried to reset her own circuits. And it can't work for a person like Arbus in a society that can't own its shit. Because Arbus defaulted to openness. When she let her guard down she was open. She saw it all. And it pissed her off and made her hurt. And how do you balance out a consumerist Eden? You reach out into the hinterlands of Eden, into the dark.

To the grotesque. Because it's always there.

The Vicar of Wokefield

Democrats have been serving a strange master. You wonder if they are masochists. I think they misunderstand the terrain. They keep peddling old electoral points. Though they seem to be holding their ground if you step back the truth emerges. They've lost to an epic degree. 

Asses were kicked. 

They've been crushed, disenfranchised and banished from the lands of political potency into the fields of feckless spectatorship. They've been retired or their values have. Still, they continue to screw up in the same way apparently never asking themselves if they should try something else.

Just try it. Because they're losing to goons. People who aren't even American. Who don't accept anything like the initial social contract. Yet they say they're originalists. The founders were rationalists and pragmatists, to a fault. Not cultists. That practicality is banished with the Democrats.

Democrats represent the true, flawed traditions of America. They have to ask themselves, given where their political tactics have gotten them, if they should rethink. First they have some pride to swallow, to see how badly they've been beaten. Then their party and the country might be reborn.

Arming the Unborn

The defenseless are most in need of defense. Especially when they're known targets and under deadly attack. How does this not apply to the pre-born? Therefore, they must be armed. The weapons will be miniaturized and introduced via existing surgical methods. 

Any practical difficulties are easily surmountable. Morally this can be nothing but right. Mothers considering abortion will think twice knowing their fetus can blast its way out of the womb. The assumption is, after a few grisly episodes there will be no more abortions. 

Word will get out among mothers. Abortion is not the way to go. A fetus defended is a fetus preserved. And self defense is a constitutional right. The womb a home. Stand your ground. Questions of fetal competency and informed decision-making might be raised. 

But they are overridden by the right to life. Once born that new life is on its own. Because it is God's way. One of many sinners in the hands of a sociopathic God that condemns His own creation. Power has its privileges. Life is a prison sentence that must be endured.

If God intended it to be nice we would still be in Eden.

Freda's Last Stand

Freda Black's closing argument in The Staircase was the turning point I've argued since I saw it. The bitch was, in her authority as a state employee, lawyer and officer of the court, saying to the jury that your hate has a place here. Is appropriate here. Was admissible, so to speak, and applicable. 

So it was about permission. 

Permission to bring that stuff to bear. The jury's 'disgust' wasn't relevant. Their bigotry and prejudice and dislike of the person weren't relevant or appropriate. In fact, it was the jury's responsibility to rise above all that. They didn't. And influential Republicans are all-in on permission. Permission to hate. 

Freda died in the ditch, more or less, like the piece of shit she was. But don't let that make you feel it was a fitting outcome or justice. It should make us sad and in complicated ways. People like Freda drag us all into the ditch. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And mostly they can't help it. 

As much as their behaviors seem composed, organized and sickly coherent it's a compulsion. They're sick. But why we would let these psychos run the show I don't know. Apathy, maybe. Or frustration or feelings of powerlessness. I understand. Perhaps we think we will get away with it.

And I don't know how to stop it myself, so who am I to talk. 

Oh, of Course

Trump's vanity and need to be the center of attention were enough to explain his trip to New York City for an indictment holiday. What a drama queen! But, of course, we see the point now. To raise money off of it. Say what you will, Don-boy knows a good scam when he sees it. A sure thing, this is. He understands his supporters are incredible suckers. 

60,000,000 Maniacs

I wish this were the name of a band. It's not. It describes a faction of the American voting public.

Spucklerization

Spucklerization is when the lowest common denominator effect results in something looking like the Spuckler household on The Simpsons. The only thing worse is when you have more than one group descending to this level in which case you inevitably have a feud. You might end up with one anyway. Spucklers are usually armed, easily manipulated, and inclined to conspiracy thinking. 

They will attack unprovoked and spontaneously believing it's self-defense because they're so utterly incapable of understanding anything and just generally nuts. The United States, you will note, has been completely Spucklerized. Republicans needed Spuckler votes so they played to their ignorance which inflamed and reinforced that ignorance and then they played to that resulting in a downward spiral. 

Spucklerization is a horrible fate. They reproduce like rabbits. Between that and susceptibility they are worthy voter prey. They are not only against birth control and family planning they want to deny these to everyone else. The reason is unclear. It seems to have something to do with religion. Don't ever try to understand Spucklers. You will never succeed and you might get depressed and despair.

That is, despair over our common humanity. Association can only result in bad outcomes, possibly even contamination. You might think you're safe but Spucklers can instantly become violent and threatening over nothing, which is to say their delusions. You might then justifiably become fearful yourself. In this it resembles rabies or vampirism. If they bite you you might become like them. 

Avoid association at all costs. And pity the poor Americans. They are living in a mess of it.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

How, you might ask, does so-and-so not notice the broomstick shoved up his ass? It must be magic. Magical levels of distraction and diversion. Fox News enters in with their hocus-pocus. And the Koch Network (more behind-the-scenes) with their miraculous money wand and smokescreen.

Poof, no healthcare. Poof, stagnant wages in a raging economy. Poof, average citizens at one another's throats for no reason but to occupy them with lies and bullshit while the rich ravage the country. 

Thus the working class, enough of them, vote for the broomstick up the ass. They've been living with it for so long. A heavy dose of hate is deployed in the deceit. Still, the broomstick hurts. As for the bedknobs, they pertain to the women and another kind of occupation. But we won't go there.

It's become clear enough without spelling it out, especially in Texas and Tennessee and Kentucky and such places. What self-loathing, or displaced hate, lies behind McConnell votes? In his state even the people are fried -- completely fried Kentuckians. Hate-fried, with a side of law slaw.

A legal system chopped to shreds, useless to the people it's supposed to protect. 

What Assholes

There appears to be no established term for a group of assholes and it's trying my patience not having one in these days of the Republican hegemony and onslaught. Hey, 'hegemony' or 'onslaught' might work. An onslaught of assholes. How about a tirade. A tirade of assholes. Anyway, this has just occurred to me. I'll work on it some and get back to you. 

Waffenpoofs

J. D. Vance is forming an a cappella group of Yale Republicans, my sources say, called the Waffenpoofs. The idea, of course, is to own and irritate liberals. That is all they care about. It has been established that their long-touted 'conservative values' such as the rule of law and fiscal sanity are a sham and front for a huge power grab devoid of any decency and fair play. Still, they have managed to wrest control of our society and skew it unrecognizably to the right so they are in a festive and celebratory mood though our sitting president is the epitome of evil and the Senate somewhat screwed up. 

So, an a cappella group of 14 (a traditional number) with Yale connections and solid nutcase credentials is in the works. They will all be slung with assault rifles (hence the clever 'waffen' prefix) and might shoot up the audience at any time, a reminder that life is short (and getting shorter in America) and that one should strive to have principles and vote Republican not that these are in any way connected but that's authoritarianism for you. The repertoire will of course extol the deeds of their idols, like Iran-Contra, starting the Iraq War and causing the '08 financial collapse with deregulation.  

With a lot of spin, no doubt, since these were catastrophes. Most of the songs, however, will ridicule Democrats and be rife with suggestive language and innuendo about how they are traitors and deserve to be killed, but that is normal Republican fare as part of their effort to uphold standards. Do they have nothing better to do, you ask, than defiling a light-hearted and innocent pastime? The answer is no. They live to own the libs. And they are bitter. At places like Yale it's assumed there's a link between being smart and being a Democrat and liberal and rational and caring and tolerant. 

What presumption! Sadly, Stewart Rhodes will not be in on it since he's in jail for trying to overthrow the government. But Steve Mnuchin and Wilber Ross are on board. John Bolton and Ben Carson are considering it. None of these people can sing but neither did they have any business as civil servants as they showed in the Trump fiasco. They have only enormous drives to advance themselves at any expense to other people, and ideally at the expense of other people, the guiding ethos of Trump's life. Josh Hawley, another fresh face and avowed theocratic crank, will lead the chorus along with Vance.

It's Worse in the App

By worse we mean better. I'm talking about the new Republican guide to channeling your money where it will do the most harm, now out in an app. There are so many choices, and many are basically street dealers who might be pocketing a lot, like Steve Bannon. The big boys don't need the money. Though all corruption serves the cause, disempowering average citizens, it's all good. 

Only better if effectively directed.

They are awash in money. Unbelievable amounts of money. And never satisfied. What kind of an idiot wants people who can't afford it to have healthcare? This is interfering in the free market, never mind that the markets couldn't be less free if they were under direct governmental control. Corporations control them, of course, as it should be, with government as a front. One of many. 

Corruption isn't a failure of government it's a philosophy of government. 

Neo-Nazi Flees New York

Marjorie Taylor Greene has fled New York and what a shame. Our conspiracy-minded girl was piecing together some evidence and its compelling implications, that she is llving through, and now participating in as a leading figure, a turning point in history.

There she saw the Koch Concert Hall and, oh my God, made a connection. We have these two families of German extraction that have come together, Kochs and Trumps, to save America from itself and make America great again just as Hitler did for the fatherland. 

Consider the confluences. Weathy sadistic daddies named Fred that trained their sons to be killers, kings and, above all, winners, equipping them to do so with piles of cash. These fathers were really sick fucks but they have achieved the final goal of immortality.

They left us sons so fucked up and dehumanized they are without lives of their own, independent personalities or consciences -- predator daddy drones. And the name Koch resonates with a hero of MTG's, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald. 

Who was known as she-wolf.

What an appellation! Marjorie so wants to be a she-wolf. Anyway, after hitting the thrift shops looking for memorabilia made of human body parts Marge received much disrespect while innocently expressing support for our designated savior and führer, Herr Donald.

But it was a relief not to have to worry about Jewish space lasers for a while, assuming they wouldn't attack a community so full of their own. Be reassured. Marjorie isn't going anywhere. She was on 60 Minutes! And she's all over the Goebbels News Network. 

We better get used to it. Liberals, airheads and flakes call the kinds of eerie experiences Marjorie had in New York (she has them all the time) serendipity or 'synchronicity' or déjà vu or some such bullshit. Conservatives call it destiny. And Marjorie knows she is its child. 

Kill a Koch Today (Not Really)

With the Republican talk of Democrats being traitors and pedophiles and 'what they used to do to traitors' and all I wanted to see if a germ of truth can be saved from the bottomless cesspool of their delusions and conspiracism, which are underwritten by the hate and fear wing of their movement.

Speaking of which, wouldn't those people be the real traitors, the Kochs and Murdochs of the scheme, who stay in the background, relatively, but have turned the country into an ungovernable mess so they can make more money and have more power? We can't go around wantonly killing people, I know.

But what's the next best thing? Complete and total disempowerment. Think of how it might be if Fox News ceased its broadcasts. If the entire Koch network, with all its tentacles, were shut down and the lackeys of the rich removed from Congress and lobbying disallowed and fair voting guaranteed.

And Citizens United thrown out the fucking window.

My God, the images that come to mind are Edenic. We might have a country again. A recognizable social contract. Civil relations among citizens and reasonable and fair returns for work performed and contributions made apart from inherited wealth and cascading profits for the fortunate. 

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