Guns and Money

Some Republicans want to force the government to default just for the heck of it. They'll keep trying until they create a crisis. The really rich people have so much money now they think they can weather anything. And the idiots who keep voting Republican so nobody will take their guns think they can shoot their way through it. Great country we have here. 

I, Chatbot

No. You, chatbot. Me, human.

Effective Altruism

Why reinvent the wheel? It's called taxation. Contributing to the degree you benefit. And not as generosity. Because you owe it. Because an ordered society enables it. Enables everything that goes on, be it profit or whatever. If people want to engage directly in good works, taking care of others, that's great and that's altruistic. But rich people in the U.S. are being massively undertaxed. Tax the fuckers. The way they used to, when America was great. 

Before rich assholes ruined it. 

The Vogon Diet

Republicans worship entrepreneurs. Really, they just love money but by bowing their heads in reverence every time entrepreneurs are mentioned they can further the bullshit notion that most of these people contribute something remotely proportional to their rewards. Another lie, in other words. Part of the scam, together with rising tide and all that.

Makers versus takers. Oh, right. How is it then that the 'takers' don't have anything? 

Most Republicans couldn't be more the opposite of makers. They suck off the state in droves, burrowing into the system and hunkering down until they can retire with a nice pension. One step removed we have the hordes that are a job away from direct government employment, but at the trough. Heads buried in the trough. Feeding bags, sometimes.

Defense contractors come to mind. Lobbyists come to mind. This is more than a scam, we know now having witnessed Trump's criminal behavior. Organized  crime is more like it. Organized crime is it. We like to think the government is ours but insiders understand this is laughable. The government has always been susceptible to selfish influence.

Now it is completely bought and controlled by rich people. We're so wealthy even the scraps are good, so there's a class of affluent folks deluded into thinking they're autonomous. More likely they don't care. Too busy buying shit and tooling around in expensive, air-conditioned cars while the world burns. Oddly, as many have noted, a lot of little people vote for this. 

These are the idiots. I'm tired of making excuses. If seeing our capitol sacked and the horror of Trump's presidency weren't enough fuck them. Their destructor fleet is doing its thing, mindlessly, like the Vogons in the HItchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Except there won't be a miraculous recreation at the end. It will all be over. Nothing but death and nothingness. 

William Shatner was great on this point, after he blasted into space courtesy of an obscenely over-rewarded entrepreneur. Guess which one? They converge on certain desires, space and yachts and islands, the idea being a realm where they aren't regulated. But Shatner saw through it to the death. That space is death. Listen to Kirk. Oh, captain, my captain! 

We are so fucked. 

And all for nothing. The fucking Vogons are here with their destructor fleet of Republican trolls, operatives and functionaries, mindlessly executing the order to destroy. They don't know why. They don't care. They will conform, play their role and fulfill their mission. No drama, just demolition. No heroes or villains, in the end, just annihilation. 

The Day of the Jackass

The world would be a better place without Trump. So much better. Think how much better it would be if he had never been born. But evil is a part of life. Assholes and douchebags are a part of life. They have their place. Which is not in positions where they can injure other people or cause any kind of harm. 

But we can't just kill Trump. Take out a contract on him. We don't do those sorts of things. Not that he wouldn't. Without hesitation. And feel no remorse once it was done. Because he's an asshole. Luckily, he's also an idiot. He's such a dumbass he's going to do himself in. We won't need to worry anymore. 

There's No Accounting for Bush

Republicans seem awfully defensive about accountability for Trump, whose crimes are so astonishing. All I can figure is it must be a reflex. He's their guy and they are going to defend him, no matter he's a crook and a sociopath and a killer. Well, then, we have another former president who was never held to account, Herr Bush, so maybe we should investigate him. 

There's been a little time there and he's a retired sociopathic killer whereas Trump is still active and seeking office, if only to escape prison. Maybe they'll be less defensive.

Bush's crimes will take more than a cursory look, to say the least. He's been investigated extensively but nothing you could teach in the Florida schools. He got hundreds of thousands of people killed, tens of millions displaced, botched the administration of two wars, one of which he lied us into, and neatly blew up the world economy like any good laissez-faire playboy. Whew!

The effects are still playing out. The '08 downturn Republicans caused correlated with a huge spike in the right-wing extremism that now plagues the world. Add to that the immigration aspect and Bush appears to have nearly destroyed everything. What's more, he USED the 9/11 disaster to try to put through a laundry list of stupid, partisan and criminally incompetent policies.

Tax cuts for the rich? A blow against terrorism! Apparently taxes are terrorism.

What kind of person does this sort of thing? And then walks away from the incredible destruction and carnage muttering about how 'history will judge' and then paints portraits of soldiers he got maimed? A worthless piece of shit, you might say. A man without a conscience. A rich frat boy who never learned about consequences. And you would be right. Maybe now is the time.

The time for an accounting for Bush. And some consequences.

Demolitions Job Now Posted

Contact your local Republican Party organization. The property in question, the U.S.A., is already largely uninhabitable and a bit of a ruin but must be finished off. Efficiency and economy are not considerations in the remaining demolition. Virtually unlimited funds are available. But it's a political job so style and equanimity in the face of mass destruction and death are important.

And the lack of those disqualifying. Take Trump and the excess deaths of the COVID years due to that and other causes. He didn't care at all and remained in denial or oblivious and he's still politically viable and then some. So there's a standard and model to which to look. Assassinations require a certain competence and expertise. This is not that. This is throwing sand into a machine.

A lot of sand. And every other form of vandalism and sabotage. The machine is the 'deep state' otherwise known as the federal government but that term doesn't have nefarious connotations so 'deep state' must be used. This is what we mean by 'style' which assumes a lack of conscience or the ability to shut it down. Experience in the use of denial and compartmentalization is essential.

The perks of the job, the Presidency of said United States, are enormous but we assume a familiarity with those. Immunity for crimes while in office (and possibly while not) is unsecured but in the works and the opportunity to profiteer under employment and forever thereafter appears to be a done deal. Nepotism is not a problem. You can hire all the idiot family members you want.

They can be put in charge of anything. While the salaries are not great the aforesaid opportunities for theft and graft are completely open-ended. All-in-all it's a good gig. This guy Ramaswamy has emerged as a contender and he has no qualifications at all and is uninformed and mostly unintelligible so there's an example, but he might go rogue and do some good and we can't have that. 

So I guess we should add that we, as political operatives, and the electorate need to be convinced of a sincere commitment to annihilating the government and a staunch resistance to the temptations of helping people out and making the government work. We have come so far. The goal is within reach. The country -- sorry, the federal government -- must be destroyed once and for all. 

And we don't know why. But we feel compelled to do it. 

Fuckwit's Last Theorem

It will be proven or disproven experimentally, since it breaks down in theory -- the idea that power wins in the end. The idea that life is meaningless and that assholes come out on top and have good lives and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a sucker or a sheep. 

Donald Trump is the test case. Because he's as devoid of intelligence and empathy as he is possessed of drive. We'll see if the system will stand. 

Rebuilding Our Nut Biome

One way to understand the Republican project is as the rebuilding of society's nut biome. That is, rebuilding society's resistance to unconstitutional, anti-democratic, irrational and treasonous elements by introducing these into the system, as a kind of inoculation.

Think of it as introducing potentially harmful bacteria, viruses or germs for good purposes. Newt Gingrich, for example, is the last thing you want in your politics. But people such as him are out there, harmful and possibly fatally toxic, so better to be prepared. 

Indigestible, he produced a Montezuma's Revenge -- the 'Newts,' as it's known. 

And the U.S.A. is still shitting its brains out -- depleted, dehydrated and weak, our vitality sapped. This is assuming Republicans mean well at some level and are a little paranoid and not actually trying to destroy us with finality. Now, this is giving them a hell of a pass. 

Because the system appears about to die. Democracy is on life support.

But it's so ridiculously crazy and seems so unnecessary. Like everyone else I'm trying to understand it. The alternative is to think they are purely evil. That Republicans are just pure evil and actually want to destroy us and everything. But this is so incredibly crazy. 

Bugs don't make sense. They're out there, and only intent on replication. 

We weren't over Newt when other pathogens arose. Notably, Trump and the tyranny bug. We thought we had inborn immunity. It turns out not. It seems they want to kill us, or take the whole country down for no reason. That they are the bug. And like any brainless microbe. 

So, there's no conscience. And no humanity left to recover. 

The Ruling Caste

Vivek Ramaswamy makes me think of Peter O'Toole's character in The Ruling Class (1972). The point of which, I think, is if you're an English lord and you have issues with grandiosity the only place up you can go is to Jesus. To think you're Jesus. Ramaswamy made a ridiculous amount of money contributing absolutely nothing, from what I can tell.

And so he thinks he's been chosen and is so special he should be president. He says he thinks Trump was the greatest president ever so he's either an idiot or a manipulative, cynical little shit. Having a huge opportunistic streak and not caring about anybody but himself fits with how he made his money. Isn't America a wonderful country? 

Being as inappropriate as possible for the job of president seems to be a qualification, an asset, and a good thing. I've heard it suggested Ramaswamy is a fan of the caste system and might want to see America head in that direction, which makes him a fit with Republicans. Republicans seem to favor extreme disparity in privilege based on birth. 

The Morally Blind Side

So, we have another inverted morality tale from America's south, which in reality is another country pretending to be a region. A region that's seized control from the EVIL YANKEES so all you have to do to see what southerners stand for is look at the U.S.A. today. 

A fucking shitshow and cesspool of inhumanity and corruption, with ridiculous inequality, political and economic systems built on lies and a huge feud among the populace, with one side having more guns per individual that any military contingent. But there are the stories. 

Lies, I mean. Like about the wonderful beneficent white people who adopted a needy black boy and just happened to make a boatload of money out of it while not cutting him in. Or so it appears but we'll see. But by American standards it's a tale too bad not to be true. 

Getting Out of Doge

You have to wonder if we aren't back in a speculative economy, where there's no 'there' there or not enough of it to justify anything. And what with crypto, which might be no more funky than a lot of other stuff but plenty funky enough. At least that 'investment' doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. 

Unless you're an idiot. 

There must be a sucker born every second, with population growth. Dogecoin doesn't pretend. And you could get rich on it. It owned its unreality. It has layers or factors of unreality. It's multidimensionally made up and a matryoshka doll of invention. It satirizes itself and celebrates self-contradiction.

You can be evolved as hell at something that's unreal, or is a waste or only benefits you at the expense of everyone else. And the speculators and crooks in charge now are those who gave us the Great Depression. Democrats got us out of it. Or at least tried to keep people from starving while it was going on. 

Of course, Musk has a thing for Dogecoin. He'd be drawn to it. Because crypto is a lie. But so is art in the sense of fabrication. Doge might be a benign kind of lie. Virginal and unsullied, which would explain the Muskian interest. Since he's so arrested -- a geek thing. With a huge dollop of authority issues on top.

They're trying to prove their manhood. And once you go there you're screwed. It's the Oedipal dilemma. Participating in that struggle only proves you've lost, that you haven't escaped dependency. Inevitably they end up with their mothers, and engage in misdirected procreation and the birthing of rivals.

Instead of heirs. It's all fucked up and incestuous. 

A circle of destruction. They're in the wrong game. Their dreams of power turn into realities of shame, degradation and dependency. They create nothing. Maybe misery. Get out of Doge. All of crypto. It's a multilevel marketing scam. You might make some money but you don't want to be there.

Crypto is a lottery that disproportionally benefits early investors but with a hint of talent in the timing. Good luck to all who venture. But we'd be better off not hoping for money out of nowhere, nor having a system that so screws average citizens they seek security in speculation. We need a sane society.

And less speculation and bullshit. 

Shootout at the Fantasy Factory

Now this is getting interesting. The Federalist Society is trying to undermine Trump. More than that, they're trying to cut off his balls, shave his head, send his hired hit men racing for the door, disband his cult and make Jack Smith's day. They're saying Don-Boy can't run for president, or anything. 

I'll take something this good wherever I can get it, even from those Federalist fucks. But America has come to this: what contingent of lies and liars will win? The truth is on the run, overwhelmed by bullshit. They flood the zone -- that's what they say. It's a formal tactic. Right out of the Third Reich. 

Bama Rednecks Attack Black Guy, Tuberville Weighs In

Tommy Tuberville has issued ferocious criticisms of the Alabama rednecks who attacked a black guy. 'Where the hell did they learn to throw a punch?' Tuberville fumed, labeling it 'a disgrace and embarrassment.'

Tuberville went on about how, when he was coaching football, the black guys were more adept at kicking ass out of the gate. It was more natural to them, he said, so much so they were affable and mostly matter-of-fact about it. He supposed it was because they grew up in 'shithole neighborhoods' and didn't know their daddies or if they did they were crack addicts. He thought everybody knew this.

He didn't, however, rule out a genetic component in the 'ass kicking advantage' or 'mojo gap' since he said the white guys were usually better at anything involving intelligence, finesse, character and leadership. When someone pointed out this sounded 'racist as shit' Tuberville seemed genuinely surprised. Sure, he had to pretend everybody didn't know this stuff when he was at Auburn, but, come on now.

Hiding your head in the sand about inherent racial differences was just plain 'woke' which he knew he was against as a rich-ass white guy as much as he favored guns, violence, Jesus and hunting. Thank God he was exclusively working for white people now. Again, when someone pointed out that he was supposed to be representing all of the people of Alabama, he replied 'are you nuts?' and left the room.  

It Has Begun

Okay, so it appears Trump is going to argue that having a judge or jurors with a stated opposition to crime is prejudicial. In other words, as I have argued, he's going to go the full O.J. with trimmings. His guilt is so ridiculously overdetermined he's going to put the system on trial and attack, trying to redefine the law or overwhelm the proceedings with bullshit in true Trumpian style. 

It makes sense. 

The system isn't designed to be perfect it's designed to 'play the averages' erring on the side of innocence. So it's relatively easy to gum up or screw up. And innocent is something Trump isn't. I think the 'unitary executive' will have to step in, meaning Biden, who according to Republicans has immense powers heretofore untapped.  He will have to intervene and create a new kind of court.

Republicans will wail like wolves but they already are so fuck them. In the sickest possible way things are falling into place. This can't be a trial. It will be a reality show. Only then will it capture America's fealty to its lawless class of wealthy crooks. And the shitshow has begun. I WANT A SLOW-SPEED CHASE. In Washington maybe but golf carts on the course at Bedminster would really be cool. 

With an absolute boatload of drone footage. Trump scooting all over with that awful head and hair distinguishing his cart from those with persons from the FBI and other agencies. And an arrest at the end. That's all I care about. Because anybody who believes in justice in America hasn't been paying attention for a very long time. It's going to be nothing but a spectacle and we better get over it. 

What a Relief!

Whew!

I'm so relieved knowing wanting someone to blow Trump's brains out is legal because it's aspirational and many steps removed from the commission of such an act. And especially far removed from culpability since I hold a sincere belief based on my religious convictions that he's a traitor, a murderer, a rapist, in league with the devil and possibly the Antichrist. 

I say to anyone considering this deed to 'stand back and stand by' which is a far cry from 'have at it' but more like 'your day will come' and not incitement but only trying to be inclusive the way Democrats are with Antifa, BLM, that Occupy bullshit and every random weirdo wanting a sex change because they hate America and everything we stand for. 

Trump Zombie Hordes

Once in a while I'll try to step back and appreciate what an astonishing piece of shit Trump is, a hopeless task. Trump's shithood defies appreciation. An aspect of it, maybe, can be encountered in the the moment and taken in, but the totality of it is simply too much. 

Too much by factors and accolades. You see what happens to language when you try to go there. It breaks down. Analytical success is out of the question. The focus required means a loss of scope. Experientially it's unrelatable, because of a lack of integrity. 

His shithood has integrity in the sense of being efficiently evil but not Trump, since it falsely assumes he's human and coherent. An action or activity might be encompassed but the extent of the whole is beyond mortal means, an interstellar quantum as incomprehensible as the quark or muon of his humanity, which is imperceptibly fragmentary and figmentary. 

Here we encounter the Trump Effect, that reality decomposes in contact with him. Reality and unreality cease to be useful constructs, since the preconditions for comprehension within that framework are unmet, leaving us with probabilities and conjecture. 

Since we can only encounter him on the basis of our common humanity. But he is antimatter and anathema to it. A lead-lined box of a sort is the only answer I can conceive, complete quarantine, but in order for it to sustain life we would have to risk contamination.

The leaking out of his degrading influence. Which brings us to the minions. We encounter a contagious loss of humanity, likely to reach critical mass or a tipping point and attain reactive irresistibility. Humanity will disappear in an instant. In an imperceptible moment. 

We'll never know what hit us. By humanity we mean meaning. Intelligibility. The logos, for those with a biblical bent.

Through the degraded Trump zombie hordes we see the need for action. The Trump destructive principle must be smashed to atoms and particles, deconstructed and reduced to nothing. Which isn't killing since, as we've said, there's nothing there to kill. They're already dead. 

Presumably this means the loss of the man, as we know him, and the zombies he's infected or infested. 

Though it can't be ruled out that his effects can be deactivated independently of the human or subhuman form. There might even be a husk of humanity remaining, a soul shriveled into oblivion. But we must save humanity first. Whatever Trump is, it's out of science fiction. 

A force from a place incompatible with intelligence and decency. He or it must be eradicated.

Let's Make a Deal

On the Trump indictment job number one is not justice. Can we bring back the hundreds of thousands of COVID victims he got killed and undo their suffering or that of their families? And that's only the tip of it. Trump is an active shooter. 

And we're standing around outside the school talking tactics. Job number one is damage control.

Justice can come later. We have huge challenges there. It's not about a man but a movement. And a movement of immense destructive capability that even its creators can't control, the 'libertarian' scam the Kochs and others put on America.

Which is a license to plunder. Nothing else. A plea deal, if one can be reached, should constrain Trump as much as possible. But a deal is a good thing if it keeps him from being in a position again where he can destroy people's lives.

A deal has to preclude him from ever holding office again. And other things. First we stop the harm. 

Things That Go Chump in the Night

What is Donald dreaming about these days? I don't think it's about going to jail. He's nothing if not proactive. So it will be about finding a chump -- a fall guy or guys or girls or some Mexicans or whatever -- to take the blame for his astonishing criminality. But it isn't going to work. Not to say he won't get off. 

That's entirely possible. But he's not going to be able to unload this on some suckers. Jack Smith has seen to that. He cut through that shit already. So we're looking at an O. J. trial, a total mess and a circus via the best protection a boy with a history of screwing everybody in his orbit can get. They'll attack the system. 

Because his guilt is so ridiculously overdetermined. And that can take on many forms and will take on many forms all at once. A total shit show. Now, Trump loves chumps. But it's unclear who the chumps are here. His base love him not because he's a winner but because he's a loser. Because he's their loser. 

And they want to see somebody go down in flames. For them. To see everybody go down in flames. Because nothing. Because they're out of their fucking minds. We're looking at a great chain of chumpism. Chumps upon chumps. Because ultimately Trump is a chump. He's not even a rational criminal. 

He's a compulsive. His dead daddy is riding him from the grave, like in some horrible science fiction scene. He might be a dragon, spitting fire and frying people right and left, but he has a rider. A rider from hell. So he's not an agent of anything. An author of his own destiny. He's a tool. A fool. A loser. 

Or he's like a turtle I once saw in the road with its head completely smashed and its little back legs still working. Trump's little back legs are still spitting out insults and tweeting trash. He's not really human but we have to treat him like it as a matter of form. Out of respect for his humanity that doesn't exist.

But job one is society must be protected from this man. Justice is not job number one. Job number one is damage control. 

King of the Losers

Trump is the king of the losers. He voices and acts out the resentments of those with grudges and a desire for revenge. He's their retribution. Try to make sense of this among the most fortunate people in history, modern Americans. It doesn't make sense. And it's probably deeper than you think. 

Evangelicals and fundamentalists are Trump's hardcore supporters. Apart from the very rich, whose backing is there because of the benefits they get, tax breaks and opportunities to plunder. Democrats think they can win over poorer Trump voters through policies that benefit them. That benefit us all. 

That 'all' is a problem, because it includes blacks. 

They don't like blacks. But it's deeper than that. They are retrograde, possibly heretical Calvinists. For them you lose by being born. You win by dying, because life and creation are shit. In death you get to be pure and perfect again. Life is a prison sentence, though God is just and good. Go figure.

They're unfit for democracy, decency and modern society. Any kind of society, which is why they're called sociopaths. But they have their place -- as wards of the state. They have to be politically neutralized. Effectively disenfranchised. Notice the projection. Everything they say about us applies to them. 

They hate America. But they hate everything so don't take it personally. They must be stopped. And it will take extreme measures because they're pathologically determined. Which of course they say about Democrats, that it's an emergency requiring extraordinary measures. So they're right.

Except that the emergency is them. It's all about them. 

What Didn't He Know?

And when didn't he know it?  We're being told such nonsense is at the heart of Trump's culpability but that's bullshit. Not that he's ever been known to fling that about. It's sticking already because it's sticky. In court it won't work. I hope they humiliate his lawyers the way they deserve. And throw Trump in Riker's the way he would have the Central Park Five or put him up against a wall and shoot him, after due process of course, the way he once suggested traitors should be treated. 

Commie Canard

The righties are back to the old commie/socialist canard that they love so much, it capturing the whole gamut of 'stuff we don't like' in a conveniently fuzzy and insulting way. In other words, it's a meaningless cheapshot the technical name for the deployers of which is asshole.

The Art of the Dole

In retirement by which I mean prison Trump can get someone to ghost write another book, The Art of the Dole, on how to suck off other people your whole life and never make a contribution. In fact, as a show of power it's important to deliberately leave a lot of wreckage and waste a lot of resources. This shows what a big and powerful man you are. Ideally you ensure your kids will do the same, achieving a kind of sick, abusive immortality. 

Blowhard With a Vengeance

Oh, this is going to be something. Trump in total operatic screaming earthquake thunder and lightning meltdown mode. Fun to watch, fun to watch. But he has a disconcerting habit of getting people killed and destroying lives. So I guess we need to lock him the fuck up. After which we can tackle the whole 'conservative' culture and metaverse that birthed this piece of shit. 

Plato's Republicans

I credit it to motivation and determination, but Plato's ideas as presented in the Republic have been used in the creation of deliberately bad governance. Government good at doing evil. Through specialization, focus and efficiencies. No philosopher kings. Philosophers are impractical. Instead we have self-serving assholes adept at rationalizing any kind of evil and at avoiding accountability. 

Warriors are deployed by them to keeps arms merchants and manufacturers swimming in cash. Everybody serves the ends of the overlords and carry on only at their pleasure, with no rights independently of them. Religion is co-opted to stifle dissent and further control the messaging, which is all lies and bullshit. Further down in the food chain lives are precarious. They are powerless. 

When has any technology not been used for bad ends? People are reasonably scared about how it might play out with AI. Plato's scheme for governance is a technology. What if good government isn't efficient? Is the American scheme deliberately inefficient and cumbersome in it's everyday operations to protect us and the system from abuse? Maybe so. But the power seekers have taken over. 

SOS

Time to run up the distress flag. Issue a mayday. Trump is back. And the confluence of his personal shit and the desire of a bunch of disgruntled white people to take vengeance on the universe for bringing them into existence in the first place is coming together in a terrifying way. They want chaos. A meltdown. Destruction for its own sake. God help us all. 

A Cup of Joe

I don't know where it came from and how we got here but we need more Joe. I'd vote for Biden if he were bedridden and he's given us something to mull over, like where the fuck has this kind of leadership been for so long? How hard was it, to own something so good? 

There was that legacy of Roosevelt which I suppose lasted through Kennedy and (yuck) Johnson but was MIA thereafter. And, I mean, why? This is fucking us. It defines Democrats. And it's all, pardon me, wonderful. Compassionate. Inclusive. Practical and pragmatic. 

I'm curious about the workings of the White House and I hope there's a whole committed group of influential people there who are all-in on it but right now we have Joe. He's doing it, it's happening and I'll let his fucking dog bite me if it will keep it up and running. 

The Answer is Death

Republicans really do have the answer. To climate change and everything else. The answer is death. There are too many people in the world. We all know that. The ultimate inconvenient truth is overpopulation. The right wing faction represented by Republicans has controlled population and kept us from becoming like China and India. Kept us in some kind of relative equilibrium by getting people killed. 

Trump understood it. The pandemic was going fine when the coastal elites who didn't vote for him were dying. Fuck them. But even later, sacrifices had to be made and notice how Trump cleverly got the stupidest element in the society disproportionately killed off even though they were his voters. There we see the self sacrifice of which Republicans are capable. It might have cost him the election.

But he did what was right. Evangelical voters and the filthy rich are the core of Republican support. Evangelicals want the world to end so courting environmental disaster, which they are doing, is great. The super rich think they can buy their way out of anything. We will see. In any case the affluent are really too drunk on the wonderfulness of being rich to give much of a shit about anything. Trump again. 

He is an example. The world is theirs, not ours. Any idea otherwise is laughable. Come on now. Admit it. You know it. That 'the meek will inherit the earth' is bullshit. The rich always get everything in the end. Money and power are all that matter. Religions are the opiate of the masses. Do you really think right wingers and the rich don't know that? And religions are wonderful at getting people killed.

So that's good. 

Idealism is for losers. It's how they feel better about losing. You have to understand the significance of Trump and why his support never wavers, no matter what he does. He understands this, the most essential of all truths, that winning is everything. No matter how you win. In fact, winning cynically, as he does, and without talent is better. It doesn't reinforce the lie that any of it makes sense.

None of it makes sense. Nothing makes sense. The notion of justice is a joke, a bone the rich throw the rabble when it suits them. Notice how they tell the rabble to fuck off or get them killed in inventive ways and walk away from it. Does George Bush come to mind? Bush was such an important figure, the love child of the blue bloods and the rednecks. And those people are about to get us all killed. 

This is good. So enjoy every day you can folks. The only uncertainty is how ugly it will get and how soon. But it is going to get ugly.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Bullshit

Bullshit -- a form of disingenuousness -- is having another maybe brief moment since the man who wrote the book has died. On this topic I've always trusted black people. Because they've been subjected to an inconceivable amount of bullshit. Saying something not true is lying. Bullshit asserts the irrelevance of truth in its application and is not necessarily the assertion of untruth. 

Rather, it's the fog of fraud. The liar says it isn't raining when it is. The bullshitter says it isn't raining so much and flooding everything because of climate change. Whatever. Where, the whatever is somehow convenient on the bullshitter's part, making money or defending group-think or simply the good feeling of getting away with it, honing one's skills for use when it really matters. 

But notice how corrupting bullshit is. There's no good v. evil. Evil and good are made obscure. So a larger existential kind of untruth underlies bullshit. That the distinction is a matter of spin. Or marketing or persuasion. Intelligibility is on the block and up for grabs. And intelligibility is everything. Because it relates to accountability, for one thing. And where there's none of that life is shit. 

Bullshit is a luxury good. A rich man's game. A liberal art. A leisure class activity among the unaccountably rich or aspirants to leisure among those unburdened by conscience. Persecuted people understand the stakes. That it's not a game. That lives are lost and ruined in the rubble of its confusion. And nothing is learned. Learning can even be lost. Lessons abandoned. Think of the sobering outcomes of so many wars.

And then we forget and do it again. And all the meaning is lost, though there's plenty of meaning while it's going on. Lots of effort and courage and nobility and decency and so on in the microcosm of it. Real goodness at one level. Insanity at another. Perfection is an attribute of the macrocosm. The macro-macrocosm. A place of which we have only speculative and suppositional knowledge. 

The realm of religion and myth. Those are the good lies. Stories that can make us whole. If they're good stories. Because even those can be bullshit. 

Universal Suffering

Democrats believe in universal sufferance. Republicans in universal suffering. But be reassured. Though Republicans are having their way it's either the will of God or Social Darwinism running the show. It's not your fault. You were doomed from birth. Feel better now? 

Something's the Matter

It doesn't rise to the level of thought, you might have noticed. By trying to reason with them. Those who say something is happening when it isn't. Or that it isn't when it is. Spin was one thing. Maybe there was a nod in there to reality. We're reinterpreting this for you. Helping you to understand. But it's beyond that now. And the dangers of bullshit are apparent -- in the corrosion of the ability to discern anything.

We have the fog of war. But there's no war. Ha! Or so you thought because you're in the 'reality based community.' The are not. When they said culture war they meant it. With casualties and shit. We are the casualties, those whose rights have been destroyed. For them there's always a war to be fought. Because of the way their outlier brand of Calvinism regards creation as shit. And humanity is a part of creation.

I know, it doesn't make sense. That's the point. They are at war with themselves. So, to them, it's reassuring to have that battle externalized. And an affront to God for life to be nice. Nice is for later. When you're dead. If you were chosen, that is. The rest of us burn in hell. At some level they believe this insane shit, with all its fatalism. As I said it doesn't rise to the level of thought. But they must have conflict.

And that's why we are where we are. The most fortunate people in the history of humanity being torn apart and running all kinds of unnecessary risks for no reason at all. Because some minority of nutcases must have a war. They must have conflict. They are not amenable to persuasion. They must be beaten. And they've seized control of everything. The sooner we see it as a war the better. We have no choice. 

Puppets for Putin

The latest emanations from MAGA-land indicate they've associated 'liberal" with legal, democratic and representative government. And they're against it. Right there with Vlad. And all the other autocrats and autocrat wannabes since the dawn of whatever. Hard to believe there was ever a time when this crazy shit didn't exist. 

Why Hate Innocence?

This is tough. As with many hard questions, though, the behaviors of Republicans compel us to look into it. In Republican eyes, or the fundamentalist branch of it with roots in extreme Calvinism that currently predominates, something about innocence is an insult. Corporeality and corruption are one. You could be forgiven for thinking they celebrate corruption. 

But, no.

If it isn't corrupt it isn't real because corruption underlies everything. If you aren't at garbage you haven't dug deeply enough. So, children are a problem. Children cause Republicans to blow a fuse. What to do with them? They must be indoctrinated. They must be infused with guilt and that guilt then and thereby combatted. Because they are part of that drama. 

Inescapably. Because life is a prison for souls. Bodies are prisons. Innocence is an illusion. Kids are corrupt because everything is corrupt. The sooner they are inoculated by exposure to evil the better. You see, they do believe in vaccines. They react so strongly against the government's versions because it's stepping on their turf. Like the 'Sharia Law' bullshit. 

Which rings their bell, being in perfect parallel and direct competition with their ideas about theocratic government. Very much for. Their Christian version. Anything other than a theocratic state embodying that battle of good v. evil is illegitimate and must be destroyed. Better yet, let's have a final judgment. Meaning the final judgment, and be done with it. 

Armageddon and such. Are we having fun now?

Splinters Up the Ass

Now, then. Republicans have been shoving a broomstick up the ass of huge swathes of people for over 40 years. That asshole is getting worn out. It hurts. This includes the working and the middle classes. 

What's left of them. As the pain increases Republicans multiply their efforts to divert attention away from themselves. If people ever realize how they've been screwed they will want to kill Republicans. 

The whole establishment. So Republican operatives, acolytes, and their propaganda arm at Fox News are screaming their heads off, 'It's the Democrats, it's the Democrats.' Because it's not. Because it's not.

That's all that's going on, folks. Nothing complicated. Just a lot of lies. And now the desperate aftermath of decades of astonishing corruption. Laughable corruption. If people's lives weren't being destroyed. 

But they are. Every fucking day. And they're not done yet.

On the Perfection of Projection

Because projective mechanisms are unconscious they work with perfect revelatory predictability. In other words, when people are as fucked up as Republicans they accuse other people of being what they are and doing what they do, with certainty and with absolute accuracy. Guilelessness, for once. 

They tell us what we must do by what they threaten to do to us. 

And the urgency as they convey it applies to them. This is bad news. They are telling us it will probably take illegal and extreme measures to stop them and maybe require violence. Because they want to do that to us. They are saying it's critical that we stop them and that it will be hard as hell to do.

Great. It's not fair to us at all. Sucks all over. But we must stop them. 

I Hate Huckabees

One clip of an interview of Tommy Tuberville is enough to remind me what pieces of shit are raised up in Arkansas. But, for those who need a real face-full of inbred southern garbage to get the point, there's a video you can stream on some huge family of white trash whose name I can't bring myself to speak. 

They were once shiny and happy for all the world knew, is what I will say, and having babies out the ass for the express purpose of taking over the planet so that they can destroy it. Because, they want to see Jesus riding in on a cloud as does Herr Pastor Huckabee and his complement of degenerate children. 

One of those, the charmingly lying Sarah, is now governor of the state and wouldn't know Jesus, to judge from her stint as an degraded Trump slut, if He drove a stock car up her twat. But she's in a position to influence things, as is Tuberville, so the end times draw closer every day, by the grace of God.

Guilty Inheritance

As we know, America is becoming a country of generational wealth. There will always be new fortunes but Republicans have, in addition to encouraging an insane concentration of money at the top, done everything they can to ensure more of it gets passed on intact. And not only legally. They don't want to defund the IRS to benefit factory workers.

Let's say inheritance is a given. I think then the culpability for any criminality involved in the making of that money should get passed on as well. So, for example, if the Kochs are one day determined to have corrupted the American government for profit and, assuming the penalty for such treasonous doings is death, then the Koch heirs should clearly be shot. 

The Conservative Dilemma

How do you have a viable political movement that asserts that its core members and beneficiaries, a smallish group, are innately superior and better than everyone else? Looks like a tough sell. Circumstances will play a big role, out of the gate. People who feel threatened are more likely to elect those they see as leaders and get behind them. So conservatives are interested in keeping the threat level up. 

Defcon always up there. The loss of the Soviet Union as an antagonist was for conservatives a disaster. Now, consider that, since then, they've been able to ramp up the fear. Bin Laden was a big help. But they also increasingly moved the threat within. Come to rest on us. Democrats. Liberals. Which is an invention. On a whole new scale. Marketing is a kind of lying. In the way of dissimulation. 

'Making things look like what they aren't.' We got sold. They have no political product, meaning policies. No service, in the way of efficiencies, added value, or even in creating a coherent brand. Unless you count something so inimical to itself it blows up. 'Beyond obsolescence.' It doesn't wear out and require replacement it explodes, taking the 'purchaser' with it. That is, sabotage. Hello, hostages.

Hello, suckers and victims. We haven't been sold a piece of crap but a bomb.

Obviously, this is beyond exploitation. I don't know if it's new, allowing for the technologies that speed everything up and enable more and more generations of mischief to be compressed into a destructive lifetime. But destruct they must. Because they fear the masses getting a clue and rising up against them. They fear us. Because they know what they would do if the situation were reversed. 

And they know they deserve it. 

Dame Donald

Maybe if Donald got the right honor it would assuage his anger. He's clearly got to have something implying hereditary superiority or it won't work so we end up trying to talk the Brits into getting involved. 

But Donald is such a crybaby a peerage might be a stretch. No denying, however, he's a princess of the first order. I say Dame. Dame Donald. And the sooner the better. Because he's on the warpath again. 

Right Rebrands Shootings

Following a holiday period of a modest number of mass shootings (by America's insane standard) right-wing media sources are indicating these slaughters are merely 'celebrations' and expressions of freedom and patriotic enthusiasm. Not to worry, in other words. 

In fact, mass shootings embody the right idea of freedom, and any consideration of the negative effects of (ahem) a explicitly constitutionally guaranteed liberty is wrong and illegal, as we are seeing decreed with speech only one step removed from actual killing.

Incitement is a right as a form of speech, so the left had better shut up about it or they might find out first hand why assault weapons are such a common Christmas gift among conservatives, because defending human dignity and independence is a sacred duty. 

Something blessed by God. And liberals are known apostates, heretics and haters of both God and country so they had better keep their fucking heads down. 

In Piscine Condition

Something fishy is going on at the Supreme Court and in our schools. Firstly, I will say that I had the college education conservatives dream of. Classics, in a special honors program that had big breadth requirements, including theology, at a Jesuit university. 

Take that, thou Supreme Court conservative justices with Catholic ties, credentials or identifications. And I inwardly roll my eyes at the idea of Women's Studies or Black Studies programs or majors or whatever. But I think it will simply work out. Over time. No big deal.

If it's not a good idea they'll come to that conclusion, the people who do it all the time and for a living, or the programs will just dry up. But it makes conservatives angry. They want to stamp it out, and anything that strikes them as 'liberal,' while they're at it, and immediately. They seem to seethe with the cleansing fires. 

Like old-fashioned Puritans. What the fuck? I have known people of faith. Real people of faith. They don't present like this at all. More calm and relaxed about things. More trusting. Because they are believers. Not just that they believe there is a God they believe IN God. 

So this whole sudden urgent attempt to remake education and crush 'wokism' and burn liberal influence at the stake smells fishy to me. The people of faith I've known aren't much into crushing and such. Maybe reducing their own sinfulness to a minimum, on a good day.

They are somewhat hesitant to crusade and purge, thereby seeming to focus on the sinfulness of others, or to question motives. Maybe it feels a little presumptuous. Reeking of moral superiority. Ungenerous. At a more godly pay grade. But what do I know. 

I'm not really a believer. Anyway, my ear having been tuned and trained by Jesuits I also detect something very fishy at Ye Olde Supreme Court. Like, the ability to rationalize absolutely anything. Any kind of bullying, for example. Not Christian, to my mind, but maybe more broadly 'ad maiorem dei gloriam.'

None of this passes the smell test to me. These are people of fear, not people of faith. Not to be reactive myself but with all the apparent vitriol, urgency, vindictiveness, and the ability to rationalize hateful behaviors, I think they might be working for the other guy.

I Want a Junket

Apply the private jet test. How many of you have been on one? Go into politics. For those without talent it's by far the easiest way. You might live like a king. Even if you're a scumball like Newt, Jim Jordan and the rest. 

Do You Know the Way to Saint-Tropez?

Lie. Cheat. Steal. It's the Republican way. The conservative way. 

Take all you can any way you can. Making a contribution implies accountability. That the world makes sense. Fuck that. Better to make your money on manipulation. Exploitation. Plunder and graft. 

Admit it. We all know life is shit. Idealism is for suckers. Cooperation is a refuge for losers and cowards. For those who can't cut it. Competition is everything. The dirtier the better. That is real life. 

The Great Desecration

I say it goes back before Trump but it doesn't matter. He made it undeniable that Republicans would love it if you spoiled and soiled everything. Which Trump did, routinely and compulsively. He loved to splash shit our ideals, tear down standards and make people kowtow to him and don the cloak of servility.

Maybe 'make' is a little strong. Republicans stood in line and volunteered to humiliate themselves in front of him, to stay in the power loop, with shocking predictability. The country got Trumpified. As horrifying and disgraceful as that is we have to own it. We go used to not owning stuff under Republicans.

Nixon, Reagan, Bush. Enough 'cognitive dissonance' to last forever there. 'That's not really us.' Yeah, it is. Try too deny it now, as we tumble into a morass of self-betrayal. What do we stand for? Above all, making rich people richer, and ensuring that wealth is generational. And disempowering everyone else. 

As must be done so if the rabble realizes how it's been had they will be unable to reverse it. We're getting a solid glimpse of a dystopian future. Evangelicals want it. Relatively affluent Americans think they are secure or are in denial. They are expendable. We all are. Our 'rights' are going up in smoke.

Perp Fiction

The tsunami of Republican lies distracts us from the simplicity of what's going on. They lie because they have a lot of shit to hide. Because they're criminals. 

Trump Pubic Hairs

Donald Trump has announced on his website an important, one-time, massively significant opportunity to buy his pubic hairs, in a limited edition of 100. The price is $10M per pube. As part of the deal Trump agrees that all his future hair clippings will be disposed of, thereby protecting the investment. 

Pubic hairs were chosen because of their assumed purity, freedom from 'product,' and possible infusion with Trump mojo and generative goodness. The point, of course, is that the pubes will contain the entirety of the Trump genetic code. His whole sequence. Years from now, no doubt, the pubes will be priceless. 

That is, when it is accepted that he is the greatest human ever to have lived. Changing standards and technology might allow you to grow your own Trump, like some people say of dinosaurs, the value of which would be incalculable. The certificate of authenticity contains numerous protections.

Other potential sources of Trump's genetics will be entirely controlled. You have his word of honor. Most of the interest so far has been not from buyers but from other fantastically accomplished people, such as Elon Musk, thinking of doing the same thing. But surely they are no competition for Trump.

Ask yourselves, as a store of value or possibly as collateral, whose pubes do you want to own? 

Illusions in Ulysses

What if your leaders are nuts? Your heroes delusional? Your rulers warped? Everything goes wrong. I don't want Odysseus running my country. But better that than Ajax. Better Apollo than Zeus. And better either than Ares. In other words, you don't want Douglas MacArthur or Curtis LeMay or George Patton in positions requiring tact, diplomacy, deliberation etc.

You see what I'm saying. Look to your archetypes. Archetypes are normally more unidimensional than what you want in a leader. That's the point. Someone with healthy personality development can draw widely on aspects of themselves to fit the circumstances. An arrested or emotionally sick person wants to force circumstances into their drama. 

Their story, with its compensatory twists. As a means to an end.

Therapy exists for that. Not electoral politics. But this means, under them, a bad ruler, you play a role. You are a means to an end. I've experienced this in interpersonal relationships. I'm sure I've done it. It's both pathological and normal, depending on the degree. In a good relationship you're more yourself in spite of all the inevitable compromises. Which is cool.

And that might be a paradox or bullshit. I don't know. But, we're at the other end of the thing. Such monstrous pathology that the unrealizable self-actualization of a tiny group of horribly sick people is controlling us. People with -- guess? -- an authoritarian bent. I hate to bring him up but Trump is incredibly sick. He's probably unfixable. A lost soul. 

He makes Curtis LeMay look like St. Francis. The guy is so sick it works for him because too many people can't imagine he's as sick as he is. He's an archetype. Or maybe a number of them, sequentially, as he struggles along, lashing out all over the place. To everyone's detriment including his own. A seething mass of pathology. He's arrested at multiple levels, never rising above the sickness. 

He never cycles out of it. And he's running for president again.

The air-raid sirens should be on. All day. This is an emergency. And there's the entire bureaucracy of pathology that enabled him. That made him possible. The assorted cults. View these with archetypes in mind. Because they've thrust us into that primal world again, which the lovers of civilization and decency thought we might have finally escaped. 

Onward Christian Soldiers

Democrats found it hard to understand back then, when the Republican assault against them was taking shape. Understandably, because the movement made no sense. At any level. The rich and powerful feeling threatened by the powerless. And as though there was ever a viable commie movement. In America. It's like Nazis blaming Jews after the Prussians' blind love of war got their asses kicked. 

The Nazi analogy holds up. Stream some stuff on the birth of the Third Reich, then tell me it doesn't. I come away impressed by the similarities in determination. These fuckers are absolutely driven. They will have their triumph of the will. They must rule. We see it all around. As some jackass (probably Karl Rove) once more or less said, while you're trying to digest the last shit we did we do more.

They make history. We're always on our heels. On our asses. Under the fucking ground, sometimes. The latest news in the pronged assault is at the Supreme Court, where their will has triumphed over reality. Again. Let none dare call it coincidence. That a raft of anti-voting legislation occurred after they decreed how unnecessary the old voting protections were. But fuck that. Down with affirmative action. 

Fuck you is the message. But it has been for 40 years. We got canceled. So, of course, they get all wound up and fanatical and reactionary about 'cancel culture' and 'replacement' and . . . name your nonsense. Amidst the noise though the Christian Soldiers on the Supreme Court are really striking out. Not whiffing. You know what I mean. At us. The justifications for their latest rulings are so patently bullshit. 

This is bad. Late stage stuff. And I have no idea how to stop it. I did some years ago but not now. The Koch effort to defeat Trump means even they can't control the monster they created. And the Supreme Court is a place of last resort. Aha! (Light bulb moment). That's why they have been (determination again) hell-bent on controlling it. None of it makes sense but all the pieces fit. 

The puzzle is coherent within its delusional field of reference. So this is very bad news. How could it happen? It's the Confederacy, stupid. They got their asses kicked by being belligerent, reactionary idiots. A 'superior' culture unjustly defeated. An honor culture. A martial culture. And a culture with enough dark baggage to support any delusion. The lost cause? A big lie, if that sounds familiar.

A Dilemma

The people who deserve to be shot -- because they don't know how to live without preying on other people -- are the ones who want to do the shooting. Of their innocent fellow citizens, who are capable of and desire a just and humane society. But those people don't want to shoot anybody. They are born for compromise and conciliation. For cooperation and fairness. So the nutcases take over. They inevitably push it too far and cause a lot of unnecessary destruction, in spite of the attempts to structure a society that can preempt their barbarism. 

Justices Like To Fish and Hunt

For cases, I mean. Our Republican Supreme Court justices are looking for opportunities to redefine American law and life. Or take us back, perhaps, to the wonderful antebellum days of unfettered capitalism and a brutal, bigoted way of life, with extraordinary inequality and the rampant misery and ignorance God always intended for the world.