United by Contempt

Geeky Libertarians and Fundamentalist Christians are strange associates until you think that both groups crave a world of purity--the geeks abstract, mathematical perfection and the bible-thumpers spiritual purity in unity with God. That is to say, death. In a way both groups despise life.

They despise matter and especially biological existence--because it's messy, mortal and flawed--so geeks with libertarian leanings find themselves voting with revanchist, delusional, literalist biblical outcasts seeking to restore an old, divine world order which never really existed. 

Or, similarly, the Confederacy. Contempt and feelings of superiority unite and define them. Bannon, Miller, McConnell and Ryan drip with it. Falwell did as well but now he's pure--or, rotting in the ground. The coalition is united by contempt. They hate themselves, their lives, and humanity. 

Climate Change Toupée

Lamar Smith, resounding idiot of Texas and climate denier, is taking the toupée approach to global warming, just as he did with his own head, and the results are bad. Yes, dumbass, you are bald and it's better to own it. And yes, dumbass, the planet is warming and it's better to own it. Away with the toupée.

Death to Paul Ryan

Never, ever would I kill someone. I don't own a gun. (NSA, are you there?) But, my God, how I wish that Paul Ryan would die. That smug smile, apparently present whenever he sees his life-long ambition of screwing his fellow citizens out of their lives and livelihood possibly to be realized, is unbearable. 

How Louche

Louche is now resplendence. Excess and tack are tasteful. Trumpism is triumphant. It's a degenerate age.

Desecration Days

Not much reverence and respect still adhered to the American State by the time of Trump but an aura of deluded idealism hung about the place, that we were still special and were still, in any case, identifiably American. Even that thin air of authenticity is now being dispelled daily by Trump. 

His actions seemed deliberately designed to desecrate his office, the government generally and the tattered remnants of our ideals, a flag still flying and shot to pieces but now wet with Trump (yuck) urine. If someone had been designed from the ground up for desecration you couldn't beat Donald.

Presidential Polygraph

Somebody, tell me what would happen if Trump were hooked up to a polygraph, and not that it would start smoking and then burst into flames.

I mean, seriously. He doesn't​ seem to know what telling the truth is. I don't know how you get a baseline on him. He's not a normal person.

Python for President

Clearly we misunderstood Trump's talk about the swamp. He was a Burmese Python putting out a warning for the 'gators. And the 'gators--life-long and well-loathed and rightfully-feared reptiles like Ryan--are finding out what a python is like. 

Oh, the Humanity!

At this point observations about the degradation of Trump voters will only be trite. The souls are already sold and can't be redeemed at the White House pawn shop. Even those of us who love diversity have been coerced into a false duality by those who believe blindly in dominance and submission. They succumb to the Republican push for depravity and mostly end up in submissive roles. The model is dehumanizing to everyone but they have won at the polls and are running everything. 

What that model isn't is Christianity, one of the wise traditions insisting that we must submit only to God and that anything else is idolatry. So it is that Trump voters will continue to take it up the ass for the team because indignity becomes them and independence, reason and accountability are outside of their scope of operation but maybe they can glimpse it in the afterlife, if justice is then dispensed. They have given up on decency and are disgraced voyeurs at the spectacles of Trump.

Out of the Shadows

Of all of the groups to come out of the shadows lately none has been more routinely maligned and misunderstood than pussy-grabbers and Trump isn't doing them any favors. It wasn't so much feminism that drove them underground as political correctness since real pussy-grabbers know how to execute the thing and seldom grab an unwilling target and they never, ever, brag about it later.

And, frankly, they don't use the word "pussy" but they won't tell you what they do use in the unlikely event that the reference is needed. Suffice it to say that Trump is reviled by them and anathema. They are honorable people with a long history and traditions and they absolutely love women which Trump clearly does not. So also in this instance Trump is an outcast, as he was in New York Society. 

There, in the higher echelons, a surprisingly large contingent are members of the club. If white supremacists can own their stuff then the grabbers (it's called impulsive fondling, more correctly) can certainly own theirs. But, most importantly, they want it known that Donald does not speak for them. They can now speak for themselves because of renewed tolerance and lowered standards.

For this they grudgingly thank Donald. And Roger Ailes. And Bill O'Reilly...

Pit Bull Radio

My sources tell me that Trump's tidal wave of misinformation will include radio talks called firesale chats patterned on Roosevelt's and meant to cement his place in our hearts with their intimacy, homespun imagery and earthy appeal, including anecdotes of racial animus and resentment. 

There will be exhortations and quasi-religious, inspirational material delivered in Donald's distinctive style which, if he realizes it is failing, will default to his attaching himself tenaciously to America's collective, psychological ass by his pit bull-like jaws of doom. We will never be free of him.

He will plague our minds and memories forever even if we manage to impeach him or if he dies. He looks as though he could die any day from over-stimulation and exasperation. He's always flush and intensely animated. Our assets have been sold cheap--old news--but the brand is now on the block.

It has been replaced with Trumpism and the firesale chats are ultimately about this, ensuring that Americans have once and forever forgotten what we formerly stood for. 

No Wall There

I keep telling friends of mine, earnest critics of Trump, that they're throwing stuff at a wall to see if it will stick and there's no wall there.

Donald Trump's Super Premium Presidency

There it is, by marketing decree, what Americans have longed for, manifestly excellent and exceptional! Trump's premium--a presidency for the ages!

What a shame it's not. That's what you get when you hire an actor and an advocate of branding. The presidency has been branded. What about us?

Unhinged

I'm envisioning a new interview or performance show featuring Republican politicians and called GOP Unhinged, patterned on MTV Unplugged and offering us a chance to assess our current leaders without all the trappings and over-produced aspects of the propaganda machines at Fox News and elsewhere. I bet we'll see just how crazy they really are. 

Maladaptive and Malicious Daydreaming

I hypothesize that maladaptive daydreaming is rampant and virulent and contagious among Republicans. The signs are rife. Read about it and tell me what you think but the loss of a sense of reality is a critical diagnostic criterion. That alone makes it plausible.

Fake President

Messages emerge from people's fixations, unconscious and accidental indicators of their failings. Donald's is authenticity, revealed by his obsession with fake news. From this we learn that he is a fake, struggling blindly to feel real. It isn't working. The man is a sham. 

Baby Seal Clubbers' Club

As Republicans cast about for innocents to slaughter the play of personalities is interesting to observe. In God's own court I think Donald Trump would be ruled non compos. But the smiles of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell​ are unforgettable as they consider the suffering and the harm they may cause. They kill people as surely as if they had shot them.

Children and old people were always first on their lists but with the rise of Trump the scope of their cruelty expands. Ryan and McConnell​ are the guys on whom you want to go medieval. Hang them above the city gates alive and in cages and let nature take its course. We didn't actually kill them--did we?--just as they never killed anyone themselves.

We Can't Afford Big Bird

Sadly, we can no longer afford Big Bird, our Republican overlords tell us. Such edicts arise from their gated communities. Occasionally I work in one of these, with the monstrous houses usually inhabited by an aging white person or two, and often only part-time. But we can't afford Big Bird, they tell us.

Who is This Trump Guy?

Donald is unknowable not because he's deep or complex but because there's nothing there. Trying to understand him is a waste of time. 

Observation makes sense. Analysis doesn't. He's already observably incoherent. Ridicule makes sense. Satirizing him makes sense. 

Criticism doesn't. There's nothing for the criticism to stick to. For the truth of Trump look at comedy. Look at farce. Look at Alec Baldwin. 

The SNL version is the truth of Trump. He isn't a kitschy president he is kitsch--gaudy, exaggerated, inauthentic and ephemeral. 

Dame Donald

Some day Donald will go to England and maybe meet the Queen. I think she should make him a dame. It feels right and it's more alliterative than if he were a sir.

The Carpet-Bombing of the Imbeciles

Let's not forget that Republicans had carpet-bombed their share of the electorate into imbeciles with lies long before Trump.

Let Trump be Trump

It was the irrefutable lesson of the campaign, that Donald was right and that he had the key to the electorate. He did it his way and he won. But it's one thing to run and another to rule.

Fresh Greed

It's Spring and the greed is in bloom everywhere and its leaves are fresh on the trees. The sap is rising in investors and there is no thought of Winter. And why not, since they have learned how to flee from the cold, vacationing on the funds they've hijacked from us.

Big Shorts

In investment language Donald Trump shorted the intelligence of the American voter and won. Voter stock went down. He continues to bet on idiocy but everything has a floor. He cashed out at the election and bet again on ignorance and gullibility. 

When will the electorate realize they've been duped? And will Donald get out at the bottom? He is simultaneously betting on an upside for selfishness, setting the stage for a new round of plundering and asset-stripping at the expense of responsible Americans.

It has been the Republican practice for decades to bet on wealth and against the poor and middle-class while gaming the system. Donald is in a position to influence, if not guarantee, the result but we still have some value, even at liquidation. We can vote.

No Worries!

Donald Trump, feeling compassion for the American people (he loves them like his children) and aware of their concerns, has created a cabinet-level department of reassurance and reinterpretation to be called No Worries! and chaired by Steve Bannon, a man of many hats. Bannon's code name in this role will be thatch, to keep it district and separate from his roles as advisor (code name: rasputinberry) and defense honcho (code name: flamingo).

Change is hard. Donald knows this but he also knows his own record and, disregarding the bankruptcies and calamities, it makes him confident. Keep in mind, however, that Trump lives large, especially now that he is lord of the universe, and that Bannon, a devotee of apocalyptic fantasies, thinks for the future. In other words, you may decline, suffer and die in the short term but, on-average and eventually, everything will work out well.

We have their word. Be reassured. And, no worries!

Trumphog Day

We are living the same day over and over with Trump, the dumbing-down of outrageous behavior into normalcy. Trump does this, Trump does that.

Meaning is reduced to decomposing, undifferentiated matter, to sameness and banality, initially molecular and then atomic in its incoherence. 

At the Trump Ranch: Ponderousness and a Brackish Bonanza

The Trump transition oozes on as an immense wall of slime, incorporating everything in its way and causing the death of differentiation, intelligibility and decency. Our unctuous, gelatinous executive is a marvel of absorptive capacity and habitual ingestion, feeding to no purpose and only from compulsion. 

In the incorporation there is no noticeable transfer of energy or increase in the organization and complexity of the brackish, rancid entity of Trump but only disappearance, the destruction of life and order for the sake of it and to reduce resistance for someone(thing) already too overfed to be affected.

Sometimes a Not-So-Great Notion (and Nation)

Congressional Republicans are some fixed-idea people, for sure. The most destructive social and economic policy ever, tax-cuts-for-the-rich, is enshrined in their souls and baked into their brains. It will be uttered on their death beds.

It will be carved on their tombstones. And they continue to tout it, that this miracle, snake-oil elixir will benefit everybody when, well--look at the figures on the increasing inequality of wealth and income instituted by them in the 1980's.

Fjord Foundation

I have learned that Donald Trump, being as perplexed as anyone by his own greatness and identifying with the pillaging peoples of the Middle Ages, is inventing an Aryan backstory for himself, that he is a true descendent of the great Scandinavian conquerors, a modern-day Viking. Tell me he doesn't look like one--ruddy, windswept and with a jutting jaw and airs of belligerence, restlessness and invincibility. 

Not wanting to take chances, though, with his immense, inherited wealth he has spun out a think-tank and corporation, the Fjord Foundation, to pursue these investigations on his behalf and return the results he requires. If there is no genetic connection to Norse marauders according to his DNA that information will be suppressed and something substituted proving his plundering roots and lineage.

The truth of Trumpism is this, that invention is everything and that reality is what powerful people deem it to be. Like any rational rich person Trump wants the rewards of risk without the actuality of it so the Fjord will be a hedge foundation, highly leveraged and an entirely new kind of entity, an organization invented for the purpose of speculation in ideas and the reverse-engineering of facts and information.

Trump's superiority is the starting point, an assumption and hypothesis, and the foundation will then scour the historical and scientific universes for corroborating evidence or it will be made up. The Fjord Foundation will operate on borrowed funds and is designed to implode if threatened with insolvency and to leave creditors holding the bag. Trump will move on, in command of his longship, to other conquests. 

Trump's 400

A list of 400 or more of Trump's lesser appointees so far shows that they aren't remotely what was promised in the days of his courting of disgruntled and supposedly disadvantaged and dispossessed white people. 

The list consists of crooks and misfits and slithery, selfish creatures and swamp denizens eying  their next meal. There are lobbyists, galore. Trumpist white voters are about to find out what dispossession really is.

Rosemary's Baby?

It is clear from his actions that Donald Trump might be a child of Satan. He must furnish his birth certificate and any other evidence that may contain clues and information about his origins and ongoing affiliation with the prince of darkness, Lucifer, and his allies. 

Also he must provide the same for his mother, especially any evidence that she was once known as "Rosemary" or evidence of her association with anyone by that name or evidence of surrogacy or the attendance at his birth of gaunt, bearded men in dark robes.

The Physics of Trump

Trumpian physics differs somewhat from Newton's and is based on the principles of seizure, inheritance and privilege. That is, it assumes energy subsidies and ongoing deference. The laws are as follows:

1. Trump, once placed in motion, will increase in motion.

2. For every action there is a disproportionate reaction.

3. Other entities, when met, will get out of Trump's way.

The Wrecking (Crew) Comes to Fruition

The dizzying disorder and ineptitude of the Trump administration can't be understood as ineptitude. It's demolition. They're clearing the ground for their new world order and sowing the seeds of confusion so that they can claim, as they already have begun, that good is bad and right is wrong and up is down. Welcome to chaos.

Bannon's Boy-Toy

Donald Trump is so far over his head in the presidency he appears to have become Steve Bannon's boy-toy.

The Camp of the Cowards

Steve Bannon has a known appetite for racist, apocalyptic literature (The Camp of the Saints) so I would recommend to him another such work, The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica by John Calvin Batchelor. Years ago I was working my way through this when I encountered a section so offensive to me I stopped reading. In it Catholics were a degraded, submissive subspecies ruled by Jesuits. 

Catholicism is also Bannon's tribe so he should read the book. He's too powerful now to care but I want to pit Bannon's racism against Batchelor's. Wait a minute, they're now both in the Trump camp, the camp of bullies, liars, lackeys and cowards. Isn't it the point? They romanticize barbarity because they feel invulnerable to it. They want it for us. And you wondered why their side loves their guns so much.

They are on the attack. Batchelor became a right-wing radio host so he's from Bannon's milieu. He poses as a serious, responsible Republican but anyone taking that seriously would have abandoned the party of Palin and Pat Robertson decades ago. The best outcome would be for all these racist people to get together and maim one another so that the decent, peaceful, sane remnant can rebuild the world.

 

Calvinists and Catholics are odd allies in the coward camp, armchair generals of the Armageddon. It shows, however, how extremes meet, some Catholics mistaking worldly, administrative authority for divinity and the Calvinists, schismatics forever, rejecting all authority and thereby becoming solipsists, reductivists and the arch-enemies of civilization. It's a tag-team from hell and where we are heading.

My Favorite Martinet

The spineless rigidity of the Gingrich and Cruz class of Republicans is illustrative of their inconsistency as seen in the tension between their fetishized, tribal take on individualism and freedom and their insistence on conformity, unanimity of purpose and total doctrinal adherence and agreement.

John Roberts voted once in a way they didn't like and--wham!--he was instantly accused of everything short of child molestation. But they lob their bombs from secure positions and leave real risk-taking to poor slobs and the sorry citizens whose franchise they gleefully reduce at every opportunity.

The competition for a favorite martinet--a representative, disciplinary automaton--is fierce. Gingrich is now a pathetic, preening, ridiculous and rotund third-base coach looking comical in his uniform. Tom DeLay is where? Grover Norquist is my choice. He cracks the whip over congressional Republicans.

They must obey his arbitrary and particular dictates absolutely and he never runs for office. He brags about removing Republicans who dare to refuse or resist him. There's independence and democracy, Republican style. Nobody knows who funds him. What a great gig for a starched white-boy.

A Well-Heeled Machine

Trump's administration is a well-heeled machine. 

Trump's Tomb

It's time to think ahead to Trump's tomb. This needs to be a magnificent structure, a mausoleum befitting his immense, incomprehensible greatness and a venue for reflection, remembrance, and evangelical prayer. He will have to have a presidential library -- a startling idea in itself for a person so unread and ignorant. It will make sense to combine with that. 

Immediately it's clear the location must be in the center of everything and be as obvious, unavoidable, and in-your-face as Trump so Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College, backwaters springing to mind, should be ruled out. New York City is the only possible place, in a site as conspicuous as the Apple Store's, so I propose the site of the Apple Store.

That beautiful, transparent structure will be replaced with a windowless, granite monstrosity, perfectly symmetrical and impenetrable. All of the works will be below-grade, as with the Apple Store, suggesting the interiority (or nonexistence) of Trump's character and the nature of his administration -- unconscious, arbitrary, authoritarian and compulsive. 

Boneless, Skinless and Chicken

God bless Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, for trying to help us understand his difficult ideas but, of them, "skin in the game" makes instant sense. There's no incentive for anyone to behave with nothing at risk, except for moral courage, a quaint idea and now in short supply, particularly when outsize profits are available. 

Hedge-fund honchos and financiers are examples and now closely allied with politicians from both parties who are too dependent on their contributions to see straight. Those politicians are supposed to be looking out for all of us but they're too spineless, cowardly and compromised to do it. And they have no "skin" in the game.

Perfidity Trap

America has slipped into a sinkhole of treachery and abuse under the auspices of conservative rule. Normal corrective mechanisms are being overwhelmed by interfering, self-serving, perverse, outside factors, rooted mostly in monied interests.

So the system keeps spiraling down. Fewer people are well-served by their institutions and wealth is increasingly, unconscionably concentrated at the top. Because of the interference the system can't alter course but continues on towards self-annihilation.

Pin-headed, Upside-down Fake: Enjoy!

Hard-working, responsible, community-minded Hispanics are being arrested in the name of our pin-headed president, Donald Trump. Such an instance occurred in Illinois and most of the local citizens, Trump voters, were indignant that Carlos had been detained. He had been caught twice driving drunk years ago but had then stopped drinking. Everyone interviewed liked and respected him. 

He manages a Mexican eatery. Several of the locals, however, said that Carlos was a law-breaker and--tough luck--that he must go. Those citizens have the mindset of pathetic, degraded, submissive subordinates (yes, master) everywhere and want to beat up on anyone they can. Trump is held to an inverted, sick standard of lying ineptitude and Republicans generally are held to no rational standard. 

It's part of the scam. Most of those interviewed were not mean. They had been duped by Trumpian rhetoric. But the bullying faction bore down at the the opportunity and they are now in charge. They were always assumed, at least by me, to be a fractional minority of Americans but they have been buoyed by the fake president, Trump. They are the worst of us. Save Carlos from Trump! 

Marxism/Bannonism

As most of us expected Trump clearly can't think his way out of a wet paper bag so we're left with a Jewish Islamaphobe and racist improbably named "Miller" and an Irish-Catholic autocrat, Steve Bannon, who wants to disempower the evil empire in Washington in favor of a more decentralized state, his dictatorship of the proletariat. 

The intervening steps are Stalinesque, however, with an American workforce turned into serfs by Bannon's party, which is incidentally also responsible for causing a revolutionary redistribution of wealth, unwittingly served by their savior, Bannon, who will decentralize everything in their favor just like Stalin and Mao and Lenin. Oh, right.

Too often the serf's-eye view of this (RIP) was from the bottom of a hole in the ground. Eggs must be broken, I guess. This casts the Putin connection in a different light. Bannon and Miller must be admirers. If Bannon's "deconstruction" looks like Lenin's and Mao's we are in for a ride. But the peasants are getting restless in Republican town halls. 

For the haters of political correctness I have a suggestion: tar and feathers for any right-winger or lumpen-aristocrat ducking the electorate and limiting voter involvement. Bannon looks feathery already and newly-hatched. We should practice on him. As one of the serfs he claims to serve I want to send a message to this arrogant misanthrope.

Let's Play "Pretend"

For all the bluster and "outsider" nonsense the Trump administration is tracking right back to core, conservative (pretense) doctrine, all observably false, such as small government (pretense) blather and promises of the impossible, that you can cut taxes and raise defense spending and (pretend) it will magically not produce deficits. It produces deficits and always has but it gives them an excuse (pretense) to try to screw voters out of everything, health care and Social Security and even civil rights. 

Government includes the military, someone should inform them, without pretense, but they like burning through our money on anything but us. Trump and his crew want a cataclysm of any kind (to act as a pretense). They already invent things. Let's pretend: "I inherited a mess." Right, Donald. Obama inherited two wars botched by Republicans and an economy destroyed by them through deregulation and a middle class on the ropes because conservative, corporate shills sent their jobs to China. 

Or, "Islam is after us." The Trumpists want a holy war more than anything, for varying scary reasons, all pretentious. They want free reign and they can't repeal the entire Constitution so they try to work within its constraints to produce a slow coup, revolution and devolution from democracy to something else--an inhuman, corporatized state with inconceivable disparities and injustice and no equal protection for anyone. Much of this is accomplished already. It is, all pretense aside, exactly what they want.

Showdown at the Town Hall Corral

My God, after decades of indoctrination to the contrary many Americans have gotten it into their heads that they deserve more than contempt and a wretched life with no security and an uncertain end.

The Republicans are stunned. Little people are standing up to them and expecting a return for their support instead of more and forever--yes, the core doctrine of the undead--tax cuts for the rich.

He stole the election...

and had no mandate and did whatever he wanted and wrecked everything he touched and left a trail of shame and horror and destruction. Bush was in all ways a precursor​ to Trump.

Feckless Endangerment

The interplay of ritualized malice and incompetence that characterizes Republicanism is hard to tease out because screwing things up deliberately looks a lot like incompetence. In reality, it's not, but only sabotage. It's a skill but a dubious one. Demolition is easy. 

They win no matter what. Did they mean to waste billions in Iraq getting innocent people killed and destabilizing the place, while the fat cats made money? Bush was reelected and there was no reckoning. "See, gov'ment sucks," they say. So they were rewarded.

If they accidentally or inadvertently hadn't messed it up they would have made hay anyway. This is cunning but not smart. All it requires is that you don't give a shit about outcomes. Maybe Steve Bannon could kill hundreds of thousands of people and not care. 

Probably, but Bush did that and not only didn't he care but we didn't care either. They mostly killed heathen and brown people, as it happened, and some dutiful Americans. Dead and injured Americans? What's the fuss? Their outlook is too vast for such stuff.

An otherworldly vision is theirs and in it creation is crud. They despise us, and probably themselves, and we vote for them. Whatever, but they should go. They are evil people, wanting to remake society according to their sick ideas, pessimism and hate.

Real Fake News: The Day in Trump

Donald Trump forgot he was president today in informal interactions with the press and others at the White House. He lambasted his own administration for its leaderless incompetence and wondered what it had come to when the head of the free world can't find his ass with both hands and has to defer to bickering hacks and subordinates to put out contradictory, illegal executive orders and incomprehensible press.

He also grabbed a young female visitor "by the pussy" and then told the Secret Service to "dispose of her" but issued a reprieve and had her kneel and kiss his ring but then he said the pope was a faggot who was out to destroy him. He also said that Melania was a closeted Catholic and that he had suddenly realized that Jews and Catholics were in control of his administration and were poisoning him. He ordered a test of all his food.

When Bannon and Miller appeared he wept and begged for mercy. He said that he was having a bad day because he wasn't "getting any" and asked them to get him some but no Catholics or Hebes, please. Just get him some bland, Protestant pussy and a nice lunch but make sure it was tested first and not by them. He thought he had encountered a Russian in the hallway, by the way, because he "talked funny" and ordered it investigated.

Donald, real fake news is when you actually make stuff up, not when someone says something you don't like or deigns to criticize you. Fake news looks a lot like the rubbish you put out. Have a nice news day!

Has He No Decency?

No, not a bit.

Son of a Preacher-Man

It isn't tenable to view Donald Trump as an aberration, hallucination, outlier, comical interlude, or intermission in the noble history of a democracy. We are prone to think this because of how it reflects on us--that we aren't the people we thought we were. But we aren't. Some percentage of us were, more or less, and at some point. I'll explain.

We are the Balkans. We are the Middle East. We are Northern Ireland or any other political area deeply and incurably destabilized by irreducible factionalism. Trump's real forebears and antecedents are Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and other irrationalist, reactionary, lying, self-serving, misanthropic, hypocritical, bullshit-peddling hucksters.

These preacher-boys are representative of a retrograde, racist element--our equivalent of the Taliban. They are believers in authoritarian government with claims to religious sanction and a divine mandate for permanent hegemony which, when threatened and challenged, warrants an all-out war and the annihilation of the (usually imaginary) enemy.

It is the devil's work and pernicious. I am several times over an alien inhabitant of the South: a Yankee, a social-justice Catholic, middle-class, progressive and even Irish--a Midwesterner by birth but politically appropriate for Massachusetts. It took me decades to begin to comprehend the depth of the racial animus, resentment, and reactivity in the South. 

There's an individual corollary to systemic, structural racism--unconscious and imbedded and as toxic to personal moral development as institutional racism is to social progress. Before I arrived at this understanding I thought I had noticed similarities and creative parallels between Southern and Irish writing--between, maybe, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. 

Their traditions are rooted in the psychology of defeated and humiliated peoples. Blarney, yarn-spinning and improvisational story-telling are ends in themselves and survival skills. Raconteurs are historians of traditions and identity, not facts and time-lines. The respective religious traditions--racism and Irish Catholicism--had been outlawed and went underground.

Irish priests were saying masses in the ditches and in the South there was segregation, the Klan, and honkeys hanging niggers with impunity (now they shoot them). Southerners and Irish Catholics (think of Fox News) share a sophistication for reactionary invention. Normally people call it lying but for them it's dimly revealed, reassuring and a matter of identity.

It's also compensatory because the boys--and it's a boy thing--had their balls handed to them in front of their women-folk back in the day. Those Southern politicians and preachers--there is no distinction--are the custodians of a tradition of identification, persecution, denial, fatalism, defensiveness, romanticized racism and delusional aggression.

In their delusion--the system of lies they live by--they recapture the flag from the infidels and restore righteousness. Now, deputy Donald has recaptured that flag for pathetic, loser, white-boy authoritarians everywhere and he's got Jeff Sessions and other neo-Confederates with survivalist instincts on his side. They lord it over the unbelievers. Oh, the triumphalism!

Reason isn't the idea. It's a performance intended to influence voters through emotionalism and fear. It's a sick, alternative world and it's reflected in the chasm between our political parties--revival culture in the land of TED talks. The creative impulse and tradition, good things, have been coopted, as have we, and are being used in the service of evil.

Whores of Parliament

The Whoredom Caucus in Congress--the Kochsucker contingent--is pushing for the immediate and reckless repeal of Obamacare. This is the face of suicidal partisanship and depravity, pure and simple. No matter how many people might be hurt, the Democrats must never have a victory. The commonwealth and citizenry are incidental in their scheme.

Goodbye, Cool World

The thing is, I love the world. I love life and all its spectacular diversity and particularity and the whole continuum down to our inanimate environment, though I wonder lately if inanimate isn't up from where we are. I don't feel any contempt for life at all but only for us because we are now anti-life--sick and predatory and suicidal and failing in the simple responsibilities our lives and consciousness require.

The gifts of life weren't enough. Little has been asked of us in return for so much but we shamelessly want more. I truly hate to say it because I don't have anything against anybody apart from how they live but--look at Trump, a despicable example of humanity. He thinks he's beyond the rules and that he defines​ everything within his sphere and authority but it's devoid of truth, justice and decency. 

I don't condemn him but only what he does. He is our incarnation of evil, a manifestation of the distilled and concentrated worst of us--those who empowered and supported him, meaning all of us. Sadly we are all implicated because of our common franchise and flawed nature, now evident in that man who is not just flawed but the repository of all deficiency, our most deplorable nature fully realized.