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. 

Canadian Wildfires and Heat Dome Cause Republicans to Get Religion on Climate Change

Of course that didn't happen. But the only thing preventing it is the sociopathic scumballs themselves. They could get up tomorrow and fight for every sensible thing and justice and decency everywhere.

But they won't. They'll wake up and fight for evil and inhumanity because they're hardened, committed, self-serving, lying worthless crooks. And that's just the way they are. And they are far from done.

Covfefe is My Copilot

Oh, for the days when we could still hope that Republicans weren't totally nuts and that we weren't fucked. The innocent days of covfefe, which morphed into so much impeachment-worthy behavior. A COVID response that got hundreds of thousands killed, the actual sacking of our Capitol by Trumpist goons and thugs, and the qualitative easing of every standard of behavior. 

It still goes on. 

And, the cause of all this is not only not in jail he's being protected by the Secret Service at our expense and making money off the whole atrocity. I believe in owning one's shit. But just being American comes with too much baggage to handle now. I need a break. Forgetfulness, and anything to get away from the piece of shit controlling our destiny and his disgraceful enablers. 

My recent stolen election count stands at 2000 and 2016. No doubt about the Republican mandate in those instances. It was negative. Decent people would have acknowledged it and governed appropriately. They declared victory and did whatever they wanted, the first guy even using the tragedy of 9/11 to put through disastrous partisan stuff. Including tax cuts on the rich, of course.

And wars the oil people and evangelicals had been salivating over. The second guy blew away every frame of reference. And not abstract shit in my book. What's a social contract among plunderers? A nuisance. Equal protection? How quaint! Tax cuts on the rich ensued, of course, the holy grail, raison d'être and categorical imperative for conservatives. People must be screwed. 

And here we are. Approaching another election cycle with a criminal degenerate leading the Republicans and openly promising all kinds of illegality. They absolutely love it. Burn the house down! With Democrats in it. Because they're traitors and deserve to die and the 'house' is the federal government which they pathologically hate. Because they are the Confederacy or rich capitalists. 

What century are we in? 

Bonfire of the Humanities

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

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

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

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

Open season on us. The bonfires are burning again.

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

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

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

Fox's Friends

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

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

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

Roll With It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans Cry Fowl

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

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

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

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

The Great Charade

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

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

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

Haze From Turd Fires Consumes Country

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

Birth of Conservative Icon

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

My Brush with Consequence

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

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

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

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

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

Texas Asshole Incensed Over Missed Opportunity to Destroy World

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

Nothing if Not a Worm

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

Fetal Attraction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or we're all totally fucked. 

Fuck Them Up the Ass PAC

I'm so tired of the lies.

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

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

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

A kind of immortality, no?

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

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

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

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

 

Chutes and Ladders

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

Say It Ain't So, Joe

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

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

Avoid the Draft

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

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

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

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

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

May God make it so. 

Losing Shit vs. Losing Your Shit

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

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

Eat Shit and Live

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

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

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

What did he do? 

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

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

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

We've Won!

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

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

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

Because rednecks resent having been born at all. 

A Johnston County Conversion

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

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

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

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

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