Welcome to the Confederacy.

I agree with George Lakoff's model of country-as-family and his idea that Republicans subscribe to the strict father, hierarchical authority version of the thing. The point I would make is that it's now the mentally ill and abusive father model courtesy of evangelical Christians because this is their view. Now, you might think that surely most of their families don't have mentally ill and abusive fathers and that this is good because it means they can come around. That their support of Trump is aberrant. 

Bad news. It's not based on their families and their experience or how they think families should be it's based on their conception of God. The God of fundamentalists and evangelicals is an asshole. Cruel, arbitrary, and unpredictable because He is unknowable, only to be experienced kinda mysteriously through grace in an instant of surrender under the watchful gaze of Jimmy Swaggart or Kenneth Copeland or some such charlatan and lunatic. So, this is bad news because God is inscrutable, immutable and perfect.

And, not to be questioned or fucked with under any circumstances. So, so is Trump. Trump stumbled into this role. They will never come around and Trump can't only not do anything wrong but they love him because he's mentally ill and abusive. For this reason historically the South has been an asylum. We have supported them at a loss and not expected them to meet normal standards, notably constitutional and legal standards up until desegregation, and so it was stable under those conditions.

But then came desegregation and this was fucking with God. So, again, just like after the Civil War, they regrouped and fought back any way they could. And, guess what, Republicans were willing to feed them all kinds of suggestions and veiled promises of a return to proper hierarchical authority in which blacks and minorities and women were back in their place. That's where we are now and how we got here. It was called the Southern Strategy and it worked unbelievably well. Welcome to the Confederacy. 

No Fault of 'The News'

The News is not supposed to be your education. It's a disaster as a substitute for that. It becomes nothing but noise. Even if a particular article is informative and teaches you something. because they have to move on. That's why they call it news. 

Hegseth Proves a Goon Right Out of the Gate

He was chosen, the idiot, for his value as an insult. Herr Hegseth owned being a loser and a sucker by participating in the charade. So it all worked out. 

An Introduction to Evangelical Christianity

This just got a whole lot easier. The cruelty and ignorance of the Trump administration is a perfect reflection of evangelicals' values. They have made him. Evangelical Christianity = MAGA. 

I might have been wrong ...

Previously I argued that resistance to Trump is futile, meaning open resistance. I argued for passive resistance and taking care of vulnerable populations, and for positioning and preparing ourselves for the inevitable crash and cleanup, because it will come. I felt open resistance was for the professionals, mostly lawyers. Sue the shit out of them in every venue and in every way. 

With maybe a little guerrilla activity on our part, but forget the marches. They enjoy your pain. I felt open resistance would worsen the harm to vulnerable people, with Trump and team lashing out more. I failed to see the depth of the fixations -- their fantasies of persecution. Especially Herr Donald. I thought they would be pleased with their glorious victory and a little risk aversion would kick in. 

Or, simply revelry and celebratory smashing-stuff-up, like a junk car at a frat party. 

I was wrong. It's all 'flood the zone’ with real cruelty and destructiveness. And the professionals, again mostly lawyers, are in danger of getting lumped in with us in their helplessness against the tidal wave of garbage. Their professionalism assumes 'the law' stills prevails in places and pockets, and it might not. Welcome to hell. Nobody can be expected to resist under threats of personal harm. 

Especially when it appears you'll simply disappear beneath the waves, without accounting, and not be around for the inevitable crash, the cleanup, and rebuilding, when you could be useful. The level of indeterminacy is daunting and disconcerting. There's so much we don't know and can't predict, but Trump and his minions have issued a 'halt and catch fire' command on the government and society.

In fact, it's unclear how broad their target is. I don't think they know, being afflicted with denial, compartmentalization and rationalization, but they could be after civilization generally. Don't let the insanity of this cause you to dismiss it. Remember how involved they are with destructive archetypes and fantasies. Evangelicals are steeped in a longing for the end times. 

Catholics, at least, like Bannon and a majority of the Supreme Court justices, seem to own a conscious desire for apocalyptic reinvention and to be less driven by unconscious forces. They represent the pinnacle of rationalization for which ability and training Jesuits were rightly renowned. They could and would argue anything, 'ad maiorem dei gloriam' and all. But God doesn't enter into this.

I think it's the other guy at work. 

Our Rights Just Went Precarious

Trump is asserting his lawlessness. This is incredibly serious. Remember all the talk of Democrats being scum and traitors? And remember the talk of declaring a national emergency and maybe instituting martial law? These don't sound petty, and it was assumed, I think by most folks, or at least by me, that it would be about immigration or something that at least exists. 

It would still probably occur under that justification or one similar but then what? Trump could do anything, and he's showing he recognizes no restraint. He thinks that not voting for him was treason, for example. He's obsessed with it. It's a huge deal to him and disqualifying for the rights of citizenship and even human rights. He doesn't recognize any of it. 

As Sure as There's a Hell

Donald Trump is heading there.  

Arrogance, Drive, Entitlement: The Making of Musk

You'll notice there was nothing in the title about intelligence. Nothing about talent. What can really be attributed to Musk? That could in any way justify his compensation? A willingness to take risks. A rich boy's willingness to take risks. 

See under 'entitlement.' In other words, privilege. In other words, too big to fail. In other words, another nepo baby and soul-brother of Trump and Bush, who owe everything to inheritance. And I don't mean genetic, as Musk would like to think.

Where do you think his interest in genetics comes from? The conviction, or hope, or assumption, or insecure belief or please God do let it be true, that he's actually a superior being. He needs so badly too believe he's a superior being.

The richest man in the world. He's the richest man in the world! And he's still trying to prove his worth. What does that tell you? That he knows his worth. Deep down, he knows his worth. That he's worthless. Useless. A taker, not a maker. 

And a scared little boy, pretending to be a man. 

Sir, I have Trump's prefrontal cortex on the phone ...

And it says it's being held captive, by 'a lizard.'

We have to assume Trump's prefrontal cortex exists and is functioning, this side of an MRI indicating otherwise, so it must be under house arrest or something. It's a hostage. Also I think we can infer this because Trump is now surrounded by hostages. A whole country of hostages. Hell, a whole planet. 

The lizard is in charge.

The lizard brain has recreated the state inside Donald's skull in the world at large. The severity of the complex and pathology, as indicated by the number of hostages, shows it to be the most extreme ever seen. Trump's brain blew the curve, in a bad way. Big lizard in there. But we must attempt contact.

It could destroy the world. We may have to kill it, and Trump might not survive, but this is life and civilization we're talking about. The existence of one man can't stand in the way. He's already gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed, by his inhumanity. This can't go on. We'll send in the probe. 

Or try the trance. Hypnosis. But something must be done. 

Republicans Are Going to Destroy Everything

But they're working for God so don't worry. 

Disgust-o-Meter

My disgust-o-meter is failing me. Maybe I need a new one. The one I have can't measure what's going on. 

Musk is Artistic

I keep hearing Musk is artistic as though this absolves him of something. I like to think I'm artistic, by temperament. I collect art and have joked, at times, that if I ever get sent to Betty Ford it will be for buying art. I love art. I buy art when I shouldn't buy art. 

When I can least afford it, for example, as a way of saying fuck it.

And I try be creative. We're told that Musk has created stuff. Name me one thing. Besides money. Somewhat out of thin air. I have a very broad definition of artistic. Crazy broad. I think we're all artists -- that we create our own lives. But some of us suck at it. 

Wait, they're saying autistic. As though that, again, absolves him of anything. If he wants to plead being nuts, let him. I won't plead for him, and make excuses for these pieces of shit. Nothing absolves them. To me guilt is one thing, culpability another. 

I make that distinction on the fly. Run with me. But we should decide if someone committed a crime, without considering mitigation, and decide separately if and how they are held accountable. And Musk and Trump are functioning criminal operations. 

Especially Musk's boy Donald. Do we see how insane it is to make excuses for people while they're still at it? Job one -- stop the crime. Artistic. Autistic. Mommy didn't love him. Daddy was a dick. I don't care. They're hurting innocent people. First, stop them.

The Appliance

Trump is a tool. If you read about how The Apprentice came about you will know. It saved Trump's sorry ass. And now all the underlings are feeding him stuff. They have claimed Biden has been a prop. 

A tool of forces in the background. But what they did was coherent. Even the stuff I disagree with was intelligible. We have a new game going on. Trump the tool. The Appliance. It should be a show. 

I think it is a show. 

Cellulose Heroes

Cellulose heroes never feel any pain. Cellulose heroes never really die. I remember going to D.C. in the Reagan years. Somebody was hawking photos to the faithful with a cardboard Reagan.

The actor president. At least he was in the movies. In B-movies. Now we have a reality guy. But cellulose heroes never feel any pain. And they never really die. We, however are expendable.

Episcopal Bishop Begs for Mercy

An Episcopal bishop, herself probably a D.E.I. hire, has asked Trump for mercy in an admission of the end of the rule of law, as Herr Donald and family looked on in contempt. There's a new Zeus in town. 

Thunderbolts ricochet around. Keep you head down, or go to the temple and plead for the indulgence of higher beings. Subdeities vie for influence and fight to have their way. Even they answer to Zeus. 

Who are we to resist? We are nothing. 

All hail Lord Trump! The bishop, in her defense, asked for mercy for others. Though she looked kind of gay. Maybe even trans. Proud Boys, Oathers and such are taking to the streets. Man she is brave. 

She should sign an affidavit of compliance with the new order. An article of submission and obedience. To be safe. So should we all. You can't keep your digital head down. And the beasts are hungry to be fed. 

Pickle Balls

Trump and the other guys trying to preserve their pathetic patriarchy are forgetting that it has to be dead. On a shelf or in a museum. Salted, pickled, sugared or embalmed. 

They're trying to embalm their balls while they're still alive. Anything alive is essentially dying, which drives them nuts, out of infantile egotism. Culture and institutions persist, to a degree.

Some idiots like to slap their names on things, so they can keep striving after they're dead, which is kind of sad. Love is what you leave behind. Mostly they have none of that.

But, whatever. I'm okay with their pickled balls on a shelf somewhere. In fact I'm good with it, because they'll have to be dead or neutered, and perhaps their patriarchy with them. 

And that will mean the end of the harm. Or some of it. For a while. And harm is having its day, yet again. 

Trump Casts His Eye

Let's take a look inside the mind of Trump. Not that he thinks, in the usual sense. It's more a matter of perception. He casts his eye. What does he see? 

He sees opportunities. Opportunities for taking. Weakness is an invitation. To take shit, hence his dictatorial bent. Powerlessness is an invitation to plunder. 

Our relative powerlessness. His power makes it possible. The disparity is the point. And it's huge now. And they have no conscience at all. Plunder it will be.

What Does It Feel Like

To be such a piece of shit.

I want to understand. To ask Republicans, but they're not very reflective. So we'll have to try to imagine. And I'm having a hard time with it. 

Don't Track Yourself

If you don't know where you've been they can't know either. Or, so you'd like to think. But maybe it's better not to know where you've been or what they know about you. Maybe it will make the info they have on you less useful, since we apparently can't do anything about that info. 

We're assets to them. Or the info is. We can degrade the value of that info, by behaving unpredictably and by not buying shit. It won't matter but, still, what the hell. Fighting back a little will be good. But don't degrade the value of that info too much. I doubt it's possible. We must consume.

And if we go negative on them, in our value as consumers, they might declare us dead-weight and  kill us off. If you don't think that can happen you're not paying attention. It's already happening. With healthcare, a human right turned into a commodity. Our rights have been commodified. 

Regression to Mean

These are the prerogatives of power. The prerogatives of a certain kind of power. If you can you take people's shit. Healthcare form the elderly, Food from children, Greenland from Greenland. 

You take stuff before somebody else does. Because they will. Thinking otherwise is for sentimentalists and suckers. Don't be a sucker. Get a gun. Protect your shit. It's the way the world works. 

Now you're a Republican. Welcome to the party. 

All Hail Lord Trump

I think the inauguration needs to be done differently. To have Lord Trump take an oath while breaking it makes no sense. It's the opposite of 'performative' in the way it used to be used, accomplishing the violation of the vow by its utterance. 

But what to do? We can't brand it a coronation. Maybe an investiture, in which Don dons some ceremonial robes and a miter and shit. His hair is practically a miter. He might take to it. In any case having him swear to uphold he law is ridiculous. 

We'll have to tone that down. Or not have him swear to anything, though I can't quite imagine it. It's highly appropriate that the Supreme Court is formally implicated, anyway. They've been as involved as anyone in this coup. Which is what it is. 

Or we could keep it simple and alter the traditional oath by replacing 'so help me God' at the end to 'so help me Satan' out of respect for the truth. I like that idea. Keep it simple, and avoid dishonoring the decent, loyal people of the country. 

All Tomorrow's Potties

This is the Donald Trump story, about the little boy who couldn't stop shitting himself, but carried on because he was so rich and it didn't matter. Except to the people who had to clean up after him.  

The Night They Drove Old Dickhead Down

Trump's time will come. Sooner or later. One way or another. He carries the seeds within him. Of his own destruction. With collateral damage. It's all he's good for. The Lord of Shit. And his own shit will take him down. Retribution is his, but not in the way he thinks. It's coming for him. 

The Last Temptation of Trump

Trump's time on the cross is coming to an end. No longer will He have to endure the stupidity and lack of understanding of inferior beings. But why must He die? He so wanted a normal life, but was called by fate to greater things. To be a savior. Even Trump must live out his destiny. And then return to heaven. 

To be with His father. In relation to Whom he is indistinct. Distinguishable but one. Independent but inseparable. Trump the Father and the Son are of one being, and their will is performative, in the proper sense, in that it is accomplished in its conception. As was Trump's life, because it is the will of God,

Wealthcare for All

Trump's second term is going to be about wealthcare. Republicans know that all the good in the world follows on the creation of wealth. How wealth is allocated and spread through the system is determined by laws of nature. These laws are as certain, predictable and irresistible as those of thermodynamics. 

The effects of these laws can be thwarted of course, but, why? That only results in a misallocation of resources and inefficiency. We must work within them. Messing with the results is like messing with God. What's the use? It's morally wrong and inhumane however it plays out. Evangelicals know this. 

As a corollary and complement to the nature of salvation in which God, being a dick, has predestined humankind and individual humans to a certain fate with foreknowledge and it is simply not to be questioned. Questioning it brands you a heretic and an apostate and requires you be stopped.

By any available means. 

The assumed efficiencies of the financial markets are as inscrutable as salvation, and are a kind of salvation, so don't even think about it. God's justice is beyond our reckoning so shut the fuck up. If free markets mysteriously create whole layers of seeming exploitation between you and the care you need that's just life. Be reassured, it's part of God's plan and your destiny by definition. 

Microbial Life with Trump

Microbes invented us to get around, so goes a line of thinking. And it's getting harder to argue as we're choosing exponential growth into a crash and oblivion, with the earth our petri dish. Trump and his Republicans (he officially owns them) are thereby understood as microbes. Bacteria. 

Hence, 'drill, baby, drill' and the other reckless shit that comes to mind. Steve Bannon, a prototypical bacterium, had his brain taken over by a kind of rabies. There are many like him. Explosive growth works in the short run, I point out, if you like explosions. Crash and burn, longer run, however. 

But the bacterial collective wins again. They play the averages.

A mindless horde. Larger entities are not the point which is the point. This doesn't upset my vanity cart, at the individual or species level. We've invented some cool shit along the way, and abandoning man's search for meaning doesn't play into it since I thought it was all invented already anyway. 

I thought that made it more of an accomplishment, that we made it all up. However, I do think we could have prolonged our stay and become masters of a sort instead of slaves. But, Trump. Which (correct pronoun) has retained bacterial 'cognition' on up to the larger entity level and then some. 

Then some through the spread of bacterial 'thought' processes which are only a drive for replication and the survival and success of the collective. Maybe, thence, Trump's love for Putin and commie-nism. As a being the mega-multicellular Trump is an agent and assignee of the bacterial collective.

He's their slave. Individually Lord Trump is incomprehensible. 

A bacterial clown car. Is our species about individuals or the collective? Bacteria will have their way eventually and I'm fine with that. They are not God. That's our adaptation though bacteria are making a run at a takeover. Don't fault them. They aren't any more aware or evolved than Trump.

But, if it's up to me, I'd like to hang around a bit longer. 

No, Virginia

There isn't a Santa Claus. This is Donald Trump, and only idiots believe in Santa Claus. Though there's a huge amount of money to be made selling people shit at Christmas. There are suckers everywhere and it's a great time to learn how to spot them and to figure out how to make money on the thing. This is the way to be happy, like me, by screwing the hell out of people. 

A Total Moral Eclipse, With Nukes

Look up at the sky and you'll see Trump's ass blotting out the sun. It will pass but what will be left? 

He Has A Grift

It's not that it all isn't a lie in the first place. Everything is a lie, in the sense that it's all an invention. It's a question of the quality of the lie. 

We've chosen bad lies. The lies of sick and paranoid people. Thieves and crooks. Is this what Trump represents or what life represents. 

Life. apparently. We carry too much baggage. Sooner or later the baggage wins. The baggage won with Trump. He's our evolutionary baggage. 

The World is Fiat

An abstract God can be as much a projection as an anthropomorphic one. Maybe more so, or an evolution of the conception of a god that kept up with increases in the human power to affect and control the environment. So the struggle played out over responsibiiity. 

If some god isn't acting on you to cause certain outsized behaviors then I guess we are responsible. Darn, that means we can't attack the world with abandon. Time to grow up. This gets embodied in the mythos as creativity in the sense of making something out of nothing. 

Fiat. Let there be whatever. Better tools. More crops. Armaments out the ass. Religion. This is the thing, the world is what we make it. Why fuck it up? Psychological baggage, apparently, which is what's so discouraging about Trump. We appear to fuck up no matter what.

Trump Licks Musk Butt

Now, this is interesting. And unforeseen. The guy with the greatest-ever record of getting people to lick his anus in about ten different ways is licking some ass himself, Musk butt. 

We're Off the Hook

I know the feeling. This is not us. Trump is not us. Musk is not us. No, it isn't us. It isn't America, in fact. It's the Confederacy. 

Elon Revealed

I remember when I realized people didn't give a shit how you got there once you won. This was always the puritanical cruelty at the heart of capitalist, consumerist America and the product or source of its fatalism. Notice the bandwagon effect building behind Trump and suddenly and simultaneously how racial justice is being abandoned. 

There's no reason for this, besides that bandwagon effect, but John Roberts must be thrilled beyond belief because it has been his specific project within the larger re-racification of America while claiming to do the exact opposite. That you can't fix racism with race consciousness (i. e. racism) has always been his core and defining belief. 

Which is as obviously wrong as it is abstractly right. 

The problem being a narrow, analytical focus removed from the circumstances and reality of the case. Try feeding your family on math. Directly. Something offends him, Roberts apparently, so you wish it away. The reality of course is that race consciousness is obviously the only way you can fix structural, systemic racial injustice. 

So Roberts reasoned himself into inconsistency and a conundrum because he's a purist and arrogant egotist. A perfectionist. Musk has a like outlook and drive, being a more profound kind of racist and supremacist, asserting himself as a race of one. That's to say, he's an inconceivable egotist and grifter. Like Donald Trump. The points converge. 

I don't sense racial animus in Trump or Musk. Their egotism and wealth renders it unnecessary. A person's worth is determined by their usefulness to them. People have no intrinsic worth, so no rights. Their 'rights' therefore change within the circumstances. Their rights re determined by circumstances. Or by whim, in other words. 

Because circumstances are determined by heroic characters like Trump and Musk whose existence and will is the only reality. They are gods, God, or a godhead, which of these it doesn't matter, since all power originates with and emanates from them. This is fundamentally infantile. The infantile god of perfect self-centeredness and need. 

There infinity meets up with annihilation. Creativity with destruction. Nothingness with infinite being and extent. All distinctions end there. Time and space are nothing. Will is everything. And what is will? To say rights or justice don't exist there misses the point. Existence doesn't exist there. There's no such framework of meaning. 

To say meaning doesn't exist has meaning. You get the point. Self refutation. Death. Trump and Musk embody a death wish. Musk is enamored of space. William Shatner was right in his observation, when he blasted off, that space is death. Nothingness. Musk is the emperor of Emerald City, over the rainbow -- unreality. Musk is death. 

They Do Care About Our Feelings

They want to hurt them.

These Were the Days

I feel like I live in the present and the future at the same time, because the future seems badly determined, predictable and unavoidable. Suffering awaits us. I understand better now why people sometimes roll the dice when things aren't that bad. 

Or anesthetize themselves in one of the usual ways. Because they feel the future is not good. That they're almost certainly fucked and the suspense is worse than anything. Worse than getting fucked now but while doing something. Anything. 

Loaves and Fishes

I'm waiting for a loaves and fishes moment with Trump. He's a miracle worker, you know. 

Now They're Really Cooking With Gas

Republicans are really cooking with gas. It's more fossil fuelly. Burning shit. An actual open flame in your house. Combustion and stuff. They love it. And they're accusing Democrats of wanting to take away their gas. Which is true but not in the way they think. 

Two Hard Truths

Think of this as counseling. What are the hard truths Democrats have been failing to fully own and act on?  There are two, in each case because we don't want to think ill of people or be mean. So the problems are familial and more complex and not something we can readily walk away from, like dating an addict, for example, and being unable to pull the plug on the relationship. 

Which is hard but relatively uncomplicated. 

And if you wonder what's hard about that you haven't been there. But walking away is not as complicated as, let's say, being married to a drunken, abusive spouse when there are kids. The kid thing cuts both ways. There are innocent parties involved who can't reasonably control their own circumstances, so more motivation and a greater responsibility but more logistical difficulty.

We have family members who are nuts and abusing us and the kids. It's the South. We have never been one country. The slave states have held us hostage from the start. All the provisions that make our country ungovernable now and enable us to be held hostage by a minority trace to them. They were that original minority. And they fixed it so the Yankees could never overpower them.

Unless they were defeated in a war. A fucking war. Sit with that. And then they still didn't give up. And they still haven't given up. In fact they have won. Look at everything Republicans stand for. It's the South. He died but the Republican Party is still the party of Lee Atwater. Scorched earth. Because it worked. All the lies and nastiness won elections.  Do I need to argue this point?

I don't think so. Not after Trump. Trump is all about nullification. Nullification means lawlessness, and the benefits of a reasonably orderly society without the responsibilities. That's the South. Freeloaders. Take Texas, a state with its head totally up its ass because they pumped their wealth out of the ground. To feed their egos they then lied. That they were the real men. Right. 

Like the morons who started the Civil War, they leave out, and got the balls of all the southern white boys handed to them by the Yankees. This is what it's about. They lead the world in false pride. Maybe not now because of the Taliban but you get the point. It's an honor culture, the most dishonorable thing ever. The Fugitive Slave Law sums up the South -- nullification until the Yankees do it. 

The law must not be equitably enforced, with Trump as my witness. 

I said there were two things. And, given the severity of the first, what does it tell you that I tremble at the second? Democratic white women, the abortion absolutists, have no political sense, and they control the messaging of the Democrats. Then white women vote for Republicans. Not the same white women, obviously. But still they insist on talking about 'women' as though it's a voting bloc. 

It isn't. Look at Trump. White women voted for him a third time after Roe was toast. The LGBT association is an outgrowth of women's rights, I think. So white women gave us the political disaster of 'woke' and the rest. Not that we shouldn't have stood for these things but you don't make them the unrelenting content of your messaging, ceding 'freedom' to the enslavers.

The white women I've observed politically were fine with chivalry when it meant white men giving into them when they were full of shit, maybe the biggest 'yes, honey' in history. I've seen it in my very blue community, white men effectively told they needed to shut up because, well, they're men. Which is racist. I say to white women please shut the fuck up. Go to the back on troop.

Democratic white women, weirdly, became Puritans.

Self-righteous, strident, utopian, accusatory moral bean counters. When have we last heard women in general and as a movement saying, basically, we still have some problems but we're some the luckiest people in history? I haven't heard it. All they talk about is what's wrong and what they want. And they're surprised people got sick enough of the complaining to vote for Trump? 

Case closed, I think, and it's too late now. We have the most horrific leadership imaginable, the exact shit that got us WWII and the Holocaust, horrific racism and rogue, laissez-faire capitalism. And Democrats are still not getting it. I give up. The damage is done. This therapy is after the breakup. The abusers have moved own, victorious in their complete lack of accountability. Nobody won. 

The Torch Is Being Passed

Having only a billion dollars is beginning to seem quaint among the Republican ultra-elite. Do they vaporize at some point into pure essence because a mortal body can no longer contain such stupendous excellence? Something must happen, a kind of phase change. Consider Musk.

His wealth is simply exploding. They're eating the world. If a billion dollars is incomprehensible, which it is, where is Musk? How does his frame contain him? Something will have to give, I believe, and not necessarily on his end. Maybe it's the world that will vaporize as they suck it in. 

Musk and his kind, I mean. And poor Ramaswamy, with only a billion or so, how does he keep from being incorporated into Musk by proximity, a little moon to Elon's gaseous Jupiter? How is Vivek not distorted and elongated, so to speak, by the force and gravity of Musk's greatness?

And now the torch is being passed to them, in Kennedy's phrase, and little did we know it could be used to burn everything down. Because we're all waste and cosmic detritus in the Muskian scheme. Worthless beings needlessly sucking up resources or inhabiting bogus, place-keeping jobs.

Jobs that were invented to justify paying us when we're essentially superfluous. We can disappear, apparently, by absorption, distribution or dissolution and not leave a trace, a curious thing for conscious beings. I wonder what that feels like. But Musk and his kind are not mere mortals. 

We were part of a science experiment. A perverse God's lab rats from an evangelical perspective. Musk and the ultra-rich were discovered to be superior. The elect, by virtue of genetics or whatever, or chosen by God. In any case, Musk has been found with scientific certainty to be a super-rat. 

You see. people have no inherent value. No Lives Matter! But what if it had been a different experiment, selecting for different traits. Musk might have lost. Tough shit, Musk and Vivek are saying. It is what it is. Look at how perfectly arbitrary Vivek's firing fantasy is. That shows it's godly.

And they are gods. Arbitrariness is their prerogative. That's way the universe works. 

Winners and losers. But what if the lesser lab mice band together and assert themselves? That might keep a Musk up at night. So they must be destroyed, disempowered or killed and disposed of. That's what this is about, not that Musk knows it. He still has a brain stem and survival instincts.

In spite of his massive cortex. And that unconscious shit is still in play, compelling him to try to annihilate the masses of lesser beings. Meaning us. So he wants to stop wasting resources on us if we aren't making him money somewhat directly. As for indirectly, he doesn't go there. 

The net result is the same. Everything for him. Nothing for us. And the implications of that are coming to us all. They can't wait, they're so impatient to wield all that wonderful power. Because it feels good. It comes down to that, all of it. It's what the rich want. To run everything. Forever.

I Saw Mommy Shtupping Santa Claus

Not much of a Christmas present for me. I don't care what they give me now. I bet I'll be screwed up for life by this. They better endow a fund for some counseling. At least they were having a good time. Not exactly thinking about me, were they. But Merry Christmas to y'all, anyway. 

Completely Backwards

Republicans want to turn the economy totally loose which results in inconceivable inequity and suffering. And then they want to regulate the hell out of our private lives and disallow behaviors that don't hurt anybody and even make society more accepting and humane. It's completely backwards. 

Kidnapped!

Brothers, I believe that I was kidnapped by Reaganites. They seemed to think they were doing me a favor, that I was some savage in need of culture, economic opportunity, religious and moral guidance and maybe a bath. You would think I was an obvious aborigine -- hairy, illiterate and unrefined. 

Damn, I was an American! An American citizen going back generations. You couldn't make this shit up. And they seemed to think they were Americans, but of a type unfamiliar to me. They would have been thought primeval by the Founding Fathers, I mean. These Reaganites were the savages.

Though they dressed okay. Better than I did, really, like fucking Mormons, or whatever they're calling themselves now as if that isn't its own kind of woke. Anyway, they were kind of naive and paternal but you didn't want to cross them, especially on economic issues. They were nuts about that.

Some kind of aborigines themselves, of a free market variety, just insane about it. You couldn't talk to them on the topic. They engaged in obvious magical thinking, going on all the time about self-regulation and an 'invisible hand' as though the invisible part shouldn't have clued them in. But, no. 

They were too far gone. Total cultists. I tell you this, friends, so that you can be on the lookout, though it seems they might have taken over the country and supplanted lawful authority. To judge from the stuff that's on the radio, anyway, the most unbelievable lies. And ditto on some news channel. 

To which they are addicted. It's on all the damn time. It will drive you nuts, though they do have some babes on there, some with oddly unchristian names and attitudes to match. The shit will drive you out of your mind and threaten your sanity and equilibrium, it's so heavy on the fear. They’re scared as shit.

Over an invasion, completely ... made ... up. 

Mexicans, Mexicans, Mexicans. And there's Mexicans everywhere already in the trades and living openly and as though the Reaganites never eat and enjoy a burrito. They love them and know the whole takeout vocabulary down to stuff I've never eaten. Watch out for them, brethren. They're out of their minds. 

And, please, come and get me out of here. 

Highly White Goober Contests Election

North Carolina used to be thought of as a progressive southern state. Progressive by southern standards. But then the white boys rose up like the Taliban and took control, thereafter earning national attention for the stupid, backward, bigoted spin they put on North Carolina politics, ending in their running obviously low character extremists for office and even the massive buffoon Mark Robinson for governor.

It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that the state that sent Mark Meadows and Madison Cawthorn to Congress continues to shit itself in state elections, most recently when highly white boy and salted goober Jefferson Griffin contested his loss to Allison Riggs. Republicans have shown a competitive drive in North Carolina combined with spirited self-righteousness and a childishly obvious willingness to cheat.

The usual southern combination of moral certitude, ignorance and nastiness, in other words. They've been especially pioneering in disenfranchising Democrats, sometimes in clever, underhanded ways but more recently by brute force, revealing themselves as electoral thugs and lawless aggressors. So it is with Jeffy. He probably thinks God is on his side, again like the Taliban, so whatever he does it is righteous.

Murder in Mesopotamia

This is going to be the shortest mystery ever. Bush did it. 

But it raises questions of a new kind of mystery, where it's solved at the start because the evidence is so overwhelming. The mystery is how to bring the perp to justice. Maybe it began with the O. J. trial. Such a glut of evidence, the trial got muddled. The defense did what you do when you're guilty as shit.

You attack the system. When the dream team got done a new standard was in place, in that courtroom at least -- perfection. These are the Democrats, subject to perfection. Republicans attacked the system and a standard of purity was applied to Democrats. Republicans are Simpson. Guilty as shit Simpson. 

Bush left a criminal wreckage behind him we'll never be able to catalog, and it's ongoing. Incalculable harm. But, Hillary's emails! Hunter Biden's anything! And Afghanistan, where Trump initiated a pullout and Joe Biden is now somehow responsible. Trump, the habitual, compulsive, murderous criminal. 

Who's about to be in charge again, of an already hopelessly corrupt and biased system. The mystery is how the fuck do we hold them accountable. Nobody has figured it out. The thing is too rigged. Remember Bush's surveillance state, targeting national threats. Like Democrats, according to Herr Donald. 

Welcome to the new America. 

This Is (Not) Who We Are

Oh, yes it is. It is and it isn't. America was never one country. The South and the pro-southern lands settled in the west, and then the rest of us. We thought, ultimately, that what we thought of as American values we just that, and enjoyed some level of national acceptance. 

Wrong! The South, and especially the evangelical Christians residing there, saw things differently. As long as they were left alone to practice their apartheid we could maintain the illusion of a national consensus, at least on the critical things. Desegregation ended that for good.

And the South rose again. The stench of racism and hate is everywhere. This was us, and it wasn't. Through the Southern Strategy, as it's called, the South has taken over the country, at first being used by the old Republican elite. But now they've demanded their due. 

Which was everything we see that makes the country unrecognizable to us. 

The Neoplatonic Trump

To put Trump in a philosophical context. he is either the source of being, pure and unsullied, or he has mystical access to the realms of perfection and is a magus, seer and shaman. As such his word is law. HE IS NOT TO BE DOUBTED OR CHALLENGED. This, above all, is the rule.

Any such challenge is anathema, heresy, sacrilege and blasphemy. All power originates with and emanates from Trump. He exists outside of space and time and is immortal. His body, understand, may pass and decay or ascend, it doesn't matter. His spirit is timeless, divine and incorruptible. 

Whereas you are shit. 

You can't know Trump apart from mystical persuasion or insight. WHICH IS NOT SUBJECT TO RATIONAL QUESTIONING OR ANALYSIS. So shut the fuck up and behave. Your life depends on Trump, the source of all meaning and being. Don't be fooled by appearances. You must believe.

Truth and Consequences

Apparently, telling the truth in America might get you the firing squad. Why was Alexander Vindman chosen by Musk, before turkey-feasting with Trump, and not, let's say, Cassidy Hutchinson? We see here what Trump meant that he would take care of women, not that they have rights.

No, of course not. Rights are conferred by Lord Trump and they last as long as they last. He meant he would spare them in his infinite, if somewhat capricious and unpredictable, mercy. And Trump is nothing if not merciful. Shouldn't everyone who testified against him be shot? Of course. 

And, basically, all Democrats. What forbearance! Trump is nothing if not the master of self-restraint. How does he contain himself when all around him are so worthless, imbecilic and inferior? How does he muster the mood control? Excellence of character, we know by observation. 

But the righteous wrath of Trump is not to be tried or messed with, nor his kindness and tolerance taken for granted. Walk in fear. Americans, of the retribution and judgment of Trump. Be grateful for every day of his restraint, because he is your master. And don't you fucking forget it. 

The Washington Witch Trials (Temporarily Housed at Mar-a-Lago)

I always recommend listening to Republicans. For literalists the messages are weirdly encoded but they're there. Trump's 'witch hunt' was as much a thing as Clarence's 'high tech lynching' which didn't occur. But Clarence was a lyncher and the Trump crowd are puritans going after 'woke' and 'cancel culture' as though these exist, just like witchcraft. They imagine them. 

But they're real. In their minds. They're more real for having the advantage of being imagined, and so not subjected to reality checks. Musk and Ramaswamy are already, a couple of months away from installation, fantasizing about witches they will burn in a carnival of sadism -- innocent government employees. Musk now by name. He's naming them on Xitter. 

If this isn't a sue-able offense it should be. No wonder they are against legal recourse for injuries. Injurers would be -- as power-crazed sadists and egomaniacal monstrosities. But they're almost ensconced and will need to be dealt with. After some carnage, I fear, but it would be nice to keep it under half-a-million, to use Trump's toll as the new benchmark of accountability.

What's a few hundred thousand lives among friends, after all. 

Twisted Mister

One thing is becoming clear, that Trump was so bad in his first term memory couldn't do him justice. But the reminders are beginning, and those feelings coming back -- the disgust, the horror, the fear. 

Ridin' the Range

America's COVID cowboy is back. Donald Trump, hero of the epidemic, was above all a real man. A decider. Real men just do shit. They act. Like in the Apprentice. They react, like asking about who voted for you in determining whether to turn loose the government's resources to ravaged cities.

That's a real man, the complete and self-contained center of his world. And Trump is set to ride again, another cattle drive, of the brainless beasts that elected him. And the innocents who lost, as well, because they can't opt out. Trump's power must be wielded to be real. To him, the fucking moron.