Showing posts with label Boneryänker's Almanach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boneryänker's Almanach. Show all posts

Friday, November 9, 2018

Just Repeat Things With Fierce Conviction

And The Future Will Be Fun For You

What will that future we hear so much about look like?  The Usual Suspects conduct Business As Usual: Nancy Pelosi is recaulked, mainbraces spliced and buffed to a high shine, and redelivered to the House as Speaker-To-Animals*. Chuck Schumer remains Democratic leader in the Senate. Together, they are the leaders of the Democratic party. While they talk inclusion to the 40-or-under crowd of "New Democrats" entering the House, Chuck 'n Nancy do represent (Left) entrenched interests, and will make sure those interests (not necessarily the People) are represented.

Chuck 'n Nancy will say The Same Things Over And Over Again With Fierce Conviction ("This [fill in blank] is a new low for the Republicans"  "Americans will not stand by while [fill in blank] takes away [fill in blank] and puts [fill in blank] at risk" "The President needs to [buh buh buh] because the American people are sick and tired of [buh buh buh]").

These responses are inoffensive, and the legislation they will pursue is bipartisan and centrist. They are the Kind and The Good. And the Republicans know they will do this and be this because that's the Democrats' side of the legislative dance.

However, the Republicans -- They are the Vicious, Vengeful, Unpredictable, with the Avarice of a Child, like The Leader. They know their side of the Dance is to kick Dems to the curb every chance they get, to be greedy and rapacious. The Leader wants war -- and until he can force the Iranians to attack U.S. naval units in the Gulf, the Democrats will have to do.

Republican leaders, like Senate Majority Yertle the Turtle (such an Especial Turtle) and the newly-appointed House Minority Leader, Sean Hannity, will continue to spout whatever little things come into their heads ("Speaker Pelosi is a syphilitic mulatto"  "Those different from us are Demons"  "The Democrat party will make multiracial dating compulsory" "Republicans have reduced the deficit by 60% since Leader took office" ). These things will be repeated, over and over, on 'Fox 'n Friends'. 40.2% of Americans will say they believe them.

The Leader signs a Prestidential Order making it compulsory to begin every sentence with a reference to Him ("Our Leader, who is wise and good, loves us, and yes I do have the data on progress in the new regional project").  42% of Americans say they welcome the new requirements, which will "teach a lesson about loyalty" to others (undefined).

CNN would report on this with comment, but Missy Sarah sends them to the Principal's office and gives their chair away to a representative of the Neues Völkischer Stoltz Jungen Daily, and its editor, Horst Whitemale. "Stop lookin' at my chins," scowls Missy Sarah, as she slyly opens her second box of crullers that morning.

Only the American Infrastructure Act will have support from both political parties --  and to celebrate its passage, Schumer, Pelosi, Turtle, and Hannity hold a joint press conference to trumpet a "new spirit of bipartisan cooperation for the American people." Chuck 'n Nancy smile for the cameras.

Leader will sign the bill at a ceremony in the Rose Garden. Leader speaks for one hundred and one minutes about His brilliance, His sagacity, His many gifts to the world: promises kept. "I made a good deal," says Leader. "We'll be handing out contracts soon; lot of people I know will do good work for the American people. Jobs. Lots of businesses making money. I know a lot of them." Sean Hannity takes the opportunity to call the Democratic party "the party of predation". He also smiles his winning smile.

The Leader began his campaign for reelection on November 7th, 2018. At a rally in Watertown, South Dakota, Leader will hint slyly that liberals should be taught 'a lesson', and when the Stoltz Jungen attack a forum held by the Soros Foundation, The Leader -- appearing at another daily rally in Murrkopf, Indiana -- will shrug, stretching out his arms and Big Hands™ and say, "Maybe the Soros people shouldn't have been there? Ya know?" to the raucous laughter and delight of the adoring crowd.

Later, He refers to reporters covering the event as "predators" -- "Don't people hunt predators out here?" asks Leader. "I dunno! Just thought they did!" In the following weeks, random shots are taken at 278 news vehicles, nationwide; thankfully, no one is injured.

Chambers Whittaker Pumpkin, baldo stand-in Attorney General, receives The Special Counsel's report on Russian election influence in 2016, and involvement of The Leader's campaign and The Leader. Pumpkin reads the report and fires Mueller in a tweet to the Völkischer Stoltz Jungen Daily.

Pumpkin puts the report in a drawer and spends the rest of the day playing golf with the CEO of a corporate defendant in a Justice Department civil action. The following week, the government announces it will not pursue the case; Pumpkin will later be seen driving around Georgetown a new Ferrari GTC4 LussoT.

It takes 36 hours for the report to be leaked. It shows that The Leader and others conspired to Want and to Take, Because They Could. It recommends the indictment of 158 Russians, Roger Stone, and a few others. Leader Jr., and Kushy, are shown to have solicited or allowed Foreign Powers to affect the election.

In an oft-repeated quote, The Leader will be reported to have said, "I don't give a [redacted] -- I want it. That's all that matters and [redacted] the [redacted] People." Melania Trump, attending a 'spa day' with Louise Hinton, appears in a custom-made Alexi Queen coat with "Scott Free" printed on its back.

Release of Mueller's report will trigger obligatory hours and hours of shouting and keening and media. Many people will stop to watch the Shiny Object on teevee for hours. Advertising time will be sold for very high prices. Much money will be made.

In the end, the Republican majority in the Senate rejects the House's Bill of Impeachment. Yertle The Turtle (such an Especial Turtle), standing next to Mikey Pence, Inquisitor In Chief, will tell the media, "Don't care what they want. They should go back where they came from." Yertle makes comments to a Fox anchor, but will refuse to answer questions from the "predator press". Another round of random shootings of news vans occurs across the country.
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UND: MEHR, MIT 'WIR SIND SCROOD':

We are so unquestionably scrood scrood scrood.
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* The "Speaker-To-Animals" reference will be instantly recognizable to readers of Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' series of science-fiction novels. For those unfamiliar with it, the term will will mystify, confuse, and possibly enrage.

Friday, October 26, 2018

Random Barking Friday

This Will Not Contain Leavening Humor

April 30, 1945, in the Reichschancellery's Führerbunker: the Red Army was closing in quickly and less than a quarter-mile away. Hitler and Eva said goodbye to a line of their old retainers and True Believers, and were on their way into Hitler's study to kill themselves.

Outside the study stood Heinz Linge, Hitler's principal valet. The two shook hands. Hitler told Linge that the situation in Berlin was lost, and that he should try to leave the city and escape to the West.

Linge later said he had asked, "For whom shall we fight on?" Hitler replied, "For the coming man."
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What makes my skin crawl about what's occasionally described as living through the Assholeocene isn't the daily, drop-by-drop absorption of new outrages Trump and his minions commit. 

Weird how predictably that happens, now. Mornings, Trump watches Fox 'n Friends, and tweets. Sarah fantasizes and lies to a room full of adults. Afternoons, we learn about more corruption, more sociopathic abuse of immigrant children; another right-wing judge appointed for life; the awesome lives of our fabled Business Leaders and Owners, and Celebrities; more peasant-fucking.

In the evening, Trump flies to some rural district which voted overwhelmingly for him in 2016, and spews about his greatness, the threat of the liberal and the Other, before an ecstatic crowd. He preens and complains that he is unfairly attacked, victimized -- that, just like them, he is "under threat". They wear hats, and chant. Their identification with Trump provides them with an almost carnal frenzy and release.

Faultlines of race, class, gender and inequality in America have always been there; Trump's appearance puts them under serious stress. Other factors (extreme climate events [see below and follow the link]; unstable financial markets; mass shootings) increase the noise of uncertainty and fear, always in the background.

A large number of people appear to be on short fuses, the Crazy looking for a way out; "everybody angry (peculiarly angry ... [as] normal is changing color, tenor)"; meanwhile, a bloated, raving old man is a role model for the boundaries of permitted speech and behavior.

Trump is giving permission to cross boundaries -- not in and of itself a bad thing; it all depends on who's doing it, with what intent. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering a speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial is one way of crossing a boundary. Trump's public speeches are another. The difference in intent is clear.
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What makes me uneasy is not the experience of the present, so much. What Trump and his slavish GOP supporters have done in just 21 months makes increased social disintegration more likely (it certainly makes a society where Our Fabled Wealthy will be comfortable, while the rest of us are not). That can lead to a rising tempo of political violence -- and a more authoritarian state would seem attractive by comparison.

Trump might be that one-party dictator of an "illiberal democracy", an Orban or Erdogan, but I don't believe he's the personification of the end state I'm worried about. It's someone who would capitalize on Trump's shattering of political norms, take it to a new level: the "coming man"
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What Chris Hedges Said:
While it is true that the United States under Trump is not Hitler’s Germany, Trump has tapped into America’s worst impulses... his ultra-nationalism, white supremacist views, and racist diatribes coupled with his attack on immigrants, the media, African-Americans, and Muslims are indicative of a politics right out the fascist playbook. If the public and media keep denying this reality, the endpoint is too horrible to imagine... 
Trump has emboldened and legitimated the dire anti-democratic threats that have been expanding under an economic system stripped of any political, social, and ethical responsibility. This is a form of neoliberal fascism that has redrawn and expanded the parameters of the genocidal practices and hate filled politics of the 1930s and 40s in Europe in which it was once thought impossible to happen again. ...
What Margaret Sullivan Said (via Digby)
... At a raucous rally in Montana last week, a Trump supporter — juiced up by the president’s crude praise of a congressman who body-slammed a reporter — looked directly at CNN reporter Jim Acosta. Then he ran his thumb across his throat. And laughed. 
Later, Acosta described “the Trump effect.” “It has normalized and sanitized nastiness and cruelty in a way that I just never thought I would see,” he said, shortly after that Montana rally. 
The Trump effect is a straight line from years of his hateful rhetoric to real-world danger. It’s a line that goes directly from disrespect to pipe bomb. And — almost inevitably — it will eventually go from failed attempt to spilled blood... 
Ann Coulter tweeted that bombs have been... "a liberal tactic.” And radio behemoth Rush Limbaugh... [said] that Republicans don’t do this sort of thing, and a Democratic operative was the more likely culprit. 
But let’s get real. Everyone targeted by the pipe bombs had been the subject of endless hours of Fox News commentary. The list of targets read like Sean Hannity’s pre-broadcast crib notes: Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and former CIA chief John Brennan — and, as the representative of evil mainstream media — CNN. 
As usual, Trump himself projected blame everywhere but where it belongs...  he combined swipes at the news media and Democrats with a call to “come together in peace and harmony.”
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What Ian Welsh Said ("...IPCC Report Version"):
... There are quite a number of scenarios where this stuff happens faster... What will actually happen is that we’ll get some feedback loop like arctic or permafrost methane release and that will lead to parabolic increases. When it breaks, it will break hard. 
At that point a lot of other problems could also blow up, the most serious of which would be the Oceans losing their ability produce oxygen. If that happens, well, we’re dead. 
Even if it doesn’t, things like the thermohaline currents flipping or shutting off are possible. Europe could, in the middle of everyone else getting hot, have a mini-ice age. 
... And it isn’t that we are decelerating. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who will likely win election, has essentially promised to chop down what remains of the Amazon jungle as fast as possible (and also, to commit genocide on the remaining indigenous tribes. No, don’t pretend, that’s what he means.)
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MEHR, MIT BOOM BOOM:

A suspect is in custody in Florida, charged with being the individual who mailed explosive devices to prominent Democrats and liberals.

Cesar Sayoc, Jr., was described by the New York Times as a Republican who had been active on a variety of right-wing social media sites, with several prior arrests for fraud, robbery, and charges associated with explosives.

Police had seized Sayoc's van in connection with the arrest, and removed it from Sayoc's home under a blue tarp. Later, they removed the tarp -- and Mark Lancia, a local freelance journalist, took a number of pictures which are, as they say, worth a thousand words:

(©Mark Lancia; via TruthDig)
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Monday, August 27, 2018

I Lift Mine Eyes To The Hills

And See The Naked Fat Guy


Back in the day, I was associated with the Billboard Liberation Front (a little odd, considering what I once did for a living, but there you are). 

The basic concepts of the BLF (and don't take my word for it: read the Manifesto) were essentially that the materialism and commercialism expressed in billboard advertising were part of the mass deadening of our culture, and so fair game for artistic manipulation which revealed said deadening -- like Adbusters, except the BLF came first and wasn't available in bookstores. You had to look up and experience it -- or, actually do it. 

So when I recently noted the art collective, Indecline, had been out and about in Los Angeles, it stirred a few memories.

(Photo: ©Indecline, via Art Newspaper, June 22, 2018)

Consider the logistics necessary to do something like this in an urban area -- reconnoitering the site; having access to the platforms; creating the artwork to match fonts, sizes and background colors; hauling all materials up narrow ladders; and completing the work rapidly enough to avoid being seen, and any unpleasantness with the local constabulary. Normally, this is done in the dead of night.

Indecline had already garnered some notoriety prior to the 2016 election by creating, and publicly displaying, life-sized statues of a naked Wonderboy in several large American cities (regarding their naked Il Duce statue, placed in New York City's Union Square, a spokesman advised, "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small").  Earlier this year, they had created a jail cell in a Trump hotel in New York for a Trump lookalike in a MAGA hat.

I should note that, sadly, no one performs this sort of consciousness-raising exercise on a billboard regarding the state of the Democratic party. But don't worry; it's all in Good Fun, and the future is bright and shiny and tasty and fun.

And, Wonderboy continues to gain weight in office, while the rest of us are driven mad -- meaning there will most likely be future billboards in need of liberation. Like this one:

(Margaret Bourke-White, 1937)
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Friday, August 10, 2018

Random Barking Friday: Waist Deep In The Big Muddy

Leaders Not Liars


What is it going to take? What are people waiting for?

The person who is President of the United States is a liar. Repeating an observation Robert F. Kennedy allegedly made about Lyndon Johnson, "He lies. He lies all the time. He lies when he doesn't even have to lie." Arguably, Trump is the worst President in the history of the nation.

Trump says things which are completely and verifiably false, using the same method as a Limbaugh, a Jones, a Weiner, or Rupert Murdoch's media: say something confrontational, even nonsensical. Repeat it. When called on it,  double down, even triple down -- or, bully up, and walk away.  An observation about a mid-20th century right-wing politician noted:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong... never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
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The people of Puerto Rico have been all but abandoned by the U.S. government after the devastation of hurricane Maria. This has been a series of deliberate, choiceful acts.
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What are people waiting for?

Trump is corrupt, and filled his cabinet with right-wing sycophants and individuals who use their positions to advance their self-interest.  The tax structure revisions Trump and the Republicans eagerly pushed into law are the equivalent of burying a nuclear warhead under our house, on a timer: it will detonate -- but someday, in the future. After Trump has eaten his fill, gotten bored, and waddled away.

Then, there's what he and his crew have done with the Federal judiciary. With the environment; water and air quality, food safety, emissions standards. With banking, finance, corporations by eliminating regulatory oversight or refusing to act. With the belief that public leaders should represent a community's ideals, our Better Angels.
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Ivanka and Melania have made public comments appearing to contradict what Daddy Donald has said or done. It's a sideshow.  Melania's "I Really Don't Care" coat defines her; she's not secretly working for fairness and civility against her crude, malevolent husband. Spend a few minutes watching Ivanka operate, and you'll know she's not going to stand against Daddy either. 

Both women are indivisible parts of the Trump Family Brand, which sees the Presidency as just another acquisition, to be milked for every last drop of revenue and influence and discarded, along with the population of the United States, when they're done. 
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What's it going to take?

Watching a past episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, he and astrophysicist Sean Carroll made an observation about Trump similar to one I've shared here -- essentially, that Trump could have sex with a goat on live television, and nothing would happen. Carroll observed:
I worry about what happens next... I do worry, that this [Trump's consistent depiction of the mainstream media as 'fake news', 'enemies'] is a hard thing [for the media] to come back from. Because ... another thing that Trump said was, "Don't believe anything you're told, unless you hear it from me" ... and Tucker Carlson said the same thing..."[If you hear news from] any show other than mine, don't believe it." ... [Trump] gives people a narrative that works for them.
Trump himself constantly use the phrase, "Fake News", a buzz-word to his supporters.  It's been observed that Trump and his legal team -- Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani -- are spinning a narrative about Trump's connections with Russia for public consumption, using the same phrases and memes to be repeated in the right-wing media echo chamber. Their narrative is full of lies, too.

Giuliani admits, cheerfully, that in doing so, what they say doesn't have to be true; it's to influence public opinion around the topic of Impeachment -- because (as Rudy knows, and so does Trump), Impeachment occurs in the House and Senate. Elected representatives can be, uh, 'persuaded' by their constituents to 'go easy' on a disgraced Trump.  But it's a strategy based on contempt -- for 'the base', for any American, as rubes, Marks, who deserve to be fed lies because they're stupid enough to believe them.
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The Special Prosecutor's investigation into Russian influence during the 2016 Presidential election (in paralell with the case against Michael Cohen, and the multiple trials of Paul Manafort) continues to show that Trump is a liar.  Donald, Jr. is a liar. No one knows precisely where this goes.
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What The Fuck? I struggle, daily, with the impact of Trump's personality, breaking political and societal expectations for the role of America's Chief Executive. An unapologetic, in-your-face racist and nationalist, he gives permission to all the 'Little Trumps' to be unapologetic nationalist racists.

None of that is accepted practice. It isn't what Presidents do. It is what authoritarian leaders do.

I've said before, This cannot continue, and This cannot end well. We see and hear our Leader lie, obviously, daily; and the fact that nothing happens as a result makes me ask: Well then, what's it going to take? What are people waiting for?

One of the Last Of The Old Unit observed, "New drinking game -- it's the only one that will get us through this. Every time Trump says -- anything -- do a shot of single malt."
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Not everyone is drinking. Not everyone is waiting. Some are organizing, and the mid-term elections are a natural focus -- and the expectations for some are high, that the season will be a litmus test for American democracy. But the Left and Right wings of both Republicans and Democrats are fighting for control of their respective party.

At least for the Democrats, it's not clear who will be the Democratic candidate for President in 2020. The party's Old Guard could win, and push Joe Biden (or someone like him). The Progressives might win and promote Elizabeth Warren or Kamalah Harris; or, the Social Justice Warriors could win and offer Bernie Sanders (or someone like him).

For Republicans, none of that matters. With their command of the House and Senate, the GOP Old Guard supported Trump to advance the wet dream of american conservatism: dismantling FDR's New Deal, and they've ignored who Trump is to reach their goals.

Unless something reduces Trump's approval rating below 30% (hard to see what would have that effect, given his behavior already), the GOP will continue supporting him, and Trump likely will be nominated to run for a second term.

But if Trump's past behavior catches up with him, then suddenly he becomes the Old Guard's scapegoat; they throw him under the bus -- a risky game plan, again built on the assumption that Americans are naive and manifestly stupid.

(Or, it's not a risky plan at all, because the Old Guard on both sides of the aisle believe that the majority of America's population -- "all those Little People down there" -- are naive and manifestly stupid Rubes and Sheep; disposable and expendable.)

Some congressional Republicans have opted to bail before Bannonite Brownshirts in their districts push them out for being insufficiently Trumpist. Others have different problems. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to ignore Trump the crude, narcissistic liar with poor impulse control, exhibiting the possible onset of dementia.

So we wait for the midterms. My guess is, the Democrats won't have resolved their internal conflicts, sufficient to present a coherent face to American voters, by September / October. The Republicans may lose some Congressional seats, but it won't be a rout. And everyone will wait for 2020.
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Trump is President. He's a compulsive liar, a corrupt and venal man -- and even though that's been shoved in our faces like a crude pornographic cartoon, repeatedly, it isn't enough to prompt us to demand his removal, or commit to ongoing, large-scale public unrest -- not like some of that doesn't happen. And, not like Trump wouldn't like an opportunity to, you know -- crack down a little.

But Trump is a symptom of the failure of two competing visions for a future playing out here, and in Europe: Globalism and Nationalism. So far, I haven't seen a Middle Path proposed -- one that doesn't lead to rule by billionaires, multinational corporations, the WTO and IMF and a neoliberal elite; or, multinational corporations, billionaires, and authoritarian political puppets controlled by a mafia of Oligarchs.

Trump's weird vision of an America behind border walls, but still projecting military and financial strength to influence the world through threats and fear, just isn't viable. The world is interdependent, -- and like it or not, how we vote and who we vote for affects more than just the United States. Trump is a perfect example.

But the two dominant political models in the current world aren't viable, either. Seen from that perspective, the politics of America's midterms are part of a larger struggle between competing theories. The Old Guard of each party will appeal to a Return To Normalcy or To Greatness. The radical Left and Right will demand a revolution.

What concerns me is that enough people will want an End To Crazy -- enough that they'll believe a Biden, or a Kinder, Gentler conservative,  will Make It All Like It Was. I don't believe that's possible. It may not even be desirable.

But until our political parties can enunciate platforms which reflect a broader understanding of what's at stake and provide an alternative, no one has my vote. Meanwhile, we still have Trump; things still can't continue like this without a terrible,  corrosive effect -- and it all cannot end well.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Random Barking: Wondering

Wandering
Murrika: Enshrouded; Lost; Guided By A Trickster (Foto: Joseph Beuys u. Coyote)

Big Box Of Terror 
In conversations with friends over the past few weeks, we admitted experiencing an uneasy, underlying sense that The World had fundamentally changed in a way we can't fully grasp, validate, or prove. We were the same, but everything around us had shifted, slightly -- like a kid's party game, where you guess which items have been moved on a table.

The Oldest Friend came close: "It's like I went to bed one night, and woke up in an alternate universe that was just a little bit different than the one I went to sleep in. Nothing immediately definable -- it would be like discovering there had never been Abba-Zaba Bars, or the original 'Star Trek' ran for three seasons, not two. I'm fine; I'm okay -- but, the World feels 'off', different -- 'stranger in a strange land'-ish.

"That's completely subjective, I know," she said, "but it takes a while to go away, and it's pervasive."

While all of the people I spoke with defined that experience a bit differently, there was common agreement that we perceived some difference between ourselves and The World that hadn't existed before -- which led us to feel mildly alienated from everything, except possibly each other.
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When we said The World, we didn't mean the planet, the natural landscape. Climate deterioration aside, the Natural World seems to be solid, abiding. 'The World' we referred to is the one built out of social fabric, stretched on a framework of collective relationships and stitched together by the cultural Ways our society accepts and agrees to in those relations. It was in that world we felt, suddenly, out of place.
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The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo said it reminded her of the Cold War -- what it meant to live in the knowledge that nuclear war was possible (guess what? It still is). It was an understanding we kept, down in the basement of our consciousness, jammed in a dark corner, along with the box that has the big, yellow label with red lettering -- Terror: Or, we are Mortal and Death is Mystery.

There were times down those years when we woke up in the middle of the night after a particularly bad news cycle, thinking what if the sirens just went off? Now (the people I spoke with agreed), nearly every morning when we get up, we wonder what new outrage has been committed, what new boundary was crossed, while we slept. We come awake expecting bad news. One way or another what we're really thinking is What? What Has Trump Done Now?

Someone noted, 'Trump is the new Cold War' -- meaning, like that time in our collective past, he has become the symbol and avatar of that dark corner in our own basements. His antics are a reminder that The World is just a construct, and the control we think we have over the Natural World is an illusion. Trump is the embodiment of unpredictability.

As a 72-year-old, Trump has to know that he will not live forever. Spasmodically, he acts out and splatters America with his own feces, then revels in the disgust he provokes, the impotent anger of others, all to feed an endless hunger for validation to avoid the Big Box Of Terror at the center of his own being.
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So I wake up in the 2:30AM, sometimes with the Terror, sometimes not. I remind myself that we're animals, hard-wired to survive -- and self-conscious animals, who understand that our lives are finite, and demand answers.

Our world (the actual one around us; the perceived one in our heads) is changing.  It has always been unpredictable in its details -- but not in our beginnings, rites of passage, ecstasies and sorrows, and our end. No one, alive or dead, can say why we came to be or where we're going -- but we demand our Reason Why, even if it's not possible.

And I remind myself: all of our Details are in The Stories. It's why Gilgamesh. It's why Homer and Herodotus, Chaucer and Pope; Dickens and Melville. It's why statuary and panel and canvas and paper, camera, movement and words on a Stage. It's why music from Cantos to Paart, Bach to Ravel, Joplin to Pere Ubu -- and all of it bent to the virtuous effort of telling the Story of What Happened To Us When We Went Through It. All of our details go; only the Stories remain.

I considered this, and because I'm only a Dog and not a philosopher, passed my observation on to friends in the version used at the Soul Of AmericaBe Kind, Motherfuckers. They could get behind that.
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This Bathroom Is Occupied

I'd picked up Peter Fritzsche's 2016 book, "An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler", now out in paperback. Browsing it at a bookshop, I was idly looking for resonances with the perspective that we're living in an occupied country, under Trump and his creatures. As if the nightmare were something alien, forced on us by an invader.

I do actually know better. My life in America is not even remotely similar to the European experience between 1939 and 1945. As swinish, bloated and mendacious that Trump and his crew are, they aren't foreign invaders. They don't speak a different language. And they aren't nazis  -- though some of  Trump's "fine people" parading in Charolettesville last year would like to be.

I'd like to say Trump's government doesn't demand your identification, perform roundups of civilians, make it easy for companies to provide the population with food, water, or products which are unsafe. But they do these things, and much more. And while Trump and the opportunistic leeches he's dragged in his wake are not nazis, there are people in America who are treated by that government as if nazis had landed -- primarily, the Usual Suspects: immigrants, the marginalized poor, people of color; LGBTQ Americans; women.

You know the drill. None of this is news; we see it on television or online, every day. But so long as it isn't happening in more affluent neighborhoods, or to your friends and families or you -- Meh. Doesn't concern us. Have a beer. Watch the Big Game.
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In the 1970's, I visited Europe. Walking through cities I noticed (with surprising regularity) something rarely seen in America -- it seemed a significant percentage of adults in their late forties to early sixties had serious facial scars, eye patches or glasses with one darkened lens; crutches, missing limbs.

At a bus stop on a warm morning in southwestern Germany, a man stood waiting, wearing a Tyroler hat, a topcoat and gloves. His face was a smooth mask of shiny, oddly pink skin, which made discerning his age difficult. His nose had been reduced to a smooth bump. Plainly, he'd suffered serious burns -- except around the eyes, where a pilot or air crewman would have worn a set of goggles. I must have been staring; the man looked over at me, took in my non-European appearance and clothing, and said, "Good morning," in a British-accented English.

I nodded back, said nothing, and so missed the opportunity for an insightful conversation with someone who at the least had an interesting personal story. He also might have confirmed what I was already guessing: that the European experience of the Second World War seared everyone by degrees, civilian and military, the persecutors and persecuted, right down to their souls.

Those who weren't killed in occupied Europe continued to experience degrees of cruelty, humiliation, betrayal, anxiety and uncertainty, at levels that would have been unthinkable before 1933 -- and all because it became acceptable and popular in Germany to believe ideas which first became policy, and then law.

One aspect of the Holocaust is as a teaching moment for humanity about intolerance and hate, and where it can lead. Fritzsche's book shows clearly what the power of belief can do to individuals, and groups, in even more detail than any other look at the period I've seen -- something I didn't think was possible. Using only contemporary documents and writings, he shows how The Leader in an authoritarian system provides permission to his followers for accepting astonishing levels of violence (if not committing it), and how he becomes a psychological scapegoat for the violence should it all go bad later.

America's history has already burned us, as Europe's before WWII had done to its own cultures and societies. We aren't living in an occupied country, but we are changing (“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig... but already it was impossible to say which was which”). We run the risk of being seared down to our souls (as Europeans were, over twelve years of nazism) by whatever at the moment seems to be coming.

I'm not sure what it will feel like to live here, when the country gets to wherever we're headed. We can try to be kind, first; perhaps that's all we can do. Perhaps it's the only real act of resistance, in the end.
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Thursday, February 22, 2018

Revenge Of The Giant Face

Random Barking, With Music

Billy And White Jesus.  A fixture lurking in the shadows of my time, like Coca-Cola logos and Huntley-Brinkley and Uncle Walter; cigarettes, bourbon at the backyard barbecues; airstrikes; racism, so fully baked-in you wouldn't know it was there ("Who, me? I'm not racist"), and the notion that your primary juice must be testosterone if you are to be considered fully hu-man.  But, since I wasn't a believer in White Jesus, I don't notice much of a vacuum, now he's gone.

Billy tried to do as he perceived the Truth and The Way to be, but Christian Leadership became fat men in suits on television, purring for dollars, always; determined to bring The Message Of The White Jesus.

Those Christian Leaders have ended as corrupt, publicly worshiping at the altar of Power, and the more private altar of Themselves. God shows his favor to the Elect. And, what of faith, for those who do? The message by example is, Pray To Grow Rich.

We're supposed to say nice things about the dead. But for all of us, the sum of our actions, words and thoughts is what remains. The effect which you had on others. But Billy wasn't like us, no mean little player, barely seen at extreme Stage Right in the Crowd Scene.  He was a player on center stage, and so responsible for a much larger percentage Effect on the world than the average person.

Now he knows what we do not. Now he knows what he did not expect.
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Gunz And Actors.  The most recent gun violence: Facing off against Murrikan Leader, against Florida politicians. The metaphor of a ship, foundering on well-known reefs of corrupt and more corrupt, and Freedom and Jesus, and right-wing Inchoate Rage At Living In This World.

Survivors, their families, may have hoped what happened in Florida would be the watershed moment, the tipping point. But as a topic of debate; as a political issue (as opposed to personal tragedy, unspeakable grief), I'm concerned the event has already lost some of its specific resonance in the eye and ear of the public.

It's being watered down by the obfuscation and temporizing of politicians like Our Leader and Mark Rubio. It's being twisted in the insane echo chamber created by 34 years of Murdoch's Fox and right-wing radio. A textbook example:

Congressperson Claudia Tenney (R-NY) said in recent public remarks regarding gun violence that
“Obviously there’s a lot of politics in [the subject]. And it’s interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats. But the media doesn’t talk about that either.”
(Bonus 'Fuck Off To The Sea' For Lil' Claudia: Tenney is up for reelection this year. She is opposed by a Democrat, Anthony Brindisi.  

(I'm not a New York resident. From a geographic perspective, I have, uh, No Dog In This Fight. And I'm not a cheerleader for the Democratic Party (whatever it may be now). But Tenney gave a textbook example of a right-wing scumbag who lies -- is a liar. 

(And, she should be told to Fuck Off To The Sea [which I believe is a Big Marine Mammal Avatar Creator reference, but I could be wrong]. I'm aware some have concerns about ActBlue -- but if so moved you can go show Anthony the love. Anything is better than having what Tenney is in office)

And, UTub videos of Florida shooting survivor David Hogg's comments the day after the massacre had gone viral. In response, a UTubber known as mike m. ("not his real name") posted a clip of Hogg, with comments insinuating the teenager's demeanor and delivery were proof that Hogg was "an actor", hired to make anti-gun remarks to the media.

It turned out that "mike m." was, by his own description to the New York Times, a 51-year-old man "living in Idaho", and whose other UTubb uploads all had a similar, conspiracist flavor. UTubb pulled his videos critical of Hogg and threatened, per their 'three strikes' rule, to cancel his account -- but
Anonymous and remorseless, “mike m” was undeterred. “There is more to this kid than appears on MSM,” he said ...  Asked if he would think twice about posting such videos in the future, he said, “No not at all.” 
He said he was worried about his [UTubb] account getting deleted, adding: “But I am not going to stop.”
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Everyone Look At Me.  She will make everything pretty, before the bombings. Because her Daddy is the CEO of Murrika, and she's so pretty. Don't you think? Of course you do.
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Soft Life; Smug Life; Treats.
What are the lives of the planet's wealthiest people really like? ... [they] are so different from those of the rest of us, it's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. 
-- Brooke Harrington, sociologist; To Parth Shah, NPR: "What's It Like To Be Rich? Ask The People Who Manage Billionaires' Money", February 19, 2018
“Have we not become the isolated thing-for-yourself in the middle of similar beings?”
-- Peter Sloterdijk, in “The Critique of Cynical Reason" (1983)
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Resist. The reasons, in the face of authoritarian rule, do not change.
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At Last; Just Music.

Dunno about the movie, but Thomas Newman is one of My Guys. 

Liked the teevee show; an attempt to ask the right questions, while wearing a bourgeois support costume -- one of the great contradictions about creating certain kinds of art, and propaganda. And, fuck it; Jeff Daniels does good.




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Friday, January 26, 2018

The Great Hedgehog Of Post-Modern Neoliberal Capitalism


Obigatory Cute Small Animal Photo At Beginning Of Surrealistic Blog Thing

Moved by the posts of others, recently, I decided to take a stab at (what can be charitably called) stream of consciousness writing, sparked by the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, attended this year by Wonderboy, Murrikan Leader.

I don't normally play with this style of fiction; so, apologies in advance. As Wonderboy's own parents once said, "Let's do this, get it over with, and never speak of it again" -- point being, this is supposed to be topical, and funny.

(For those with no knowledge of Cricket, a "Diamond Duck" is the term for a situation where [per Wikipedia] "a batsman who is dismissed without facing a ball -- most usually run out from the non-striker's end, but alternatively stumped or run out off a wide delivery -- is said to be out by a 'diamond duck'.")
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Diamond Duck In Davos

1.  Greasing The Grenze

Coming into Davos, surrounded by winds whipping the confectioner's sugar of Swiss hospitality between the crisp billboards, Halt! Grenze! (Stop! Pemmican!) and Kämpfe Für Das Karussell Des Fortschritts! (We  Struggle For Kurt Russell's Foreskins!) The searchlights are blinding, guard dogs bark with an accent (Wüf!), and sudden efficient women are opening doors of perception in your car, murmuring, "Good evening. Anything to declare?"

But you're not surprised. No, not you; never you. All this was in the briefing. They are efficient, here in Davos. The Mark O' Mammon is barcoded on their hind parts -- you've been shown photos -- and at home, skis are racked demurely beside priceless paintings bought at bargain-basement rates, in auctions at Zürich and Geneva, between 1936 and 39.

And of those pouring into the valley, no one ever says to the women, "Ah DO -- Ah say, Ah say, Well AH DO DECLARE," in a voice borrowed from Foghorn Leghorn -- although you have a secret urge to do that. The women smirk at you, without envy, because Ach, Ja; we know this about you. You wish to do That Cartoon Rooster; such a typical male. We here in Davos know -- otherwise, you would not be allowed here. A brief blonde hand mumbles through your luggage, brushing socks and briefs, lingering for a moment with the rough play of starch in a shirt -- then, waving your car on: Alles Gut; los geh'n. 

And then, you glimpse the last billboard: Im Diesen Friedenskrieg Gibt Es Keine Gefangenen! -- No Prisoners In This Peace War. The Great Carousel Of Progress gives only to take. It really is shitty, what a Town Without Pity Can Do. Ha, ha, ha; that's our Davos!

Even if you have a Safe Conduct Leaflet, dropped like pet leavings on sidewalks by the IMF and WTO (Be a DO RAG, it proclaims, Not a DON'T RAG), after surrendering, the best one can hope for in coming to Davos is a cot in that hut on the mountain. They'll be jammed in with municipal workers and novelists. There will be a crucifix hung on the damp concrete wall, and a 1970's postcard showing light at the end of a tunnel. In the dark, farting and snoring settle around you, diaphanous, studded, anxious. You dream of gristle.

The others will receive a coupon for a discount-price small soda, and a trip to observe George Soros' hair colorist, reading a copy of Forbes, through a bulletproof window. But the Surrendered had denied the primacy of the Great Carousel, so their Davos will be a short sniff of the leather seats in an otherwise unoccupied Daimler. Then, to be sent home at their own expense for long retraining in a job that will take months to find, and which is discontinued the day after they are hired.  Ho, ho,ho, ho, Cisco! Ho, ho, ho, ho, Pancho! That's our Davos!

But this is not your Davos. You are not on file, under the name you were given to use, as having denied The Carousel Of Progress. [Your Name] has been Cleared, umbrage squeezed dry and ready for productive action in service to Man's Betterment. If L.Ron were ever alive, he would be. If Tony Robbins were real, he would guide you personally across the hot coals. Parma-shahanda Yoga-nanda, Parley-voo. In your mind, a Crackerjack prize, and in your gloved hand, the feel of a bag strap made from an endangered petrochemical, all telling you this is real.

(But: The whole squeezing Man's Betterment is just fake bullshit, a double-blind ruse. You're here in Davos in a big quilt, so far under the covers that your latitude and longitude come up Zeroes. You're not who you say you are, and never were. The hopes of all humankind stain your carpeting in expectation that you would complete this mission and get an oil change. God is with you, but he steals your stuff and sells it downtown.)

You stride up to the 4-star hotel desk repeatedly, just trying it out. The clerks -- parthenogenic, muted -- take no notice. They are busy timing each other's movements and their interactions with guests. The clerk with the lowest total time receives a coupon for a discount-price small soda. The rest are allowed to live, but forced to wear old animal costumes outside the hotel, in public, so that all will know of their shame and inexactitude.

Your electronic room key is imprinted with the likeness of Klaus Schaub, wearing a bib, and pictured eating in a 'Communist Lobster' franchise restaurant. The room, fragrant with violets; your phone, seeking you; and promises of delights of the eye, tongue and intellect are hung around the wallpapered box of your room like laundry washed in the sink. It is cheesy and expensive: the highest expression of the Free Market. You have made it.

Pencils down. You evacuate your bowels. The toilet has a shelf for you, the curious, to view leavings before flushing, and it would be churlish to refuse anything offered for free. This act of introspection will be your best moment at Davos. They told you this would happen -- but nothing, nothing could prepare you for that moment of contact, of spurning. You wash your hand.

2.   Where You Were, Gentlemen

It's the day. There are WEF conferences and hubub scheduled, rooms, many rooms, of people murmuring peasancarrots, peasandcarrots repeatedly. But you were instructed to feign shyness until The Moment. You hang. You chill. In The Packed Elevator, you do your Robin Williams laugh -- and everyone in the Car suddenly does the same thing.

You almost flinch. It's endless, permeable, like having a colonoscopy on a train -- but you remember: Keep control. Deep breaths. Be Coolidge: You Lose. Then, the Car stops; its doors slide open and a man moves past you, still making his seal-bark laugh, pausing to wipe his eyes on a woman's hair, and pat you on the shoulder as if to say, Dude -- good one.

Here, finally; the white placard outside a door to an auditorium, with a single word in red: Stumpfegger. This is where you are to meet your contact. You accept a glance from the woman beside the door -- an intense simulacrum of Donna Reed -- who hands you a brochure entitled Complete Release. Blushing, she says this conference covers "the plot for forgiveness of all First-World debt." You smile, nodding, earnest, but keep moving. Your mission is more important than what you suspect about her thong underwear -- and will never know. You'll have to live with that.

They said, Your contact will know you. All you had to do was to find "Stumpfegger" and show up. You stand near the tasteful refreshment table and realize the man serving drinks is a frenzied doppelgänger for Joe Turkel, eternal bartender in The Shining, and decline a tequila shooter. You wave the Complete Release brochure back and forth, as instructed -- a signal, an urgent, full-bladder motion, and think about thong underwear. Really hard.

Then, you see The Contact. You see them seeing you see them, actually. Everything that happens after this is a blur; you'll be debriefed about it for weeks in extra crispy detail, a swimming up from sewage depth to where sheep graze, safely. And, fortunately for you, the story will not change. You will be allowed to go back to wherever it is you come from. You will be allowed to toil in many jobs, but not remain for long -- because Lt. Gerard will always show up, looking for money.
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What catches your attention about The Contact first is his hair, its architectural blondness -- now whitish, now caution orange, and shiny, like preternatural two-tone ice cream or a small child's flotation device. The Contact is a suet, puffed inside his black suit, behind the signature doublewide red tie. His face is a carnivore drunkard's bloat, too-small eyes, piggish; his mien oblate and spiky. His lips are a crayon line drawn by an angry pensioner across the lower third of that orange face. The French Cuffs of his whitish shirt have little numbers embroidered on them: "45",  and he is nodding, nodding, at you as he walks forward. This is your contact.


3.   Historical Briefs With A Brown Streak Of Genius

A Stonehenge of men and women in sunglasses surround The Contact. They move in formation, maintaining a Raggedly Ann circle around him, continually bumping into other guests, chairs, tables, each other, headed right towards you in a chorus of s'cuse me; par-done, pal; hey lookout; aw christ you could see me comin', right? and who keep reaching inside their jackets as if checking to ensure they still have their wallets.

You clench. The deer flips on its headlights and there you are, about to get a mouthful of antler (Hi! Remember me? You hit me with the Volkswagen! Payback's a bitch, pal!). You think of the face of your mother -- or Lady Gaga, or another suitable female substitute, just as The Contact stops directly in front of you. You are standing in his Circle Of Trust, surrounded by partially blind people who have weapons.

"Hey, you know," The Contact says, lifting his chin and tilting his head back to look down at you, Mussolini squinting at a small boat far out at sea, "You know, I was out there, goin' by, and thought, 'You know, I should stop in there'. How's it goin'?" You open your mouth to answer but the contact, like the voiceover for an industrial safety film, keeps on talking.

"There's so many things goin' on here! It's like the world's fair of banking and whatever, right? You know, they never -- never -- wanted to invite me to Davos. I mean, I'm the most sympathetic person to what they want to do, in this whole place, the whole thing, me -- and they never invited me before! Not once!"

The Contact sees a blur moving outside his Circle Of Trust and raises a hand, perfect white teeth in the ocher pudding of his face, saying, "Hey, thank you. How ya doin', yeah; thank you," before turning the oily tumblers in his eyes back on you.

The Contact's eyes widen to the size of dimes. He throws his hands out, experimentally, the breadth of a large fish. "But, n-ow -- now, they had to invite me! I'm the leader of the free world, right? Over 300 on the electoral; nobody ever mentions that, by the way. But, hey -- Swiss've been great, they really have, very gracious -- they've been very, very good to me, very respectful. Not saying they're not. I'm very much thinking I hope they stay like that."

You nod. You lean towards him slightly, and enunciate the code phrase: Hobo Oboe.  The Contact stops, squints, pushes on his chin. "Din' getcha," he says; you rinse and repeat. The Contact thinks about what an impression of remembering something might look like, then leans towards you, and speaks a countersign: "Ah, Yeah, yeah.  'My Penile Prosthesis'." He steps a little closer and, with a quick glance around the room, squeezes out a shruglet, raising his brows while the eyes remain inscrutable, swinish.

This was the moment. This was why you came to Davos: to observe your leavings, and tell this person what you were instructed to say -- a single phrase, "Stormy Weather". You ignore the sure impression you have gained that The Contact is wearing thong underwear, stand on your feet's balls, and draw a deep breath -- but before you can speak, The Contact interrupts you.

"Hey, I have a lot to do; so much to do, I've got -- you wouldn't believe how much I have to do in this job. I tell you, if I could go on strike, I'd do that. Leftists would love it. Chuck Schumer'd love it -- but I am the most involved president, hands-on involved, of any president. Not since Lincoln, or anyone, has there been a harder-working president than I am. So that's one.

"Two, nobody is listening to me. I mean, the people, some of the people, they listen, sure. But there's a fucking conspiracy with the New York Times and fucking PBS. Jesus; fucking Frontline. The Washington Post -- that Bezos, he's just trying to mindfuck me. But, I'll be fair, some of my own people -- don't want to name anybody, but some of them are very close to me -- use the media to talk themselves up. Take credit, make me look like some crazy, stupid person. Happened just last week."

Everyone in the Stumpfegger Room is looking at something else while they look at The Contact, and you. He has drawn himself up on a cocktail napkin, his gut pendulous within a tent of jacket; he pushes a stubby finger into the inches before your face, shouting, "I'm tellin' you: I am not stupid, like everyone says! I'm Smart!! I am fucking in charge!"

"I was elected with the largest electoral numbers in modern history -- I was, me! Not the goddamn Daily News! And I'm about ready to say to the Post, 'Hey, Jeff; you want to get shut down? You want a military censor sitting in your office with a magnifying glass up your ass? You want the IRS looking at your offshore LLCs?' And those terrible conditions in his shipping places; just terrible. We're gonna look into that. He's outta control, that guy; it's very sad how outta control.

"I'm not even getting into the Russia thing. Yeah, we're lining up for ol' Bobby; and oh, everyone's gonna be surprised when we let go, my friend!" His face is an alarmed bell of crimson. "see, it takes just one thing, just one thing, and the whole ball game can change. That's what I'm saying; I'm saying that. All right." His face relaxes like a sphincter, and he nods, lifting a hand with two fingers, faintly Benedictine. "All right. Thanks very much. Great to see you."

The theme to "Heroes Of Telemark" begins to play in the background and he's off walking, his perimeter of flesh shifting with him back through the room and out the door.  A tendril in your head saying hey man that tequila shooter be lookin' good right now. From here to eternity, everyone is turning, turning, and have come round, Right wing, at last, to be looking at you. If curious glances had their own mucus, you would be coated in slime.

You order a tequila; the Joe Turkel bartender says Your Money's No Good There, and it's all on the House. Somewhere, you realize that you did not give The Contact that message. On the way back to the hotel, your Uber driver talks about a company which has made an app -- an interactive photo-calendar of shaved animals, for other animals. It has had two billion downloads at $2.99 each.

Obligatory Dog-Faced Fruit Bat Photo: Pooch Of The Sky

At the hotel, you receive a message: Mother says the cow is sick. You must come home immediately. Tickets will be delivered today. There is also a huge, Dog-Faced Fruit Bat, in a basket, from the Davos Chamber Of Commerce. One of these messages is benign, the other ominous, and you do not know which is which.

The Fruit Bat turns on the room's television;  you both watch situation comedies in German until the Fruit Bat turns to you and says, "Are you understanding any of this?"
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The Fruit Bat dials Room Service and orders a Martini. After a time, the Room Service waiter, a man in his mid-twenties, appears. He places the Martini, and the bill, on a side table.  The Fruit Bat sips at the Martini in silence. The waiter stands to one side, observing. The world wonders.

After a few minutes, the waiter politely clears his throat and says, "You know -- we don't get many Fruit Bats ordering Martinis here." The Fruit Bat, glancing at the bill, replies, "Yes; and at these prices, you won't see many more of us, either."
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Monday, January 22, 2018

Random Barking: Climate Denying Potato Edition

Knitting Trees For Africa
  • This isn't much, I know -- but it could have gone a completely different way if I'd been in the mood. Be thankful I didn't spend 1,500 words on tapeworm sushi.  
    • The Good News is, before a replay of the dinner scene from the original Alien occurs, you can take your dog's worming pills and get clean.
    • Remember -- ask your Dog for the pills, first. Politely. Don't take what doesn't belong to you just because you have opposable thumbs.  
    • And, we will have to watch this happen all over again before February 8!
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 MEHR, MIT MEHR:  Still in that place.  But: Woof ! Muss Sein. Es ist so.


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Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Mad As Hell And, Y' Know, Mad As Hell

Unless Of Course There's Free Cable In It For Us 

When I'm alone, and things are getting me down, I can always suffer weight gain, gross disfigurement, have urges to Make Time with girls, engage in cross-dressing, and dance with pom-poms. Just so you know. This is Murrika, after all, where our ability to debase ourselves is the crowning glory of our civilization.


Yes, it changes nothing. That Other Pig is Murrikan Leader. He says he is Not Racist. He says not crazy but stable. He says all is Fake, and my head goes into its Third Reel.  I mean, it's not like he's Alan Watts or something. The earth is facing an unthinkable series of environmental catastrophes, the dying species don't even get they're being taken out of the Big Parade, and Our Wealthy are doing everything to keep their soft lives and privilege as long as possible -- at the expense of everyone else, of course.

And when It Is Too Much and we come to this crazy-place in our Dog brain, we sit down and refuse to move -- until our request, that everyone will now please to dance the Rhumba Charleston until we can get a grip, is granted.  So, everyone get with it. Shake that thing. Thank you.

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Friday, November 10, 2017

Galatically Stupid Is Our Buddy

One Year

Before we begin, here's a perspective you might consider : The physical remains of a Bronze-Age human were found on a glacier in 1991. He was dubbed 'Ötzi The Iceman'. He had died in the mountain pass where his body was found (between current-day Italy and Austria) roughly 5,300 years ago. 

Use the link; go look at this man's reconstructed face. Let me repeat: He Died Five Thousand, Three Hundred Years Ago. He died at least 3,000 years before there was Greek civilization, or a Roman empire. 2,000 years before the Pyramids of Egypt were built.  

He lived and died four thousand years before the Buddha was supposed to be alive, and at least 2,300 years before either Jesus or Mohammed were supposedly doing their community service. Consider that.

Also consider: he was discovered because the glacier, which held and moved his body, was melting.
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Where we were, before November 8, 2016. Compare in your own minds with where we are now.
  • Climate Breakdown:  The effect of human life on the planet's ecosystem continued. There was no way to know if the Paris Accords, if put into action, would have a measurable effect on dampening trends in global temperature, precipitation and extreme weather. Some critics complained the accords did not go far enough; others that it was too late to reverse climate effects, no matter what we do. However, the planet's political representatives (including the United States) had committed themselves to an agreement, and that was no small feat. But, it's just a few paragraphs of language, unless and until legislated into action.
  • The upward flow of wealth, to Those Who Have from Those Who Don't, continued in 2016. Important people being paid large salaries released reports detailing what a bad thing this is, which were tut-tutted by many (Inequality; must do something about that). Anyone born in the United States in 1980 -- the generation which should be in its prime, income-producing years -- has a 50/50 chance of making less than their parents. The top eight wealthiest persons in the world have more collective net worth than 50% of the human race (See "Panama Papers" below). That's a ratio of  1 : 437,500,000,  if you're curious. Or, not.
  • North Korea and the Kim-Jong Un regime continued development of nuclear weapons, and an ICBM delivery system capable of hitting the United States. The North claimed to have successfully launched a submarine-based IRBM in August, 2016; two test launches of surface-based IRBMs/ICBMs in mid-October apparently failed.  North Korea had also conducted three underground nuclear weapons tests -- one in January, and twice in September, 2016.
  • China continued to spread its influence. Chinese companies made large acquisitions. Foreign currency reserve money (i.e., USD) flowed out of the country.  Development of the "one Belt, One Road" initiative begun in 2014 continued as a strategic direction. Tensions continued in the South China Sea with Japan and the United States over islands China had 'enhanced', expanding China's definition of territorial waters into what the U.S. sees as open shipping lanes. Encounters between naval vessels and aircraft were tense, and the possibility of an 'incident' seemed likely.
  • War in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen continued. Russian military support for the Al-Assad regime had allowed Syrian government forces to retake territory from rebel forces in the north of the country (in particular, the brutal retaking of the city of Aleppo), and from the so-called Islamic State. In Iraq, the IS still controlled large areas, but counteroffensives by U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces had begun in 2015, and by the fall of 2016 the Islamists were in retreat
  • In Turkey, a military coup in July 2016 against its increasingly authoritarian leader, Racep ("Kiki") Erdogan, failed, resulting in curbing of civil liberties, censorship, closing of any media critical of the Erdogan government; mass firings of civil service employees suspected of being sympathetic to the coup, and summary arrests. 
  • Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric who had long been critical of that country's Sunni majority in January 2016. One result were violent protests held at the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Iran (where the Shia are in the majority). The Saudis closed the embassy and severed diplomatic relations with Iran -- all this is related to the ongoing war in Yemen -- where since 2015, rebels backed by Iran have tried to overthrow a government supported by Saudi Arabia. 42,000 people have died. In August, 2016, talks to end the conflict collapsed, and Saudi airstrikes -- which have terrified local populations -- continued.
  • Great Britain's citizens voted for 'Brexit', 52% to 48% in June 2016. The Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron (who called the vote to silence critics, believing it would result in a victory to 'remain' in the Union) resigned. Implications for the rest of the EU weren't immediately clear, but weren't positive. Conservative Theresa May (a diehard 'Remain' supporter), was chosen as new PM and barely able to maintain a right-wing coalition in Parliament against tremendous pressure from the Labor Party and its leader, MP Jeremy Corbin.
  • France elected Emmanuel Macron, a Centrist, in a May 2016 election which pitted him against the far-Right Nationalist Marie LePen, 66.1% to 33.9%. This was seen as a bellwether of nationalist, anti-EU and fascist-leaning politics in mainstream Europe, and LePen's failure was seen as a defeat for those extremist viewpoints. What Macron as a 'centrist' would do with French internal and economic policy? well, that's a different matter, c'est non?
  • Roderigo Duerte was elected President of the Philippines in May, 2016. A populist candidate, Duerte instituted a ruthless campaign against drug dealing in the country, utilizing vigilantes and police, leading to reported thousands of murders. Duerte also hinted the Philippines' would be ending its long-standing relationship with the United States, and its troops would have to leave the country by 2018.  He made clear overtures to the government of China as a new ally, and made headlines by referring to then-president Obama in a public speech as a "son of a bitch".
  • The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) had been in negotiation since 2009. It was an American-led vehicle, providing leverage for the U.S., and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, to determine how trade in the Rim would be conducted, and was clearly aimed at containing Chinese economic influence (that it would also become part of a network of prior, similar trade agreements which provide, uh, 'rewards' to the usual large financial interests was obvious but ignored). The TPP was not popular among many politicians in the U.S., Right or Left; even so, then-president Obama hoped it would be ratified by the Congress in lame-duck session before the end of 2016. Good luck with that.
  • In April 2016, the "Panama Papers" were released in the media,  over 11 million documents dating from the 1970's forward which detailed how a long list of wealthy clients of a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, used offshore shell corporations to move and protect income from taxation. The documents were copied by an anonymous whistleblowing employee of the firm, who initially provided them to a German newspaper. Almost no one was surprised, including the governments which had been potentially defrauded of tax payments.
Left out here are mass shooting episodes in America (the Orlando, Florida nightclub attack) and continued police shootings of unarmed people in urban cities. There were the July Bastille Day terror attacks in Nice, France, and also in Germany by lone attackers. There was resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock. Anton Scalia died in his sleep ("Whales weep not").

The existence of gravitational waves, created by the collision of two black holes trillions of miles from Earth, was confirmed. Hundreds of the oldest footprints of our ancestors (in fossilized mud, some 19,000 years old) were found in Africa. People found Ube on their doughnuts, Poke holding their veggies and fish, Raclette scraped on their eggs, and "fairy bread", in the year since November 8, 2016. 
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After the 2016 election: I'm going to agree with Ian Welsh on this one. It is no bed of roses, but
... I say that we are moving out of an era where problems could only be solved if they made someone a billionaire and are moving to an era where we will be able to start actually fixing problems that matter. This is a high-risk period ... But unlike in 2009... we now have some real reasons to hope along with all the baked-in catastrophes we’ve had handed to us. 
Oh, yes, Trump. Yeah, he’s bad, and he’ll be bad for a lot of people, but I am not worried when it comes to the big picture because he’s ... far too incompetent.... Someone competent, running on actual right-wing populism, say, Bannon with charisma, could well have turned America into a fascist state for two generations... [Trump's] failure provides a clear warning of the danger and may discredit those policies.
Trump's behavior, which we can count on to be consistently erratic and polarizing, is an important factor in how near-term events (say, three to seven years) could play out. Put simply, Trump is his own worst enemy.  He's already proven it.

His behavior galvanizes opposition and identifies alt-Right extremist conservatism with his own Batshit-Crazy, galatically-stupid incompetence. A more competent mendacious person might do real damage to America, and the rest of the world -- so in a way, we got lucky with Wonderboy. His inherent nature is our best friend, just now.

This isn't to say that if he were about to be indicted for -- treason, perhaps -- Trump might not do something which had maximum Shiny Object value in the media as a distraction. And his target(s) would be (like immigrants, like the Dreamers, like the women he bragged about groping) someone who couldn't really hurt him, couldn't really fight back.

It's important to remember that Trump's closest political advisors, his go-to guys, are all general officers, whether they wear a tie and a blazer or not (Rex Tillerson isn't part of that team, but they seem to get along). Someone made the observation that we've already had a military coup, and no one noticed; if we're lucky, it's only half-wrong.
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Our old-order politics in America, with the two parties serving the Usual Suspects, is no longer viable. Something will replace it -- the what, how and when, we don't know. It may be pretty and joyous, or not.  Change will continue -- and, we're only one year into the Occupation, and haven't yet seen how crazy it can get. We need to remember the past, and we need to remember the future.
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Things, in their relative way, abide: Here's my only solution, just now. Imagine standing in some specific place in the world, one you hold close to your heart. One you can close your eyes and all your senses light up at the memory; see, smell, feel, hear that place. Imagine being in that spot for one year.

The wind blows; birdcalls come and go; clouds appear, thunder and rain, and then pass; night falls; the great bridge of stars appears and twists on its axis above you, until the next sunrise -- and all of it 365 times, passed in an overarching quiet which ignored your presence, as if you were simply an element in that landscape. A rock, a tree, a lost Quarter.

Now open your eyes again and remember that during the year since last November, in all it's terrible beauty; despite everything; your place stood, full of change but rooted, exactly so. Consider that.
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Friday, February 17, 2017

One More Voice

The Beaver Speaks For His Kind

(Photo: William Ploughman / NBC)

Never did I ever think I'd be grabbing quotes from Davey ("Bucky The Beaver") Brooks, unindicted war criminal, but these are strange times.

Bucky is really an old-line conservative, out of Kristol, by way of  Buckley and Podhoretz. Like many pundits of any political stripe, he supports the status quo (ultimately, rule-by-the-0.01%), but from the Right. He's carved out a niche in Right wingnutostan as the voice of traditional conservative values; a reading of his columns in the Paper Of Record seem to indicate his perfect world looks a lot like Saskatoon around 1958, as Bucky was born and raised North Of The Border.

While many pundits frequently hedge their bets, while the contest for a Republican candidate ground on, Bucky sided with that party's old-line leadership in declaring Trump a menace, and said plainly This Is Bad when Wonderboy became the nominee.

Still, for the sake of preserving a Republican party, through the summer he tried to find some silver lining in the sow's ear as Trump faced off against She in the clash of worlds. With the election, Bucky was as stunned as the rest of us, offering jumbled conservative credos that amounted to a 'How Can This Be Happening??'

Wonderboy, Speaking To A Room Of Dishonest Lying Haters (Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP)
Bucky is one bellwether of mood among status quo conservatives. Not long before the inauguration and America's renaming as Trumplandia, he said plainly that he wouldn't take a Trump presidency lying down.  And after watching the 77 unscripted minutes of Wonderboy's free association press conference yesterday, Bucky typed:
I still have trouble seeing how the Trump administration survives a full term. Judging by his Thursday press conference, President Trump’s mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued.

Trump’s White House staff is at war with itself. His poll ratings are falling at unprecedented speed. His policy agenda is stalled. F.B.I. investigations are just beginning. This does not feel like a sustainable operation.
One way or another, we're all feeling this. Bucky, on the other hand, is a well-known right-wing cheerleader with impeccable (for those people, anyway) credentials -- and even he is verbalizing the same WTF and "this can't end well" which we're all feeling. And, what next?
On the other hand, I have trouble seeing exactly how this administration ends. Many of the institutions that would normally ease out or remove a failing president no longer exist.

There are no longer moral arbiters in Congress like Howard Baker and Sam Ervin to lead a resignation or impeachment process. There is no longer a single media establishment that shapes how the country sees the president. This is no longer a country in which everybody experiences the same reality.

... The Civil Service has a thousand ways to ignore or sit on any presidential order. The court system has given itself carte blanche to overturn any Trump initiative, even on the flimsiest legal grounds. The intelligence community has only just begun to undermine this president.

President Trump can push all the pretty buttons on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise, but don’t expect anything to actually happen, because they are not attached.
So far as the USA goes, this is a good description of the internal political landscape as of February 17, 2017.  However, this ignores the possibility of something -- an external threat, but most likely something happening within our own border -- to change the game.

We're one terrorist (or false flag) incident away from Wonderboy -- insecure, narcissistic, child-man led by Stevie Bannon -- declaring a State Of Emergency and locking the country down. It will be a massive overreaction designed simply to match the paranoid, delusional world Trump and Bannon inhabit, a "War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast -- the results of which will be impossible to predict once it's been put in motion. At that point the nation will find all the buttons on Trump's command deck are fully connected and operate very well. 
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MEHR, MIT MEHR VON BUCKY!  On this evening's PBS New Hour -- following a segment showing interviews with Trump supporters and critics in Bellville, and Austin, Texas -- Bucky made a few observations [warning: paraphrased quotes].

"What's at the core [of the divide between Americans]? Why is the chasm so wide?  Is there some cultural or racial divide?  Whether it's some identity politics thing or something else... that's the world we're in."

Bucky said he saw Trump's news 'conference' performance as "mildly deranged", then questioned what of substance Trump was actually doing. He noted that relatively few of the total number of presidential appointees had actually been made. "On the substantive picks, he doesn't have nominees [in place]... nothing is happening."

Asked if he believed Trump was 'mildly deranged', Bucky made a trademark non-demurral demurral: "I'll walk that back a little... he was 'unmoored'... he's not speaking as a president giving orders and leading the American people... [his] attack on the press... saying that they are enemies of the people... [that's] to take [direction] right out of the fascist playbook..."

Trump's actions "offends 65 to  70 per cent of the American people," Bucky added later. "It pleases 35 per cent of the people," he said, noting that the Republican leadership was not in any hurry to put distance between themselves and Trump "anytime soon. Among Republicans, 82 per cent support Trump, a higher [percentage] than Reagan got."
 
Finally, Bucky said the Republican leadership are "living in a hermetically-sealed universe, as are the democrats; so they're going to [support Trump] even at the risk of electoral downfall..."

And that's Jenga.
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