Absolutely everything in America gets fucked up by puritanical utopians. Feminism got fucked up. It immediately went from a good thing to a crusade and got co-opted by power-seeking, masculine bullshit and the consumption machine.
But punk rock feminism was great. Fun and angry and really challenging to the system, but with some compassion. Some amazing shit and they just about didn't get co-opted. It was inclusive and democratic and free. All the things that make the white boys tremble.
Everything gets comromised. You can't be an American without being implicated. Artists can stay stay true. But they still get mediated by the system. Everything is a commodity. You can't breathe in America without that shit. It's in the air.
What menhad got defined as what was worth having, in the case of feminism. But what men had and wanted and strove for was the problem. Punk feminism was feminine. And pissed and strident and fun. And human and vital and noisy.
I think I understand how the protestors in support of the Palestinians feel. That the status quo is against them. That the status quo involves an inexorable movement backwards -- the loss of lives and lands. It's not a static status quo. And they don't feel heard.
They feel that Israel and Jews in general get a pass because of the Holocaust. Which they had nothing to do with. So they get emphatic and belligerent because they feel helpless. Helpless in circumstances in which they are inexorably moving backwards.
Wouldn't you be pissed? And act out just to try to get people to listen to you?
Bots are people now. And as more bots get in the game they're rubbing elbows with themselves, bot on bot. People can't compete with them. Not at what they do. So there will be layers of bots. Tactician bots and worker bots, like managemant and labor. White and blue collar bots. Bot bureaucracies.
Enter AI, whatever the fuck it is. Being incorporeal is an advantage. Inhumanity is an advantage. I smell evangelicals. They've always hated 'the flesh' and despised their humanity. And taken it out on us. So they empower rich people to prey on all of us. More inhumanity. They teach it in business school.
It adds up to greater concentrations of power. More and more until it implodes, as it will from it's own gravity, an unsustainable, mindless black hole of greed and a vampire economy. It used to be you could only die once, when life was more coherent. Now some people, the winners, have many lives.
The rest of us, many deaths. In any case, time to hedge your bots. If the bots are on your side you will need vertical integration. If not you need damage control and an escape plan. And good luck with that.
I'd like to interview our Republican Supreme Court justices -- grill them, really -- to find out what they think about being instantly proved wrong about voting rights and abortion and some other things. Their side proved them wrong about voting rights by immediately jumping on the opportunity to screw people out of the right to vote in a partisan -- racially unequal -- kind of way. The exact states that were covered under the Voting Rights Act for having a history of screwing black people. And some others with Confederate refugees who relocated after getting their asses whupped.
And their abortion ruling is leading to unintelligible law. If it's up to the states it's not a constitutional right but nor, presumably, is it constitutionally prohibited. So their boys are now pushing for a national prohibition and not through new law, though I'm sure they'd be fine with that, but by arguing that stuff already in the constitution applies. That's how I understand it. This is arguing from conclusions. They want to outlaw abortion so they come up with reasoning to do it. Bullshit reasoning. Rationalizations. As they did with gun rights. To reward rednecks for voting for Republicans.
They said they would call balls and strikes. They didn't say they wouldn't be biased, bigoted and partisan about it. Clarence is behind the plate. Harlan Crow is in his sky box watching Clarence, his boy, do what he pays him to do, protect the interests of the super-rich. The thing is, the justices don't give a shit. They're ideologues and bullies. We can all fuck off. There will be no interview. They answer to no one. The dream of all criminals is impunity. Immunity. To be a law unto yourself. These Republicans make the law (what a feeling of power!) and they don't even have normal consciences.
No, I haven't converted. But I bought a new dishwasher. And I think -- God, we can't go on this way, using up and throwing out this consumer shit like there's no tomorrow. Evangelicals have a plan.
No tomorrow. Fuck tomorrow. Let's get everybody killed. Destroy everything. And in this they're right -- it can't go on. Beyond that we differ. I love life. I love humanity, nature, the world and creation.
And dogs. I love dogs. Evangelicals hate it all. Maybe not dogs, but ... collateral damage.
Pure spirit, that's what they want. A bunch of souls, maybe with incorruptible bodies, floating around in space somewhere. But no more of this awful imperfection. They're going to blow it all up.
Mortality puts an edge on everything, I'll grant that. Corruptibility, the way it plays out, where anybody can die of cancer or another misery, for example, might not be my favorite. But life is what it is.
I don't think it's our place to pull the plug. Presumptuous, to my mind. But evangelicals want to see the end times. I think life is a miracle. They think it's a catastrophe. A huge mistake.
And they will have their way. Destruction is easy. But I'm going to stick with wonder at the miracle of creation. As long as I can. Thank you, friends, for being here with me. And I wish you well.
What constitutes a fair shakedown? Republicans might be wont to wonder. What's enough? When are average people disempowered and screwed enough? The answer is never. Once they might have thought so. That was another generation of Republicans.
The new crew is scared they'll be found out. They ask themselves, perhaps in some subtle, unconscious way, what they would do. What they would do if they realized they'd been suckered, lied to and shafted for decades. They would want to kill the fuckers.
Kill the fuckers that screwed them. But there's no such thing as a fair shakedown. Republicans told themselves anybody who wasn't completely selfish and willing to do anything to win was an idiot and a sucker. That those people deserved to lose.
What good is the opportunity to crash and burn if it isn't explored occasionally? Thus we see the need to tempt fate. To explore limits. To challenge authority for the hell of it.
This was supposed to be done, and the issues resolved, in adolescence. When adults do it it's from arrestedness. From having not grown up. Like those running the Republican Party.
This is the eminent domain approach to idiocy. Use it or lose it. And Republicans are about to cause us to lose it. Flexing their meathead muscles they're going to take us all down.
Being inadequate and bring bad are different. Christians should to own inadequacy because it's not corruption. Corruption is different. Being corruptible is different.
And sins of error and inadequacy are different from sins asserting that life is unintelligible. Christ is the Logos, without which life is unintelligible. Intelligible, with Christ.
Intelligible, in the way of beauty. By uninspired reason life is not intelligible. People are inadequate at that. Which is where faith comes in, making up for our inadequacy.
The news from Scamalot is bad. Truth Social is tanking. Everybody knew it was a lie. But could Trump make money anyway? After all, he's always made his money on image.
Trump was corporate vaporware. Everything was always based on Trump vapors. Which does't bear too much thinking about. Like everything Trump, scrutiny is not allowed.
Evangelicals have a new niche. They're winning the culture wars so it's about consolidation. Stuffing their values down the throats of their enemies. That is, their fellow citizens whose rights they are supposed to respect as part of a social contract which benefits them enormously. The responsibilities of that social contract don't suit them. Like, respect, tolerance and compromise. They are out to win. By any means.
By illegal means, since they're in a hurry and they answer only to God's -- not secular -- law. They're traitors and parasites, in other words, enjoying the benefits of a society while being its irresponsible members, sucking off the stability and success provided by others. The stability and success they are destroying. They vote for Trump. They support voter suppression, gerrymandering and intimidation.
I'm going to take the evangelical drive for death and destruction as a given. As an observable thing. And I'm going to say this is about revenge. Revenge against God for having been born.
Trump finally looks as deranged as he is. He always looked nuts to me but so did Reagan and Bush so what do I know. But Trump looks terrible. Like the madman he is.
Trump's ass is over the line. Out of bounds and foul. He's thrusting his ass out into odd places trying to get it kissed. He's a sick ass-man. And I call him on it.
Puritanism always wins in America. Somewhere in there feminism went puritanical. It became self-righteous, and a numbers game. It became angry and vindictive. It became masculine and left-brain. Analytical, divisive and intent on power. Focused on individualism.
Lesbians were seen as being a more pure form woman, gay men a less pure of man. That's pure male centrism. A view of women as men who lack something. A dick, presumably. And here we are now, after women promised everything would be better if they were empowered.
And things are worse than ever. From a feminine perspective anyway.
I was going to write a little satire on how you could probably get MAGA to support implementing a preemptive nuclear first strike. Then I realized it might catch on.
The Heritage Foundation's plan for America, Project 2025, is toga party. Drunken revelry. Debauchery. In the basement of the frat. Lots of pussy. Gaetz is pussy-master, the go-to guy for snatch.
Sorry if the language offends. Go after the offenders. Don't blame me.
Party until somebody pulls the plug. Or it all all falls apart when they get busted. Daddy money funds the thing, in the manner of Bush and Trump. Their daddies bought them countries to play with.
Hitler was good at being Hitler. He had Hitler talent. Trump is a bad Hitler. A half-baked Hitler. A typically derivative American. A loser's Hitler, and I don't know if it makes him better or worse.
Democrats don't believe in pieces of shit. Pieces of shit such as Ted Cruz. Democrats want to think there are shreds of dignity and decency in every person to which you can appeal. But some people, like Cruz, are irredeemable or must be treated as such because they are lost souls.
Their only hope of redemption is confrontation. I intend to run for Congress and, once there, speak the truth loudly and every day that Cruz and Hawley and Gosar and all the rest -- so many now -- are total pieces of shit. No doubt this will end up in court. That's what I want.
I mean to prove in court that they are pieces of shit, in any normal sense of the term. I will bring in the best people in scatology, those who study feces and turds. Experts in shit. Experts, relatedly, in bullshit. People who understand menace, cheapshots and vituperative innuendo.
If such a thing can be. The Cruzites are practiced in nastiness but also in avoiding accountability, so they lay much of it between the lines and have a sure command of suggestion. 'Brutus is an honorable man.' Right, we get it. Brutus is a treasonous asshole. No honor in him.
Like Cruz. And virtually every Republican left in Washington. It was bad before Trump but it's horrendous now. I face an uphill battle and may fail, but I will go down fighting. If I can win it will be a miracle. A moment for the ages. The clouds will part and the sun shine.
We must try. If we can win the truth will reign again.
Trump has his uses. He's so extreme we can see in him the essentials of Republicanism and 'conservatism' and apply that to the less crazy, thereby acheiving enlightenment. First off the primal fear, the persecution complexes and preemptive belligerence.
Trump was born so rich he didn't have to do anything. Some say he would be wealthier if he hadn't done anything -- if he had invested his money in index funds. I believe it, but he's been at war his whole life, trying to prove something to somebody.
To prove to himself he's not a worthless piece of shit. But he is a piece of shit so he's in a positive-negative feedback loop, self-reinforcing self destruction. The destruction of those around him or affected by him is incidental, not to say it doesn't hurt.
So Trump is not a reality based operation. Similarly 'conservatives' are skeptical about their humanity. They don't like their human existence. It doesn't satisfy them, as we see in their religiosity which longs for the perfection of incorporeality.
That is, death. Non-existence. To be pure spirit, assuming that exists and with a form of consciousness attached to it. Heaven, presumably. Go for it.
Good for them. God bless. But this means they're mean. They're dissatisfied. They feel persecuted and they lash out. At those they envy, the segment of humanity which, if not thrilled with the prospects of being human and mortal, make the best of it.
These 'conservatives' therefore experience the loathing as though it's coming at them from somewhere. When, really, it's what they feel for themselves. They assume being human is a disgusting thing because they're disgusted with it. I find that disgusting.
I find Trump disgusting, but that's me. I find life miraculous. I'm not entirely satisfied with my humanity and humanity generally but it's what we have. And I don't think it makes sense to fight it. They crave more. Always more, in the way of vampires.
Stealing life from life. Which is a scam. They have to lie, all the time, because they have bad intent. Lie, that is, and strive for complete domination and hegemony, the institutionalization of their persecutory impulses. Then they can stop lying.
And speak their truth to the world, which is fuck you we're the winners and deserve everything and will take everything and will kill you if you stand in our way. Which is Republicanism and 'conservatism' as we see it increasingly openly in Trump.
Poor Andrew Sullivan has his panties all in a twist over 'woke' which doesn't exist or exists mostly in the famous fever swamps of the conservative collective imagination. Bugger that. Shades of rich white boys trembling at the sight of hippies protesting Vietnam or, my God, Black Panthers strutting the streets.
Calm yourself, Andrew. Woke isn't going anywhere. It's a reactive, powerless puritanical movement protesting the real disenfranchisement they've been handed by your side's inconceivably rich elite and their goons. Are you a goon? A writer goon? A hit man and enforcer with keyboard and Wildean wit?
Andrew is an elitist. A supremacist. Andrew thinks some people are better than others, extrapolating from his own obviously higher state and Oxford and all that shit. As a conservative, though, he's been plenty enfranchised. Super enfranchised, I would say. By assorted manipulations, stolen elections, etc.
He hasn't watched his rights go out the window, like the 'woke' crowd, owing to a Gingrich or other principled crusader coming after them. Gingrich, another man convinced of his superiority. Possible inerrancy, as the movement confers it. They know they're right. Why not worry about a Koch, Andrew?
Instead of 'woke'?
Never mind Reagan and Bushes and Trump stealing elections and bankrupting the country and annihilating the middle class and starting wars and exploiting tragedies for personal or party benefit. All that is fair game for conservatives, because they deserve to rule. They were chosen. By being rich.
Or anointed by God, maybe, being fundamentalist evangelicals or authoritarian Catholics just following orders. Like Andrew they don't understand that dominance and submission don't have to be issues. Nobody has to be on top. We can all be together. Alive together, on an even existential footing.
When the higher functions are gone what's left is a desire or drive to replicate. Sick religions devolve into this, out of insecurity -- the nacissistic need to see themselves reflected in everything around them.
Everything.
In their weakness, meaning lack of faith, they are struggling to find themselves. The persecution is incidental. Tell that to their victims. Those they persecute. They need mirrors. People who reflect them.
Institutions that reflect them. For fucking everything to reflect them. But there's nothing there. No there there. No self. No ego. No conscience or humanity. They're vampires. Life stealers. Bloodsuckers. Killers.
They are the void. Which they try to fill, in compensation. They are befuddled by those who love life. They resent them. Envy them. Despise them. Religious fundamentalists hate life. They want to kill us.
I want to thank Republican evangelicals for bringing so many people closer to God. By dying, for example, people presumably come closer to God. Also the heathen, if they suffer enough, might be induced to repent and in that way draw closer to God. So, death and suffering are good -- for non-evangelicals.
Evangelicals, already being saved, don't need the benefits of death and suffering. In fact, they don't even have to behave since their salvation is already assured and is persevering. Evangelicals have been great at causing suffering and getting people killed. So, thanks for all that, though I'd like to say it's a bit presumptuous.
I feel that all the forces of evil are marshalling under Donald Trump for a last great battle. And I finally understand, in a way I never have, the impulse to pray. In other words, the evangelicals have us where they want us, staring down the end times, And they don't care which side they are on. They just want to see Jesus.
But I'm becoming one. Because I've discovered insecurity. Being scared makes you think of yourself. Being really scared makes you think only of yourself.
I always felt the wealth. I always felt and knew I lived in a land of plenty. So I didn't worry. But now I worry a lot. Because I live in a land of plenty of nuts.
Where crazy people abound. And they are trying to destroy everything.
Marketing has discovered cynicism. In the wild, they claim. In other words, they aren't saying they're cynical or that they're using cynicism per se they're saying they've read the mood. That people are cynical. As though they had nothing to do with it.
With businesses breaking faith with the people they serve. Marketing can be rooted in reality but we're way beyond that. They're not selling you anymore in the sense of selling to you they're selling you. Because they already own you. Your attention.
What do you think all the 'big data' is about? It's you, in a nutshell. They have your number. Numbers, really. But, no matter. They sell you to established businesses and monopolists. Those who can afford it. To increase their 'market share.' That's you.
This is partly the power of not giving a shit. So, of course, they are cynical. But they're making good money at it. So they don't have to own it. They already own it. Again, not giving a shit. If this sounds circular it is. A perpetual motion machine.
Which can't exist. Doesn't exist. So, look for the subsidies. There's no product anymore. No producer. Those elements are powerless. Remember 'real' needs? Food, clothing, shelter. These aren't the players. If they were everyone would have them.
Because that battle was won. To a ridiculous extent, at least in developed countries. America throws away a shocking amount of food, which it produces unsustainably, by the way, and people are hungry. Tell me this isn't insane. And I'll tell you it is.
And that this system is sick. No wonder we're cynical. That I won't deny.
The age of extraction is coming to a head. The age of exploitation. The age of violence, manipulation and disempowerment. Strange about the disempowerment. When we're raping the world of resources.
Truth in paradox. Enormous wealth, but insanely concentrated. By a mercilessly greedy system. Injustice by choice, in a quest for power. Don't look now. The end will not be pretty. And the end is near.
Puritans had some cool ways of determining guilt. Like submersing you to see if you sank or what. Float and you're guilty. Sink and you're innocent but presumably drowned. Or something like that. In this way God makes your guilt or innocence known.
There were many variations. But we've moved on. Puritans have new kinds of trials. Suffering is efficacious in lots of ways. You might be induced to repent and have a 'personal relationship' with Jesus. Or you might die and get to see Jesus that way.
All good.
So they love suffering. For other people since they assume they are saved, being evangelicals. The thing now is money. God reveals his favor by who gets rich. This has advantages. Not least that you can suck up to rich people by telling them they're the best.
God's chosen, like you.
They reward you by giving you money. You cut their taxes to thank them and apparently it goes on forever. That's negative taxation, effectively. Socialism. Socialism applied to the rich because God loves them. You socialize the costs of their predations.
They are an odd alliance. Some semblance of the old American high-tea aristocracy that pretended to royalty and claimed innate superiority by the favor of God and ... the rednecks. But the rednecks, or evangelicals, also claim innate superiority because they are saved. Got their card stamped at some hideous revival or whatnot. They have a 'personal relationship' with Jesus.
Like with a guy in a bar. What if God were one of us? From which personal relationship we are evidently excluded. All the weird shit is kicking in. Like wanting inheritance to determine everything, in some way. Genetically or monetarily or by being chosen by God or make-it-up. The important thing to know is some people are better than others. And it probably doesn't include you.
Mitch McConnell, a son of Alabama and soldier of the Confederacy, came to Washington for revenge and the restoration of the South's honor. Revenge for the insults of the Civil War and desegregation. Losers have long memories. May he be remembered for what he was, a racist piece of shit.
His revenge is accomplished, and the stench of death is everywhere. This is the South's honor, the misery and horrors of white man supremacy. He has done his job well, the Democratic Party standing in for black people, the closest effective approximation the society will permit.
Let us not praise famous men. Give them the reputation they deserve.
In what kind of a nation does the worst side win every argument by cheating, raw power and overwhelming everyone with bullshit? One on the way to failure and collapse.
Republicans spread disease, shit and piss everywhere, cannibalize one another when they must and scurry away as the light of day reveals them. We know who the vermin are.
Trump, the aging monarch, has kids with lots of limitations. Two appear stupid, chips off the block but without their father's disreputable talents as a con man and belittler of his enemies. A belittler of allies, for that matter. The other, a daughter, who knows. Anyway, it will be a hell of a thing to watch.
For talent Trump will have to look outside the family. The usual, anticipated difficulties of succession are playing out. Lots of complexities around Trump's unbelievably fragile ego. All must demonstrate their limitless fealty and subservience. But they must also show skill at clobbering enemies in jousts.
But not threaten Trump by being too skillful at anything. All praise and credit must go to fearless leader. Remember the ego. Always remember the ego. The landscape of enemies is a constantly morphing mess because Herr Donald is such a loose cannon. It includmany in his own party.
This will probably entail the destruction of our country but it will be interesting if you can stomach it. I'm having trouble already. The degradation is too extreme. This is reality reality TV. Or something like that. Trump is basically a Kardashian. Without thei better qualites. It should be a show.
Donald Trump has won big in the traitor state. But South Carolinians, who started the Civil War, have always voted for pieces of shit. This is not news.
Though, in profile, Trump looks more like Chris Christie all the time. He must be consoling himself over his gargantuan legal costs and fines by eating.
Evangelical Christians have infiltrated every part of society. They pretend to believe in democracy but are being activated as the pheremones of hate are released and spread around. They are programmed to destroy everything so a new society may emerge. Or, barring that or in conjunction, everything will just come unglued and Jesus will come.
That part is unclear.
Evidently even to them. But in the short run they'll wreck everything leaving a huge power vacuum on the assumption Jesus needs help. Meanwhile the super-rich will have a field day. Maybe they represent Jesus. Maybe they are the ones who are saved. All of that is unclear. If you're not rich hang on to your hat. Hang onto something. It could be rough.
The worst people most want to have guns. Then there are people who want the worst people to have guns. That I find harder to understand. Antonin Scalia might have been a pig but he was a smart pig. Alito and Thomas are lost souls. Scalia must have known he was wrong about gun rights. He, especially, and a lot of other affluent, educated Republicans threw a big bone to the gun nuts. Because they wanted their votes.
So they could take over and have their way. Now they're afraid of their own base. Everybody is. With good reason. So to save themselves and further their interests they direct all the hate at Democrats. That passes for character and conviction among conservatives. They are spineless garbage with no principles.
Christian antisemitism is simple to understand. Some Christians in some periods have seen Jews as a standing insult to Christianity. Because Jews have a familial claim on Christ Christians can't have, or think they can't. But this requires that Christians opt for a tribal outlook, which is incompatible with being a Christian. You can't be Christian and an antisemite at the same time. Each excludes the other.
I intend to suggest the possibility that Trump supporters are snuffing dope from his ass crack if not his anus. How else to explain the combination of dependency, degradation and delusion? Delusion at a level that suggests chemical dependency? Hallucinations.
Trump must perform multiple roles for them, some of which are apparent and written about extensively, but not about his role as a drug dealer. They might be more met heads or LSD types. I see evidence of both. They must have their fix, which leans us away from LSD to meth, crack and heroin.
Notice how they can't go long without a huff of Trump or other hate from Fox or another source. They require maintenance, and will begin acting out and experiencing withdrawal without their jolt of lies, hatred and contempt. These folks are fucking addicts.
What would Europe do if Putin decided to drop one nuke somewhere? Just to bait them? Maybe on a city, maybe on some relative wasteland. These sociopaths make hostages of all of us. And the racists in America, who have held the country hostage since the beginning, have now nearly won.
Lots of Americans are on the off ramp. Some because of detours. 'New World Order Under Construction.' Soon they will be told to turn back. That there's no future for them that they might want.
I want a religion that understands my weakness. But without pessimism or fatalism. Expecting too much can cause a revolt. Well, they might be saying, I'll remind you what life is really like. And how people really are, just to hit the reset.
You would think we could identify a turd. So much easier than a face, to the point of being able to name the individual. But we can't, with Donald Trump as my evidence.
Americans are learning how well or not the 'great man' approach to history works, the focus on individuals shaping events. Not implying the loss of a 'great' leader won't stop a movement or cripple it, the 'if only someone had shot Hitler' thing, but I'm saying it's harder to stop a leader than we might have thought. They surround themselves with flunkies.
Layers of goons and henchmen. The attacks start early and are opportunistic. America is passing into the intimidation phase. The lies and deceit are still abundant but the aggression is more open. The hate more transparent. And that core group of goons, the base, is loving it. The Liberals or whatever deserve it. They earned it. But we see who the real traitors are.
