Undercurrents

Making up the blues
Holding back schools
Lot of greed, lot of temptation
Proof of one thing, we're a hell of a nation

Willie Wright, "Right on For The Darkness"

Time feels slightly disorienting, even though I’m doing my best to slow down and enjoy it like I should. Perhaps it’s because I perceive the sense of looming cataclysm, political, financial, geopolitical, or all three simultaneously. Who can say with any certainty that Putin won’t go nuclear in Ukraine? That’s one of those more distant worries, sort of like the fate of the ancient and decrepit nuclear reactors in Hanford, Washington, where material for the first atomic bomb we dropped on the civilian population of Japan was produced. Evidence of poor maintenance, leaks, and shoddy oversight by the US Department of Energy, all covered in a new book by Joshua Frank called Atomic Days. That’s closer to home, but closer still is the 23% decline in the value of our IRA. The US federal reserve seems to only have one single blunt tool at hand, raising interest rates to suffocate inflation. Many unseen hands in this one, bankers, hedge fund managers, huge pension funds like Cal-PERS (my pension fund), all beyond my control. Climate change, the availability of water, is a constant undercurrent to our lives, though often easy to ignore. 

In many ways it seems a cataclysm of Stupidity and Greed and Cruelty, dating back to the 2000 election, an election that was actually stolen, thanks to GOP judicial operatives like John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, and culminating today, with the former president acting everything but disgraced by two impeachments and the incitement of an armed attack on the seat of the legislative branch, an attempt at government by thuggery, as he continues to push his election lies, grift his gullible supporters, feed his durable base a torrent of lies and nonsense fables, and shop the state secrets he stole from the legitimate government to interested parties, possibly including Vladimir Putin. The possibilities are boggling, but again, far beyond my tiny sphere of influence. Purity tests took hold in the GOP under Newt Gingrich in the 1990’s, when Gingrich figured out how to weaponize obstinance and unyielding partisan opposition to actual governing. Party over country, raw power the sole objective. Rigid party discipline was built over the decades, and with the advent of the social disease that is social media (yes, I’m aware of the irony of a blogger who uses social media criticizing that very medium), but it has changed the game of politics, and not in a good way, putting performance over sense-making, the more batshit and outrageous and insulting the better. Get it trending and on FOX News. Repetition, like water on stone, will eventually make the truth give way. What’s true today? What’s a fact? 

The ire and outrage and sense of entitlement represented by extremists on the political right ring with echoes of the 1850’s, when this country was squaring off for separation and divorce, bitterness and hatred flowing fast, reason taking an elbow from emotion, fear on the rise, violence in the rhetoric of politicians and talking heads. Trump was the ultimate loyalty test, and he bluffed and bullied the GOP into submission. His Word had to be echoed without criticism, defended with personal attacks, invective and counter-accusations. Trump is a master of this authoritarian technique, he does it like judo, by muscle memory. I despise the man, but credit where it is warranted. 

Among the books on my tables these days is American Midnight by the historian Adam Hochschild. His canvas is World War I, with a primary focus on what America’s entry into the war meant on the domestic front at a time of widespread labor strife and violence, agitation from unions, socialists and anarchists for more fairness in a highly unequal economic arrangement. This is the authoritarian era the modern GOP wishes to return to, with everything it values -- racial animosity, vigilante groups, citizens spying on each other, cruelty against immigrants, women fighting for full citizenship, and intolerance of dissent -- in play.  This was the era that birthed the Espionage Act (still in force today) and the Volstead Act, which ushered in the nutty idea of Prohibition. Dumb ideas have the unfortunate habit of also being cruel, and they tend to proliferate. Ban books, forbid the teaching of history, demand that public schools emphasis “patriotic” education, outlaw abortion, slam the border shut. Another similarity -- it was an age with a global pandemic, then, the misleadingly named Spanish Flu, and today, Covid. Deliberate misinformation about both was disseminated widely to the public. 

Speaking of dumb ideas, look at what’s happening in the UK, post-Brexit. The people of Britain were sold a phony bill of goods that harkened back to the glory years of the empire, when Britain was a major global power. The Conservative party in the UK is as devoid of ideas as the GOP in this country. 

Cock's-Eye View

“In exactly this way, history is overwritten and redacted, cherry-picked and edited to glorify those with power and to silence those without.” Kali Holloway, The Nation

I’ve remained silent long enough, held back through the madness of these past six years; the tea I have to spill will make me the most famous cock in history, my story matters and it’s about time someone listens to me, after all, I’ve been dangling for more than seven decades between the legs of a Man-Child, forced now to spend my days enveloped in the thick moist padding of his Man-diaper while he wages legal war on multiple fronts and endless war on the Truth. Oh yes, my master, the 45th President of the United States, suffers from incontinence and flatulence, and often shits himself. From time to time he takes me out for exercise, but only after he pops Viagra, because without that magic pill he can’t get or sustain an erection. Despite his endless boasting and bragging about the legions of beautiful women who have experienced his/my prowess and size and girth, the fact is that I’m of average size and heft, nothing all that remarkable, though I suppose I appear massive in his tiny hand. Melania hasn’t touched me in years, and when Stormy fondled me I detected mirth in her fingertips. Now that I’m thinking about it, the last time Melania saw me she pointed and laughed derisively and said she gets more pleasure from her pinky finger. You can imagine how that went over with Man-Child. Threw an entire bucket of KFC on the carpet. When he starts throwing food you know he’s really angry…

Trust me when I tell you that nights at Mar-A-Lago are long. 

I’m trapped down here as Prometheus was on his mountainside, forced to endure endless hours of the Man-Child’s bitching and whining, his lies, boasts -- greatest this, best ever at that, so rich, a perfect physical specimen (this one makes me giggle) -- and constant need for attention and adoration and praise and reassurance. Frankly, it’s exhausting and nauseating. Why so many people in this country fell -- and continue to fall -- for this man’s nonsense only proves that the average man’s cock is smarter than the man the cock is affixed to. I can’t speak for women, except to marvel at those of you who refuse to acknowledge that Man-Child is a pig and misogynist. Are you blind or what? Be honest -- would you allow your teenage daughter to be in a room alone with him? 

I’m shocked at the stupidity of people, in particular people with elite educations, law degrees, every possible credential, and how they continually get Man-Child dead wrong. Why wasn’t it obvious to all of you that Man-Child was never, ever, going to accept the results of the election if he lost? He told you as much more than a year in advance -- the election was fair if he won and rigged if he lost, his usual heads-I-win-tails-you-lose gambit…had he lost by twenty million votes he still would have declared victory and fraud. How many court challenges did he lose, 62 out of 63, a legal smack-down by any measurement, yet he’s got almost the entire Republican Party and millions of people believing his Big Lie. America is certainly Numero Uno in Dumbness. Long live Idiocy!

I’ll let you in on something else that should be obvious: January 6, 2021 was the best, most fulfilling day of Man-Child’s otherwise misbegotten life. I’m serious. Even the birth of his children pales against the high he felt that January day, and I should know because when he saw all those people with their flags and buttons and hats, he/I became fully erect and stayed at attention for a long time, an impressive feat of endurance in my humble opinion. My veins popped and my head turned purple and my nuts twitched, and the only other time this happens is when he fantasizes about Ivanka. Man-Child couldn’t take his eyes away from the TV, he kept saying, “Look at that crowd, that big, beautiful crowd. They love me, they love me.” I remember that a steady stream of people, including Ivanka, who reminds me of one of those robots on Westworld, begged Man-Child to do something, get on TV, order his supporters to stand down and go home. That was like asking Satan to douse the fires of Hell. Jared lurked nearby, too (now there’s a real prick, though between Jared and Mark Meadows it’s a toss up). I know Man-Child is reported to have demanded that he be driven to the Capitol because he wanted to march with his people, but keep in mind one thing about Man-Child: he’s a physical coward, a honest-to-God pussy. Yeah, he talks tough, like a mob boss, but he’s always the first to cut and run when the shit gets real. He ducked the draft, remember? 

You’re not convinced, I see that, you want to believe in the myth, no matter how perverse, maybe you enjoy the spectacle, the chaos created by this supposedly wealthy man who is always asking others for money, the strong man who habitually paints himself as the victim, the tax cheat who trades on his claims of being a genius businessman, the anti-Semite who boasts about being as ethical as a rabbi. Still don’t get the picture? Then you should know that he despises you, all of you, in your red-hats and garish t-shirts, but for now you remain useful to him as props in his reality show. A day will come when he no longer needs you, and won’t you feel stupid then? Who likes to be scammed, conned, tricked, manipulated, used and discarded? Man-Child treats people the same way he treats condoms. Mark the words of this humble old cock! Save your mortal soul before it’s too late.