Mandate of Heaven, Evil Edition

Some prominent dems have signaled willingness to work with the repugnant.  Should they?  Or should they just stonewall and annoy, as much as is possible from minority positions?  I don’t know.  Yes, everything the nazis have said that they desire is literally evil, the kind of stuff that should be opposed by all decent people with everything they have.  On the other hand, this is what the US wanted.  The nazis have a mandate.

Literally speaking, it isn’t what the people actually wanted, right?  All the polls say those positions would fail if given simple majority polls of all people in the US.  But that isn’t how things work.  You have to vote.  This is the thing about red state people saying “my vote doesn’t count”:  Yes, it doesn’t decide the election, but it helps set the tone of the national conversation.  By not caring enough to show up, you said, “nazis, fuck it, take it all.”  Now they have, and they will get to goose step all over our asses, for as long as they can stave off self-destruction.

And it will have to be self-destruction, because without earth-shattering numbers of people voting blue next time, it will be impossible to break through the wall of voter obstruction they are going to erect the second they take office.  We know americans are too bitchy provincial and lazy to make that shit happen, so we are officially at T minus X days til more than a decade of fascist rule.

So what do you do, as a non-genocidal body filling the loser seat on Capitol Hill?  Oppose and obstruct as much as you can, or play some kind of ball?  If one of the ball-players manages to wheedle the fascists into being 2% less deadly to innocent people, that’s worth doing.  It will be degrading, humiliating, frustrating, and tragic to behold, over and over and over again.  So much failure ahead of them.  But still, some lives might be saved?

Any dems with that in mind are going to have to pick their battles.  Obstruct on some days, play ball on others.  It’s just how it is now.  At many times over the last few decades, it’s the way it has been – only now it’s a lot worse, and going to stay that way.  Meanwhile, smarmy anti-voting anarcho-fools will point to AOC signing off on some reprehensible bill as proof they’re all out to get you, even when it was the best thing she could do to eke out a better chance of survival for her constituency.

America didn’t want fascism, but didn’t know enough or care enough to stop it, and they will not have a choice next time around.  So for those of us who are vulnerable, it’s all about picking our battles.  For some, that will mean never coming out of the closet, leaving the country, shining stormtrooper boots on monday and trading illegal art on tuesday.  For some, it will mean joining La Résistance.  For many, it’s going to be some combination of the two.

At some point you’re going to be forced by circumstance to play nice with your mortal enemy.  (Black people have to do this every time they get stopped by a cop.)  Don’t let it defeat you, in your heart.  Keep keeping on, my friends.  Eventually, we’ll get through it.  And if we don’t live long enough to see the other side, we can still live well, in whatever ways we can find.  Power on.

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Sorry, I never explained the title.  It’s kind of obscure to most of us in the USA.  There is a concept from part of Chinese history that overlaps with mythology, that you can win the blessing of rulership from Heaven itself, if you get a cool magic artifact or whatever.  I half-remembered that when I thought about our incipient theocracy.  The dominionists threw a little lasso around the foot of a golden toad, and now they can ride behind him as he leaps across the night sky, raining despair and violence like sweat as he goes.  Blessed be.

Life List: Bald Eagle

When I first moved to a homeless shelter in Seattle as a child, I was given a book about wildlife.  Our Magnificent Wildlife, by Reader’s Digest books.  The cover was dark brown, with the lovely face of a bald eagle in profile.  The articles inside gave me some interesting bits of information, might have informed my worldview in some respects.  I do think they overemphasized the threat to animals posed by poaching – the number one enemy has always been greed, from colonialism to capitalism – thus giving lil me an outsized hatred of poachers.  In my mind they were white dudes in khaki pith helmets with elephant rifles.  Shit do be more complicated than that.  Still, that book was the first place I ever saw an illustration of a slow loris.  Love those guys.

Getting away from the topic.  Other than that book cover and images in media, I never saw a bald eagle until a certain zoo visit around age ten – and then only through the narrow slats of a fence.  My first wild sightings were much later, which makes sense – the population still had a lot of recovery to do, after depletion from the pesticide DDT thinning their shells.  Something I also read about in that book.

Now I know.  That eagle cry you always hear in Hollywood output is actually the sound of a red-tailed hawk*.  Bald eagles sound like the seagulls who get bullied by other seagulls for being too effeminate and silly.  Bad seagulls, leave those apex predators alone.  Incidentally, bullying is the easiest way to spot a bald eagle in the open.  Unless you’re in an area with a weak presence of corvids, you will hear the cawing of crows and see them fly aggressively, before you notice they’re doing so to harass a bald eagle.  The only times I’ve seen a baldy that wasn’t being tormented by crows was when the eagles had a flock of their own, or they were at some lonely altitude, far above the earth.

Bald eagles are known to join claws and plummet out of the sky, as a daredevil courtship maneuver, I think?  My dad said he saw some doing this over I-5, and they almost got hit by a car when they neared the asphalt.  It was visiting my dad, in a brief window of time when he lived on an Indian reservation in Snohomish County, that I got my best view ever of a bald eagle, perched briefly in a tree that had been stripped of all its low branches.  I also saw one even closer, more briefly, as it flew above his back porch there.  Majesty, yo.

In Alaska they are numerous around landfills and fisheries, seen as pests.  It’s easy to find video of this on youtube.  Big flocks, kinda cool.

Bald eagles are the symbol of Amurrica.  Love it or leave it, pal!  Hey, where are you going with my DDT, I need that…  Gotdam renevuers.  What was I saying?  Bald eagles are not very rare anymore, and that’s nice.  Look upon them and feel some type of way about where you are.  And wonder how long it will be before the tumorous-organ-in-chief mandates all factory farms switch to eggshell-destroying pesticides again.

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*I never recall hearing red-tailed hawks make that sound, as many times as I’ve seen them, until this year, when we went to a mountain on the Olympic Peninsula for part of our honeymoon.  At high altitude, they love to belt it out.  Only other soaring birds up there were ravens, that I saw.  Ravens surely harass raptors like crows do, but I didn’t happen to see it.  Probably because they don’t have as large of flocks.

Unimaginable Nationalism

Any kind of nationalism is kinda fucked up and weird to me.  Born and raised on stolen land, soaked in blood and slavery, the whole nine yards.  I don’t belong here but I don’t belong anywhere else either.  Citizen of the world?  Except you can’t be.  Every inch of every place that hasn’t had the natives fully eliminated is staked out, by people who would die for the dirt, kill for the dirt.  Give me this dirtpile or give me death.  But better to give you death, other people who I have decided should not be here.  Nationalism, like colonialism, is the seed of genocide.  Some flavors of it are so mild and banal that you could miss it, but it’s always there, waiting to blossom.

It’s especially wild to me that some people want to kill or die for land in the Middle East.  There are much nicer or more interesting deserts and plains and beaches, and most of them don’t have nearly as many genocidal terrorists or fascists, don’t have as many centuries of decapitations and flayings and immolation and destruction.  If any place in the world is hell, it’s the holy land.  If I was Jewish, I’d be glad to be nowhere near it.

Might feel some type of way about it, since the history of the shituation is very different from that of my ancestral island.  What would it be like, to have lost your homeland for over a thousand years, to never be allowed to feel at home anywhere in that entire time?  To at last be given a promise of a return there, of a homeland – a promise literally predicated on nationalism and colonialism both – and to see that come to exactly what anybody with an ounce of wisdom could have seen a hundred years away?  Poison gift.  I’d keep Brooklyn, thanks.

Seriously.  People who feel magical about that piece of dirt.  What even?  I can’t imagine a worse place in the world.  Here I can walk down main street and feel the ghosts of natives choked in disease, driven from their homes, murdered in the wilds.  Not great.  There, I’d be walking the same streets where so many people were slaughtered in so many ways it’s fucking near unimaginable.  I’m willing to bet there is not a person in the entire region who is without genocide in their hearts.  How could you live through that history and not want to see everyone on the other side of the conflict disappeared?  With cruel violence?  At least on some level.  I know there are peace activists in Israel and bless their hearts.  But how often are they tempted to just give up, and join in finishing the job on their opposites?

The overwhelming hate of it all.  For dirt.  If I was born there, I’d have left and never looked back.  The USA is bad enough, but at least I’m not living on a land mine, living in torture alley between people who want nothing more than to see each other reduced to shreds, to blood and then dust.  Ain’t no god and ain’t no land and ain’t no ideal worth living in hatred.

This is the only thing we have, when fascists rule the day.  The freedom to have moments of peace in our hearts.  Because above all they love hate, and we have the ability to love life.  They can’t be happy unless horrible shit is happening to someone, somewhere.  We are capable of living for good things, and they aren’t.  We win even when we lose, given that.  What if we didn’t have the option tho?  What if we were born into an endless war, gestated in amniotic fluid poisoned with cruelty, with lust for annihilation?

I advocate a no-state solution.  Everybody lives as refugees in other countries for another thousand years, and moves back when they’ve learned to play niceys.  I used to be more flip about the idea all the holy cities should get nuked (rome, jerusalem, mecca – ideally with everybody moving out first), and I’m not that grody nowadays.  But should anybody be living there?  No.  What’s the half-life on genocide?  How long before that land is no longer glowing with hatred?

My guess is that for the remainder of humanity’s time on this world, there will be nothing in Israel or Palestine worth preserving, except for people – who would be much better preserved by leaving that hellhole behind.  The touristy beaches, the shopping malls, the ultramodern gleaming skyscrapers, the perfectly irrigated fields – yeah, even the nice parts.  They are not nice, because of what they cost.  Leave them.

With my nazi-ass country in your corner, Israel, things are about to get even worse.  So much worse than you’ve ever imagined.  To those of you who love genocide, you may find that getting what you wished for is the worst possible outcome for your people, for humanity.  And your day in the sun won’t last.  Your whole country will be destroyed.  And then rebuilt again, I’m sure, with or without you, and whoever lives there?  Probably gonna be genocidal zealots as well, of some flavor.  It’s in the dirt.

Fuck dirt.

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The Anticipation Kills

What horrors will happen in 4 years, and with their power cemented by all the things they can get away with between now and then, what horrors will happen after that, and for how long?  Don’t answer that question.  We all have some pretty good ideas, I don’t need ’em spelled out.  But my mind can’t help but ask, like the way we think “why?” when we feel pain.  Doesn’t have to make sense.

I just hate it.  It’ll be more bearable to me if they at least lose their vile messiah.  Leave us in nazi hands, apparently we asked for it, but just lose the hideous smug face and insufferable voice at the top.  Fuckin ben shapiro’s uncle tom ass lollipop guild voice would be more bearable.  Entropy i pray, please do your inexorable magic, disintegrate the life, steal it away, reduce this horrific waste of flesh to atoms, and then to nothing.

If you’re one of the few tender souls who doesn’t think we should wish death upon the worst of us, take heart that this is as useful as thoughts and prayers, and can do no harm.  Shit, you know he’d be proud and pleased to be despised by people like me, so if anything I’m doing him a favor.  Even knowing my ardent desire for his extinction might cause his desiccated member to twitch, I can’t help it.  I need it so much.

I have wondered in life sometimes who I hate the most.  Con men tended to be number one, followed shortly by nazis, transphobes and misogynists somewhere down the way as well.  These were always categories, not individuals, but how apt that all are rolled into this creature, the number one category embodied there with primacy.  Just cease to be, bitch.  It could happen any day, or not for twenty years.  The luck we’ve had, you know which is looking more likely.  But fuuuuuck.  Let it be.

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Silver linings,ugh, lemme see…  Just the usual.  I think for most of us our lives may be negatively impacted but they will not end, we will survive and love our people and go into the night the same as we would have in a better world.  Stick around, my friends.

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Another one:  I don’t feel homicidally cranky about these fuckers all the time because I don’t think about them all the time.  If I’m thinking about them, I want them dead.  But mercifully my mind allows me to think about other things during the day.  I can lean into that.

In fact, I’ve been queuing posts, and by the time this one comes up, I’ll probably be a lot more chill.

Satire is Dead

Seriously, what is anybody going to joke about now?  It’s over.  I cannot imagine ever laughing at anything related to politics ever again, not that I was laughing much in the year leading up to the end.  The cackle of demonic glee I might get from seeing one of the new clowns get brutally murdered?  Doesn’t count.  Mirthless.  The second the SNL people put on their wigs and get to doing impressions again, it will just be a demonstration of the fact.  Is Colbert cracking wise?  I wouldn’t look it up to find out.  All of the court jesters should just go home and call in sick for the rest of their lives.

We are all the joke now, and the only people laughing are the worst people in the goddamn world.

I gotta stop thinking about motherfucking politics like right the fuck now.  Woof.

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Memes are Dead

I remember before it was general knowledge that literal neo-nazis were the chief purveyors of pepe memes, when we’d pass them around on tumblr like fucken clowns.  Anyway, the Department Of Government Efficiency is absofuckinglutely named after the same meme as elron’s crypto rugpull “dogecoin.”  It is.  It is a massive “fuck you” to all the innocent summer children of internet foolery past, that hey, look, you helped this happen.  This is always what it was about.  Soft-pedaling the death of democracy.

The thought had crossed my mind the first time I saw a news article about it, but like so many things in the era of Fascist Deathclown AmeriKKKa, I didn’t even know whether to believe the article was real, or a joke.  So it took a few days to sink in, days during which I may have posted a meme or two.  Like earlier this week.  I think, no more.  Gonna figure out a different way to be on the internet, in my remaining time here.

No more memes.  The nazis dug up that cheezburger cat and crucified him on the whitehouse lawn.  Matt Furie’s frog ripped his skin off and sunk his carcass in a peat bog.  Somebody once told me the shrek theme guys headlined a superspreader event in the heart of the pandemic.  The doge is a government entity devoted to killing poor people through “austerity” policies.  Any hope for gradual change to a better USA and a better world is triple fucking dead right now, and irony is the weapon that killed it.

Memes served a purpose for those of us who aren’t soulless nazi fucks, and not sure what we’ll replace them with.  Well, I’m probably the only person in the world that is going to hew to this policy, so I’m not sure what I’ll replace them with.  I’ll figure it out.

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Thanksgiving

As the divisions within this country deepen, some middle-of-the-road seem to have given up and said “sigh, guess we’re all nazis now,” and trudge dutifully through their lives.  But will they feel motivated to go to thanksgiving, with gloating cheerful white-haired fascists carving up the bird?  And of those who had been tolerating it thus far, how many of them will find it now fully unbearable to look into the eyes of the heartless fucking pieces of shit in their families who are making this hellworld possible?

I’m just sayin’.  Thanksgiving and subsequently xmas, they might be a little more lonely this year for you nasty fuckers.  Taste it.

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Just Don’t Like his Face

if nature could finish the job on the scrotum elect, i wouldn’t mind.  i’d sure appreciate it.  as incompetent as he is, him staying alive is probably the least worst scenario at this point.  but i’d take competently evil replacements over him, just to not have to see his face or hear his voice ever again.  just to see every single reference to him be in past tense, damn, that would feel like a hit of ecstasy every time i saw it.  i feel the lack of that in my life right now.  c’mon.  just a tiny taste, i’ll never ask for anything else as long as i live.

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Sometimes I’m an Antichrist

This is a post that sat not-quite-finished in my drafts since before October, dusted off because I am done with my “hope” series.  That’s not to say I’m going doom, just that my big push is over.  I will try to include a silver or at least grey lining in all future posts on dire topics.  If you missed any of my hope articles and want to check them out, I had at least one a day between 11/6 and 11/16.  Oh 2024, what a time…

Anyway, the same old shit, back to one post most days:

***

The massive fuckboyism of organized atheism has put me off the brand completely.  You won’t catch me saying “atheist and proud,” because how can I be?  Don’t come up in my comments begging for a list of the dozens of famous atheists that have turned out to be shitbirds.  The movement itself was a contributing factor to the rise of reactionary fascism, and while FtB types should feel good about how we conducted ourselves since Deep Rifts 2.0, most of us were part of the problem for a decade leading up to it.*

But I do hate jeezis an awful lot.  If hate could power telekinesis, I’d have accidentally caused a few million in property destruction over the years.  I see a bus go by with the name of some vile religious fake charity, youth group, church, or whatever?  One devil claw in the side, scraping through the words as it passes by.  Billboards in flames.  Church facades in rubble.

I’ve long thought the origin of American fiction’s love for underdogs has to do with our national narrative of rebellious colonies, but realized today it’s apiece with the way jeezis fans here will imagine themselves oppressed, and that can be traced all the way back to the origin of xtianity** itself.  Why in fuck did the Romans adopt the religion of some Hebrews – people they’d colonized and oppressed?

It’s because of that dramatic story in Exodus, and the reiteration of the same theme in jeezy’s story – wanting to play the brave victim.  It captured imaginations.  More importantly, it somehow gave license to people with all the power in the world to feel like they were oppressed courageous fighters for that one special truth.

Religion in general promotes and protects itself with truth claims no matter where it’s found, but these narratives of oppression have a unique appeal which has given the abrahamic faiths potent recruiting power – especially xtianity.  Jewish and Muslim people aren’t mine to talk about, but xtians are.  They spread jeezix germs nowadays with tears for the magic suffering boy (and voter suppression and using collection plate money to fund the legalized murder of gay people abroad).

Look at what you did, sinners.  You made the magic boy cry.  And when you accept him into your hearts, you can feel the empowerment of that suffering.  His performative victimhood is yours!  For just $9.99 a month (which we will use to prop up conservatives that help us launder more money and eviscerate the social programs on which so many of you depend).

Jesus is my enemy.  Progressive and liberal xtians aren’t necessarily my enemies, but if they see me talking like this and take it that way?  Fine.  Your boy is shit.  He’s an excuse to feel oppressed in a culture where your fellows in faith have control of nearly everything, to feel justified in persecuting anybody who can’t or won’t fall in line with your fables.

If xtianity was truly a good thing, it wouldn’t still hold a concept of hell, wouldn’t separate the saved from the damned.  It would just give to everyone, and take nothing in return.***  It can’t pretend to.  If jesus the superghost exists, and christianity is his will, then he can be held to account for so many crimes, enormous and small.  Not a day goes by that somebody isn’t victimized in his name.  This entire nation is about to get reamed by his holeyness.

He’s in my head because I’m culturally xtian.  Even if I’ve never believed, I absorbed the lessons of misogyny and homophobia and islamophobia from the culture he controls, and they made me do bad things, made me harm myself, made me harm others – or at least annoy them.

Progressives can quote all the parts of the bible where magic boy is not being hot trash, but conservatives have the veto of cultural dominance.  Your version of jeezis has never held sway over the masses.  The one in control demands human sacrifice and is already drinking that tithe of blood and souls from those who died waiting for an abortion.

I’d crucify him again just for that.

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*It’s funny that slymer bitch “nunyabiznis” is Xitting that we should feel bad for making him a fascist.  Fucko, the only thing we should feel bad about is that we were rubbing elbows with you up until the soup went down.  The movement was always ableism and islamophobia with a progressive gloss.  In our own separate ways, we’ve both figured that out, and are now living our truths.  It’s not our fault if your truth makes it hard for you to look in a mirror.

**I get that x can stand for jesus, hence xmas and xianity.  I just think xtianity sounds better, but honestly I’m up on the air for what I should call this dogshit what I’ve been stewing in.  I don’t want to call it by the name it wants for itself.

***It’s a low bar to clear but I’m holier than that, giving help to people regardless of political persuasion, nine to five – for less money than I’d need to pay my mortgage by myself!  I’m one accident away from disaster, as most of us are, but I’m still putting myself out – even to utter fucking bastards – for this pittance.  Back of the line, jesus.  I’m numba one!  Seriously, fuck you!

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Does this post need a silver lining?  Maybe.  Most of us are not women whose lives depend on an abortion in the Midwest or south, not gay people in Uganda, so most of us will be fine – just sad, is all.  Whoever you are or however much risk you personally endure, take care of each other and take care of yourselves, comrades.  I love you!