mutability

the current administration has coined a new post-truth word for the "special vocabulary" that will define the next four years by introducing the concept of "alternative facts"..i do not trust the current president or his advisors...which isn't saying much...i didn't trust barry obama...and i don't trust congress..and i wouldn't have trusted hillary or bernie either...or the supreme court for that matter...they do not have my ( or your ) interests at heart...only theirs...only the elite's...there is nothing new in this...old as humanity probably...certainly the twentieth century saw its share of fact distortions...reality is as mutable as history...stalin went to great lengths to banish his real and perceived "enemies" from the present as well as any recounting of the past...if you look at the two black and white photos you'll see nikolai yezhov vanish and a retaining wall and some water take his place...a crude distortion...in these modern ( or, perhaps, post-truth, post-modern ) times one assumes the technology has improved....we all know about digital manipulations of photos of models, why not crowds...who knows if mainstream media hasn't altered photos to fit editorial policy? i don't...i am not that technically informed...it could be...true everyone has a camera in their phones ( i do )...but that means reality shrinks from the macro to the micro...yes you can post photos on social media that contravene macro media..but who's posting them and to what purpose? fact or argument? truth or persuasion? there has been so much unfounded bullshit on facebook i don't much go there anymore...i know from manipulation and i am weary...and i am not alone in this..and is this weary turning away from events something someone wants me to do? it will continue without me...people will choose sides and believe the narrative their "group" provides...it is a function of human behavior and how it defines belonging as much by what it is not to belong as by what it is to belong...reactive...and so passive...used...i have saved the comparative photo(shopped?) of the crowds at the obama and trump inaugurals before it vanishes down the memory hole of alternative facts the trumpists are creating...they will continue to expand the vocabulary of their distortions to meet the needs of their deceit..the problem with these sorts of distortions is that the people who create them begin to believe them...embracing their own lies as fact...distortion leads to a disconnect from objective fact...the lies may thrive for a time..as the disconnect widens so do the consequences...have a look back at the history of the past century...eventually there will be rubble of one sort or another...brick and mortar...human...both.

civic kitsch

i was looking at a photo in the n y times of the rostrum of the house of representatives and i noticed ( for the first time...it is an index of how much attention i actually pay to these people and their processes as i try to render them irrelevant to my existence ) that there are fasces on either side...a roman symbol of civic authority that was subverted by mussolini...and the source of the name fascism...so i was curious...with all the political hysteria rampant these days...about exactly when they appeared...surely not post WWII...and it would seem not...they predate the house remodeling in 1951 and the subsequent changes have not seen them removed...so not a signal from the cold war then...rather simply more of the neo-classical kitsch that defines the capitol and shows its denizens see themselves as the heirs of rome...empire..and the deep seated strain of violence it left behind...there is talk of "draining the swamp"...it is an empty promise...whoretown is and always will be a trysting place when the full moon rises over the swamp...there is no cure...civic authority wants its way...no matter what it costs the polity.