there's nothing in the water...it's just politics

the buddah has plenty to lament...it has been a weird few months and it simply continues to go more sideways as summer draws to a close...things aren't right and i am inclined to think that, while it may not be exactly too late to do something to extricate ourselves from our species and planetary wide predicament, we would rather dither and bicker than act...until, eventually, it will be too late...such are humans...

may saw ten inches of rain in my back yard which probably isn't record setting or the most rainfall ever recorded...or even extraordinary given rainfall in other parts of the planet...still, it had an impact...

in that it rendered the local fields too wet to put in a crop of dense yellow # 2 field corn and so half the fields hereabouts are supporting "native plants" rather than feed stock for industrial food...this is just a local reflection of the climate issue we all are facing across the world ( albeit some more than others...we will be getting to that directly )

there are wild fires burning in siberia...

and the amazon...

and the have been on the uptick over the past year it seems..which may be a bit more of an indication of a crisis than ten inches of rain in my back yard a few months ago...and politicians love a crisis...they can campaign on it...and garner monetary support...and confuse the voters...or scare them..into giving up their sovereignty as individuals in the name of "the greater good"...which somehow always turns out to be to the benefit of the elite who control the hegemonic culture...the problem with climate change is the hegemonic culture cannot readily admit it actually exists and pretty much wishes it would all go away because it is screwing up "business as usual" which has been very profitable for them...a real dilemma for them because the whole climate change thing is pretty scary and you could leverage the rabble into line if it were possible to recognize its existence...so what's a power hungry politician to do? manufacture crises...

trumpy has immigration, nativism, and his useless border wall to stir the yahoos up...

and he keeps trying to jerk china's chain...which may cost him...

and his base among soybean and pork producers..as well as the rest of us if he isn't careful ( and self-absorbed sociopath he is careful isn't in his vocabulary )...

across the pond his political understudy has exacerbated the existing crisis there...

by engineering a prorougement of parliament...

with the help of a senile or complicit ( you choose ) queen in order to prevent parliament from legislating away boris's ability to do things his way and assume the mantle of...

lord protector of all things english...there may be resistance...one can hope there will be...the thrust of politics in "the west" these days seems to be the disenfranchisement of as much of the population ( especially those who don't agree with "business as usual" ) to as great an extent as possible by using scare tactics and outright coercion to achieve that end...a recreation of john locke's desire to not create " too numerous a democracy" and john jay's echoing of that in the federalist papers ( with a supportive "here here" from madison and hamilton )...ever since rome ( if not before ) elites have succeeded in making their interests the "national interest"...they continue to do so...the time for redefinition has arrived.

swill

"advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." george orwell______________________the latest edition of the new yor times "t" style magazine came with the paper today and it is the "women's fashion" issue and while i am fairly sure of my approach to this you will need to decide if this is a public service, a practical joke, corporate structures seeking profit, propaganda, or a combination of any or all at once...it would seem that the times has carried its self-proclaimed monopoly on "truth" over to the swill bucket and has some definite ideas about how i should be thinking in these troubled times of slobo II...and, while i agree with much of their take on slobo there is a considerable gap between perceived reality and the time's reportage that no glossy magazine can overcome...

the cover announces the advent of "the new androgyny" with a subtext that includes "everyone"...

and some ( mind you, some ) of the "fashions" do indeed lend themselves to opening doubts about the model's sex...a "that's pat" sort of thing...i am disinclined to make judgements about anyone's orientation...as long as everyone involved is of age to say "yes" and says "yes" with no duress then it is none of my business and i will live and let live...and i know there is no privacy anymore...however that should not mean i am open to being propagandized...i am part of "everyone" and i am not wearing this under any circumstances...my days of needing to fit in are long dead and givenchy and gucci can go pound sand...

anxiety or marked irritation? true enough that anxiety can crop up in these slobo ridden times..however i find more of a relentless irritation with the unapologetic arrogance erupting from all across the motherfucking political spectrum...the stench from whoretown is deeply putrescent and it may take more than a lake of fire to cleanse it...the times is all over arrogance like a cheap suit...they are not shy about telling me what i "need to know" ( check out "your weekend briefing: here's what you need to know about the week's top stories" as if i am suddenly incapable of any stripe of independent thought ) and how to go about finding it out ( from them )...a transparent attempt at "news branding" which all the "news media" indulge in because they are, at bottom, corporate structures seeking profit and building a customer base...like any other retailer ( check out the "times store" while you peruse the web site...if you can stomach it )...worldview is their product ( along with t shirts and wine )...apparently anxiety sells clothing...

according to the caption this woman (? it is the "androgyny" issue ) is wearing $11901 worth of designer clothing...but the times does not pander to an elite...

given that $11901 is something like an everyday clothing expenditure i would have to think that the answer to this poser is there is never enough that's why they need "growth" and why they are 1.) depriving as many people as possible of a living wage and, 2) doing so to drive as many people as possible into debt penury ( with help from advertising ) because debt creates "new" money...extraction as a first principle...

i would call cordless lamps flashlights and i have ones that are rechargeable, solar powered, and have an internal crank dynamo to recharge them...don't need any of these either...don't need any of these things...you?

"you will not be beaten"

it has always been a violent country born of a western culture that has an inherent violence ingrained from its roots...there has already been one civil war here...and i was reflecting on trump's clear incitement of an obvious uptick in that inherent violence and i flashed on slobodan milosevic telling kosovar serbs "you will not be beaten"...milosevic use the kosovar serbs as a vehicle to promote serbian nationalism over a yugoslav identity in the central committee of the serbian communist party...once he gained the support of that committee and put serbian nationalism at the front of the agenda the other constituents ( croatia, montenegro, etc ) were forced to wither accept or reject serbian prominence in the country...that was roundly rejected and the state broke up into its constituent parts with al the resulting violence...

which thrust him to prominence and was a marker along the road to the dissolution of yugoslavia...none of which especially ended well...and now we seem to have a president saying "you will not be beaten" to a group of people who have always been here but have had to "go to ground" in the face of a society trying to be more at ease with diversity...privileging white nationalism as the nationalism of the country over a more inclusive and diverse identity...and using that malevolent base to spew out his own twisted disdain for...near as i can tell...everyone but donald trump...looking around i find i am not the first to make this connection...as pleased as i am to have found it on my own i see it was made early on in this non-presidential presidency by a number of people...that this has significant potential to end "not especially well" should be obvious...what i find myself asking myself is who ( and here i mean in the halls of government ans specifically the whores in the senate )...beyond the fore mention malevolent base...is accommodating themselves to this vileness...and why? personal gain leaps to mind and no one in washington is shy about money...none of them will retire like pepe mujica...government" of the people, by the people, and for the people" has always been a shiny lie...if nothing else the last twenty years or so should have illuminated the oligarchical nature of american "democracy"...it should also be manifestly clear that the likelihood of the senate, in its current configuration, convicting an impeached trump is exceptionally slim...and ever increasing violence could lead to another civil war...or it could be the reichstag fire and suspended elections in 2020...or...it might just be "business as usual" in the west while the orient waits to see what happens to the barbarians...slobo the second has arrived as the decline of the "american century" accelerates and the confused fringe looks for answers as the nationalist indoctrination they have been inculcated with continues to shift farther out of sync with the realities of the new direction of geopolitics...one wonders which identity will ultimately be chosen.