essential work

so the department of homeland security is broke this morning and deservedly so...still..."essential work" will continue...define "essential work"...well the coast guard, tsa, and fema can all take a break however the masked, extra-judicial thugs will continue to operate as "essential"...and why the shutdown? seems some misguided souls in congress want ice to take off the masks, identify themselves during operations, and swear out warrants to make arrests on private property...all of which the pedophile sluts and conspiracy theory whores ( who, incidently, aren't quite ready to believe the epstien files...possibly because some of them are mentioned by name therein ) think it "overburdensome" to force the thugs to do so...clearly these people have abandoned the constitution as has dandy don as he muses about suspending mid-term elections which may result in a congress that causes him and his sycophants some grief...so the strassenkampfers will continue to threaten and intimidate citizens as they pursue ethinic cleansing in the guise of "protecting the homeland"...a front for racist white nationalism with a sub-text of fundamentalist religion...while victims of natural disasters on land and sea ( which are only going to increase in frequency...climate denial will bite the hegemons on the ass ) and those poor souls who need to fly somewhere pay the costs...register and vote your conscience...time to take back the government

what if that's the plan?

"protest politics and web-based outrage may send signals to the ruling elites, but these strategies exert no effective pressure. no matter how many people take to the streets in massive marches or in targeted direct actions, they cannot put thier hands on the real flows of power, because they do not help to produce it. they only consume."____" restrained aggression keeps people suspicious of collective action and working hard to overcome their fellows, while constant, generalized anxiety keeps people servile, unwilling to take risks, and yearning for comfort from whatever quarter, whether the dulling sameness of herd thought or the dumb security of consumer goods. since at least september 11, 2001, people in the united states have been subject to an unprecedented terror campaign, not from al qaeda, but from the united states government. national domestic policy transformed "security" into constant fear, threatening its citizens at every turn:first with alarms of explosions and anthrax, then with prison, austerity-produced structural unemployment, and harassment, and finally with torture, swat tanks, snipers, drones, and total surveillance." roy scranton. learning to die in the anthropocene.___________________________________so, is minneapolis sending signals...no doubt...however what if civil unrest is part of the plan that reaches beyond the "undocumented"...what if they are looking for pretexts...acting as agent provocateurs in order to engender rationalizations for martial law and rule ( even moreso than executive orders ) by decree? democracy ( if it ever actually existed ) seems to be headed for extinction and the process didn't start in 2025 or 2017...it might go back to the ludlow massacre or the railroad strike of 1877 or shay's rebellion and the government response to ( or initiation of ) those events...it's an old playbook with any number of old players...the government says there are "hundreds more" ice agents headed to minnesota which won't do anything but exacerbate tensions and lead to more clashes...then there is the threat of ice going "door to door"...more tension...more confrontation on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis ( although one suspects the more affluent neighborhoods will be exempt )...one thing i do not see is much of any mention of military involvement since los angeles...they may have distanced themselves from a domestic agenda and acquiesced to it and are, perhaps, preoccupied with events in the caribbean and possibly preparing for a quick sortie into greenland...which would put an end to nato...another plank in the maga platform since not supporting it would leave that much more money in the public purse to be extracted by the elite through tax cuts and cost-plus overrun government contracts...elites are averse to civil unrest...it gets in the way of consumption and the orderly upward redistribution of weath that entails...they also purport to be disinclined to creating "big government", much less the "deep state"...of course hypocrisy is a common weapon of power._______________addendum...it is true that doge canned some 300,000 federal employees through terminating probationary workers and by buying out something like half of that number...at the same time ice more than doubled the number of agents in its employ...it would seem that the government growth is resticted to the coercive elements at the expense of mostly the social services.

door to door xenophobia

j d vance says that ice will soon be going "door to door" in its ongoing effort at what seems to be accelerating enforcement of an authoritarian political platform emanating from the whoretown stench with ethnic cleansing as its current main plank...this appears extreme, however these people are extremists to the core and the maga dogma must be propagated no matter what the cost...and what might that be? that is an open-ended question with multiple answers so let's narrow it down to just a few numbers...the census bureau estimates there are 148000000 housing units in the united states...so, at least 148000000 doors....the current adminstration says it has 22000 ice agents so each one has approximately 6727 doors to go to given that they go solo and not in clusters...that would also leave the borders unprotected so let's assume that a third of the agents would remain on the periphery...so for the 14666 remaining agents each now has 10091 doors to go to...then it comes down to how many doors could be covered in a day...certainly we aren't going to knock and ask if there are any undocumented immigrants in there...we are going to want to look around and that could be time consuming ( it could also be a massive fourth amendment issue...if these bozos cared about legality )...this could be a drawn-out affair and the logistical organization and costs could dwarf the costs of the project on the streets...none of this is going to be free in any definition of the word...it also strikes me as a manner of dissembling to run cover for some of the other twisted projects that are in the works...the fat's in the fire and the prospects look dismal...the dialectic grinds on._____________addendum...then we have to consider which doors they may visit...those in gated communities...or those in federally funded housing projects...homes along the gold coast or along tenth avenue in gary? there would be some method to this and it would have specific direction

ripe for dissolution

“the monroe doctrine is a big deal”____ trump: we’re dealing with people who were just got sworn in, and don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer that will be controversial. Reporter: what does that mean? Trump: it means we’re in charge.____ “we need total access. total access to the oil.”____ on gustavo petro and columbia: “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the united states. he’s not going to be doing it for very long.”____ “american dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”____ “we need greenland from a standpoint of national security.”____ ‘i don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but cuba now has no income.”_____ the political cover for the monroe doctrine was that it served to protect the emerging nations in central and south america from re-colonization and/or interference in their internal affairs by european powers...that this “doctrine" was, from its inception, used as a rationalization for the united states to interfere in the internal affairs of those nations is a given...from chile to nicargua to guatemala and panama and so on, this seems to be a blind spot ...it’s a “big deal” because don ( and, no doubt, his trusted handlers...he isn’t thinking this stuff up on his own ) can use it to re-institute the socio-political and international relations of the late 19th century...except, of course, in cuba where a return to the batista era of the 1950s with casinos and hookers in the streets of havana are the foreseen outcome...the late empire is in an expansionist mood...which may give the russians a green light in ukraine ( since resources will be tight as the expansion bogs down ) and big dada xi may well knock off taiwan since that is his “sphere of influence”...and did anyone else notice the comment about “total access to the oil”...we may be closing in on the main nerve there...and that probably won’t please big dada xi since china seems to be venezuela’s biggest customer...the times continue to be interesting.

not the first time

on the twentieth of december 1989 george herbert walker bush sent u s troops into panama to arrest manuel noriega the "superem leader" on suspicion of smuggling drugs into the united states ( altheough there was some concern he was selling his services to intelligence agencies other than those of the united states as well)...manuel holed up in the vatican embassy and, rather than break down the door, the troops used "psychops"...in other words bright light and loud music...which finally either drove manuel out or he was expelled ( ironically on the third of january 1990 ) and taken into custody, brought to the united states, tried, convicted, and jailed...all without much concern for panama's soverignty...

thirty-six years later to the day and, after weeks of military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs from venezuela ( and what some analysts say are extrajudical murders ) the u s military and "law enforcement" have attacked caracas and siezed nicolas maduro and his wife cilia flores for suspected connection to the cartel de los soles an alleged drug cartel and author of the above attacked boats...a cartel which some analysts ( who seem to choose to remain unnamed ) say does not exist...nosy as i am i downloaded the drug enforcement agency's "2025 national drug threat assessment" and have been having a look...the "transnational criminal organizations" section lists nine drug cartels operating worldwide...they are the sinaloa cartel, the jalisco new generation cartel, the northeast cartel, the michoacan family cartel, the new michoacan family cartel,the united cartel, and the gulf cartel all in mexico as well as the mara salvatrucha cartel in los angeles...the olny cartel listed working out of venezuela is the tren de aragua cartel...for an agency charged with overseeing the interdiction of ilicit drugs the oversight of a major cartel such as the cartel de los soles with such a prominent figure as nicolas maduro at its heads seems unpardonably unprofessional...which leaves me wondering whether this is all about drug smuggling or who controls venezuela's oil reserves...the coast guard is running down tankers with venezuelan oil and the russians are seeming to offer some asylum...or at least protection in name...geopolitical control of resources seems to me to be a more likely explanation than the existence of some bogus drug cartel...like noriega maduro will go to jail and look for a regime change in venezuela...nothing new about that in the imperial playbook...nicaragua, guatenmala, chile, the dominican republic...it's been done

10 november

"no; a Canadian winter for my money; or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the free simple of his own ears." thomas de quicey______________tom's weather has arrived...for the moment at least...of course tom wanted foul weather so no one would interrupt his use of ( or worse yet want to share in his ) laudanum...tom was a conservative tory politically and a great admirer of david ricardo an immanuel kant...neither of which provided any restaint on his use of opiates...that people, and particularly children, were fond of him shows a decent temperment...that he "almost" overcame his laudanum habit shows that a decent temperment isn't of necessity an aid in overcoming an addiction...never an easy road

the dialectic grinds on

mamdni wins in new york...spanberger in virginia....sherrill in new jersey...california goes in for redistricting...all this will make the tumpists nervous ( as though they weren't a nervous lot already...so much disturbs them ) and what will that engender? their denunciations of all that they hate will become more shrill...a chattering, high-pitched whine that may finally drive the rats out of whoretown...and they will dig deeper looking to create crises that will allow the suspension of elections in 2026 and 2028, the delaration martial law, and rule by decree...all this because they thought they could ram project 2025 down the polity's throat without resistance...nothing is ever that simple...they are chock full of hubris...rendered ignorant ( or unsensing ) by dogma...the fat's in the fire...so where is the reichstag?

st. thomas's day used to be 21 december, now it's 3 july...i have my doubts about the church's motives

i find that in my seventies, since i am still working ( at a wage-paying "job"...i work maintaining the house as well, among other things...all unpaid however all necessary ) much of my "time" is administered by a clock set by someone else ( and this "administered time" would include laundering work clothes, conmmuting, preparing a lunch, looking up a schedule on line, etc. all the shadow work that goes along with being "on the job" ) and, increasingly, it becomes clear that clock time is an anthropogenic artifice of command and control imposed on a natural system ( hence "leap seconds" to correct it ) as is calendar time ( hence "leap days" )...at some point soon enough i will be dead and, near as i can tell, outside time without extension...until then i hope for a period where i can dispense with at least clocks, although calendars may still be necessary to chart payment of monthly, bi-annual, and annual obligations, and exist in "event time" ( all the while hoping the events are not too unpleasant )...until then i will always look forward to the end of another anthropogenic artifice ( worthy of the casuistry of a jesuit ) daylight savings time....i get the hour the extractive economy stole last march back for a third of the year and i can revel in the dark with de quincey..."surely every body is aware of the divine pleasures that attend a winter fireside: candles at four o' clock, warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging wildly without...so great an epicure am i in this matter that i cannot fully relish a winter night fully if it be much past st. thomas's day and have degenerated in to disgusting vernal appearnces...from the latter weeks of october until christmas eve therefore is the period when happiness is in season."...the "latter weeks of october" are past, however my hour is at hand and the "season" has arrived.

"ruins value"

"Hitler liked to say that the purpose of his building was to transmit his time and its spirit to posterity. Ultimately, all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history was their monumental architecture, he remarked. What then remained of the emperors of the Roman Empire? What would still give evidence of them today, if not their buildings."____albert speer. "inside the third reich"

show trials

when an authoritarian teleology begins to falter and its stated ends seem to be fading out of reach ( which presents something of paradox since the stated goals of any teleology are always somewhere in the future and reaching that future always requires "sacrifices" in the now for those future gains and it is always instructive to ponder who benefits from those "sacrifices" in the "now" the polity are called on to make ) a police force dedicated to controling behavior and thought is necessary...and that police force consists of more than law enforcement elements...politicians and media play leading roles in framing debates and marginalizing or eliminating dissent...these limits on free discussion are not sufficient to validate the dominanat ideology...the ideology itself is inviolate ...it has the true and final ends firmly in hand so there must be some internal resistance impeeding its progress..."wreckers and saboteurs" ( or "domestic terrorists" in maga terminology ) that collude to subvert the final ends...to prove the validity of that contention public statements of guilt substantiating it are necessary and so show trials are engendered...ideologically motivated farces with forgone conclusions condeming various officials on trumped-up charges...the further up the hierarchy, without touching the upper cadres' circle the better to display the depth of the resistance the ideology faces and explaining its seeming inability to deliver its stated ends...has the u.s. seen show trials? well...the simpson trial was 352 days of theater and seemingly inept prosecution...there have been politically charged trials...sacco and vanzetti may or may not have been involved in a payroll heist that resulted in two murders ( there was recanted testimony and a confesion by another alleged perpetrator ) but they were itallian and anarchists so blind justice concluded they must be guilty of something that warranted electrocution...patty hearst got off with basically a wrist slap 22 month sentence for bank robbery which was the result of jimmy carter commuting it and she was later pardoned by bill clinton because she was of the elite...while alger hiss's trial for purjury was politically expedient for richard nixon none of the above fit the definition for a show trial...never the less while we are talking purjury what about james comey?

in a remarkably short indictment he is accused of purjury ( surely not the first time law enforcement has purjured itself ) and, through that purjury, obstruction of justice...so would this be a prelude to a show trial? since it is related to an investigation into russian influence in the 2016 presidential election it is not directly tied to maga teleology ( and, as a side note, i do believe there is a maga teloelogy centering around the return of manufacturing jobs to the united states...if that is possible as well as if those jobs would pay a living [unionized] wage, and if that is the true reason for maga grasping for power are debateable ) it is however indicative of resistance to maga and touches a fairly high ranking official while not incriminating the current political elite still it may not fit the show trial definition...it may be a rehersal for creating one though and as fissures develop ( and they will ) in the maga hierarchy show trials may become politically expedient, if not necessary...stay tuned to events...if the media reports them outside the aegis of the ministry of truth

darkness...perhaps at noon

charlie kirk is dead and there is nothing to celebrate here...if your intent is to re-establish democratic thought and due process this is not the way to go about it...charlie kirk didn't get any more due proces than many people of color are getting from the masked thugs at ice ( and anyone who feels compelled to wear a mask to do thier job is a thug...no doubt about that )...there is a long history of political violence in this country...from mayors and city councilmen to federal judges to presidents murders have happened with some regularity...many in my lifetime...it's what happens when you have an adminstration that sees violence as a political tool no matter which end of the extremist spectrum it originates from ( although some of it may be considered "good" or "warranted" violence...lynchngs were viewed as such at one time...vigilance committes have been around a long time...everything old is new again )...and i do not doubt that somewhere in the maga hierarchy some cynical bastard ( and i can think of a few names ) is thining ala joe goebbels "how can we use this? turn it to propaganda value"...politicians are putrid scum at the best of times and the current class are a bit slimier...this will end...all human institutions are finite...one wonders how many more dead there will be before it does...and, as a side note, jerry seinfeld is a tedious ass and, in the parlance of my youth, about as funny as a crutch...fuck these people.

peter and salvoj

“sovereignty can indeed be defined as nothing other than being able to distance yourself from epidemics of opinion; that is, to refuse to be employed in the service of excitation. We live constantly in collective fields of excitation; this cannot be changed so long as we are social beings….they come from the newspaper and wind up returning to the newspaper. My sovereignty, if it exists, can only appear by letting the integrated impulsion die in me or, should this fail, by my re-transmitting it in a totally metamorphosed, verified, filtered, or re-coded form...I am free only to the extent that I interrupt escalation and that I am able to immunize myself against infections of opinion...I have neither the right nor desire to be either a conductor in a stress-semantic chain or the automaton of an ethical imperative.” Peter Sloterdijk “Neither Death Nor Sun”

...sloterdijk wrote this in the german version in 2001 and so far the english version ( 2011 ) is a book length polemic about an academic kerfluffle pete is having with jurgen habermas which isn't what i am actually looking at....this... “the endless emphasis on the necessity to act, to do something, often betrays the subjective stance of of not doing anything. The more we talk about the impending ecological catastrophe, the less we are ready to do. against such and inter-passive mode, in which we are active all the time to ensure that nothing will really change, the first truly critical step in opposing it is to withdraw into passivity and refuse to participate. This first step clears the ground for a true activity, for an act that will entirely change the co-ordinates of the constellation.” slavoj zizek. “Welcome to the Civilization of the Liar’s Paradox.”

is from the current issue of "philosophy now" and i am left wondering if slavoj has been reading peter's stuff of, possibly, these two are independently ( although somewhat delayed ) coming to the same conclusions...either way virtually all academics are derivative and philosophy explains virtually nothing since it is an escape hatch from "average everydayness" ( see william james )...reading zizek is usually a slog...he is slovenian and so may be writing in his native language with pathetic translations or, perhaps, he is writing in english as a second language and his english skills are not up to snuff with is erudition and sloterdijk ( so far ) is so intent on defending himself form habermas and the german media that his writing seems shrill if nothing else...so here we have the philosophical equivalent of masanobu fukuoka's

"do nothing" agriculture ( except fukuoka's is feasible ) which, like endless talk, would seem to "ensure that nothing will really change"...should i repost conspiracy theory bullshit on social media...why no...in that, at least, sloterdijk is valid...the rest of it seems to border on advice for quietism...you still need totalk about it ( whatever "it" is ) you should make every effort to remain factive in a seemingly fact-free society...which means you'll have to do some digging.

rote response

with a waffling ( we will pause immigration raids on businesses owned by a constituency we do not want to alienate...tariffs? 145%...or 30%...third term? well maybe not...vlad the impaler is a horrible person but a stand up kind of guy...iran? we'll see in a couple of weeks ) septuagenerian of decreasing acuity in charge it is difficult to come up with an explanation for policy based on critical thought so of course we are going to jump into ad hominem discourse with both jackboots...an authoritarian extra-due process assault on a given community of people based on ethnicity that allows the questionng of the status of even those who are citizens won't stand up to an intellectually rigorous ( or constitutional for that matter ) analysis based on the much cited rule of law that has eamnated from the constipated thought proces of the conserative faction in american politics probably since, at least, 1789...so the junior varsity has traveled to the scene of resistance to attack civil servants ( another specialty of the twisted ideology they represent ) and politicans of differing viewpoint...rendered stupid by dogma what else would ( or could ) he say?

closed

as a retirement job ( and as a hedge against the greedy bastards in whoretown whom no one with any rational sense would trust not to take everything they can ) i am working for a "retail giant" that refers to itself as the "omnichannel retailer" in a decaying and slowly dying suburban mall...which just died a little deader on the last day of march when...

the local forever 21 closed its doors for the last time...

it looks rather empty in there as a bastion of "fast fashion" seems to have found the limit to the genre...should i be saddened by the death of a retailer...hardly...there are others...i work at one...and then there is the wealth of on-line shopping to take into consideration...and that is the crux of the issue...i have to consume to survive...and even if i refuse to make purchases from one particular vendor or another...either out of preference or some political or social issue ( dei for instance ) i am still making them somewhere else and so still supporting a corporate entity and as a function of that, capitalism which seems to be a source of many issues...embedded in the system and aggrandizing it though need and, on occasion, desire...framed as much by its needs ( we're here to help you help us ) as much as by any of my own even by working supporting it...work is as much about consumption as it is earning ( what am i "earning" for ? )...work demands food, fuel, transport, clothing, time and effort to sustain...how much of my consumption is geared towards "work"? do i work to sustain myself or do i sustain myself to work? and while we are talking costs let's look at some stemming from "fast fashion"...trendy cheap-assed clothes that are discared readily...where does all that end up?

well...ghana imports a lot of used cothing from the west...and, from what i have been reading, about 40% of it ends up in landfills and along the shoreline as unsaleable...so the environmental costs ( who knows what went on during the production of said clothing? i do not allthough i do hear of workers in california earning well below minimum wage affixing labels to garments...one presumes [however cannot prove ] sweat-shops all alnong the processes ) extend to various parts of the world, developed and un...who could rationally call any of this elements of a sustainable system?

what has this accomplished II

an "unconditional discharge"...and do you suppose this makes a difference in any way...at no time did i expect donny to serve jail time...he is of the elite and they will protect their own...they are, after all, extrotionists to an individual and if one goes down there could be a cascade of criminal comeuppance...there is a long hisory of elites bending morality to suit their purposes...hypocrisy is a common weapon of power...aaron burr was indicted for murder in new jersey for killing hamilton...that was quashed as he was a sitting vice-president...donny is an incoming president and he ostensibly skated because of that...nah...just another self-promoting entitled rich ( allegedly ) guy whose base, for whatever twisted reason, thinks he is an answer to their problems rather than part of the cause...do they have a right to be angry? i'd say yes they do...it is simply anger that is misdirected, or, rather, not fully directed...missing the point somewhat in thinking that any part of the elite could possibly have anything beyond their own interests in mind when grabbing for political power...they will be disillusioned soon enough and then the need for a police force to ensure loyalty to the maga dogma will become a necessity...interesting times ahead.

another post that would have offended the facebook arbiters of the acceptable

today's mail was fairly nondescript in anyone's assessment ( and, particularly, mine )...it did, however, contain one piece of junk mail that held some interest on a number of levels...

first of all it is a brazen invitation to usurp the letter of the law of this godforsaken state ruled from downstate by a legislature with a supermajority of trumpist, bible thumping, covertly racisit, and homophobic atavistic relics from the ninteenth century ( at the very latest ) who would never undermine the whiskey lobby in the state capital by legalizing marijuana sale...and, even more to the point, indivdual recreational use...sloppy drunk was good enough for garandpa and by god it's good enough for them as well...right and true recreation for all decent citizens...marijuana is simply a tool of subversive elements used to corrupt youth and, much like socrates, needs to be suppressed...secondly, any attempt on my part to post any of this on my facebook page would result in a stern warning from what are doubtlessly robotic sensors about its unacceptability on the grounds that i would be promoting something illegal ( in this behavioral sump of a state anyway...clearly a different philosophical and legal out look across the state line )...so i came to this bastion of free speaach just to say "fuck these people"...which group ( or groups ) of "people" i have in mind is up to you to divine.

taxes, whore politicians, and contingency

my not going to the court house in the county seat ( "what will happen if this does not happen"...begins to sound like a descartes square ) today would have been contingent on several events occurring which did not...first i would not have gone if i could have paid my property tax on line...unfortunately when i filled out the "payment" page with all the rquisite details such as routing number, account number, address, email, phone number and clicked on continue to go to the confirmation page nothing happened...same with a debit/credit card...technological failure...second...i could have mailed it ( i have eighteen days left to pay in ) if i trusted the post office...however since just yesterday i received mail addressed to someone in a different city i had no faith in their abilities...third...there was a list of banks that would accept my payment on the bill...i did not want to hassle with finding directions to branches of unfamiliar banks and trust issues cropped up here yet again...so i got in my vehicle and drove to the county seat...the treasurer's office is in "building A" in the complex which is fine except there were large signs on the windows stating "entrance sr-1 is closed ( this being the door to "building A" ) the public should use entrance sr-2 " ( why the "sr" designation eludes me ) which was a nuisance but what to do...unfortunately "entrance sr-2" is the entrance to the building with the courtrooms so i had to empty my pockets in a plastic tray and walk through a metal detector which my metal belt buckle and the rivets in my jeans set off so i had to be frisked and scanned again with a hand-held scanner ( " boy you sure got a lot of metal buttons in here"...no they're rivets but that is beside the point )...after that adventure i had to walk down the hallway connecting the buildings...which was festooned with signs saying "detour for entance sr-1" and walk up the stairs ( the deputy at the door said i should "take the elevator" so i defied authority ) to the treasurer's office which was surprisingly empty so that transaction was quick if not painless...coincidentally enough early voting was set up just outside the treasurer's...

so i voted against that orange haired bozo...which won't actually matter in this yahoo state however i voted my opinion of that clown officially...whore politicans ( from the county level grifters on up ) are all whores...some are simply less vile than others

antness

so i am one of doubtlessly a significant number of people to receive this...

email informing me that there are changes coming to the way i log into my social security account and i had best get on with conforming my account with said changes or i won't have access and then there will be extensive paperwork just to prove i am me so we can fix this...they seem unable to leave things be...why did a user name and password on one page need to be shifted to another? one possibility is that one subset of bloated bureaucrats had to find a way to justify their existence and making changes to "streamline the process" into a more "efficient interface" was just the ticket...or...they could simply be intensifying what the dutch writer geert mak calls "antness"...the feeling of being small in the face of institutional archetecture...both physical and in the processes involved in maintaining your identity "inside"...change keeps people off balance and provides them with something to occupy their attention and thoughts...an effort to prevent them from thinking about why we should need to pander to a bureaucracy and their top down imperatives to change the way things are done for instance...either way, my thoughts are this is not likely to improve until the entire edifice collapses from its own weight

political discourse 101 summer session 2024

i saw any number of these flying from pick-up trucks on the fourth of july...not surprising since the next county over in this trupy state is a crypto-fascist enclave of white rural rage...amazon sells them at a reasonable price so even the land poor can pick one up to vent their spleen at everyone in eyeshot...and, given the condition of some pick-ups, earshot...

given that capitalism is consequentialist, amazon sells these as well...it's what old jeff has not how he got it that matters...a system lockean to the bone that focuses on property not ethics...i cannot truthfully say i have seen one of these in the flesh even though there are pockets of anti trump voters dotted around the environs...i also notice that they are three dollars more in price...somewhat unfair pricing as one correspondent to this blog has pointed out...another has pointed out that the pricing may reflect that the socio-economic status of those who might consider flying a "fuck trump" flag would likely be of a higher standing and so could be afforded...both sensible positions...they do, however, leave out the sacred economic principle of supply and demand...the greater the demand the higher the cost because the "good" is in scarcer supply...there may be more "fuck trump" minded people about than white rural rage is taking into consideration...or, conversely, old jeff is trying to discourage purchase by jacking up the price and giving us a glimpse of his political position in 2024...either way, political discourse has sunk to a rather low level in my experience...politics is always emotional and fear based to whip up the mob ( politicians love a rally because of group-think [ think "two minutes hate" ] and the attendant lack of thought that they entail...in the documentary "confessions of a hitler youth" the subject discusses being at a party rally where hitler spoke...at one point the crowed rose to its feet screaming "heil hitler" in which the protagonist joined and then said, after the noise had died down, that he truned to his neighbor and asked "what did he say?" politicans on both sides of the aisle are pure slime...past, present, and future ) so it's no surprise people aren't really thinking...takes too much work...and the incessant drone of political falsehoods alienate anyone who might...fuck these people.

2025

2025 i have listed at least three distinct groups that likely see donny trump as a vehicle to furthering their agendas...these would be people of wealth...religious fundamentalist/theocrats...and white nationalists ( aka racists )… wealth wealth does not want to be taxed...wealth wants more since wealth is never satisfied...wealth wants it all and as a result debt will become more central to the national political agenda than it already is...in an effort to reduce as much of the population to a state of debt penury, unable to do more than survive and service the interest on the debt while never paying down the principle i can see a sharp reduction, if not the outright elimination, of social security benefits ( which are NOT an entitlement...i have paid for them all my working life and continue i pay into the fund while collecting benefits...politicians, of course, see a different reality ) rendering the aged submerged in debt to survive... credit card interest rates are already usurious yet one could see there being no legal limit set on where they may raise to...economic life may become one national payday loan store to a greater extent than it already is… fundamentalist/theocracy oklahoma seem to be leading the way here as the bible is introduced into public schools blurring a constitutional separation of church and state which is the agenda of any number of sects as a start towards some sort of compulsory church membership or, possibly if there is some residual tolerance ( although to be tolerant is to be lukewarm ) a non-attendance tax melded into say the income tax like the wonder of obamacare leading to something akin to Edinburgh in the 1750’s...”the Sabbath was a day in which every moment was under surveillance. Work, the smallest recreation, ‘vaguing’ in the High Street or on the Castle esplanade, all invited punishment from Kirk-session or a fine from the magistrates. ‘Seizers” patrolled the streets during sermon-time to ensure attendance...or patrolled the streets in the evening, pursuing suspicious passers-by down the steep, dark wynds...visitors from England were crushed by the gloom of the Edinburgh Sunday.” (Crowded With Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment. James Buchan p. 60)...something to look forward to and, no doubt, something dreamed of by theocratic wannabes….in my estimation freedom of religion would include freedom from religion...or, at least, organized religion...i do not need some cleric to tell me i am part of cycles larger than myself...all i need to do is look at the sky at night...i can achieve that without allowing someone to remove my existence from the here and now to some imagined eternity...i will live my life in the present, thank you without the benefit of clergy or slimy televangelist impostures. racists Native-n. A person born in a place; a person connected to a place by birth whether subsequently a resident there or not. b. A local resident of a place. c. One of the original or usual inhabitants of a country as distinguished from strangers or foreigners. Adj. Belonging to or connected with one by the fact of one’s having been born there; that was the place or scene of one’s birth; belonging to by right or reason of the place or country of one’s birth or of that nation to which one belongs. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary i am thinking there will be a redefinition of what it is to “belong” and that it will follow rather a strict nativist adherence to the “by birth” portion of this definition with, however, some added limitations of what it is to be “born” here...not everyone born here is gong to be “native” and donny’s avowal to deport 15 to 20 million people will come with some updated version of the alien and sedition act of 1798 ( we will get to the sedition part soon )...that act stated, “...it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof to depart out of the territory of the United States...and if any alien so removed or sent out of the United States by the President shall voluntarily return thereto, unless by permission of the President of the United States, such alien on conviction thereof shall be imprisoned so long as, in the opinion of the President, the public safety may require.”...someone needs to define “reasonable grounds”...that is considerable judicial power vested in the executive... the argument was and would be now that it is wholly unconstitutional...except the present court would likely turn a blind eye to the constitution much less say habeas corpus… considerable power donny would covet and, likely, acquire...and to borrow one from vonnegut, once the barbed wire at those detention camps along the border goes up when do you suppose it will come down? one can see a subset of the polity that would use them for a wider ethnic cleansing which would also refer back to the above definition of native and what interpretation it might be given...those camps may have an additional use as well, which we will get to in the sedition section below...detention camps have as foul a history a ghettos...there is no justice in them...my thoughts are the republican party, as it is now constituted, has no interest in justice, only power and expanded wealth…and once the maga promise fades ( and it surely will as it becomes kleptocracy ) a police force will become necessary to enforce belief...since there can be nothing at fault about the philosophy of the wonderful new order there must be some of those “secret machinations” going on...internal enemies...good thing that barbed wire is still there sedition i do not believe there is any media source for unfiltered information...from fox news to the new york times editors and news producers keep close watch on information that might offend advertisers...this still does not keep criticism of public officials out of the news, even though that criticism is thoroughly partisan in nature, depending on the media source, and may not reflect reality in any real sense...still i can see that there would, of necessity, need to be a means to make the “news” more supportive of government policy and less able to critically analyze what is going on...confuse the polity with distortions about the raising and lowering of the chocolate ration and leave policy and policy decisions in the dark...section 2 of An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States...a section of the alien and sedition act mandated, “ that if any persons shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published..any false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them into contempt or disrepute...then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.”...an individual was brought to trial for saying he wished a cannonball would strike the president’s posterior...free speech died dead in 1798 and it seems ripe to do so again in 2025...”false”...i could accept that as libelous if proved...scandalous? what if true? and “malicious” seems to be altogether too subjective to be brought as evidence...in 1973 i may have said “fuck nixon”...i would probably not have flown a flag that said so yet I have seen “fuck biden” flags more than once...malicious seems to be the lexicon of political discourse in the maga era...wondering where the “fuck trump” flags are...so...wealth, religion, and racism coming together to attempt to impose viewpoints and rationalize actions through a false pose of populism, and willing to do so with legislation backed up by a biased supreme court...which will do its best to aid a full bore assault on the twenty-second amendment and institute “president for life”...all possible, not yet reality...at least not for a few months...and the maddening thing is i have no particular interest in seeing either of these self proclaimed leaders be elected...there is no positive choice here and i cannot find the lesser of two evils...either way this will not end well.