On Appearances

Merrick Garland gets slammed for being a Caspar Milquetoast kinda guy, and that's certainly how he seems to show up.

I'm thinking the guy is no wimp, and I could certainly be wrong, but I'm fairly sure Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols would back me up - if they weren't dead because of Mr Garland's meticulous i-dotting and t-crossing that is.

Once upon a time, I was street racing on Speer Boulevard in Denver, having a pretty good night, when this beat down old '63 Falcon pulled up along side of me, and wanted to have a go. I nodded - very sure I could shut this turkey down.

The light turned green, and yes, as you may anticipated, that crappy-lookin' Flacon blew my doors off.

That crummy little Ford - with the crumpled left rear quarter panel, and the mismatched doors, and the partial grey primer paint scheme - that was what we called a "sleeper".

Merrick Garland vs Foghorn Leghorn

In A Single Image

One manifestation of America's mental health problem

I'm guessing there's a minimum of $40,000 worth of guns in this picture.

In a kind of bare-bones setting where you lounge on a too-big sectional, watching a too-small TV - indulging in a daily ritual that celebrates comfort over culture - style over substance.

And I'm wondering - why has he arranged all the guns to be pointed at himself?

Symbology is important in that it can reveal a lot about how our brains work at the subconscious level - particularly so when we choose the symbols, and/or make the symbols for ourselves.

What does this guy think he's telling us, and what is he really telling us inadvertently?

It is a wonderment.

On Kanye

It's always about a lot more than is obvious at first blush - and I'm not minimizing - I don't think it's unreasonable to include "Privilege Envy" in the description.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic:

Kanye West, a god in this time, awakened, recently, from a long public slumber to embrace Donald Trump. He hailed Trump, as a “brother,” a fellow bearer of “dragon energy,” and impugned those who objected as suppressors of “unpopular questions,” “thought police” whose tactics were “based on fear.” It was Trump, West argued, not Obama, who gave him hope that a black boy from the South Side of Chicago could be president. “Remember like when I said I was gonna run for president?,” said Kanye in interview with the radio host Charlamagne Tha God. “I had people close to me, friends of mine, making jokes, making memes, talking shit, now it’s like oh, that was proven that that could have happened.”

There is an undeniable logic here. Like Trump, West is a persistent bearer of slights large and small—but mostly small. (Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Barack Obama, and Nike all came in for a harangue.) Like Trump, West is a narcissist, “the greatest artist of all time,” he claimed, helming what would soon be “the biggest apparel company in human history.” And, like Trump, West is shockingly ignorant. Chicago was “the murder capital of the world,” West asserted, when in fact Chicago is not even the murder capital of America. West’s ignorance is not merely deep but also dangerous. For if Chicago truly is “the murder capital of the world,” then perhaps it is in need of the federal occupation threatened by Trump.

It is so hard to honestly discuss the menace without forgetting. It is hard because what happened to America in 2016 has long been happening in America, before there was an America, when the first Carib was bayoneted and the first African delivered up in chains. It is hard to express the depth of the emergency without bowing to the myth of past American unity, when in fact American unity has always been the unity of conquistadors and colonizers—unity premised on Indian killings, land grabs, noble internments, and the gallant General Lee. Here is a country which specializes in defining its own deviancy down so that the criminal, the immoral, and the absurd become the baseline, so that even now, amidst the long tragedy and this lately disaster, the guardians of truth rally to the liar’s flag.

- and -

What Kanye West seeks is what Michael Jackson sought—liberation from the dictates of that “we.” In his visit with West, the rapper T.I. was stunned to find that West, despite his endorsement of Trump, had never heard of the travel ban. “He don’t know the things that we know because he’s removed himself from society to a point where it don’t reach him,” T.I. said. West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.

It would be nice if those who sought to use their talents as entrée into another realm would do so with the same care which they took in their craft. But the Gods are fickle and the history of this expectation is mixed. Stevie Wonder fought apartheid. James Brown endorsed a racist Nixon. There is a Ray Lewis for every Colin Kaepernick, an O.J. Simpson for every Jim Brown, or, more poignantly, just another Jim Brown. And we suffer for this, because we are connected. Michael Jackson did not just destroy his own face, but endorsed the destruction of all those made in similar fashion.


For my own bad self, I'll try to remember that whatever else Kanye thinks himself to be, he is first a foremost a Kardashian.

Russia Russia Russia

It's always Russia.

I went to see The Death Of Stalin, and maybe it's just me, but I can't stop thinking there's an obvious parallel here. There are efforts to scramble our brains - efforts coming from the White House - that seem to sync up pretty well with the main theme of the movie: "Believe nothing except what I'm saying to you right this instant."

Maybe it's not just me. Maybe we need to proceed with enough of a touch of paranoia to keep us mindful of how this shit goes when it really gets going.

Maybe it's about The Russian Daddy State by mere coincidence. And maybe not.

Art is pretty amazing.

A Letter

Stonewall Jackson - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

From 2 direct descendants of Stonewall Jackson.

Slate, Jack Christian and Warren Christian - Monuments Must Go

We are native Richmonders and also the great, great grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.

- snip -

Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.

As is usually the case here in USAmerica Inc, we get hung up on the symbol itself - or we get too use to feeling comfortable with the hagiographic bullshit swirling around those symbols - and we forget about what the damned thing actually stands for.

Participation Trophies.

Jefferson Davis - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

JEB Stuart - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

Robert E Lee - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

It Was A Metaphor After All

So OK, congrats to the Patriots for a pretty amazing comeback win last night.  

Tom Brady is probably the best ever at quarterback.  And maybe it's because he cheats. Or maybe not.

And you can argue that Bill Belichick is the best coach ever. And maybe it's because he cheats. Or maybe not.

And maybe New England is the best franchise ever. And maybe it's because they cheat. Or maybe not.

I say, "Teach the controversy".

Anyway, the top trending hashtag on Twitter this morning is #NotMySuperBowlChamps, and it's all about setting the game as a metaphor for the election and gloating about it.

Breaking: Jill Stein announces demand for a re-match because Russia hacked the football. Send her lots of money. #NotMySuperBowlChamps

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 6, 2017

#NotMySuperBowlChamps https://t.co/69yNWU2WNs

— Yashar (@yashar) February 6, 2017

We're all so clever.

It's the spectacle that's important - especially to The Daddy State.  Bread and Circuses. It gets the blood up and inspires us ever forward.

And yes, I know - the whole bit about drawing the parallels with Rome and the Gladiators is old and tired. But y'know what? If it wasn't so fucking obvious all the fucking time, maybe we could stop doing it. Or maybe not.

I'm just glad I can put it down and walk away again -  for a while.

My Super Bowl Prediction

I've been thinking about this for a while. Something that keeps popping into my mind is the fact that I've watched every Super Bowl. I've been in front of a TV on Super Bowl Sunday every year for 50 years. 

50. Fucking. Years.

And I'll be there again today. Not because I feel a weird need to blindly continue a personal tradition, but because this is being hyped now as something much bigger than just a game. And that in itself seems pretty bizarre - the thought that an event that couldn't possibly get more over-hyped is now being overly over-hyped into America's Mutual Orgasm Of Battle-Porn.

The team representing the blackest city in USAmerica Inc - and the political home of The American Civil Rights Tradition - is up against the team from a city that is known for (and in some ways, proud of) being the most racist city anywhere; the team with a quarterback, a coach and an owner who're publicly good buddies with 45*.

So while there is nothing at all to the bullshit of God Will Decide This By Taking Sides In Mortal Combat, I'm pretty sure that's how it'll be characterized by the side making the claim that their cause is represented by the winner of the game.

A fucking game.

BTW - here's hoping the so-called president Donald (The Pissant) Trump gets his ass stomped by Genuine Home-Grown Hero John Lewis.

Winning At A Very Steep Price

He says near the end of the interview that the best thing the Bushies did was to split and give him the room to get his thing going, so I don't see him doing it, but I'd dig the fuck outa Obama becoming the Troll In Chief, making life miserable for Trump.

Survival

Sometimes, there really is somebody out to gitcha.  Sometimes, it's just dumb luck they don't.  And sometimes, you get lucky because the guys trying to get you are a buncha dumb fuckin' snakes.

Possibly the greatest scene in documentary history. Incredible. #PlanetEarth2 pic.twitter.com/01dDjDJcdX

— ✏️ (@MrLukeJohnston) November 7, 2016