June 29, 2018

We're the heroes in this story.

We're the people living in the heart of the beast, who likely hold the future of the human species in our hands.

Every person that stands up. Every blogger, every person that shows up for The March, every secret sympathizer.

And I think this site matters in that story. They shut us down that night. NO OTHER POLITICAL OPINION SITE GOT HACKED BY THE RUSSIANS. Tells you everything, right there.

Scary, scary stuff, but also kinda cool, because guess what -- we're not bored. We're not lost in ennui. And we get the chance to Win This Fight.

Take that fear, take that panic, shove it down or get it out, feel that blood surging in your veins, WE'RE STILL ALIVE, DAMMIT and we are at the Center of the Cyclone!

Of all the humans that have ever lived that have fought this same fight, we get Baby-Cagers! Goddamn is that a clean divide. Holy cow with these villains, some of who are ACTUAL NAZIS.

We get to be the people who win this fight. It's Big. The goddamned Biggest So Far!

Songs shall be written. Stories shall be told. Movies shall be made.

Long Live The Democratic Underground.

June 28, 2018

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death.

And by liberty, I mean a fully-functioning democracy.

And by death, I mean in the course of defending our right to a fully-functioning democracy.

I believe in the words. I believe in the ideas the words describe.

Deep down. I'll never give up.

They'll have to kill us all.

June 23, 2018

Psychopathic souls at the edge.

A writer friend from the neighborhood posted an article about the immigrant children on Facebook -- yes, I still use it, kids and relatives and creative/vegan groups, eh -- and a friend of hers commented with a long screed about how Obama did it so shut up. The standard, right? It's all they got. Evil Obama did it so we get to do it. Works on idiots, makes no sense, who cares.

Ignoring my general common sense, I riposted. I commented with the Snopes link and pointed out that nothing the man had said was true in any sense.

His response was a video from a YouTube channel called 'White House Brief'. CRTV -- Criminal Russian Television, I suppose. These videos all have between eighteen and five thousand views, and it's wall to wall Pizzagate and Muslim Brotherhood and all the good stuff the KGB is cooking up for the Really Stupid Among Us.

I didn't want to get ugly on my writer friend's thread -- this guy is a real estate agent she met at some point, not real friends, just an associate. So I kept it measured and fact-based.

Now, I know the routine. This stuff is always useless. All their energy is spent in shoving their fingers in their ears and going 'LALALALALALA', pffft.

However. In so many words, I called him a traitor to the United States. He responded without rancor, as if I had said nothing wrong. I began to get the feeling that he was keeping it cool too, perhaps he didn't want to go Full Nazi in front of my writer friend. I conversed for two days with this man, always eliciting only calm, measured, irrelevant responses. He objected to nothing I said.

He did say he had '27 years of service', and had held security clearances. He also said I was 'being lead (sic) around by the corporate media'. I remarked that these facts made it all the more sad that he would fall for such obviously calculated misinformation. He dd not object. We ceased the contact with his suggestion that we revisit the issue after 2020, and I thanked him for his civility in the conversation.

But the truth -- the dialogue was seriously disturbing to me. This man's Facebook profile shows real estate stuff and a new girlfriend -- he's a white guy in his late fourties, some old photos of him in uniform, not much else.

I called him a traitor, and he shrugged. His only response is a video from a clearly whacko KGB-created site, full of misinformation and outright lies.

Bland. Empty. Unconcerned. Disengaged. Unreal.

I know I made a mistake. The dialogue injured me, because I was unable to say what I really wanted to say, the social proprieties bound me like iron chains. When you call someone a traitor and a racist you expect a little more reaction than a shrug of the shoulders.

It was frightening. Who raised this mild psychopath? He has a dog and a girlfriend and sells houses, and yet he unapologetically longs for a white militarist America propped up with Russian help. He supports torture of children and probably much, much more -- and the only defense he offers is that 'Obama did it too'.

It was a minor but spiritually expensive window into the madness of Not America. I was glad to leave the conversation because I started to get the feeling that he was really one of Them -- the neo-libertarian anarchist orcs who are pushing us over the edge into chaos and blood in the streets. Mild-mannered. Not angry at all. Quietly, calmly defending torture and murder and blood and barbarism and betrayal of all this is Actually American.

I've been struggling with my feelings about this for days. I know about these things intellectually, statistically, and through humorous videos -- but to converse with a full-on Actual Psychopath -- "Yeah, I want to burn it all down and rule over the rubble, so what?" -- made me think that this is not going to end well.

Mueller may end Trump's presidency. But this guy will still be out there, happily extolling the virtues of Ragnarok and baby-cages.

I won't engage again, not for a long while. My alarms are still going off, and the repression of my anger for social balance was costly to me. He was shockingly evil in his own quiet way. And there are many like him. And they are dreaming of Evil Things.

In the Alt-World, the Constitution calls for White Supremacy and Autocratic Dominance. "So?"

I'll be at the March next Saturday.

June 18, 2018

Hey, Republicans aren't all primitive murderous torture-loving sex-obsessed psychopaths.

Just most of them.

Plus, a lot of those 55% are plain old ignorant zombies that can't think their way out of a paper bag. Vlad tells them something, they believe it. It's not like they're actively evil.

Just passively evil.

Republican voters support the separation policy 55 - 35 percent, the only listed party, gender, education, age or racial group to support it, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe- ack) University National Poll finds.

I'm in favor of deportation of 55% of Republicans.

June 5, 2018

When George Washington was proven to be a British plant, the Founders were helpless because words.

Helpless! No recourse but to submit to the Will of the Invader. All would have had to bow before their skillful misinterpretation of our own documents. Bound and gagged by our own language, prostrated before our enemies through a mere artifice of phrase, aaaaand -- scene.

This is the logic of Guliani and Trump.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Gosh, that sounds like they're talking about Russian Military Intelligence! Spooky! How could they have known?

Yeah, I don't think the Founders meant what Guliani says they meant. I think they would have run the pretender out of town on a rail, language notwithstanding. Those guys were kinda tough.

We're a nation of laws and not of people, but absent law, it's all People.

June 4, 2018

A Day in Pompeii -- an intense animation.

Pretty horrifying.

June 2, 2018

I'm watching groundbreaking socialist liberal propaganda on Netflix.

The Andy Griffith Show. Have you seen it yet? My god.

Yes, not a black person in sight. And certain episodes haven't aged well.

But the wisdom, the delicacy of thought and emotional intelligence in other episodes --

Astounding. Absolutely the best parts of down-to-earth America. Plain and simple love. True heartfulness.

Brilliant writing. This show will be played in space. It should be required watching for all Americans. I know my kids loved it, still talk about it.

Andy Griffith -- wherever you are, sir, I salute you.

And I wish you were real.

And the music! Holy cow!