Cancel Conspiracy Culture

The most interesting question to ask someone in charge of the RNC -- assuming there is someone at least nominally coordinating this hilarious dumpster fire -- regarding cancelled speaker Mary Ann Mendoza is not some arcane specific about whatever high-on-ludes QAnon bullshit she's spinning this week. Nor is it anything about how she thinks the world is under the spell of some shifty J-O-O.

The most interesting way to pose the question would be to get this hypothetical show producer to explain to their own customers why they chose to bump Mary Ann Mendoza, and just watch the wheels spin. This is all a freaky coke circus anyway, might as well send in the clowns.

(Fun fact:  Jerry Falwell Junior was scheduled to speak at the convention. They even told him he could have any time slot on any night. But Ol' Jer said he just wanted to watch. Get it? Just wanted to watch? Hello, is this thing on?)

For some inexplicable reason, I greatly enjoy conspiracy theories, the more convoluted and baroque the better. I find them highly entertaining. But that's a completely different matter than believing them.

One of the more unusual ones I find myself returning to a lot these days is this weird idea that George Soros is quietly funding everything authoritarian douchebags don't like, from the DNC's porn budget to Hillary Clinton's immigrant-child cannibalism pantry to sending every BLM and Antifa protester a fat check for showing up in the streets.

So there's that little Twitter chuckle of where's my check, George? We've all seen that. But let's deconstruct the premise down to its essence:  a shady billionaire is quietly funding a variety of individuals and entities that work in concert against the interests and well-being of the American nation and the majority of its citizens. Sound about right?

Well, that happens all the time, especially on the right. All of the things they think Soros is doing are actually being done by Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friess, Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, and many others that never make the news because that's the way they like it. The fucking Secretary of Education has spent her adult life funding efforts to privatize Michigan's public school system, in order to scale it nationwide.

No, they're not running a cannibal pedophile cult -- probably. But all the rest of it is right there in front of everyone. They don't blast it out from the rooftops, but they don't make much effort to hide it either. Old money tends to be quiet money. Not a lot of flashy Martin Shkreli types there. But they do spend it, and they do like the minions they rent to know where their paychecks come from. Think tanks, foundations, newspapers, magazines, teevee networks. Who bankrolls The Federalist?

It's yet another gaping flaw in the upside-down logic that rules the bizarro world the cultists inhabit. They sit and watch a propaganda network openly funded by an evil billionaire, where the morning show hosts literally lie about the plague being nothing, while those same hosts are socially distanced and working remotely. Uh-huh. That's a hell of a hoax.

What few specifics I have bothered to read about the QAnon mythos are comically ludicrous enough to give you a headache trying to make any sense of it. The idea that JFK Jr., of all people, would fake his own death twenty years ago in order to lie in wait for Donald Trump -- again, of all people -- to become chief executive and team up to purge the "deep state" of the power-mad sex cult that's really been running things all these years. This is an internet prank that got out of hand, thanks to timely assistance from Russian troll farms along the way.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that there is a "deep state" of criminality that includes Bill 'n' Hitlery, Obummer, and the usual gang of Demoncrats Jebus Don't Like, and they've been getting away for years with all these heinous crimes. Let's just postulate that that particular element is empirically true.

Why, then, doesn't Trump simply have his lapdog attorney general, a man whose sole operational principle is doing whatever master commands, investigate those people? Why does Trump need to wait around for John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior, who has been hiding out in Pittsburgh for twenty years, to see the magical sigil in the sky that the seventh seal has been broken and the time is now?

Bill Barr has made it quite clear that he is ready, willing, and able to do whatever is asked of him, real or not, factual or baseless. They could initiate a complete bullshit investigation of Hillary or Obama or Biden or whoever, just to waste time and get media attention. Why haven't they done so? Whatever happened to Lock Her Up? I mean, seriously, if you got something on her, put your money where your fuckin' mouth is and prosecute her already.

Of course they have no answers, because they're not really looking for them. It's really a weird combination of two intrinsically American phenomena -- cults and porn. Obviously, many countries have one or both of those things, but nobody does those things like Americans.

The doomsday cult convinces its followers that the end is coming on such-and-such a date in the near future. When that date inevitably comes and goes without Armageddon, the cult leader simply moves the date back. A few followers realize they've been taken and peel off, and a few more join up to take their place, and the cycle repeats until the bozos finally die of terminal stupidity.

Porn, in its worst instances, can warp the minds of its frequent users. There are countless studies that have shown that excessive porn use leads viewers -- especially young men -- to have extremely problematic views about women in particular and sex in general. To put it more crudely, some of these dupes get into a routine of spanking it to their favorite jam, and after a while start reflexively thinking that every new woman they encounter really wants to jump their bones, but just doesn't want to admit it. Their brains have been rewired to think uncritically that something non-existent is not only possible, not only likely, but definitely true. They don't know the difference between fantasy and reality anymore -- or they simply prefer the former to the latter.

In both instances, the level of certainty is such that they can't merely be talked out of their tree with [pfft] "logic." That's just something that people who are in on it want you to believe, to divert you from the truth.

There's always been a certain percentage of people who are willing dupes for this kind of nonsense, who have lost at the business of life in one way or another, or who are outwardly successful but have no real inner life, and so cling to these idiotic ideas in order to feel part of something, to possess coveted knowledge available only to a select few. It's a self-reinforcing dynamic, and it's always been around, just because the law of averages stipulates that X% of people are fucking morons.

What's changed, of course, is that in the past decade, social media has served as a handy organizer and propagator for this garbage. Reality teevee has dulled people's critical thinking skills even more than porn, and across a much wider volume of viewers. And you have the worst of both worlds in charge -- a visibly stupid reality-teevee huckster who literally rose to prominence by pushing a harebrained conspiracy theory for five years.

There are a lot of things killing off this nation at an alarmingly fast pace, all of them predicated on a critical mass of people being dumb and angry. But within that is this even more disturbing phenomenon of chumps who, rather than observe what's going on right in front of them, prefer to concoct a ridiculous fairy tale that doesn't even make sense on its own bizarre terms.

Perhaps the most ironic part of all that is that Trump probably never "believed" the birther conspiracy he pushed all those years in the first place. Clearly he doesn't have beliefs as such, beyond how awesome he is, and how every woman wants to ride his thirty-five-inch cock, and pay him for the privilege. Again, you can see the "porn pattern" of empty wish fulfillment in the face of reality.

But he knew that just enough people out there did believe the birther stuff, enough that he could plant the seed, grow the crop, and reap the harvest. And he's made things so much worse since, people are tired and broke and angry and somehow bored all at the same time, wanting it to be over but not sure what they want in its place, since there is no "normal" to "return" to. They've gone from binge-watch to hate-watch, and now they want to the show to be over, but they're still uncertain of what to switch over to.

It would not be surprising if the coming decade is shaped in great part by competing conspiracy narratives, with varying political stances and elements of truth twisted to conform to those narratives. The more bizarre ones will be aimed at more religious types, since the personality traits align for wanting to believe in unverifiable fables that affirm one's preconceptions.

But they'll be everywhere across the board. Given the success they've had helping QAnon along, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the Russians decided to keep sandbagging Democratic prospects by discouraging lefties with some random bullshit about Biden or Harris or whoever.

The main goal is not even to get people to believe a specific thing, so much as to get them into a permanent state of never knowing who or what to believe. If your real goal is simply to enable the vast network of transnational money laundering to keep chugging along, all you really need is permanent destabilization. You don't have to actually defeat or conquer anyone.

It's been known to happen. I read about it on the internets somewhere.

She Seems Fun

You think Gavin Newsom ever looks back on when he was hitched to this goofy broad and thinks, Jesus, I dodged a fuckin' bullet?

Back in those days, it was our Sunday morning ritual to pick up a nice thick copy of the SF Chronicle, and spend the entire morning reading through it, sipping coffee, trading sections. I recall one time when they ran a puff piece on Guilfoyle in their society pages (which are always off-putting in principle anyway), and it's been too long for me to put it into specific detail, but I do distinctly recall coming away from the article thinking I really don't like her.

There was something weird and overly calculated and "ambitious" -- not in the gritty Working Girl way, but in the ugly Sunset Boulevard or Showgirls way -- that really gave me a bad vibe about her. Newsom was mayor at the time, of course, and has had higher ambitions from the start, but manages to carry himself without being a leg-humping, social-climbing asshole.

So it's no surprise at all to see how Kim Guilfoyle has turned out -- smug, obnoxious, annoying, coked out of her skull like her douchebag boyfriend. Together they always look like they're about to shoot some weird stepmom-fetish porn, then go to a restaurant and abuse the waitstaff, nurse a couple of drinks while the shit wears off.

As far as the conventions themselves go, I watched a few bits from the Democratic convention, and while I don't plan to hate-watch the Republicon convention, I will read some hate-recaps here and there.

So after the opening night of the GOP festivities, I'll say that the one main difference I would have assumed beforehand is true in spades so far, and will no doubt worsen:  the Democratic convention was designed to enthuse the base, and encourage moderates and independents to come to sanity, while the Republicons will do nothing other than beat the one drum they have and simply badger the shitheads that comprise their base to show up.

These are awful, profoundly indecent people, appealing only to like-minded souls, telling them that it's worth all the death and destruction so far, and to come, if only to keep those people in their rightful places. That's all they've got anymore, and they're happy to use a big mouth and a fat set of jugs to make the pitch to the pot-bellied, fist-shaking codgers who still jerk off to this shit.

Superduperman

You know, if this babbling moron manages to win again, despite being THE STUPIDEST MOTHERFUCKER ON THE PLANET, this nation deserves every bit of what it's going to get, good and hard. I mean, I really don't know what to say anymore. It shouldn't even be close. Who looks at this shit and says, Oh yeah, this is what I want? Fucking super duper missile, like a dopey little kid wanting more ice cream.

I think you can get by in life being an idiot or an asshole, but not both. (Unless, of course, you have enough wealth to insulate you from the consequences.) Obviously, it's better if people are neither, but we all have our moments here and there. I think I've made a pretty solid case here over the years of being a straight-up asshole. Some of it is schtick, to make things more entertaining to read and maybe provoke a few laughs along the way.

But most of it is absolutely real -- I have zero patience for ignorance or stupidity, because I consider those things, in a world where information is mostly free and constantly available, to be a voluntary decision. You have to decide to watch Fox News rather than, I dunno, read a fucking book once in a while, or a newspaper, and learn how to mentally sort empirical facts from mere opinions and conjecture. Or better yet, just get off the fucking field and let the grown-ups handle things. Go back to the shack and play with your truck nuts already.

Still, many people are not terribly bright, nor do they care, and that's no crime. But combine it with the asshole temperament and real power, and you have the problem you see before you -- this elderly, doddering dunce, mincing around in his fat-guy suits and his shoe lifts that make him stand like a fucking centaur, his comically applied Oompa Loompa makeup with the raccoon eyes, spouting ridiculous nonsense like (again) an annoying four-year-old, knowing that no one has the guts to tell him to his face that he's a fucking degenerate, a metastasized tumor of a soul with a bag of rancid pudding where his brain should have been.

A nation that put this ludicrous simpleton in charge of anything beyond a broken pinball machine needs its collective head examined. There is no excuse for any of this -- yes, our political system is broken and run by the corrupt and the timid and the rented and the outright bought, but who the fuck put them there, keeps them there? Who keeps falling for this shit, over and over again, whether it's flag-humping and Jebus-stroking on the ratchet right, or stern "we can never ask for better things" N8er b8er lectures from the pawl center? (Aside from Bernie and AOC and maybe Barbara Lee, there are no real leftists anywhere near the halls of actual power.) Who decided they had better things to do in 2010 and 2014, instead of showing up to shore up what power they did have, which puts them into a real position to ask for those better things?

Hell, what do I know? I'm operating under the assumption that people can look at empirical reality, see what could be improved and what their role is in that, and then act accordingly.

Maybe the real problem is with my assumptions. Maybe not enough people are willing to take the time and effort to sift through things and figure out the mess for themselves. Or maybe they do know, but don't care, or would prefer to bitch and moan about it while watching whatever basic-cable panel of shitheads chokes their chicken for them.

I dunno, and at the end of the year, I won't be asking about it anymore. All I know is that if enough people out there don't pull their ever-lovin' shit together and act like this matters, it's gonna be a hard rain that's gonna fall. And I'll be in my boat, spraining both middle fingers.

Everything Trump Touches Dies

As irritating and demoralizing as it can be to watch an entire political party give its collective soul away to a vile would-be caudillo, there are some entertaining and even strategic points to observe in the ugly process. It seems only fitting that these points were mostly provided by none other than John Fucking Bolton.

The most superficial point has been watching the F Troop of slapdicks at Fixed Noise scramble themselves into a frenzy, trying hastily to excise Comrade Bolton from the photos and narrative of the People's Soviet, lest Comrade Von Clownstick be enraged or even inconvenienced by seeing a hint of Bolton's Cap'n Crunch facial hair. I don't know which frontal-lobe-impaired sliver of codgers in their withered audience is going to buy that truckload of horseshit, but Bolton was Trump's handpicked National Security Advisor, and the very same Fox hand-puppets crowed and snorted at all the libturds crying about Dear Leader's wise choice.

Ever heard of YouTube, motherfuckers? They can try to paint Bolton as a trouble-making commie all they want, but there ain't no memory hole anymore. The only people still buying Fox's tripe need it to stay alive now, to offset the possibility they walk too slowly past a mirror, realize what they support and what they've become, and blow their worthless brains out.

Which, honestly, I am surprised that mainstays like Lou Dobbs and Alan Doucheowitz and the morning-zoo crew haven't already done. You can see it in their eyes now. They know what they are -- and worse yet, they know that we know. Let them live with that, long and hard. This isn't business anymore, assholes. They're openly supporting the open betrayal of their country, hooting and yukking it up.

But that's small potatoes compared to watching #MoscowMitch's dopey gang of treasonous shitheads. They were sure as hell going to railroad this shit through, right up 'murka's poop-chute, and the Dummycrats were just going to have to sit there and take it, like Paul Manafort with his cellmate. McConnell was enjoying the prospect, you could see the evil gleam in his soulless eye-holes. He was getting off on it. He was going to get it over with before the SOTU speech, just the way Dear Leader wanted, and then they could get back to bamboozling the cult loons just long enough to make it to November and renew the prospect of looting the many for the very few.

They even brought in the most cynical team of dipshit "lawyers" imaginable:  the main White House counsel, who literally lied during his arguments on the Senate floor (which is grounds for disbarment); a professional "Christian" who is currently being investigated for (surprise!) embezzling millions of dollars from his megachurch (when he's not playing drums with a couple of discards from the band Kansas); Ken Starr, a sanctimonious, hypocritcal scumbag who would be tarred and feathered in any decent society; the drunk frat girl who took $25k from Trump to not investigate his fraudulent "university" in America's Wang. Like something out of central casting in a fourth-rate Animal House knockoff.

(Side note:  I have honestly lost track of how many times in the last few years some weird instance or assemblage of goofballs has occurred, where I seriously thought, If you wrote this in a treatment or script and pitched it, they'd kick it back for being too on-the-nose.)

So it was all set to go down, in the most humiliating way possible, and here comes Bolton -- and with him, a set of flash polls all showing that even a majority of Republican voters want to hear witnesses and evidence now. Turns out that even people who disagree passionately about the nature of the thing currently occupying the office of chief executive, still agree on the basic principle of if he's innocent, he shouldn't have a problem with presenting testimony and evidence that show how perfect the call was and how he did nothing wrong.

People who are old enough to recall the O.J. Simpson trial from a quarter-century ago remember that moment immediately after the bodies were found, the LA media copters hovering over the white Bronco, futilely trying to escape to Mexico. Certainly innocent people get railroaded and unjustly convicted sometimes, but only guilty people immediately assume that everyone else will assume they're guilty. You follow me?

The innocent person's initial instinct is almost always, Hey, I know I'm innocent. I have the truth on my side, and nothing to hide. I'll just tell them what I know, and go on about my day. Again, sometimes things don't work out that way once investigations and procedures get their wheels set in motion, but that's the initial response.

And of course the guilty person has the opposite response just as reliably. Their first -- and usually only -- instincts are to conceal and/or to escape, if they can. Since Trump cannot escape, he has to conceal, which is what he's done at every possible turn. He's had a million opportunities to straighten this whole thing out; the Democrats have pleaded with him to present all this evidence of how perfect everything was, to refute the sworn testimony provided last month by his subordinates that directly implicated him and Mike Pompeo, among others.

And at every opportunity, he's refused the chance to do so, angrily, insultingly. He thinks his sub-Nelson Muntz taunts of "Shifty Schiff" and the like are going to do anything but make Adam Schiff -- a trained prosecutor who's dealt with organized crime figures and competes in triathlons -- more dogged and determined to stuff that burger-hoisting garbage pail into the nearest jail cell, and strip him of every dollar they can find.

(Incidentally, this is just one of many reasons why intelligence really does matter to some extent. You should at least be sharp enough not to poke the people who can actually harm you.)

So everyone knows he's guilty -- the public, his own supporters, and the Republican members of Congress. The last two groups have made their own calculations about how and why they keep supporting someone whom they know is corrupt, and again, this is something they get to live with for the duration. They've rationalized themselves this far, you can be sure they'll continue to do so.

But it's that third group's calculations that become interesting in the strategic sense. Baked into the cynicism of the McConnell gang is the assumption that the general public will forget because they're easily rolled dupes, their own supporters will get ginned up over whatever bullshit they concoct for them in the fall, and they can all cruise to re-election. But throughout, they know not only that he's guilty of the bare minimum that he's being impeached and tried for, but that there's almost certainly plenty more shit that just hasn't bubbled to the surface yet, and that any or all of it could start coming out all through the rest of the year.

It was the only move they had, really, sticking with him at this point. You're all in or all out, bottom line. "The "heads on a pike" line may or may not have actually occurred, but does anyone seriously doubt that that's really the case? It's what his supporters like about him. It's why dozens of Republican House members, even from safe districts, have abruptly quit, finding suddenly that they no longer possess the intestinal fortitude to continue betraying their country day after miserable fucking day.

So the GOP Senate assholes had no choice. It was a sizable gamble, and it may be starting to backfire on them now, thanks to Bolton (who, again, let's be clear, is not motivated by any illusions of "patriotism" so much as an overweening arrogance and sense of self-regard). Because it turns out that Trump knew Bolton had a manuscript ready to drop -- and didn't even warn McConnell. So now they know that not only is more of his fuckuppery going to trickle out and stain all the carpets in the coming months, but there isn't even any honor among thieves.

What they've always said about Trump and "loyalty" is true, and can be empirically observed over decades of him never shutting the fuck up about anything (other than his money laundering):  The loyalty only goes one way, from you to him. It is never mutual, except as a matter of convenience to him.

So it is immensely entertaining to watch these genuinely despicable people find all this out the hard way. They richly deserve to be tossed out on their asses as soon as electorally possible, and then shunned for the remainder of their lives, and then rendered destitute by lack of further prospects, karma, worsening health, etc.

It won't happen, of course -- this is, after all, the nation that still allows a glowering pustule like Newt Gingrich to not have to live in a needle-filled alley sucking diseased cocks to feed his drug habit, like he deserves -- but there is at least a chance for them to lose at the ballot box, and they're starting to realize that. Nothing ever gets better with this guy, none of the scandals ever turn out to be less than initially thought. Always worse; always more. They're starting to realize that as well. More and more incriminating, stupid stuff is going to come out, and they're all going to be up to their necks in it.

Because they're accomplices, in the end, and even some of their own constituents, the ones not chugging the kool-aid and asking for thirds, are getting that as well.

They decided to have a Jersey Shore cult rally last night, and the Hoarse Whisperer has a very entertaining live-take thread of the festivities. I didn't (and wouldn't) watch the rally, but like Hoarse, I did watch some of them back during the campaign, all the way through, mostly to get a sense of why people were falling for this ridiculous grifter so hard, and what sort of nonsense was resonating with them, that sort of thing. They were just what you think they were -- amazingly dumb, hopelessly repetitive, demoralizing in that you realize that no matter how cynical you've ever been about the stupidity of people, it wasn't nearly enough.

And what Hoarse observes from tonight's rally is what I'm seeing lately in general, this kind of low-octane, lukewarm support. Don't get me wrong, they'll still vote for him, but the passion is fading, the novelty is wearing off, the "vote for change" excuse from before is no longer valid. You know what he's about, so you can't talk about "change" anymore -- you're either with this spiteful idiocy, or you're not.

I saw a lot of links today crowing about how all the hotels in Wildwood sold out in anticipation of the rally, all the crowds, blah blah. So here's the deal about that:  Wildwood has a population of a little over 5,000. That's five thousand. It's a resort town, so they do have more and better accommodations than most towns that size, but it's still barely more than a village in size. And Trump's rally promoters have been infamous in recklessly overselling these events. The convention center has a capacity of 7,000, which means they probably gave out 30-40,000 tickets, maybe more.

It has been their deliberate attendance model to pack the parking lot as well as the venue, which for a small resort town means traffic nightmares for a couple days around the event, and probably the stretching of the town's police resources, and definitely a security bill that Cheapskate McFrightwig will refuse to pay. All for a relative handful of suckers who think they want to be used as stage props for a traveling medicine show, who think they're pwning libturds by driving for hours and waiting for more hours out in the January cold of a Jersey Shore seaside town.

And then they get up there and realize they're really just there to hear the greatest shits, to chant USA and Lock her up! when prompted, like the barely-trained farm animals they really are. To spend an entire day waiting around, hoping above all else to get into an arena with a bunch of strange, sweaty groper types, to listen to a demented old man rant about dishwashers and how he'll fix their health care, while never really explaining even the broad strokes of how.

Clearly these are not the sharpest tools in the shed -- all you have to do is listen to them rattle for thirty seconds in any random YouTube video to see that -- but it may be starting to dawn on them finally. They're not really rubbing anyone's noses in anything, if they still can't afford health care, if they still have to work two jobs to survive, if they still live in crappy, boarded-up towns where the smart kids have left, the others are stuck or dead, and all those boarded-up lots are squatted on by out-of-town owners who don't care if the property ever re-opens or helps the town turn a buck.

And fuckin' Jim Jones up there at the podium in the high-school gym, with all the colorful insult-comic lines they can sing along to by now, like some discount Don Rickles, after the jokes are done and the circus has left town and they're back to their opioids and fast food and boredom, he's not going to do anything about any of that. Because he doesn't really care, not even a little bit. Shit, his dick-waving just got four dozen military personnel hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries, and he laughs it off as headaches. Walk it off, you pussies!

The schtick wears thin after a while; like any drug, the user has to chase more and more of it just to get anything out of it, never quite approaching that original euphoria. I think there is a very real cultural thread from Duck Dynasty to Trump, and as popular as that show was, it was done in five years. I mean, they basically beat everyone over the head on a constant basis with 130 "episodes" (I once caught one to see what all the fuss was about, and seriously felt stupider by the end of that interminable half-hour) and an unholy barrage of promotion and advertising and Wal-Mart swag and all sorts of cheap shit like that, but it wore out its welcome.

The human brain, no matter how dull and desensitized, can take daily barrages of nonsense and cognitive dissonance for only so long. And then it's old. If Trump knew how to give it a rest, or if the media knew how to change up their coverage a bit, it might be different. But they are all one-trick ponies, and maybe the American public is starting to get a bit war-weary. People are exhausted, and the one-liners are long past their sell-by date.

And even the most die-hard cultist has to wonder at some point, if Crooked Hillary is so crooked, and Republicans are in charge right now, then why haven't we actually locked her up? What's the hold-up here? Even the cynic has to wonder to themselves why they continue to sing along, if they know it's bullshit.

I make no predictions; my observations on the messiness of human nature are what they've always been. But the patterns are clear from an operational perspective, and from a perspective of how a rational actor would craft a strategic response to save their job and reputation:  the boss is erratic and impulsive and dumb and cruel, and would incarcerate every loyal minion and nuke the entire Midwest if it would make him a buck or save his worthless hide. Everything that is politically bad for them now is only going to get worse, never better. What do you do?

Either they hang together, or they hang separately. They know that. All it takes is for a few key players to break, though, and the floodgates will open. It is enormously fun to watch these mendacious shits twist in the wind.

Amor Fati

He'll get away with it, you know. All of it. He always has. No one has ever really held him accountable for much of anything. The closest call he ever had with real accountability was back in 1990, when he nearly bankrupted one of his shitbag casinos in AC, and as part of the bailout the creditor banks put him on an "allowance" of $450k -- per month.

And so he never learned anything from his many failures and stupid excesses, because why should he? There's never been any reason to. Just like the Wall Street wizards who lawn-darted the economy a decade ago, looted the wreckage, and still had the balls to insist on their performance bonuses. We don't hold rich and/or powerful people accountable.

Well, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein might beg to disagree with that. There are always exceptions. But they are notable precisely because of their scarcity.

And this impeachment trail farce. Right out in the open, like whaddaya gonna do about it, same as it ever was. Ol' Moscow Mitch, he didn't even bother with the pretense of a reach-around, the thin veneer of fake comity and moderation. In what trial court does the jury foreman declare his intent to work with the defendant and the defendant's counsel throughout the process and to acquit the defendant before the trial even starts? And what jury pre-emptively decides that they don't need to call any witnesses or demand any evidence that might prove the defendant's guilt?

More importantly, what sort of diseased society is okay with all of that? We may just be too far gone at this point, seriously, as a functioning republic or democracy or however you want to term it. This is pure despotism, right here. That's all there is to it. And an incredible percentage of people seem to be okay with it, or inexplicably apathetic to it.

The fix is in, and nobody will or can do anything about it. Not his party, because they're all in at this point, counting on cheating, suppression, and pig-blind stubbornness to carry them over the line. Not the opposition party, too intimidated to fully commit to what they've started, yet seemingly not understanding that if they fail and he stays, they're all targets. They should be setting up an ad hoc committee to investigate and draft more articles of impeachment right now, ready to load soon as this dog-and-phony show is through.

The media certainly won't challenge them, long as there's a buck to be made selling tickets to the circus. The librul media helped him in his ascent, every filthy, corrupt step of the way. He may be dumber than a bag of rocks, but intelligence and cunning are two different things, and the ability to read people and spot the most credulous, dull-witted saps in the room is a by-god bona-fide skill.

If you really think about it, the main ability required to screw people over, lie to them constantly and poison their brains, is just a willingness to do it and stick to it. Never relent, never break character, never admit guilt or defeat. There will always be people who want to believe the lies, and there will always be people who will ingratiate themselves to your cause and assist with it, in order to capitalize on the opportunity.

So it comes now to the people of this fair land to sack up, show up, and hold them all -- there's that pesky word again -- accountable. Like the impeachment, and even the crimes that led to the impeachment, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not enough merely to remove Trump; a Democratic president with the House and Senate as is will be hamstrung and obstructed at every opportunity, with no small amount of assistance from the agitprop fiends at Fixed Noise.

The Republicon party has to be removed from power at every possible point, at every possible level. Period. They are nothing more now than a malevolent, destructive force that wants only to sow discord and wreak havoc. That is not an exaggeration. You want this bullshit to end, they have to end. There is no other way.

Frankly, I think voting is pretty much a waste of time. You're either outnumbered by the bastards, or cheated and no one does anything, or you win, but your guy gets prevented from doing much of anything regardless, and is mostly undone within months after leaving office anyway. It historically changes very little, and as Emma Goldman famously put it a century ago, if it did change anything, they wouldn't let us do it.

Having said all that, you should still vote anyway. Not because of any moral or patriotic duty, or any of that flag-humping, group-chant nonsense. Do it because it's the practical thing to do, because of game theory -- if you don't show up, things will definitely not improve, but if you do show up, not only is there at least a small chance of improvement, but the odds go up in direct proportion to participation.

You have the ability to increase the odds. The proof of that is if you didn't, if there really was nothing to be done regardless, they wouldn't keep investing so much in cheating and suppression. You don't need to cheat at a game that doesn't matter in the first place. Again, let math and logic and reason demonstrate what mere "patriotic duty" apparently does not.

And after all that, after all the fine thoughts and good deeds, he still might win again. There's actually a pretty good chance of it. What then? I wish I knew the answer to that.

Back in my wild youth, I did have my quieter moments when I read philosophy and economics, classics, things like that. I probably had a grip at the time on philosophy about like Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, but being older and hopefully a bit wiser now, it comes back around with more heft. Re-reading the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and such, is a good reminder about understanding what we can and can't control, and adjusting accordingly for ourselves.

So at the very least, don't despair, but prepare. Think about what specific aspects of your life will be adversely affected by the return of this demented old wet-brained pervert. It could be something concrete like your access to decent health care, or something more abstract, like the sinking realization that this country has a very deep sickness in its collective soul right now, and it simply may not recover in your lifetime. Maybe never.

All the people and things that we care about eventually come to an end. Toxins build up, systems break down, parts corrode and fall into disrepair. You can treat it and maybe prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later the bill comes due. The people who yap loudest about how much they supposedly love their country, refer to it as a living thing, as she or her, often seem to be the ones causing the most damage. The old gal is taking on some serious water these days, and the people who have the most power to help seem intent on drowning her.

So each of us really needs to consider the odds, and what our responses are to various scenarios. Maybe you decide you've had it, you don't want to leave but you can't stay anymore to continue watching the controlled demolition, helpless and mute. How do you move on? Maybe it's time to get your passport in order, see what the emigration requirements are to various places. Just in case.

For me, it's still a bit cathartic to vent and complain about the whole lot of it, but it's a very small part of my daily life, and I do and engage in other, more constructive things. I'm sure most of you do as well, and maybe it's healthier for us all to do more of those things and less of this thing.. I think we all need to find ways to insulate ourselves from the penumbra of pro-wrestling madness from these people, as well as to assure ourselves of the ability to just keep going with our jobs, families, money and health issues, all the things that we are all affected by to some degree, and can be made worse if we let ourselves get demoralized by the bastards.

There are some things you simply cannot get around -- the monopolies you pay each month for all your utilities; the needs for food and shelter and love and culture -- but we have choices about what we read and see and where we spend our money. Instead of bitching about the New York Times just drop them like a sack of manure, and don't look back. Instead of complaining about CNN having the teen rapist Alan Doucheowitz or the liar Kellyanne Con-Way defiling our teevee screens one more fucking time, just cut CNN loose. They're fucking useless anyway. Instead of griping about why no one is doing anything about climate change, look at what your contribution to that is, and reduce it by ten percent, then another ten percent.

If enough people do these things, all of which are within their power, things will change. A big part of it is the gatekeeper corporate media, whose vested interest is to get you riled up about shit you can't control, and hey while you're here check out our ads for cheeseburgers or boner pills or a big gas-guzzling truck to take your mind off your tiny dick. I stopped watching all teevee news, except for local weather, and that's one sure way to clear your head. I can't recommend it enough.

I don't necessarily agree 100% with the concept of amor fati -- to love or embrace whatever fate has in store for us, but you get the idea. If the fate of the country is Trump getting re-elected and ramping up his agenda, knowing he can get away with literally anything now, I don't think it's necessary or even wise to simply embrace that, or even passively accept it.

But we should prepare for it, not only because of how it will enable him and his henchmen to continue killing off this country, but because of what it clarifies about the citizenry. Blame the electoral college or the media or Russian Fakebook nonsense or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that there are enough people here who are okay with all of it -- they either actively support it, or are simply too goddamned lazy to get off their asses and do their job as citizens.

The 2016 election posed a conundrum to the engaged observer -- did the result reflect what the country had become, or did it reveal what it has always been? It seems to be a large measure of both, now infused and empowered with technology and authoritarianism and incoherent rage.

We can laugh at those dorks in Richmond yesterday, with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camo-drag and their dick substitutes positioned in often comically dangerous places. Look at the photos of these morons, you wouldn't hire any of them to sweep your front porch. They're useless and they know it. Their biggest enemy is not Antifa, it's hardening arteries and sodium benzoate.

But they won. They marched with masks and .50 cal sniper rifles and even grenade launchers, through the streets of a state capital, defying laws and challenging authorities to do something about it. Their intent is to set up "sanctuary counties" where people can have whatever weapons they want, and the sheriffs won't enforce the laws.

And no one did or will do a goddamned thing about any of it. You think these assholes are up on it now, you wait until their boy skates on impeachment, tells Schiff and Pelosi to go fuck themselves in the SOTU speech, and openly cheats his way to re-election.

The beauty of it is, if everyone just ignores all that and shows up anyway, we can beat them back. Always remember, there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to stop dicking around, herding cats and worrying about what MoDo and Bobo and the rest of the slop-ed losers think about anything. They are trying to demoralize you. Stop letting them.

Projection

Look, if you're the sort of person who shows up for an "event" hosted by a vile blow-up doll roughly posturing as a human being, you're probably okay with her mocking a stutterer.

Let's cut the shit -- this is who they are, to the cellular level, to the very atom of their being. It would be far more surprising if Lara Trump, or her diaper-wearing rapist of a father-in-law, or her scumbag husband and his troll siblings, or any single person in the toxic orbit of Planet Orange had even a second worth of acting like adults fit for the positions they're in, and just said, "You know, I respect VP Biden's long record of service to our country, but here are just a few reasons why I think you'll agree that we have something better in mind."

They don't not only because they can't, because they're incapable of functioning on that previously base level of acceptable behavior, not only because they really have no policies at all besides legalizing theft and plunder for themselves, but because it's the only thing their idiot kayfabe crowd responds to.

They don't give a fuck about health care or foreign policy or any of that. They just want to make sure you know that they shit on everything you believe in, everyone you hold any measure of respect for, every principle your parents and grandparents fought for.

We'll have forgotten this within twelve hours. It won't even be the thousandth most repulsive thing said by these fuckers between now and the election, or even now and the fourth of July. The important thing to remember is that this is not a gaffe or a slip-up or an inadvertent revelation of what they're really thinking. This is what they openly think at all times. They don't try to hide it. The mediots should stop pretending that they do. It's not a mistake.

Taking Debate

No, I didn't watch the debates, and hopefully you didn't either. Even the few spare post-mortems I did skim offered nothing of value, per expectations.

If we accept the basic premise that the media are gaslighting us as much or more as Trump or anyone else, then what exactly would we expect the result to be from packing in candidates -- more than half of whom are wasting everyone's time and have no business being there -- ten at a time, to field framed questions from principals of that very same ongoing system of corporate gaslighting? In other words, what value to the political process in general, or your decision-making process in particular, is provided by having Jake Tapper lob some bullshit provocation at Kamala Harris or Jay Inslee or whoever?

I Want to Believe the Fairy Tale

Longtime readers of this here eternal rant may recall that back in a more innocent time, I put out a few e-books under the "auspices" of the blog name. Two were annual compendia of blog posts from the years 2012 and 2013 (with some fresh commentary included; I would feel bad screwing you out of two bucks for something you had already read), and two were 100% new analyses of people in the news for those years, along the lines of the old Buffalo Beast's annual Assholes of [the past year] series.

(Not to shake anyone out of their hard-earned couch-cushion change, but if you have a few shekels you can part with, the books are still available, and I think you might be pleasantly -- or not -- surprised by how relevant they still are, more than half a decade later.)

So in the Assholes of 2012 collection, which had the catchy title 12 in '12, I ranked the current thing in the Oval Office as the #3 asshole in these here Yewnighted States, due to his toxic blend of birther conspiracies and shameless ignorance. In retrospect, that ranking seems at once to be prescient, while also giving outsized importance to what was then realistically a noisy reality-teevee gadfly looking to fill his bottomless psychic hole, his pathetic need for publicity every fucking hour of every goddamned day.

What I was ignoring, even as it seems apparent in a back-handed way with the second factor stated above, was just how pernicious and effective reality teevee has become on people. Sure, it's been a staple here since the very beginning, how it's made 'murkins stoopid and whatnot, but the fact is that, since I really have never actually watched any of it, I only know of its effects secondhand at best.

Now, another more recent common theme of mine since the bewigged gastropod has oozed its way in and ensconced itself there, is that while it presents a significant problem, the real problem is the prion disease eating the brains of the idiots who voted for it, and still inexplicably believe in it, despite failure after failure after pathetic, toxic failure.

How do you deprogram a cult? We've been trying to figure that out with North Korea, among others for decades. But at least North Korea's cult is obviously held in place with a very real, palpable fear. These slapdick rubes sincerely love Trump without reservation. Until they decide that they love their country more than they hate whatever caricature of "liberals" Fixed Noise is pushing on them today, they'll follow him right over the edge. Don't kid yourself otherwise.

The joke about "when we're all living under freeway overpasses, grilling sparrows on curtain rods, the Trump voter will look over at his neighbor, who has no sparrow, and consider it a victory" cuts closer to the cold truth than any of us would like to admit. Think about it for a second -- whatever choice you've cast for imperial custodian or congressional prelate or what-have-you over the years, did you ever factor as long as it fucks over the other guy into your choice? Yeah, that's not a normal thing. But it's sadly become all too normal and obvious.

---

Here's a little story, completely true, about the effects of reality teevee on otherwise sentient, normal, even nice people:  an older person of my acquaintance for about ten years (let's call her Mary), very sweet, devout church-goer, even more devout reality-teevee fanatic, and currently deep in the thrall of He Who Shall Not Be Named. But Mary is also the kind of person who always asks about everyone's families, remembers the names of your kids, even gets them a little something for their birthdays and Christmas. A sincerely kind person, but one who has been immersed and baptized in the poisoned well of Rupert Murdoch.

So some years ago, back around the time of the e-books (it really was a simpler time, wasn't it), she was rattling on about some Bachelorette-type show, and I was alternating between ignoring her, politely nodding my head, and occasionally providing some gentle ribbing. But at some point, having written so many caustic observations in here over the years about what I perceived (again, mostly secondhand) to be a negative, perfidious cultural epiphenomenon, I wanted to get the point-of-view from someone who watched all -- and I do mean all, she did and does have an encyclopedic knowledge of this crap -- of these shows.

"What's the appeal?," I asked. "You know it's seedy and gross -- these people who could all easily hook up in any meat market on a weekday night, pretending to have to go on a show to look for love, but really just wanting to burnish their social-media cred. You spend weeks watching them winnow through dozens of members of the opposite sex, frequently in hot tubs and other unseemly situations. And in the end, they're not going to get married, and if they do, they'll be divorced within a year, because this is not how anyone meets people. It's weird that someone like yourself, who takes pride in having been married nearly fifty years, would see value in that sort of thing."

Mary replied simply, I want to believe the fairy tale.

I think that cuts to the heart of both the appeal and the treachery of reality teevee. Whatever else you want to say about how and why it su-su-su-suuuucks, the fact is that the people who assemble this schlock are very good at distilling it down to elemental narratives that we all had drummed into us by junior-high school, and carry with us in our daily adult lives, whether we know and use them or not. They're there:  identifying cliques, choosing sides, likes, loves, hates, fears, what you can share with your "friends" and what you can't because they can use it against you with the rest of the clique, etc.

These are extremely effective tropes, and they've obviously been very successful at packaging them into interchangeable "entertainment" products to piece out in between endless scads of advertisements for fast food and insurance and feminine hygiene products and big ol' trucks.

But what we're seeing now with Trump is someone who really had been on the verge of being rightly consigned to history's dustbin as a ridiculous punchline, a perennial blowhard who tried to go all Ross Perot in the 2000 campaign and got reminded that the court had to put him on an allowance because, you know, he bankrupted a fucking casino, because he's about as good a businessman as he is a husband or father or human being. Until that fucking turd Mark Burnett pulled him out of that dust heap, brushed him off, cleaned up his ricockulous microweave hairpiece and spent the next decade presenting him to 'murka as a gin-you-whine boner-fried bidnessman.

And they bought it. And now they're buying it with him as an "outsider" politician, even though he's neither of those things. He's an "outsider" to the extent that actual billionaires want nothing to do with him, don't invite him to their elitist soirees, etc. But he's a trust-fund asshole through and through, never worked an honest day or made an honest dollar in his goddamned life.

But try telling them that. You can't change their minds with "facts" because they want to believe the fairy tale. So you have to come up with a better fairy tale, a more compelling narrative that clearly positions who the "good guys" and "bad guys" really are. Put it in Game of Thrones terms:  you may enjoy the moral fluidity of, say, Varys and Littlefinger, but there's no doubt where Ned and Joffrey were on their respective points of the moral compass.

Farmers in the midwestern states are going through huge increases in bankruptcy filings, thanks in large part to Purznit Shit-fer-Brains' brilliant trade wars, which are good and easy to win. This in spite of the fact that over eight billion dollars has already been expended in bailouts and price supports, because these people literally have entire harvest rotting in warehouses, because it cost them more to harvest it than they can currently get on the market.

Now, on the one hand, I am a huge -- and sincere! -- fan of people getting what they vote for, and in this case, these people are getting exactly that, good and hard. So fuck them. On the other hand, if I were running for president, and wanting to win the people in these states back over, I'd work on crafting a narrative that cleanly and simply outlines exactly what went down, and who's responsible. I'd find a handful of these suckers in every state and trot them up onstage, get them to recite their litany of woes to the audience of neighbors 'n' friends, and then make goddamned sure no one left the building without understanding that Fuckface Von Clownstick is entirely responsible for every miserable, sleepless night they've endured going through their financial hardship, and that we're going to fix it. And make sure that the corporate media shows up and broadcasts that shit, again and again.

That all of this has the added benefit of being 100% true is orthogonal to the real challenge. Truth just makes it a bit simpler to craft the narrative, but you'll still have to add a bit of fairy tale, a little something that they want to believe, even when they know in their hearts it isn't true.

Maybe point out to these farmers that while they're trying like hell to figure out how to hang onto what their parents and grandparents busted their humps to pass along to them, Jared Kushner is selling our nuclear tech to the Saudis, because he's neck-deep in hock to them. Maybe point out that things aren't going too well with North Korea after all, despite all the stunt summits and hand-waving and time-share salesmanship.

Maybe point out that poor and working-class people, whether they're in Alabama or California, have a hell of a lot more in common with each other, than with a thin-skinned fake tycoon who lies about everything, even things that don't matter. Maybe point out that, just as in real life, treating your friends and allies like shit does matter, because sooner or later you want or need something from them, and they have no reason to help you.

Maybe point out that this could all have gone completely differently, if he had just been 30% less of an asshole, that he could have won over moderates and even some liberals by simply making good on promises such as infrastructure and the opioid crisis, and not siding with nazis and calling everyone who disagrees with him an enemy of the state. Maybe ask why wages are still stagnant in Duh Best Economy Evuh, or why Genius Q. Dealmaker, Real Billionaire Tycoon, feels so comfortable cutting their health care.

I mean, if you didn't know any better, you might start to think that, you know, he's always been a fucking bullshitter.

---

I hate to say it, but future Real Housewives of Scottsdale star Meghan McCain has the right idea:  you don't have to take any shit from this doddering cartoon character. You really don't. I look forward to George Conway finally screwing up the courage to tell that mercenary cunt wife of his to make a choice -- your boss or your family. (Although I also hope that, whether or not this Magnificent Bickersons act the Conways have going is real or some weird cover-our-asses-for-future-employment gambit, they both spend the rest of their lives broke and despised, just like the scumbag they helped put into office.) I look forward to enough senators finally remembering that they took an oath to serve the Constitution, and not a particular man, especially one so deeply unqualified and unfit for office.

More than that, I look forward to Trump's continuing decompensation. He's unraveling fast now -- fifty tweets over the past weekend, whining about Saturday Night Live reruns and Fixed Noise anchors, and equally meaningless nonsense. But what it really reveals is how fucking miserable he is.

I said this about Trump long before he threw his ricockulous microweave into the ring, and transitioned from being a distributor of thick envelopes to becoming a recipient of thick envelopes:  if you, Tonstant Weader, had a kajillionty bucks and could do whatever you want, would you spend your time picking Twitter fights with Bill Cosby and Rosie O'Donnell, giving dating advice to Twilight actors? Which is literally what he was doing at the time, when he wasn't LYING about Obama's birthplace.

But now he's the chief executive, with all the cultural "soft power" perks that come with it. It's the closest thing to a literal version of the old "if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be" question -- he can reach out to virtually anyone from any walk of life, musicians, actors, writers, economists, people of skill and talent and expertise, and ask them to dinner. Obama made great and frequent use of this perk, not for cynical fundraising reasons (as the Clintons did, renting out the Lincoln Bedroom), but because he's a fan of art and science and people who do things most people can't. That's what a normal person would do.

Trump does none of that. He had (pfft) Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and former veep flop (and current reality-teevee flop) Sarah Palin shortly after the election, as a suck it libturds! moment. Since then, nothing, not even z-listers like Tim Allen and James Woods, people who would suck his tiny dick in Times Square if he asked them to. No, he bails to the Maga-Lardo every other weekend to hang out with thrice-divorced urologists and has-beens and never-weres like Robert Davi.

I mean, I think I know who Robert Davi is. Or was. He's still alive, right?

But that should give you an indication of how truly miserable Trump is. He can do literally anything he wants, and this is what he chooses to do. And he knows that the walls are closing in, that even if Mueller's report turns out to be a nothingburger with extra cheese, there are already enough wheels in motion just at the SDNY to keep him in court for the rest of his life, and that he stands a very real chance of going to jail and/or losing substantial assets. It's driving him nuts, and he was never all that tethered to reality in the first place.

And that brings me immense joy, because I can scarcely think of a more deserving scumbag. And that's not an exaggeration. He is scum. His adult kids are scum. His current wife and his ex-wives are scum. They're all fucking awful people, lamely pretending to not be fucking awful, but by definition not really knowing how to pretend convincingly.

They are all part of the same vile problem -- and it is the same problem that we saw last week with the celebritard college admissions scandal. It is the tacit admission by wealthy people, that the whole point of being truly wealthy is not simply having more money, or just having enough money to not have to worry about money, the way the little people do.

The real point of being truly wealthy is having your own set of rules to play by, because you are insulated from the consequences that the little people take for granted. So you have a kid you want to get into college, but they not only aren't qualified to go, they don't even want to go? No problem, just bribe the right people in the right places in what is undoubtedly just another American racket, like health care and finance, just a grift designed to siphon money out of suckers.

And it worked until it didn't. Don't worry, America doesn't want to see the chick from Full House go to prison for a "victimless" crime, so she and Filliam H. Muffman will pay their token fines, and then go on PR rehab tours on the talk-show circuit, and go right back to what they were doing, which is whatever the hell they wanted.

But that's the same dynamic that Trump and his disgusting coterie of fellow grifters and enablers count on:  that the little people really lurve their pelf-grubbing insect overlords; that they're too fucking dumb to understand the difference between knowing something about real business and just being a garden-variety chiseler; that they hate their fellow citizens more than they love their country.

And it just might work, not because Trump might steal the election next year, or refuse to leave if he loses, or any of that. It's because Democrats and liberals want to believe the fairy tale too, only their fairy tale consists of the disproven notion that most people are inherently good and idealistic and care more about facts than emotional catharsis. They need to recognize that their base is fucking hostile now too, and adjust their approach accordingly.

I don't give two fucks about how competent Amy Klobuchar (for example) may be. What concerns me is that her tepid, sensible approach reminds me of the beige suit known as Al Gore, who couldn't even get his home state to vote for him against a proven dipshit like George W. Bush. We want a fight, so either be prepared to get in the ring, or go the fuck home and weed your garden and draft policy papers touting the intrinsic benefits of gutless incrementalism.

What would be very nearly as bad as Trump legitimately winning next year, is the Democrats winning everything back in an indisputable landslide, and still not understanding that unless and until the current incarnation of the Republicon party is burned to the ground and the ashes pissed and shat upon, nothing will ever really change except the players. They have to deliver a convincing message of real economic justice for everyone, and couple that with a sincere conviction to end these cocksuckers, once and for all.

Seriously, Fuck Kanye West

So did I tell ya or did I tell ya? The guy has, like, zero fucking redeemable characteristics. He's a perfect acolyte for this anal fissure of an administration -- not one-tenth as smart as he thinks he is, proudly ignorant, completely incoherent when he thinks he's trying to actually make a fucking point. He has nothing useful to say about anything or anybody. Just like his fat, elderly, doddering daddy figure.

Few things are more pathetic than watching a grown-ass forty-year-old man spew his little-lost-girl daddy issues; even Clownstick looked uncomfortable after a while. I think if there hadn't been a crowd there, Kanye probably would have tried to suck his dick.

The professional observers who are trying to make this a mental illness issue need to reconsider. He may be mentally ill, but that's not the problem here. Kanye West's problem is exactly the same as Fuckface Von Clownstick's problem:  he's an ignorant, jabbering fool who has nobody in his life to tell him no or set him straight on anything, so he's now far beyond the point where he would listen anyway.

You really can't tell people like that anything, all you can do is cut them out of your lives, and hope they finally see the pattern for themselves. Or not. If they can't get it together, you're better off without them anyway.

But this is how West has always been, always. Clownstick fans and self-styled conservatards think they're being clever by appropriating West as one of their own, like they've liberated him from the Dummycrat plantation. Well, they can fucking have him, and the wife-beater Jim Brown, and the murderous thief Don King, and the rest of the criminal types they think show the party as being more inclusive. Hell, dig up Ike Fucking Turner while you're at it.

The funniest part of it is that this serves as a perfect example of what I was just talking about in the previous post less than a week ago -- they can't tell musicians and athaletes to shut up and sing or dribble or dance, when they take a stance against their senile god-emperor, but soon as one starts singing his praises, they all reach for the hymnal and join in.

Who Is America?

Slow holiday weekend, and I fully plan on indulging myself by doing as little as possible -- finishing up a couple of books, playing guitar, knocking back a beer or three, maybe doing a little writing (political and otherwise). So we're getting a free weekend of Showtime, featuring the Season 1 marathon of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest project.

Baron Cohen is a bit of a mixed bag for me; at times his cringe-inducing brand of comedy can be uproariously funny, at other times merely gross. Who Is America? fills both bills adequately right from the start, opening the first episode with SBC's southern conservative journalist character (complete with motorized scooter, natch) baiting Bernie Sanders, following that with a segment featuring SBC playing a paroled prisoner who "paints" with his own feces and semen, pitching his "art" to a credulous gallery owner.

I guess I'd give it a qualified recommendation -- there are few genuine surprises to be had, but that is probably in part due to the fact that we now live in a world where truth isn't truth, a demented old bastard runs the country, and nothing is really surprising anymore, primarily because we've all been forced to confront how said demented old bastard got into office. Reminding us that there are morons and assholes among us, many of them in positions of power, is no longer funny or cathartic. Irony suffered a mortal blow after 9/11, but now it's dead and ground into sausage.

That said, clearly a lot of work has gone into this, mainly in the variety of characters SBC has crafted to gull the dupes into revealing themselves. It's worth watching just for that, though again some segments are more worthy than others. Your mileage will vary, and you enter at your own risk.

One of the more relatively innocuous segments occurs in the second episode, where some interchangeable Bachelor dingbat gets tricked by the decadent Italian billionaire photographer character into doing a PSA for child soldiers. [rolls eyes] Yes, you read that right.

What makes this slightly more interesting is when a teevee critic decides to get in on the hijinks, and decry the seeming fish-in-a-barrel quality of the segment:

What is this segment trying to satirize, exactly? That a woman who’s already been used as a tool in multiple TV ratings ploys would make a fool of herself again? That she’s absurdly compliant with the demands of celebrity, to the point that she’ll go along with any script she’s given? At its most damning, the segment is a swipe at how happy Olympios is to be on television, and what exactly she’s willing to do for publicity.

....

But the segment does raise questions about Who Is America? and its goals. Why is this reality star a target? Why is the assumption that it’s hilarious to watch a powerful man manipulate a fame-hungry, clueless younger woman?

Those are an awful lot of questions that fail to see the (to me, anyway) rather obvious point of it all: what sort of "culture" routinely makes these random idiots famous and wealthy? Obviously, from movie B-girls to music and sports groupies, the entertainment industry has always used young women willing to do anything (and I mean anything) for what? Fifteen minutes of....well, it's not exactly fame, but let's call it attention of a sort.

The girl in question struck a very dim glimmer of memory, of someone perhaps seen in the "Entertainment" section of the Google News aggregator, a section that becomes increasingly irrelevant as it is overtaken by the children and stepchildren of one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers in his trial a quarter-century ago for murdering his wife and her friend. [Ah, fame! -- Ed.]

And indeed, Corinne Olympios first achieved the glories of name recognition when she caused the dating show she was on to be investigated for allegations of sexual misconduct, when Olympios got one of the male contestants to perform oral sex on her.

You want the epitome of meta-cynicism, folks, there you have it -- a cynical audience watching a cynical exercise in which cynical idiots pretend to be competing for love, filmed and edited to be as cynically manipulative as possible, and to encourage moral judgments from the audience. I've always considered myself a hopelessly cynical bastard, but this sort of shit is a depth beyond me.

Is it possible that that is at least part of what Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to send up here, using a character that is a crude, vulgar distillation of the gaudy Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless bullshit that captivated American couch potatoes for years? That's yet another level of cynicism that we've all just taken for granted for decades -- this idea that people who actually work for a living would like nothing more than to have their noses rubbed in the mostly unearned and inherited excesses of tacky swells and net-worth assholes.

In fact, that might have been the one way for SBC to top the routine meta-cynical excesses of the Bachelorette types, and the rotten, soulless anti-culture that's sprung up around it. There is a clear cultural connection between that sort of mindless Ow My Balls! bullshit, and its current political by-products. Maybe the teevee critic's error was in assuming that Baron Cohen was only interested in duping the Roy Moore types, and not thinking that maybe people like Corinne Olympios also participate in something that is ultimately harmful to the mental health of the people who are hooked on it.

When everything turns into a cheesy wink and a nod, a joke that we're all in on but continue to beat into the ground long after it stopped being funny or interesting, it can't be too surprising when we eventually get what we have now. Random jerkoffs with no discernible talent "monetizing" their side hustles on Instagram and YouTube, hoping to parlay that into some "reality" teevee bullshit, and thence into some Kardashian-Jenner quadrant of Satan's asshole, pimping collagen creams and taint waxes and such like.

Given the longstanding prevalence of this nonsense, it makes a certain perverted sense that a fake tycoon with fake hair and skin and a third trophy wife, a man who brags that he shits in a gold toilet in a marble tower, would be received by a sufficient number of certifiable dipshits as an authentic hero of the working class.