Blackmoor Vituperative

[I enjoy doing this sort of thing, and I think I have an eye for it. If I were a bit more ambitious, I would try to do it as a “side hustle”.]

“Psychological warfare has a new meme for your approval, Your Majesty.”

“What is this, Klytus: some new form of torture?”

“Most amusing, Your Majesty. These are a form of propaganda used on the Earth.”

(Ming examines the image)

“Would you like to explain why there is a Frigian labour beast next to the exalted name of MING THE MERCILESS, or should I call for the bore worms now?”

“Of course, Your Majesty may do as he pleases in all things, and I embrace the opportunity to display my undying loyalty. But as it happens, that is the current year according to the reckoning of the people of the planet ‘Earth’. The animal is a symbol of strength, ruthlessness, and nobility. It is known locally as a ‘jumbo’.”

“What primitive creatures these Earthlings are. And the purpose of this image?”

“Why, to grant the Earthlings hope, Your Majesty.”

“Hope?”

“Hope that you will show mercy, Your Majesty.”

(Ming pauses, then slowly claps, exactly three times)

(laughing) “Well done, Klytus. I look forward to reports on the psychological damage.”

(chuckling) “Thank you, Your Majesty. HAIL MING!”

P.S.

Being an actor must be such a strange job. You wear what someone else picked out, stand where they say to stand, and say what they wrote for you to say. And yet, it is so much more difficult to do than that makes it sound (I have only had a couple of amateur performances in my past, but it was enough to learn that much).

Then (if it’s film or whatever), you spend days, weeks, months, traveling from city to city just to sit and repeat the same half-dozen sentences about it for “interview” after “interview”. (Do they even get paid for any of that?)

And then, when the product is complete, you bear the brunt of the blame for the end result, even though you just did what you were told to do.

And whether you even get the job in the first place is dependent on factors so far beyond your control that joining Scientology or Keith Raniere’s bonkers sex cult seem like good alternatives.

Show business, man. It ain’t for sissies. (I think Betty White said that, originally, but I may be mistaken.)

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“The Second Coming“, W. B. Yeats, 1919

Fun fact! Yeats went on to embrace fascism and authoritarianism — the “passionate intensity” of “the worst“. “The Second Coming” is the most compelling proof I know of that an artist is not their art — and if we insist on conflating the two, or on depriving ourselves of great art by less-than-great people, that it is we who suffer for it.

Yeats, after all, is long dead, and quite beyond our reproachment.

What had me thinking about this was, of course, the results of the election yesterday, in which the “the worst” — angry, hateful, and completely detached from reality — won virtually every election.

I am glad that I don’t have children. The United States is a dumpster fire, and it won’t get better in my lifetime.

If it ever does.

On this day in 1945 in Berlin, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the second of two unconditional surrenders by Nazi Germany to the Allies, including the United States.

America at its best is Antifa.

A lot of states have a very nearly 50/50 split between reasonable people across the political spectrum, and Republican death cultists. Who wins an election in most of the USA boils down to a tiny fluctuation in the electorate. There are two significant consequences of this.

First, in places like Texas, where that tiny difference leans ever so slightly in the direction of far-right extremists and would-be fascists, you get state legislators calling for their state to secede (taking with them the nearly 50% of the populace who aren’t overtly delusional death cultists).

Second, in places like Virginia, where that tiny difference leans ever so slightly in the direction of people of good will across the political spectrum, the state is run by well-meaning people, but those people are continually struggling against the nearly 50% of the populace who are death cultists.

Don’t be too proud of the fact that your state veers ever so slightly away from the Republican death cult. In most of the USA, it wouldn’t take much more than a stiff breeze for that to change.

Trump is just a symptom; Republicans are the disease.

“Both sides are the same”?

• Only one party has had 120 criminal indictments of Executive Branch officials, 89 criminal convictions, and 34 prison sentences in the last five decades (as of the last time I looked into it — it has gone up since then).
• Only one party is devoted to oppressing women.
• Only one party is pillaging public services for the private gain of billionaires.
• Only one party is deliberately refusing to participate in the government of the USA by sabotaging the legislative process.
• Only one party is obsessed with ridiculous conspiracy theories.
• Only one party’s Presidents have consistently left the USA with much more debt than it had when they started (Clinton left office with a surplus, while Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have all run up huge debts).
• Only one party is overtly, blatantly, PROUDLY racist.
• Only one party is aggressively anti-science.
• Only one party calls Nazis “fine people”.
• Only one party places grossly unqualified people in charge of government agencies with the purpose of destroying those agencies.
• Only one party is steadfastly, maniacally devoted to lies, hatred, and death.

I’ll put this as nicely as I can: if you say “both sides are the same”, within the context of political parties in the USA in the 21st century, you are just as responsible for the fall of the United States as the Republicans are.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, two dozen police officers are under investigation for falsifying evidence, and three (so far) have been charged.

I have been saying this since… (checks blog)… early 2018, but Chris Conroy’s analogy is much better than mine. (Mine was about earthworms and astronomy. Alligators and pants is better on a couple of levels.)

Republicans literally don’t care if what they say is true, or even consistent. All they care about is causing harm. Criticizing a Republican for being a hypocrite is like scolding an alligator for not wearing pants. They don’t even know what pants are.

Also, they want to kill you.

Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.

“The Lancet”, Volume 395, ISSUE 10223, P524-533, February 15, 2020