Blackmoor Vituperative

We are about 15-20 years too late to change anything, but if you are curious how this started, it was during the Clinton administration.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/27/clinton.radio/ (CNN, 1997)

Mitch McConnell, then the Senate minority leader, helped make judicial sabotage a priority for Republicans when President Obama was elected.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/when-basic-governance-deemed-controversial-flna6c10205110 (NBC News, 2013)

And it worked, because Democrats failed to realize that they were no longer dealing with Reagan Republicans, but were instead dealing with an increasingly deranged death cult. So they continued to rely on appeals to reason, to compromise, and to putting the good of the country ahead of (most of) their political differences.

I learned an important lesson from a boy named Brian in the sixth grade: bullies see an appeal to reason as an explicit invitation to continue the bullying. They do not care about reason, or compromise, or making the world better. They just want to be the ones doing the punching, and most people are content to stand by and watch and do nothing.

And so they have.

I have stopped sharing links to wildlife being cooked to death in the oceans, or catastrophic polar melting, or the fact we are in what future generations will regard as the early months of World War 3, etc. to Facebook. Even so, the slow-motion apocalypse (a phrase I coined and began using in 2013, although others independently did the same, some even earlier) continues its relentless approach.

I am a little surprised that World War 3 hasn’t officially started yet. My entire youth, the threat of Communist expansion was like a black cloud on the horizon, and the threat of nuclear war was ever-present. But Russia invades Ukraine, and the West can barely muster a strongly worded letter in response.

This does not bode well for Taiwan and Pakistan, but I have no input on any of it.

Meanwhile, sea life is being cooked to death in the oceans, and natural disasters and wet-bulb events are becoming more common on land. I assume the Republican death cult is still blaming homosexuals while simultaneously dismissing it as a hoax.

If Canada ever opens its borders to American refugees fleeing north from the climate crisis and the theofascist takeover of the South and the western flyover states, I think we should apply ASAP.

[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.

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

The neighbor who doesn’t mow their lawn often enough is not “just as bad” as the neighbor who tortures and kills your dog. One is an irritation. The other is evil.

When you say that it’s unreasonable of me to keep criticizing the dog-killing neighbor (who is, at that moment, torturing and killing yet another neighbor’s dog), and when you bring up the neighbor with the unkempt lawn (which I never did), and when you say that you won’t “take sides” between the evil neighbor and literally everyone else, it does not make me angry at you. It makes me sad and confused.

I do not understand why you are obsessed with the neighbor with the unkempt lawn. I am horrified that you can make excuse after excuse for the dog-killing neighbor. I do not understand how your values became so utterly warped.

My heart is broken, and I miss the person I thought you were.

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

I was a capital-L Libertarian for a decade or so. The thing is, they are absolutely opposed to the initiation of physical force, because it’s the single greatest infringement of another person’s liberty. I think this is a good thing. For one thing, it would make the USA far less of an analogue of the Empire in Star Wars.

There are, unfortunately, two rather significant problems with libertarians. First, although they are opposed to the initiation of force, far too many of them fetishize the idea of retaliation. Once you do that, it becomes very easy to rationalize any violence or atrocity, because after all, “they started it”. You’ve seen the Gadsden flag, I assume, the one with the snake? “Don’t tread on me”? That’s not a celebration of living in peace and harmony: it’s a fetish symbol for someone who wants the opportunity to use violence and is looking for an excuse.

The second major problem with libertarians is that they are purposefully blind to the fact that physical violence is not the only form of coercion. A libertarian is perfectly fine with a single company buying all of the patents on a life-saving drug and then demanding your life savings for a dose of it, because that’s not physical violence — but it is obviously a direct “your money or your life” form of coercion, to everyone not blinded by their religious fervor. And it is a religious fervor, make no mistake. When you adhere to a creed or philosophy in defiance of the clear and measurable harm that philosophy causes, you have become a religious zealot — a fanatic.