(Regan's) War on Christmas

(A sentiment that does cut both ways)

It is true, Regan is a pagan. I've seen her dressed in scarves and beads out dancing in the desert. She likely has scented candles and incense lit somewhere right now, perhaps at the temple where she stores her bras and underwear, a shrine that straddles the Nile, with her whispering bewitching incantations from above, waiting for the sun's march across the Autumn sky, channeling the many secrets and fertile truths of the goddess Hathor. 

If you believe that sort of thing. 

Do you see what happens when I try to abandon politics? My mind turns to applesauce. She is quite delightful, but my readers would soon bore of that fact alone. I promised to dedicate today's blog to her. I could have done better. I found a good picture of her, but chose not to use it without asking first. Something about my "panties parthenon" and the image of the actual woman did not sit correctly with me. Luckily, I know her to have a sense of humor.

I'll do better dedicating next time Regan, I promise. 

Moving on.org

It's Trump's War on Christmas now. He will expect a full debriefing this week. As with all other matters, he has ruled in the nuclear option. His team has contacted Santa Claus personally via private weather satellite. He has very strong diplomatic and economic ties with both poles. They are great, great friends of his and have been since childhood. He had an ongoing correspondence with Santa until well into college. He wants to re-open trade talks with Kris Kringle and wishes only to stop the flow of undocumented elves from entering our airspace. 

He currently has plans to put a fence on the northern border of Canada. 

Some fear that the US involvement in the War of Christmas will escalate into a full blown Wikipedia War, igniting the whole region. Trump will not quickly forget how some attempted to use facts against him. So far he has been a great president-elect, the very best. He has requested that the nuclear codes be added to his Twitter account so that when needed, and only when needed, he can call an air strike on Rosie O'Donnell. 

It's true. In a few short months Donald Trump will have the power to put American citizens to death without trial. I know that seems like an outrageous claim. I assure you that it is not. That power is being contested in the courts, because it violates one of the most basic principles of the constitution, but for the time being Trump can call for the assassination of Rose O'Donnell, as long as he claims that she's suspected of being involved in any covert manner with the very real Gay-Liberal War on Christmas.  

Trump is expected to also roll out his plan for a wall around Jerusalem. He wishes only to complete what others before him have started.  He sees lots of land development opportunities in Israel. Lots and lots.

No, I have tried to retreat into sarcasm, but that is no place to hide. Santa Claus needs me now more than ever, and mere Christmas carols will not make this nasty hobgoblin go away. How the fuck did this dumpster fire grow wings and take flight? 

I guess we found out what Americans are and are not okay with. 

People have tired of career politicians, now they want entertaining ones. And why not, really? Haven't the American people suffered enough. Because nothing quite shows the elites what we are made of as a society as does a generous spoonful of Celebrity Intolerance. 

Just the other day I was talking with a voter from a red state. He and I disagreed on everything. It turns out that I am quite mistrustful of all of those strange people that I've been accusing of xenophobia. Have you ever noticed how foreign republicans seem? 

There are only two types of patriots, us and them.

In the days since Tuesday it has started to become obvious who the white men were that voted for Trump: almost all of them. They have started to trot out their "just give him a chance" suggestions. 

Women, also. 

The electoral college has been explained to me in detail, that it was designed to give the slave states power that they couldn't have by actually casting votes for their slaves, because that would have been wrong. So, it was instituted to maintain the delicate balance that slave nations require. Now, it is kept in place as an efficient tool to prevent the tyranny of democracy. 

If the power to vote as a proxy for your slaves had simply been granted to their owners at the time then this little issue would not now be a problem, but it was not polite to suggest such things then, you see. So, we have a system that makes sure the popular vote can be squelched by process when the time is right. 

Suck it up, citizen.

The electorate can be used to silence the votes of people living in cities. This is because the fewer number of people that live out in the country should not be subject to the needs of the majority, or so it has been explained to me with an absolutely determined and straight face. The concept of "area" was described. How the people living in these large "areas" should not have to be subject to a democratically elected president. It's just not fair. We live in a Republic, and there's no mistaking the Suck it up, faggots atmosphere that's been created by this new conduit for capitalist conservatism. 

Trump will think nothing of stacking the courts with clones of Clarence Thomas. He has been among the most powerful legislators in America and has done so entirely from the court bench. Trump will appoint Bill O'Reilly to be the Minister of History, of course. I predicted Ronald McDonald would have a place in his cabinet also, and I was not very far off in that prediction. Mayor McCheese, the Grimace, and by necessity the Hamburglar will all have prominent positions at the newly branded White Castle House. I can not wait to see him brand that building with those famous golden letters, like the five fingers that fit in an Atlantic City boxing glove.  

We suddenly live in a world where a Pat Buchanan cabinet appointment would be a welcome respite. 

Back to the electoral college: You see, we are meant to direct elect representatives, but not the president for some reason. To do so would be wildly tyrannical and would result in a situation where our presidents would then only come from places like New York. Our founders did not want a "mob rules" mentality, or state - because, you know: slaves - so they made sure to give unequal power to the less populated states. This is how our beautiful democracy was designed to be. The educated city dwellers should be subjected to the needs of our farmers, not the other way around. Because these modest plantation owners might not have choices otherwise. 

Listen very carefully to what is advanced by the people who would defend the electoral college. These are the same people that will tell you, If you don't like the choices your state makes then you can move... But if you want your vote to weigh more than that of a city-living-citizen then just stay right where you are, poor pilgrim. America has your back, and they're not just going to abandon the many political successes of slavery.  

Well, they have their hero now. This is a man that will not suffer the liberal gibberish that has been advanced by the culture that created him. Leaders that have a chip on their shoulder against liberalism always turn out to be the best, the very best, particularly the 20th century versions. The list is too long to trot out here but my favorite was Pol Pot. Oh man, did he have fun reforming his elite, educated classes. They wanted to work, and oh boy did he put them to work in record numbers. He made Cambodia roar. 

Now, I write here with my tongue massaging my cheek, of course, but it's all true. I hope that my readers today can see that I am speaking in the hyper-inflated terms that they love and best understand. I'm desperately trying to make any of this funny, but am failing for reasons that should be obvious by now. This predicament only seems funny if you have completely stopped caring, or if you believe that it was time for a regressive cultural shift. 

I blame Jon Stewart, in part. He very astutely predicted this debacle and stepped out of the path of the carnage train that he helped to create. His brand of arrogant pretense and snickering smugness is what came under fire in these last few months. It was very shrewd of him to dodge, to try and let that bullet pass by, but do not think that it was not noticed. I have been attacking the premise of his excessive self-regard for some time. He's very good at what he does, but he was inflating a balloon that he could no longer manage and I believe he knew it. 

Now he'll return and ask the nation, What did you do? 

Many liberals sat around asking where was he in their time of need. Indeed. Good question. Where was he? Not that he would have changed anything, though he might have had to accept the result of the backlash against his branded manner of conceit. That alone would have been worth seeing. 

I was watching Seth Meyers (the Jon Stewart-lite) the other night. It was the episode after the election and it suddenly dawned on me that I was having a schadenfreude moment. Something about his visible suffering at the outcome pleased me. It seemed so saccharine, squeezing its way out of his  usually more well hidden pompousness. For a brief moment I felt a touch bad about the feeling, but then I thought of all the people who will actually suffer at the results of this election, and that Seth Meyers isn't on that list, yet.

That's part of what was forgotten along the way, it seems. There is a cultural struggle and it's not going to be won or even advanced by simpering late night tattle-tales, or cultural hall monitors with a team of comedy writers on retainer. Someone will need to make a much more compelling liberal argument than did Hillary, or Jon Stewart. I only hope that liberals have not exhausted themselves making sure that Facebook is a safe space from which to micro-correct minutiae. 

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Parenthood: Planned

(Smiling Trump supporter in background)

We live in surreal times. I hope they last.

I'm currently in the market for some military-grade tactical combat gear, would also be interested in opening talks with any reputable below-ground bunker builders, and am investigating a time travel device that would allow me to go back and argue Facebook politics before the election.

I know I could get it right this time, if I could only have another chance.

If I could just reach the Bat Belt...

I mention that my son doesn't have his passport and two of my friends lost their fucking minds. They accused me of all sorts of things, but being typical probably hurt the most. I had thought I said it with enough tongue-in-the-cheek, and it might be worth mentioning again here that it wasn't even me that was worried about it, it was the boy's mom. But, ah well... you know me... if somebody disagrees then I'll try to do the absurd thing just to prove them right, particularly if it's easy and also might also cause them anger or frustration.

The boy should have his passport, while the US still issues them.


That anybody takes what is written here seriously is beyond me. I do try to convey my own internalized opinions at times, but much of the time I'm just fucking around. It is shocking that everybody does not see that. Though, I suppose that many years have passed since some of my friends have seen me in person, and perhaps have forgotten what my sense of humor is like - inconsistent at best, a dangerous combination of dry delivery and unplanned direction. I rely heavily on tone.

Ah well. Trump, trump, Trump, trump. You can't make me shut up about it. He is fearless and he is our grand leader.

We have a successful NY business typhoon entering the White House. The Orange Reich. His hair is as beautiful as a hurricane crossing the Atlantic towards the southern states. The first ever of his kind - a babe in the woods, a naif, an accused rapist that shoots from the hip, and a man without any political qualifications whatsoever. All rolled up into one electoral victory. He's our guy now. He rode in on the "lets gang-rape the liberals" platform, which still has some Libertarians high on newly legalized catnip.

42% of American women voted for him. 53% of white women. Only 1 in 100 women voted against their party affiliations for the first woman ever to run for president in the United States. That fact alone should cause some questions to float to the surface. What happened to the idea of equality? I thought that I didn't like Hillary, but fuck.... women didn't even give it that much thought, it seems. I still voted for her, as there really was no other option.

I'm going to rush out and get an abortion while I still can. Maybe give out clinic gift certificates for all my friends for Christmas. Get it while the gettin's good, they say.

I'm trying to strike the appropriate balance here between hysteria and despondency.


Hey, I found something fun. Google has added a "Special Characters" function to this platform.

Let's see if I can emote something meaningful: 👉👌💃...

That's my sign language for Planned Parenthood. We will need these types of codes in this new world.

Next comes despondency.

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Facebook did this

(Unknown)

It is good to get away. Camping was refreshing. None of my friends made any jokes about me retreating into such a famously "white" pastime. I was a little disappointed. That's the problem with liberals, they're all a bunch of pussies, even the funny ones. 

The boy's mother reminded me that he needs a passport. It's true, he does. I'm trying not to think about what the implications may be beyond that.

I might have to get out of politics. It's killing my happiness and has been for a while, that's with me barely paying attention.

I might have to start reading again soon. I don't see anywhere else to go right now. 

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They Are All Swing States

(USA!, USA!)

I didn't mean to suggest yesterday that I was smarter than my liberal friends, which I very much am. We know it's only cool to claim that you're much smarter than Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, and those in the Tea Party most of all. It's easy, because it always seems true when you repeat it so often. 

Somewhere along the way liberals forgot that poking rednecks in the eyes for being ignorant and worthy of comedic derision falls outside of their own moral framework. They were all in shock that rednecks knew how to vote, and when, and why, and that voting against the interests of liberals was maybe in their own best interests. Even the pollsters ignored them as being nearly irrelevant, and so did I. Only opinions from within the city limits were gathered, it seems, where people are more agreeable about how adequate Hillary is. Or, was. It seems that everyone forgot that equality and treating people with respect applies to those that you don't believe deserve it, also. Now, those rednecks have hoisted their candidate of choice into real power. 

Also, women. Women voted Trump into power. Think about that. It seems inconceivable, but we're always told that women know things in a very spiritually mystical way. They have access to the universal truths of divinity, the cosmic motherhood and all of that. Those women did not want Hillary, or at least not in great enough numbers. 

For some time now I've pointed out that shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, 30 Rock, and just about name it on any network... they've all thought nothing at poking everybody that doesn't live in a city in the eyes with branded fireplace stokers. The ex-wife noticed it also, because I would hammer on about it at all opportunities. When they just thoughtlessly made fun of the rural population, trotting out the same tired dual-jokes of incest and accent, I would point it out and ask, Would it be okay if that same joke was made about any other group, or population? Why are liberals so at ease ridiculing one group while revering the suffering and plight of another?

The ex started noticing it, also. It's nearly impossible not to once you look for it. The easy go-to target was anybody that chose to not live in the coolest city in their state. Liberals never seemed to notice that very few black people mocked southerners by adopting a faux southern accent. That sort of mimicry hits a little too close to home for many of them, and they know all too well where those sorts of diminutive behaviors lead. They have also been mocked as caricatures, and they don't like it at all. You'll find that nobody does, but white people (mostly) have been hammering home that same ridicule on social media since Tuesday, still not understanding why they got their asses kicked. They act as if this is a punitive presidential election, directed solely at them, and in some ways they are quite right. The people have spoken, and they are sick and tired of faux liberals.

It's everywhere and nobody seemed to notice or care, because that group wasn't marginalized in the same way as other groups. They seemed to lack the chic of urban disenfranchisement. It was so easy to claim that the racism liberals were fighting against was caused by those same rural-ites anyway. Who was going to get behind their cause? It turns out, they were. Little matter that Trump rallied them and will now very likely desert them. They wanted their voices heard and they wanted to shut liberals up. I can't blame them, at all, though I wish that there would have been a better way for them to be heard. 

Now, in full disclosure, I mock everybody for being stupid, because I'm both insecure and witty, so I use that wit as a pro-active intellectual defense mechanism. Anybody that knows me can see this. But, I've had a growing distaste for self-proclaimed liberals for many years now, and a small part of me enjoys the feeling of cognitive dissonance that I've been wading in with them since Tuesday night. In trying to speak for every group they forgot to speak to everybody. Few people epitomized this fault better than Hillary. I suppose now she will retire entirely into the private persona that she cited so fondly and privately shared with Wall Street execs. 

She was a faulty pick, and many seemed to notice this, but very few recognized that she was going to lose. I still had my hopes. 

I know with certainty that I will hate the direction that DT is choosing to take this country, based only on his announced cabinet picks as being nothing more than a washed up republican goon squad. He will be an unmitigated disaster to the causes that I care most about. But liberal tears do taste so sweet, they are filled with the saccharine of confusion and the failings of smug condescension. 

This election is Shakespearean, in at least that one regard - when considered as being safely and entirely detached from reality. The reality of it is still very much a nearly unimaginable horror, for "us."  The next four years there will be much fighting. Governmental control has now been roundly handed to the wrongest of people. Just because I hate liberals, do not be confused, I hate conservatives much more. Republicans have always represented the worst in both dogma and doctrine. That hasn't changed a bit, and how could it now?

But, man.... liberals do not like elections. That's the only conclusion to draw from all of this, unless you follow Ann Coulter on Twitter like I do, then you'll also know that liberal women are fat and useless. So says Ann.

I just made the post, "Is it just me, or does Ann Coulter look like she's lost a little weight?" So far, only women have "Liked" the post. So much for body-shaming, I guess. Women seem to really love that stuff when properly directed. The post was in response to Ann Coulter's fat-shaming of women on Twitter, but nobody needs to know that for the post to be funny, so.... why bother telling them?

Ann Coulter looks like my kneecap, especially when I have a knee-sized tear in my skin-tight lycra pants, and I put a little line of lipstick on it and make it dance. 

Well, it's true. My kneecap shares her unique complexion and odd facial disposition. It only needs a dash of color around what would be the mouth. 

The election was unanimous in one way: everybody can agree that America is divided. The bubble of the Obama presidency has burst. It's time for liberals to fight again and more, though many of them have forgotten how by now, and I no longer trust their motives. They have shown that all they really wanted was to subjugate others to their narrow view of politics and society. The focus on individual and group-defined identity has shifted. 

Most of the people that I know are still wandering around in a daze, asking how this could have possibly happened, and I very much share those feelings of sudden disconnectedness. The lesson here is that people will vote for things before they'll vote against things. People voted for Obama, they did not vote for Hillary. At least not in the important areas, you know the ones we've all been laughing at all along.

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Don Wayne

(Goya)

It all makes sense now, Trump has outsized his hero John Wayne, The Duke, Colossus-tomy. The highest hope that I can muster is that he will be this era's Reagan. Kids may raise their fists again at the injustice of the establishment. Hopefully a band will come along that will forever erase the remaining fragments of U2. 

What else can we possibly hope. 

The gym I workout at is mostly Mexican, about 9 to 1. Things just don't feel quite the same there anymore. I shaved my head a few weeks back and I haven't developed the summer tan that I had quite hoped for, one that would make me resemble a middle-aged Mel Gibson at a routine roadside check. Tonight I tried to make eye contact with everybody, I had accidentally worn a combination of blues, and white, and a touch of red. It was really something. I might not ever swim free of that coincidental wardrobe malfunction.

There's no way around it - liberals just had their fucking asses handed to them. From watching their reactions I understand so much better now why it happened. I suspected that it would, and even called it here, but had never seen the effects of societal mocking, a groundswell of reaction against cultural elitism, intellect. It shocks the senses. The shared cognitive imbalance is palpable. Watching people online, even encouraging them a bit, it's been a sadist's eden. 

Yet every instinct I have is twitching that there is a very significant threat emerging. What he was willing to do to rise to power is an indication of what he will do to accrue power, and to maintain it. It is no joke. I haven't felt this nervously interested in a long time. I am wary of anybody that is self-evidently writing us into their biography. 

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Why I'm White

(Luis Ricardo Falero)

Soon, I will have some photography to look at, pieces to consider framing and hanging. I have made a deal con el diablo. I have asked for prints for several years now and have been roundly ignored. 

We'll see. 

Today, I return to the city, where there is much moaning and gnashing of teeth. The unthinkable has become the unstoppable. Other cities will perhaps be hit harder financially by Trump's victory, though a Trump presidency cuts to the very core, and even suggests an extinguishing of, San Franciscan values. I have friends that can not even talk about it. Trump, for them, is nothing short of the anti-emancipator, the evilist demon of the apocalypse. It's easy enough to understand why. He was nearly hoisted into office by a mob, or so it seems from within almost any city. Had there been statues of Hillary, they would have been toppled and burned, dragged behind pickups. The celebrations and counter-protests have a deeply uneasy air about them. 

So far, I have heard nothing about Trump's election victory being anything less than legitimate. Hard to believe for many, but he stoked all the right fires, blew all of the appropriate dog and sports whistles, and suggested all of the ugliness that many would love to see come to immediate fruition. I am almost surprised that there were not more burning effigies. Now we must wait, prepare the fight against those he has validated with his victory. 

Many of us will miss the vaguely liberal-ease that was Barack Obama. 

As a white heterosexual* man I can shrug most of it off. I have gay and lesbian friends from a range of indeterminate heritage that may not be able to do so quite as easily as me. People know right away that I'm Irish because when they meet me I am drinking Jameson. You do hear a lot about white privilege and its associated phenomena, so much so that sometimes it's easy to tune it out, until something like a Trump assuming the presidency. It is then that you realize that it simply won't affect you nearly as much as it does some of the people around you, those that have been marginalized their entire lives and are deeply involved in a struggle for equality in rights. 

The only marginalizing that has occurred in my life is that which I've brought upon myself. I can see that, and more so, I can feel it. It would be a lie to claim otherwise, though I resist the notion that white privilege invalidates anything that I have to say, or that it should silence me, or render invalid my opinions. It is only a qualifier, one that I struggle with, having emerged from a white family with very little to show for it beyond my whiteness. How can a privileged father like me be anything other than patronizing, the word is nearly designed to describe me now, a patron.

Living in the Bay Area can make it sometimes too easy to forget how the rest of America treats those from the outer edges of the whole. It is one thing to claim that we are from a melting pot, it is quite another to fight the making of an American stew, to express open hostility towards the idea and practice of inclusion. I have always had an affinity for outsiders, even as I have been treated somewhat as an insider to most everything I've done in life, even by those same outsiders. 

Everywhere I go I have friends. I have people that would come to my defense, and have many times when I have crossed a line, or any number of lines. Others do not live with these same luxuries; impossible not to acknowledge that fact. Black, hispanic, brown-skinned from any number of global regions, gay, confused, overly certain, admittedly ambiguous - there are many who are marginalized through no real fault of their own, then there are those who wander to the peripheries because that is where they feel most comfortable. Then there are those like me, people who can wander to any area of the center or edges of the whole and never get asked for identification. 

I am not regularly treated with the same suspicion or derision as others. I have close friends who are and always will be. I have others friends who, given the opportunity, would likely be suspicious of some of my other friends. They don't seem to understand why such a thing is or should be shameful. They talk about other cultures as if they actually understand them, knowing what ails them most are their own problems and not the problem of the society that they are plaguing. Them doing so is not an informed observation, it is only an entrance for them to then question the legitimacy of others.

Sort of like this:

What too few of the marginalized seem to understand... is that the Right has perceived them as a sort of loosely organized Leftist Tea Party that has done nothing but work against them and "their rights." The right to have what should be the shame of others hidden in an open and free society. You know, those rights... What happened to mine?  Outsiders are an affront to the sensibilities of insiders, particularly as they seek to move towards the center where they can conduct their lives with more stability and demand acceptance from those that are already there. There is some natural resistance to any such a transition. I make no value judgments about the rightness or wrongness of such a dynamic. It simply is and always has been this way, to my perception of such things, it is quite natural. 

Of course there have been periods of exception, though those are usually short-lived and long revered, like the heyday of the swinging 60s. People look back fondly to those times, but are unable to recreate them or to create an adequate simulacrum of them. The spirit of such times emerges in pockets where people seek to participate in what they believe to be the recreation of that same space. There seems to be a Hegelian dialectic to it all, though I can't remember if Hegel was the thesis-antithesis-synthesis guy or if he was something else. 

Was Hegel white and straight? Of course he was. Certainly, that alone invalidates him, or his thoughts. Philosophy is classic white privilege. To attempt to describe one's own condition when white is or should be the crossing of a social taboo. 

You see?  

Being well-meaning is not enough, there should always be a stern rigidity to respecting the righteousness of others. 

It's easy to pretend to be harmless. You're just explaining how things are to those that are less "are" than you. I get it, the impulse is easy. Thought wishes to be expressed. Before you know it, you've repressed somebody by virtue of your existence and the luxurious heritage that you were born into. There is a great impulse to participate, and can you believe it... even white people feel that way, sometimes even when it's not convenient. 

To agree is not enough, to sympathize with a cause is insulting, one must match and then adopt the self-righteousness of others, without stealing any of their genuineness. There is a strict code, one which only affirms the obvious. Nuance of thought is the newest slippery slope, one employed mainly buy the enemies. 

You see? I can't stand all of this bullying and coercion. I don't care which side it comes from, there is an expectation of indignation that loses me, most of all when I am the one employing it. 

I don't have any answers for any of this. I try to be accepting and always note first whose rights are being violated or denied. I try to side with those people that are being wronged, even as they might struggle against me siding with them. You see, when white people support your cause it is only so that they can subsume your "culture" and adopt your victimhood for the purpose of stealing your group identity. Be warned: they'll try to take your picture, to snatch away your soul. It's the damage that well-meaning white people do, and nobody should question the premise that all white people have ruined everything for everybody. That much seems clear. 

I jest, but only a bit. I'm just and old hetero-whitey popping-off about the discourse that we've all suffered and enjoyed for a decade or two now. 

You see. 

I heard one time - I believe it was Germaine Greer - when referencing women's liberation: Nobody was ever granted liberation by asking nicely for it. It was won in a bitter fight. I'm paraphrasing terribly there and am too lazy to do the research, but I loved her stance on a number of things. She understood that asking for equality and then expecting that request to be granted was useless. It must be fought for if you wish to be treated as an equal at all. 

That's why I tire easily of most white-whining, even my own, and I gravitate towards those that are angry and willing to snap for a cause. I am just also tired of being made to feel as an intruder to the causes of others just by lending an ear. If they want support, I fail to understand why they're so angry at me once they have my attention and allegiance. 

Mostly, I like going home, closing my door, going to bed, and forgetting the struggles of others. You know, the sleeping white privilege. 

I came of age late, involved heavily in an underground musical culture where sexual and racial distinctions were made less severe by circumstance, environment, and collective agreement. It was that easy in an inclusive setting. Nightclubbing is not a very fertile space for racial or sexual hostility and intolerance. Quite the opposite, when at its best. I am of the deeply held opinion that everybody should experience it, though there are some that I am glad enough never tried. 

Odd, that inner hypocrisy, wanting everyone to feel something that I wish to also keep secret from them. To keep things safe and precious requires a type of exclusion, because when given the chance people will too often destroy what they do not understand, even through curiosity and support.

You see?

* - My label as a heterosexual is almost entirely speculative at this point. It's been so long since a woman has encouraged me to touch her that I am going only off of past experiences here. My assumption is that I would become aroused at a physical interaction with a woman, but that might not be as true as it once was. We might have to experiment a bit. It's is possible that the impulse towards sex diminishes as distance from it becomes a more regular experience. There should be a phrase that indicates: inactive heterosexual. 

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Yes We Can Fail

Anybody that is blaming 3rd party voters is ignoring the hobbled donkey in the room. Hillary caused this. She defeated herself in a number of ways, as I suspected she would. She relied too heavily on presumed correctness and the smugness that results from same. She did not listen to the message that Bernie's supporters were advancing, and by doing so she handed the election to Trump. 

There are others to blame, of course, but nobody quite as worthwhile. Blame Hillary. Shut the fuck up about people not being willing to vote for her. She is the reason people didn't vote for her. She could have come out of the democratic convention far more conciliatory towards Sander's supporters and their platform, and she could have wooed his base. She didn't. She tried to go after the middle, a middle that her husband reached but that she could not. One that apparently Trump did reach, or more so than most people suspected. To ignore the far left or far right is no longer a luxury that can be afforded any politician at the national level. 

The people willing to respond to polls are no longer meaningful in a significant sense. 

The best that we can hope for now is that Trump will continue to disappoint Republicans, though I believe that the media may have extinguished any remaining love that Trump might have had for any left-leaning causes. His skin is very thin and he will not quickly forget how they treated him, which at times was actually unfair. 

They should have never released that recorded tape. Whatever racist and bigoted bells and whistles Trump may have been ringing and blowing it didn't compare to the growing sense among remaining moderates that the left is dirty and corrupt, and Hillary epitomizes those problems. To record someone speaking without their consent is illegal both federally and in New York, where the recording was made. There are good reasons for this. They claim that he knew he was being recorded, but it is clear that he was lured into his own stupidity. But, it was dirty and the democrats paid for it. Now, we'll all pay for it. It doesn't matter what he said, what matters is what they did. It was shitty and cheap. 

Then, to praise Debbie Wasserman-Schultz after the DNC email leak, and to give her the campaign title "Honorary" something..., by Clinton, immediately after she had to resign for corruption.... Well, even after the DNC was caught red-handed, she wouldn't resign. Obama had to call her to convince her that she had to step down. That's how blind the left is to their own problems. They are so convinced of their own moral superiority they have ceased self-examining. Last night should have changed all of that, but then again, so should have the 2010 election.  

There's a genuine crisis of legitimacy and the country will pay for it. Apparently, the only thing America didn't want more than Trump was Clinton, even though she won the popular vote (yet another absurdist outcome to a democratic election). 

This morning when I dropped the boy off at school, the mostly mothers that were there had puffy eyes, seemingly from crying. Only one bothered saying anything to me, so I made a joke about The Empire really Striking Back this time, but it was only because I didn't know what else to say. I wanted a victory for women, and I didn't know how to say that I never believed that Hillary would represent that, but I very much did want them to feel as if they had won. They do deserve it, and I'm not sure why more of them didn't vote for Hillary, though their reasons may also be my reasons for not liking her.

In the spirit of disclosure, I voted for Hillary, even though I have my problems with her. I was going to vote for Gary Johnson, only to show support for more diversity in our choices of political parties, but when I looked at the ballot I realized that I wanted to vote for a woman instead. I had no way of knowing when that chance might happen again, and I wanted Trump to lose, because I think he is reckless, stupid, and represents an almost evil arrogance that does not, can not, ever make anything Great. 

Ah well, fuck it all. I'm going to ride my bike later and pretend that I'm smarter than everybody else, because for now, it would very much appear that I am. I'm not going to be as kind or permissive of their rhetoric any more. The problem is not the near or far right, it's that too few from the left are willing to call bullshit when there's a stinking warm steaming pile of feces in the field, sitting just underneath the bull's asshole. Well, I'm not a farmer, but that just might be bullshit. 

Welcome to the oldest democracy on the face of the earth, the one with the newest president elect. 

Liberals don't pray, but they might want to start.

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America Makes Great Sausage (have a taste)

I'm just going to focus on the only thing positive that I might be able to find in today: If at the end of it all America has their first female president, well that's great. Truly great. It's about fucking time. I'm happy to see it in my lifetime. That's it. I've become a single issue voter. I want little girls to grow up in a world where they believe that they can do all of the things that little boys can do. I do. 

Hillary self-defines as a woman. I think that one of those people should be in the White House. That's it. I think that she should be allowed to shit in the men's room also, if she wants. Truly. It's what everybody's fighting for. Let a woman shit where the men have been shitting, I say. 

It might actually improve the place, thinks Louis C.K. He wants a President Mommy, and argues that Hillary is just that. The argument fails for that reason, though he does make other points that I would agree with. 

I don't think that she'll be a great president, though I am always hopeful. I was even hopeful with Bush, the second one. The first Bush I had no hope for. He was Reagan's Hillary. 

After writing last night's post, lying in bed, wanting to go to sleep, it occurred to me that my mother would have few memories of Hillary Clinton. She died October 1992, I think, or '93. She would have none of the Clinton fungus growing on her that the rest of us do.  

I believe in women, despite their individual attempts to dissuade me. 

Hillary is just as qualified to advance the executive expansion of power as any man, probably more so. I suspect that is what many men fear. 

We know that if you concede anything to a woman then that concession is almost always doubled. Whatever it is - guilt, love, a promise, money, power, anything... They all double in value or magnitude between the ears and mind of a woman. Whatever you said just cost you twice what you thought it would. This may be because so many women live in half truths and through metaphor. They insist upon it, or they don't want to play. It is an enormous part of their charm and mystery, but it also becomes the curse of how they see the world, and perhaps why they don't age as well as men.

Men have a similar affliction. They often over-speak, exaggerate, knowing that the truth of the thing is about at the midway point between what they said and what actually happened. When they mature they simply exaggerate less

If you think a woman doesn't try to bridge the gap between youthful doubling of the values of the world and their own aging then take note of a middle aged woman's makeup habits. It is the physical manifestation of the perpetuation of an idea of self. Men do it also, in different ways, but the evidence is not left smeared in color across their faces. 

Sexist, you say? Of course it is, I have blanketed almost all of us, as if. But you can't show me that it doesn't happen. 

Combining these differences in disposition and simple conversation and you are already four-fold in distance from the truth. That is, if you believe in the objective, impartial nature of such things. If you don't, then try a few romantic breakups. 

Love will smash your silly notions. 

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'Twas the Night Before Shitshow

(Stella)

I was halfway through my day today before I realized that something felt very different. I hadn't written a post. It had caused this swell of ambition and then a series of minor accomplishments. My mind seemed freer from distraction, by mid-afternoon I felt far less cluttered. 

After work, I washed clothes and straightened up the apartment, performing the hundred little acts I just didn't bother to at the time. I let domestic tasks go for far too long, so that I can use the excuse of them being overwhelming when I wish to escape the voice of guilt, to escape it with a flimsy enough reason. 

Every time I do laundry I tell myself: It's going to be different this time. I try to show myself that by doing laundry more often it's not such a task, a day long burden. Every single time, I tell myself this. Nothing changes, of course.  I just keep buying new socks and underwear. They're relatively cheap and it allows me to go longer and longer between washings, if I'm careful with the hundred or so shirts I own. You might think that I'm exaggerating, but May 18th was the time that I did laundry before the time before that, not including today. Do the math, it's longer than most people can possibly go, longer than most people would even consider, even men.

We're having a small birthday party here tomorrow. I will clean up even more, possibly degrease my grille, make dinner, buy a little cake, help the boy make a birthday card, and vote.

I found the locket above in my desk today, almost by accident. Right away it passed through me - how happy, proud, and excited my mother would be to be voting for a woman for president. It reminded me of her and the many talks that we had. We did not agree on a number of things, but she was an impassioned conversationalist, not afraid to invoke the Old Testament God if it supported her biases. She was a nut, of course, and I loved her greatly. That is what I was reminded of most today, that she was my only mom, imperfect in person, nearly infallible in mothering. 

One of my earliest memories was the Watergate hearings. I stayed home from school and was disappointed that I couldn't watch kids' shows. I remember her yelling at the television. It scared me a bit, how angry she was, how betrayed. It was a level of corruption that was inconceivable. I even remember her telling me, perhaps many years later, why a country has to be willing to subject their leaders to the same laws that we lived under. 

When Ford pardoned Nixon I thought that she was going to hatch a plot to kill him, the fucker. She wanted both of them in prison, or worse. Carter didn't help anything. She spoke highly of him because he was a Christian, not much more.

My mother resembled Geraldine Ferraro, particularly when the latter made the cover of Time magazine. Have I written all of this before? I think I have. I'll stop for the night. tomorrow will be a trying day, whether I succeed at ignoring what is happening, or whether it seems like we were able to keep the idiot out of the white house, or not. 

I've never seen anything like this in America before. It feels as if it is going to pop and that nobody is going to be able to get away fast enough before it does. Nobody at all. 

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Few Are Chosen

Turns out that DST might not be as great as I had hoped, an extra hour of sleep for those that can. For the rest of us it's an hour more of darkness, nothing more. I awoke at 2:30 am rather than 3:30 am. It's a real party over here.

The other day, I was sitting at my kitchen table working, as I often do, when a woman came to the window and held her hands up and looked in. It took her a second or two to realize that I was sitting just a few feet away from her, and she stepped back in embarrassment, laughing and apologizing. I went and opened the door and said hello. She and her friend stepped over and said hola. I explained, Mi Español is muy malo, you necesito practicar.

She explained in freestyle Spanish that she used to live in this apartment, for twenty years. Veinte años. I invited them in to look around, though instead we stood at the door and chatted amicably. She explained that her children grew up here and they are now grown, that her children also had children while living here. Now she lives somewhere else, the rent was too expensive for her to stay. I explained that I feel the same. She asked me how much I pay and in single Spanish digits I went through the four numbers that comprise my rent payment, not knowing the Spanish word for the full amount and wanting to say Millenovecento, but knowing that number was wrong (lifted from Bertolucci) and that the word is Italian. Though that hasn't stopped me much in the past. When I want to be wrong in either a cultural or linguistic sense I do not allow many interruptions on my path to error. 

It is the second of the fours digits that could use some work. The first number is as one would expected it to be, of course there are the two zeroes that trail the painful part, the part that seems most negotiable, that second digit could come down quite a bit.

We laughed about the absurdity of it all. I tried to make a Trump joke but I may as well have offered to host a blood-feces seance and child sacrifice with these two Latina Christians. That wrapped up our little conversation neatly. I tried to counter-balance my bilingual comedic error by saying, Viva Hillary!, or something like that and they broke into the closest approximation to a jogging getaway that I've seen from two octogenarians in some time, maybe ever. They were rubbing their rosary beads and chanting counter-spells of some kind.

Dios mio....

Aren't Catholic women just the cutest? They sure beat those mean-assed Methodists. What was it that Norman Maclean said, Methodists are just Baptists that can read? Well, maybe Maclean stole the line from an old joke, looks like he must have. That is the conclusion of my extensive online research into the matter. 

I don't really care all that much about Christianity. It is only the seven-headed elephantine monster whose fourteen eyes I must poke with a smoldering branch whenever the spirit grabs me, and while I still can. A part of me likes all of the mumbo-jumbo, reverence, and intense self-interest. It offers myriad opportunity for cynics. It is my calling, as they used to say back in the great old country that was.

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Pola'Roids

I saw a polaroid of an old friend on Facebook today. He was towards the lower center of the image, the sun setting in the background, Cubs jersey on, glasses. Just a kid, circa '82, he said. It was a picture like many others, one taken long ago, an object reflecting a world that is no more. A document that represents a set of memories, times and places. It caused me to start looking around online at polaroid cameras and instant film, forming plans, scheming to obtain something new. 

It would be really silly of me to buy another camera right now, wouldn't it? The one above is at B&H Photo for $300. Each 10-pack of instant film is $20. It's an expensive hobby, photography, like cycling. Instant film would allow me to give away my money more quickly. I might enjoy it more that way.

My mind is beaten, bruised, in need of a woman. I was on call last weekend and worked today, shortening my days off to a single one, tomorrow. I had hoped to go on a hike with my buddy from the city, but now that I am here in bed I wish for nothing but to disappear, to disperse into the ether, not taking physical shape again until the dark of morn. It's a great night for it; it'll be 2am for an hour.

I would like DST more if the clocks stopped for an hour. There's nothing all that fun about them jumping back at a given time, unless you're at a bar. For all of them to stop and hold a time, well that would really be something worth sleeping through, like a lunar eclipse. The next day you'd overhear people in the coffee shops talking about how they stayed up for it and watched their clocks, how they had missed it last year, and sure enough at 2am the clock just stopped. 

I didn't watch it the whole hour, after a couple minutes it's just more of the same, but I just couldn't believe it was really going to happen. They say even a stopped clock is right twice a day, well we couldn't figure if that sucker was right or wrong, we just stared at it for a bit, then went to bed.

The buddy that I am thinking about going hiking with just hiked the Pyrenees, from east to the west, the whole paella. After that he went down somewhere in southern California and meditated in complete silence - ten hours a day, ten days straight. I have spoken with him since though not at length. When we did speak I was more interested in the meditation than I was the hike. It seemed terrifying to me, to not speak, to only have my own thoughts for such a long period of time. Everyone wants to believe they can do something like that. I presume that I would lose my mind, or that it would find me. It's out there somewhere now, waiting, stalking in the dark. 

I went for a Herculean ride today, a few hours out to the Infineon Raceway then back up into the hills on the eastern side of the valley, by the bike shop, and then home. Now, I sit here in bed, beaten, wanting something that is far away from me. A woman. 

Or, maybe it's not that at all. My friends appear no happier within relationships than I seem locked outside of them. Or, so I tell myself.

I want to visit my friends again, at least. My little sis' had a baby this week, a girl. I wish to visit, though now is probably a bad time, perhaps the worst. I am much better around kids now than I used to be, but a newborn is not even a kid yet. Being a dad forces you to be better around children, I guess. I have learned to only scream the word fuck when I need to. I've cut way back on using it as a sentence conjunction. I find it much easier to talk to kids now than I once did. It is sometimes, even often, an unexpected treat. It might not always be the most sustaining conversation, but there's usually a jewel hidden somewhere in there, an unexpected glimpse into the not yet mature mind of mankind. 

The kids are alright.

(Aaron, circa '82)

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I'm > With Him

(George Condo)

Who wants to hear more about my recent experiences biking, or why Trump supporters are so eager to usher in apocalypse? I've been giving the first a lot of thought but have not been able to take notes. I might start live streaming my cycling monologues once I install a mic on my helmet. Just a river of out-of-breath invectives and desperate promises I'll never keep. 

Well, I can understand how it might not be of interest to anybody, even cyclists, but this site is about me writing emails that have nowhere to go. So, fuck off and block me... send me to the spam can.

No, no... none of that of course. I'm still just trying to find Jesus. I live in nearly constant fear that CS might find him first. I don't really want Jesus in my life, but I do think that finding him would help my singing career, or maybe if I could convince him to sell tickets then I could satisfy the dreams of all those waterheads that choose him if they could speak to anybody in history.

Wouldn't that be great, to excavate this wandering sectarian and have him unleash a bunch of local tribal nonsense on the modern world, an inarticulate FrankenChrist. Oh fuck, it would be truly great to hear the real Jesus speak, just once. To watch the faces of so many believers drop in confusion and disappointment as they try to align what they believe their religion to be with the actual wandering shepherd they purport to be so imminently worthy of worship and veneration has to say to the modern world. It would be straight out of a Monthy Python script for the believers and non-believers both. You'd have some that would simply adjust to his nearly pre-historic sensibilities and claim the new right as the true right. 

You heard him? Let's round up our enemies and put them to the fire after we poke their eyes out. 

Or, maybe that was Paul. I forget.

I heard that the Greeks have been doing some forensics, also poking around the dust of His little hillside resting place at the Church of the Holy Sphincter. The scientists involved in finding this site - some three centuries after Christ's life and death - are said to have been the finest geological minds of their time. Some thousand years before the golden age of discovery. 

Roger, Bacon. 

Ah well. It is not enough for me simply not to believe. My happiness derives from menacing the faith of others. It is my cross to bear, as they say. I'm like the Christ of Christmas lost, a sort of modern day Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters. I also use a spaghetti strainer in many of my purely clinical probes.

Who gives a Lake Michigan fuck about the Cubs when they're over in Jerusalem poking around the holiest of all dust. I might put an Aramaic translator on retainer, just in case. You never know, as they say. If the Cubs can do it then maybe Jesus eats his brats with mustard.

Okay, when I awake straight from sleep without experiencing or remembering any of my dreams then this is the occasional result. The mind has a tendency to make senseless things sensible for the purpose of fascination, comedy, and anxiety. They function together as my Holy Truancy: The Fasci, the Fun, and the Holy Stress.

My religion requires that I mock all things, act vengefully towards all others, to trade slaves as the market permits, to only sell brides when it is in the groom's best interest, to conduct my ethnic cleansing in the name of something holy, and to never covet my neighbor's ass. I dispense (of) justice, you should also. 

Perhaps one day they will also dust my sphincter for prints, looking carefully for the type promises and secrets that a holy sphincter just can't keep.

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Self-Help (and where to get some)

The first real ride on the new bike, yesterday. I decided on an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods route. It was only an over-the-hill ride, but you get the idea. My fight is with age and against aging. It is all there is that is left, each stroke a temporary victory against some clock in the sky.

Across the low mountainous ripples that allow easy passage from Sonoma to Petaluma there arrives a point in the ride where the valley opens up wide towards the coast, providing one of the most ecstatic vistas in the region, as if it is not the land but rather something inside of the viewer that has instead opened. A glimpse into the eyes of life. The sun drops slowly from its apex in the sky, the mechanics of the orbitals become clearer. The ending of a day says something that the beginning can not. 

I rode over and past the spot where I would often stop and turn around on my mountain bike, though I am adjusting to the differences and their unique charms. 

I do something perhaps quite usual within myself when exercising - I expect more. The voice that I use to coerce my fatigued body into compliance is an odd one. On some level I suppose that this voice loves me, even though it sometimes struggles saying just that. The inner voice does make me laugh, there is that. I mean, Jesus, what happens to a man? I fluctuate back and forth between having tender observations about life and living to a screaming internal incantation of: pump your fat fucking ass up that hill you chronic masturbator. 

Well, sort of. I wouldn't call it chronic, more enthusiastic than debilitating and progressive. 

It is a form of motivational speech that might not pass muster with Anthony Robbins. What is it with cyclists? So many seem to embrace some inner self-help component of riding. I mean, it's somewhat inherent in all exercise, but cyclists seem more annoying about their self-regimens, and the claimed beneficial results. Of course it's therapeutic, why must it be ruined with talk?

So:

There is a tremendous beauty to the simplicity of riding. There is that. It seems implausible that a machine so simple, one that arrived so late in man's history, can produce such ease of speed. The sensation of "getting away" is deeply liberating, tied in with my notions of childhood and what I once needed. I remember getting on my bike when I was a young boy and riding away from my parent's house, never to return until dinner. I dreamed of escape for as long as I can remember, though I did sometimes contemplate what sadness it might bring my mother. You see, I was heroic in my loneliness. After her death, I drifted towards another life and different families, ones of my own choosing. I learned to better love and accept and forgive there in a way that seemed impossible with my own family until I had tried.

See what I mean? 

Cycling delivers the capacity to bring out these once deeply settled issues and shows them as being far more unsettled than I had at a time convinced myself. There is nothing but that voice spent inside oneself, listening to the back and forth narrative of one's own weaknesses and strengths, one's triumphs and otherwise. It's like a 12,000 step program every day. It's not for everybody, this forced quietude. It can be a terror to listen to yourself, if you are anything like me. 

The problem with so many people is that they have ceased to think about the things they claim to think about. Check Facebook, you'll see. So much is still unsettled. Every now and then, when riding, an observation appears in the mind that demands renewed attention. For whatever reason, the mind seems less guarded, more open to reexamining some of the old court cases, as if there is new evidence to present that may exonerate the condemned. 

I am trying to find new ways to love people. Best not to rest too heavily on the past there. Again, my fight is with age and against aging. 

After hitting my unstated goal - the outskirts of Petaluma where the farms begin to disappear, the warehouses rise around the roads at first in single stories - I turned and began the ride home with the sun to my back, the softening colors transitioning across the valley around me, almost imperceptibly. The softness of the day's ending also closing its hands upon me. 

On the road ahead was my shadow, looking more fit than what seemed possible. The dark outline not revealing anything more than what I would want it to. My body proportioned in such a way as to be flattering, even to me. The dancing apparition appearing younger and stronger when stretched out away from the eyes that are so accustomed to it. Cycling on the just road ahead of me, also heading home. Just barely in the lead, our tires nearly touching.

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The New Natural

I have little choice now but to become an avid and vocal bike enthusiast. I have the equipment that requires compliance to the culture. I must learn the phrases and terms for all of the bike's constituent components. I must be willing to use those phrases both naturally and condescendingly in conversation, depending on circumstance, until nobody can tell that I snuck in late and had never been invited. 

Then, I'll likely tire of it. 

I rarely discuss the technical aspects of photography with anybody, which partially explains why I'm still taking nothing more than expensive snapshots. I could put more energy into things, but that takes time or worse, money.  

I rode the bike yesterday. I took it up Lovall Valley Loop - my favorite daily ride. I have acclimated to it now. Riding it does not seem such a dangerous and precarious balancing act. The muscular twitch responses adjust pretty quickly. Suddenly, it all felt natural. 

The bike is fast. That is why people love them and will pay money to feel it. You sacrifice nearly every other quality for decreased resistance. The increased responsiveness to effort in the form of speed is really something. Perhaps I will slowly discover more qualities in which the road bike is superior to the mountain bike. So far there is just the one, but it is enough. Speed feels good.

It is perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive, that I would buy a bike that provides slightly less of the thing I want for exercise: resistance. If the point is to exercise then it makes no sense to spend more money for less of it, until you ride the thing itself. Considerations give way to sensations. The feeling of speed achieved through the power of your own body is self-astonishing. Yesterday, again, I felt free. 

I have been riding a mountain bike for so long I had forgotten that there is the rhythm to road riding that hypnotizes a part of the mind. It acts upon the rider almost as does a drug upon its user. I drifted along as the flatness of the road invited. There were other roads that did not. There is that. One must embrace the conditions, I suppose. Like Sisyphus, there remains the choice of whether or not to love Rock-N-Roll. 

In domestic baking news:

My conversion to being a housedad is nearly complete. For the first time, I baked. It was just corn muffins, but I prepared and triumphed. They came out of the oven warm and tasty. The boy and I put generous swipes of butter on them and ate as many as we could. All of them vanished over the course of a weekend day. 

I'll be baking wedding cakes soon. Don't ask, do tell. 

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Component Sets

I've lost my mind, have given up on doing anything else. 

I bought the bike this morning, must run now to find my initial ecstasy, before it too goes.

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#OccupyJesus - I'm with Herself

(Rhys, depicting a smiling Barkley)

I feel empowered by this election cycle. I think I'm going to find a Mexican and appropriate something from their culture, or maybe just beat them up and call them a "Jew." To the reasonable people that are left in the national conversation it really is starting to seem like it's the blacks, the Muslims, and the Jews that are causing all the trouble for America. Or, it could be the Aleppan refugees. This message is being hammered home, as they say. The problems are not necessarily in that order, but the idea of the threat of otherness is as old as the Great Testaments. 

I think "The Blacks" should be capitalized, because you know, Liberalism. It's a Real Problem, it should be capitalized. You know, to help raise awareness.

It's astonishing to me that there are people out there that seem dedicated to advancing the idea that there would be no racial problems, or far fewer, if the liberals would just stop race baiting the whites the way they have. This "political correctness" stuff has gone too far. Far too far! some have lately screamed. It's as if the only thing that will make liberals happy is equality. 

Once we roll back political correctness to pre-Obama levels then we can rationally discuss liberals being allowed to form their own nation again. A small undefended nation perhaps back where liberalism probably came from, like Europe. How the fuck did we ever let liberals join the military?

The Right should have never let the Left take Christmas. That was their Poland. They should have come out shotgun-shooting when the godless came after the nativity scenes in government buildings. To adequately understand the separation of church and state it's most important to Second That Amendment!!! Holla', ya'll. 

#OccupyJesus. Holy Fucking Batdance... I just realized that there is no way... that I could have thought of... #OccupyJesus... So, I did my extensive "research." You're very welcome. I wear a Large Mens. 

Have I explained that Jesus was a sectarian? The occupation of the temple is a subject that we went over in part yesterday. Even the esteemed authors of the gospels using the nom de plumes of the apostles couldn't stop themselves from embedding the important sectarian fact well into the Christian myth. It mattered far too much, even then, and hasn't let up much in two thousand years, or even five thousand, hopefully a few thousand more. 

I was about to ask out loud how Jesus invaded our peaceful Sunday morning here, but then I realized: I was writing about politics in America. Has a Republican told you lately how much their party has done for The Blacks? You know, Lincoln. Just ignore everything since around 1964 and you will see the true truth of republicanism my dark-skinned friends. After that, you should know how to vote. Stop acting as if it's the Democrats that like you when really it's the Christians that hate you. You see, even Newt Gingrich has started to change his messaging. The way to care about Blacks is to pander to them as a voting block. Tell them they're stupid for voting Democrat. They love that. 

The tattle-tale atmosphere from one side meeting the brazen bigotry on the other, both competing to more adequately assign the label of neo-fascist to the other, both failing in almost the exact same way. In this atmosphere of mutual uselessness I almost invite the "big government" takeover that everybody is so in a fright about. None of these people ever seem to look at small government and ask the simple question: Are we sure that we want this? Local governments are free from all tyranny, you see. Just look around and pretend that your nation could be run the same way that your school district is. Village politics have served us so well in that imaginary America that never existed. 

I've tried to listen through the media coverage to determine why there are still so many that would support Trump and one need look no further than Hillary Herself, though that does not explain it in any complete sense. There is more. A few aspects of that support for Trump do become clear, but at such a tremendous cost in willful ignorance that it is and has been a lost cause all along. The Clinton side is only marginally better, but that's all that it takes. 

Though to be very clear: it is better. I hate to admit this. It pains me, but it is not reasonable to assume as many have tried that Clinton and Trump would both cause equal damage. They wouldn't. Trump's would be far more fun to watch, at first. The hideousness that Clinton will unleash will be a set of concealed acts as any president can possibly pretend to function under the weight of. We'll have no way of knowing who was the most secretive of the presidents of the last 40 years. All of the presidents since Nixon have learned the painful lessons of how best to govern. Clinton must have a coven of Kissingers hidden away somewhere. 

One gets the feeling that this may be the last time America dodges its own bullet. It may be among the last they openly laugh about, once it all seems over. This rise in race-specific nationalism and religion-based bigotry began its most recent push right about the time the Palin nightmare hit the big screen, which coincided neatly with Obama's first victory. Coincidence? The 2010 elections should have warned everyone what was coming, but that was not the effect that it had at all. Republicans have wished for a return to a time of more well established troubles, a pre-lapsarian balance of white over black. The Democrats are more eager to replace those old troubles with some branded new ones. 

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