All the bizarre and horrifying things he did are going to come back to us at random moments like half-remembered scraps of dreams.
"Am I wrong or did the president of the United States sit behind a truck just like a big boy and make honk honk sounds? Was that a real one or did I just ... OK he did? He did. Good. OK."
Now listen am I off here or did Trump make the joint chiefs pose for a fake situation room photo after all the shit was unplugged and make them pretend he was part of the successful op against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi while they all looked like they'd swallowed a live cat—he did! OK.
I know I dreamed the one where he stood framed dead center of a Kubrick-meets-John-Watters kitsch nightmare of fast food hillocks wearing a face that screamed "I'm a used car salesman who just murdered my wife and I'm about to shit my pants," that one didn't happen—what, really?
Now I *know* I'm making up the time he went to El Paso after a horrific gun massacre, turning a national tragedy into a gross photo op, capped by giving a shit eating grin thumbs up while posed with an infant orphaned by a gun policy he himself—WHAT?
Authorizing the brutality of protestors of brutality so that he could walk across the street and hold up a book he's never read so that conservative Christians would know that it was on their behalf that he had delivered the one thing they truly worship, which is state violence.
Fighting with the family of a fallen soldier ...
Fighting with a different family of a different fallen soldier ...
Giving Rush Fucking Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom ...
Suggesting that the reason for the mask shortages is because the medical professionals whose lives he is endangering are hording them ...
Gasping for air on the balcony, projecting a weak man's notion of strength, the horrifying implications of the phrase "one of the diers" ...
Pardoning Joe Arpaio, imprisoned for racist profiling, who ran concentration camps in the desert ...
The time he called Americans who died in war "suckers" and "losers" ...
Calling Haiti and African nations "shithole countries" ...
Selling access to himself at his gross country club for assholes ...
The unfathomable glee with which he and his pallid coterie of supremacist ghouls carried out the unfathomable cruelty of their family separation policy ...
Going to court to make the specific argument that children detained in his concentration camps should not have access to toothbrushes, soap, or other toiletries...
The time he trotted out his pale damp dead-eyed psycho killer of a senior advisor, Stephen Miller, to take a shit on the Statue of Liberty ...
The time when, upon being asked to repudiate Nazis, he told Nazis to "stand by" during a televised debate. apnews.com/article/electi…
The time he led them in a bloody insurrection to overturn an election he lost... fox5dc.com/video/887807
The time he lied to the nation for a year about the severity of a pandemic and a half a million people, disproportionately people of color, died. npr.org/2020/09/10/911…
The weird way he stands ...
The time he sabotaged his national pandemic response specifically because it would kill people from states where a majority of voters don't support him politically, which just so happen to also be disproportionally people of color. businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-…
Praising all the military dictators for being military dictators and all the killing ... politico.com/story/2017/05/…
The time he bragged about protecting a Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman from scrutiny after bin Salmon murdered journalist U.S. resident, and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by dismembering him with a bone saw, citing our arms deal. vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/d…
My book is about the tradition of American supremacy & the ways it shapes all of our lives, sabotages our natural shared society in order to steal all value from it for a few, makes others pay its unnaturally high costs ... and what we can do about it. armoxon.com/books/very-fin…
I find it useful to begin with art—with the idea that humans are art. The idea that to be a human is to be a unique expression of unsurpassable worth, whose worth is natural and inherent.
Focusing on this truth makes it easier to spot supremacy's anti-human lies.
These laws are *foundational*—literally, present at our founding. Our founding lies are: 1. We are not related to one another; a rejection of society 2. Life must be earned; a rejection of the humanity of others 3. Violence redeems; a rejection of one's own humanity
Well I'm given to understand that today & for a VERY limited time, our nation's political violence party is shocked—shocked!—to learn that we currently live in a world of normalized political violence, and would like very much to know who is to blame.
(link to essay in thread)
I'm kidding, of course. They've already decided who is to blame. It's the same culprit they hold at fault for every other real and imaginary problem in their lives: Everybody except them.
I think we all know the news by now. Yesterday in Pennsylvania, a gunman took some shots in the direction of the former president—the adjudicated rapist, 34-time convicted felon, insurrectionist, and daily fomenter of political violence, Donald Trump.
LOST is streaming on Netflix—an excellent time to revisit the show, using the viewing guide I'm publishing in my newsletter (link in thread).
Many think the story isn't coherent. I think it was. My lens is the one the show itself suggests: a dialectic of observation and belief.
This dialectic isn’t too tough to detect. There’s even an episode called “Man of Science, Man of Faith.” In a dialectic, the opposing ideas operate in concert with one another. While these ideas are oppositional within the artistic work, they aren’t opposites.
The main reason I want to do this is as an investigation of story—particularly an investigation the way I look at story. LOST is story that lends itself very well to investigation of how story does and doesn’t work.
I've been thinking of American conservatism—which has proved itself irreducible from American fascism—in terms of burdens.
I find burdens an apt metaphor, because christian fascists claim to worship a Jewish rabbi from antiquity named Yeshu ben Yosef (Mr. Jesus if you're nasty).
Interesting thing about young Mr. Jesus: He was very sharp-tongued with the politically influential religious hypocrites of his day. There's a whole chapter of him reading them the riot act, calling them whitewashed tombs and broods of vipers and blind guides etc etc.
It's a real hum-dinger that ends with Mr. Jesus saying he doesn't really see how any of them are going to escape being condemned to hell, and you should check out the whole thing, but today I just want to think about his open salvo, which is an amazing tee-shot.
I want to dig into this, since my book VERY FINE PEOPLE comes out tomorrow, and it's in large part about precisely this sort of polemic trickery in service of bullshit apologia of supremacy.
There's a slight of hand at the start that catapults us into the massive lie.
Let's do the slight of hand, first. The article presupposes to answer the question "Did Trump call Neo-Nazis and white supremacists 'very fine people'?
This is savvy if what you want to exonerate the comments, because it answers the wrong question, and dismisses the right one.
What Trump said is that there are "very fine people on both sides."
That would be the side counter protesting against the Nazis who organized a pro-Confederacy protest.
And then the side full of Nazis and those who found common cause with Nazis.
THE HUMAN PROBLEM
Last week an image went viral online. It was generated by a computer from the classic movie 12 Angry Men. It added no value, and it was being used for no good reason.
It's a perfect encapsulation of where our dominant cultural narrative has brought us.
It's my belief that things that provide positive value to humans are good, and that those who make good things should be compensated for it.
I also believe that people should have access to good things whether or not they can pay. It's the reason I love libraries, for example.
This strikes me as an appropriate way to organize society, provided that we believe society is meant to benefit humans rather than money, and that humans—being inherent generators of value and of limitless potential value—deserve the fruits of society even if they can't pay.