Déardaoin, Deireadh Fómhair 23, 2008

You're a Dim Bulb Herbie

The God-Fearing Real Americans of Nebraska surely hate terrorism more than the urban elites who are the most likely victims of terrorism, and will certainly not tolerate the anti-American argument that there are degrees of terrorism, regardless of the fact that this is true. Bill Ayers and the Rainy Day Bombers have never been proven to have killed anyone, which makes them more like ambitious vandals than terrorists in the way we understand them. Terrorism as a means of committing MASS murder is actually something quite new. One or two corpses and a dozen film cameras has been the more traditional historical goal.

But of course Real Americans couldn't care less about the varying shades of terrorism, and indeed don't seem all that concerned about the victims of terrorism. They're pretty up front about their contempt for New York and Washington D.C. after all, and the Real Americans' reaction to Hurricane Katrina reveals a mindset that is quite proudly indifferent to the suffering of non-real Americans. It may seem obvious that the trouble with terrorism is its tendency to kill and maim people, but when Queen Tracy Flick Palin of Real America referred to terrorists in the vice-presidential debate, she made a point to emphasize their hatred of America in that folksy fakecent of hers. (i.e. Obama would sit with terroists, who HATE AMERICA.) The real Americans' hatred of terrorism has little to do with the pain and suffering caused by terrorism, and the country that the Real American loves more than you is most certainly not a love for his compatriots, who have such a frustrating tendency to turn out as non-real Americans. No, the America that they love more than us is an ancestral father-god, a totem, and their hatred of terrorism lies in its symbolic show of contempt for that totem.

There is also the fact that the Real American is not terribly bright. He is in fact a bit too stupid to understand human existence very well, and so he needs a eternal river of enemies to keep his badger brain occupied. If life is nothing but defending the women and children from this endless stream of enemies, then it suddenly becomes okay to not know all of the things you don't know.

And so the Real American will hate whoever some talking pile of diarrhea on Real American radio tells them to hate, and Bill Ayers is the hot Other of the moment. Barrack Obama, you see, lives in the same neighborhood as Ayers. Indeed they have been in the same room and yes even spoken to each other. Their relationship goes so deep that they have served on the same educational board. Senator Obama, elitist that he is, dares to be more concerned about helping children than he is about keeping himself pure from totem-hating taint.

The right-wing's attempt to paint this relationship as anything more than a business acquaintance has been comedy gold. Michelle Malkin has produced a blurb from one of Ayers' books in which he states that Obama lives down the block; the same shocking expose that one can find in the Chicago phone book. Phyllis Schlafly has suggested that a President Obama would appoint Ayers as his education secretary; a position from which he would surely implement the long-dreaded mandatory unisex restrooms. The Real American quite naturally believes every bit of it. He is, after all, finally receiving the richly deserved kick in the ass from a society that is becoming ever more urbanized, educated, and accustomed to interacting with people from different backgrounds; and since Real Americans are spoiled children who will never blame themselves for their own failures, they have little choice but to faithfully believe in dark conspiracies at the highest level of the Liberal Elite.

And so the public reaction to Ayers invite to speak at dear old Nebraska U. was utterly predictable. You might think that an invitation to speak is something less than proof of agreement with whatever may be said, but you can just keep your damned elitist logic away from the Real American. He is the one who decides what truth is and he will dictate his truth to you. It is inarguable (or else) that universities are polluting pure young minds with liberal bias. It is inarguable (or else) that liberal reformers are all secretly violent revolutionaries in disguise. So here you have a former terrorist, (though of course there is certainly no such thing as a FORMER terrorist. Once you have defiled the totem you are forever cursed.) speaking at the liberal university, and that's all there is to that. There is no context, there is no detail, there is most certainly never any allegedly or maybe, or else. It was only a matter of time before this university, like every university, would prove itself to be insufficiently anti-terrorist. They have left the Real American no choice but to show his hatred of terrorism by threatening to murder a man with politically intolerable ideas.

There was never any doubt that Dave Heineman, Jon Bruning, and every other shat out pile from the state GOP machine that dreams of playing Senator someday as long as they stick to party talking points would condemn the invite*. There was never any doubt that once the heat was on the university would fold like, well, like the University of Nebraska. For their acquiescence Perlman and the gang will surely be rewarded by the Unicameral with a twenty percent cut in their budget to make room for tax cuts and nifty meth-fighting gear for the state patrol.

(* Though I should be careful to exempt Ben Nelson, who is a GOP shit pile already in the Senate.)

While the rest of the United States is showing a sudden and welcome loathness to allow the Real American to shrivel this country into the third world, it's heartwarming to know that the Real American will always have Nebraska, but wait. It goes without saying that any young professional with the slightest ember of intelligence or morality is getting the hell out, but we're being replaced by those damned Mexicans aren't we? A blessing in disguise I say. Not only will the real American be rid of all the people who are smarter than him and make him feel so very, very, small and weak, but now he can gorge himself on an endless supply of funny-speaking boogeymen.

And as he cowers in the corner of the village bar in his sleeveless Trace Adkins shirt futilely trying to wash down a lifetime of hatred, ignorance, and cowardice with a pitcher of warm Bud Light, the Real American can look back upon the time when he chased some damned hippy out of Nebraska, and feel something like the happiness that has always eluded him. Congratulations real America. You have, at the latest possible hour, in the last possible place, won the day. One small victory to keep you warm in the unmarked grave of history's discarded lies.

Dé Domhnaigh, Deireadh Fómhair 12, 2008

Purity of Essense

It seems that Ted Nugent has written a new book. This may seem strange to you, but it is something I can believe easily enough. The Prince of Artificial Penis has written several books before, and at any rate if someone were to tell me that a five year-old had written a book titled "Mommy and Buster Kill the Space Dragons" I would be inclined top believe that the book had indeed been penned by a child. So when I hear about a book titled "Ted, White, & Blue" and quoted as follows, it is clear that nobody but The Nuge could have possibly written it.


"War: “[I’d] instruct the US military warriors to do their job — win the global war on terror right now and eliminate all threats from all sources by any means necessary.”

Peace: “Each morning I bow down on bended knee in reverence to the Almighty and pray for good bombing weather. The history of mankind is one of war, not peace…’Give peace a chance’ will get you killed. John Lennon was wrong. Imagine that.”

http://www.celebitchy.com/14765/ted_nugent_for_president_the_nugent_doctrine/

"Imagine that?" Damn but you're a clever devil Teddy. All the same the second statement is a half-truth. While it's true that, throughout history, there has always been somebody fighting somebody else, and that large empires such as our own invariably find themselves involved in incessant low-level military housecleaning somewhere, the fact is that most societies are in a state of peace for a slight majority of the time, or at least long enough to do things like invent books and bombers. Any history book worth its salt will tell you whatever you need to know about Gutenberg or Tycho Brahe or Goethe or Kirkegaard or any other human being who did some pretty cool non war-related things. But it's quite clear that Ted was one of those kids in school who skipped all the faggy shit between The Crusades and The Black Plague.

Joking Aside, I might to be able to accept the gist of Nugent's "peace" quote as reflecting an intellectually valid conservative worldview; that the savage history of humanity is proof that there is a universal human nature that seeks to compete and dominate. That societies cannot possibly change this nature, in fact can only make things worse by trying to do so, and that the only thing to be done is to put societies in the hands of a ruling elite wise enough to recognize it's own will to power, and to channel both the social and the individual need to dominate into acquiring more material resources; either by inventing them yourselves, or taking them from somebody else.

But I really don't think that this is what Teddy is talking about. What really interests me is what he had to say about war: "eliminate all threats from all sources by any means necessary.” All threats? From all sources? Here we see the childishness of the right wing in its essential form, the difference between the old economics professor with a sour view of human nature and the modern Christmas Warrior who holds this bleak view of everyone else while seeking some cultural merit badge; Americanism, Christianity, what have you, to exclude himself from it.

What Nugent and his ilk (such as the executive branch of the United States government) seek to do is nothing less than to separate the inseparable, existance from vulnerability. If you are alive, than every other living thing is a potential threat. There are the obvious enemies, of course, and there is nothing wrong with direct self-defense; no more virtue in it, mind you, then there is in eating, shitting, or any other biological imperative, but certainly nothing wrong with it.

But that's not what "all threats from all sources" means. Your best friend might kill you one day for your car or your wife. Your mother could have easily tired of your whining one day while she happened to have a pair of scissors nearby. Whether Nugent is consciously aware of it or not, this is the meaning of "all threats from all sources."

I imagine that Nugent is familiar with the bonged-out hovel version of the Yin-Yang
concept, and so am I. There is bright, substantial, "masculine" life and strength, and there is dark, insubstantial, "feminine" weakness and death. Keep in mind that I'm only the messenger here, but the prevalence of witches, hags, and evil mother goddesses across different cultures is no accident. Man surrenders himself completely only in orgasm and when the strain of taking another breathe becomes too much. Death is perceived as female. She who gives birth gives death. Man perceives himself as creating life within the safety of his own private utopia, while the woman exposes life to the world of decay, her screams reminding him of the pain his child has to look forward to.

Become immortal. Tear yourself away from the woman inside you. Inoculate yourself from all threats from all sources, be they physical or emotional, or medical. But no, that won't do. Emotional threats are too insubstantial, medical threats too uncertain and you must become a perfect wall of substance and certainty. Turn everything you fear, everything you secretly desire, everyone who has ever denied you some sort of happiness, into The Enemy. Al Queda is not just one of the endless number of things that can and eventually will kill you. It is death itself. So is the man who raped and killed a child on the other side of the state, so are the boogeymen who would take your guns away and deny you the cheapest means of establishing yourself as complete master of your environment, affecting but unaffected.

("But you said death was female Josh." So I did, and I direct you to read up on The Lavender Scare, or the blatantly erotic description of Baligant in "The Song of Roland")

There has been a very successful rhetorical attempt by the right to frame differing views of morality into "clear standards of right and wrong" and "moral relativism."
That is, believing in something or not. But the real conflict between right and left here is the different understandings for what right and wrong are. Does the essence of good lie in being good towards others, or does it lie in hatred of and willingness to punish wickedness?

The latter view has obvious appeal for all aspiring immortal rocks. Evil is not some insubstantial malevolence or indifference towards others. If that were the case one would have to become vulnerable and womanly to recognize this dark shade and perceive it in himself. No. Evil is simply those who do evil. To destroy the murderer is to destroy murder. To destroy the terrorist is to destroy terrorism. When a right-winger says that those oppose the death penalty are not properly offended by murder, he is not making a cheap ad-hominem. This is what he truly believes. To support the existence of a murderer is to support the existence of murder.

It all makes perfect sense now. Billions of dollars wasted on SDI; well, would you rather just lay back and receive Russian missiles? Now we can blow them to bits with our lasers! The invasion of Iraq, the howls for Iranian or North Korean or Syrian or Venezuelan blood. Anyone who has the minutest chance of ever being a real enemy must be annihilated. All threats from all sources. Anything less is to accept mortality and uncertainty, to accept feminine death. Callousness towards poverty is absolutely essential. The poor simply haven't learned to unchain themselves from their yin (Think of all the stereotypes of the hedonistic minority or poor person) and become wholly invulnerable. At any rate, the most important step to becoming pure Yang is to never admit to any imperfection in "your" society. Physical invulnerability is worthless if you accept that there is any such thing as valid social criticism. What, after all, could be more insubstantial and womanly than the very concept of society? This so-called society is nothing but an extension of you own impenetrable
self. This is why you have every right to be offended by a department store that doesn't celebrate YOUR holidays, YOUR God, or YOUR perfect, impenetrable heritage as slavishly as you do. It is your society. You control it. You command it. Affecting but unaffected. To criticize society is to criticize you, to remind you of your own fallibility as a human, to remind you that you can not, after all, inoculate yourself from the world. Yin, woman, death, etc.

Needless to say, the ability to cling (Yeah that's right) to such a worldview requires such lacerating mental and emotional self-deception as to leave one functionally insane, and not the cute sort of insane, not Ted Nugent's loin cloth and longbow act. The constant stream of enemies that the perfect yang absolutely needs is the quiet, lurking malevolence of a sociopath who one day slashes his neighbor to death because she reminds him of the banshees who laugh at him in his dreams.

Dé Máirt, Deireadh Fómhair 07, 2008

Some Qutes From The Palin Visit

"Palin thrilled her Nebraska and western Iowa fans on Sunday with a 24-minute speech at the Civic Auditorium Music Hall. She led a familiar 'Drill, Baby, Drill!' chant, took a few shots at Obama and tried to portray her running mate, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, as the real candidate for change."

An attractive woman leads a crowd into a frenzy over "drilling." I would only be insulting the reader if I elaborated on this wouldn't I?

"The pundits were saying, 'Check out where she's going. She's going to Nebraska.' The pundits were saying, 'The only reason she would be going there is because they're scared. They have to shore up votes,' " Palin said.

I so wanted to reach into that TV and say 'no.' I'm going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska," Palin said."

Sooo, what exactly are you saying here governor? I must admit that I don't have cable and I'm not entirely sure what just what "the pundits" were saying, but I do know it really wasn't very much at all, perhaps a passing reference to the fact (yes) that Obama could conceivably win the Omaha metro district. It's a long shot, but who knows? There may be a brown man wondering around Millard on election day, forcing the locals to barricade themselves inside of their homes and never getting around to voting. "I'm going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska" Okay then. Did a political rally in the middle of your political campaign just happen to come up while you were on the way to "The Waiting Room"?

"Cheryl Martinez of Omaha called Palin 'down to earth.'

'She believes in things that basic Americans - normal Americans - believe in,' said Martinez, 41, a marketing manager and a Republican.

Let me be polite and civil here. If you are of the mindset that "normal=good", you are fucking trash and you can spend an eternity in hell getting fondled by demons with poor conversational skills, covered head-to-toe in tattoos of Ingmar Bergman characters and singing Armenian hip-hop at the top of their lungs. To take pride in imagining oneself to be "the norm" is the absolute lowest state of being that a so-called human can possibly "exist" in. It is perfect weakness, perfect treason to humanity, and the very essence of all that is wretched and disgusting, to be unable to justify ones' life without imagining a non-existent norm that all are beholden to and that "I" am that norm. Cheryl Martinez, 41, can bite my drug-addled borderline schizophrenic ass.

"Palin told the crowd that Obama's association with Bill Ayers showed that he is a man who does not "see America" as former President Ronald Reagan and others do as a force for good."

Well you see governor, "good" is an abstract ideal, while "America" is a tangible human institution. As humans we are free to create ourselves. There is neither any individual human nor any institution that human societies create that have any inherent nature or "force"; good, bad, or otherwise. The idea that one is morally obligated to consider one's own society to be "good" may seem like simple patriotism, but in fact it is the basest sort of nihilism. If we are inherently good, then anything, absolutely anything we choose to do, such as invading Middle Eastern countries at random, allowing strategically vital and culturally revered cities to drown, or denying access to medical care for the children of riff-raff, (You know, all those people who aren't "basic Americans")is automatically the right thing to do, no because of the nature of these actions and the suffering they bring, but because it is we, the magical "force for good." who do them. The moral cowardice of such an attitude should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent...

Oh right, I'm supposed to be pretending to address Sarah Palin. They hate us for our freedom governor.

http://omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10451571