Sunday, December 7, 2014

The State of the Blog

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Hey mikey. What's all this stuff you've been writing lately? What about liberal outrage and political injustice?


Just looking for some distraction
Yeah. I know. And you know what? I'm just tired of it. It's the same thing, over and over again. Think Progress is unreadable - they're writing the same crap they wrote five years ago. You even get the sense that Krugman is getting tired of shouting into the abyss.

Look. We have divided government. The only thing that prevents the US from becoming an utterly dystopian third world authoritarian oligarchy is that the Republican party has sacrificed any ability to win the White House in order to control the House.  But that leaves us where we are - radical right-wing extremists trying to turn the US into something ugly and unrecognizable, and a very thin line of non-white Democratic activists preventing them from going full on East Germany on what's left of the liberal democratic dream. The sickness is clear - what used to be fringe hate groups now have a stranglehold on the mainstream Republican party, and stand as gatekeepers for any legislative initiative. And the result of decades of Republican presidents and Democratic indifference is a Judicial System wholly invested in the movement conservative project, from the protection of the wealth of the 1% to the destruction of any kind of social safety net.

But mikey, you say - if we don't speak out, and continue to point out their lies and hypocrisy, the status quo will just continue unabated.

Meh. Show me some evidence we're changing anything. Here's the hard facts. The system is obsolete, antiquated, massively corrupt and hardened against democratic change. This - this toxic madness, this dysfunctional charade, this democratic kabuki - THIS system is the problem. And until we're willing to do what they did in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, in Hong Kong - until we're willing to die in the streets to regain some kind of systemic justice, it's all just noise and bullshit. And you know who enjoys the noise and bullshit the most? Yep - the wealthy and business interests that are reaping record profits while the people hurt. I'm mostly done shouting at them. Let me know when the shooting starts.

Hope. Belief. Faith. These are toxic concepts. They are us saying we recognize we have no agency, no control, no access to the process. They are saying we want change, but we neither believe change is coming nor do we have any idea how to effectively contribute to change.

Tell Me How This Ends


Seriously. Explain to me how we fix this. How we get back some kind of democracy, some kind of social justice, some kind basic human rights. The torturers went free. The thieves in the banking and mortgage industry went free. The cops that committed blatant murder in front of witnesses and video cameras went free. This is the world we created, or at least permitted to come into existence while we were distracted by big screen teevees, smart phones and American Idol. 

If you want to understand how pathetic we are, our system can't even be arsed to lock us up. In other nations the politically powerful fear the opposition, and they arrest them, they torture them, they imprison them. Here, they laugh at us. "Go ahead, whine" they are saying, "while we own all the power and all the wealth. Your pathetic tears mean nothing". And they are right - we can't change the system and they know it as well as we do. 

This isn't Ghandi vs. The Raj or even Mandela vs. The Apartheid regime. This is two very large portions of our population with vastly divergent visions for what America is and what she should become. And virtually no part of either of those visions is even remotely acceptable to the other side. Meanwhile, the media refuses to acknowledge the collapse of governance. They refer to it as 'gridlock', a kind of business-as-usual state of democratic governance, not a long term failure of the system itself.

So no. I can't keep writing the same stories, recording the same failings of an obsolete, massively corrupt and utterly co-opted system of governance. I can't learn anything from repeatedly describing the daily drumbeat of lies and hypocrisy. I can't convince you to abandon hope and act - but until you do, there is simply nothing new to say.
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13 comments:

  1. Yeah. That's part - I said PART - of the reason the Empire has gone kind of quiet. I have started no less than FIVE Fuck You Friday type posts, and gave up before I finished them, no matter HOW much Awesome Sauce I drank.

    So yeah, Turdwaffle is going to make Wisconsin a Right to Work for Less state. And the White Folks in BumFuck County cheer, because it is hurting Democrats and blacks and Milwaukee, even if it actually hurts them worse. They have never really gotten over the fact that Madison and Milwaukee and the unions are the gearbox that ramps up Wisconsin's economy. When White Flight killed the urban area's manufacturing, most of that went south, not to the rural areas. You fuckers still get to work yourself into early graves by the hell of farming, only to have your land sold for pennies on the dollar to AgriCombineCo leaving your survivors barely able to plant you. Suck it up, you fucking blithering idiots, you cheered this on.

    Yeah, i'm still angry, but what am I going to do? Maybe move to Playa del Carmen, they are building the hell out the area, and my style fits right in. Plenty of ex-patriates there, and lots of tequila. At least there, the corruption is right on the goddam surface, and the egregiously pathetic squeezebags running the show don't have lazy eyes and a weird kitchen-cabinet-inspired bald spot...

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    1. Of course, I could write about weird obscure bands, and have my favorite commenters shit all over THOSE posts....

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  2. The other thing about the Empire is that I'm busier than a no-armed zombie at a Mensa convention. I have two project, both of them about 100 residential units with associated parking and commercial spaces; one just received approval for a construction variance (yes, I am JUST that good, convincing plan examiners who never get fired for saying No to agree to a wood framed building at least one story taller than allowed by code) and the other is closing on land acquisition and partner contract in January, scheduled for a mid-2015 construction start. And maybe a project for some long time friends in the Republic of Madison in the near future....

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  3. Commenting here is much less...FRAUGHT... than writing a post. Heh heh heh...

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  4. Watching old MST3K episodes and ignoring Sportsball and doing code analysis and building section alternates. Yes the Office Rum is stocked....

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  5. Glad to hear you're still shambling. When you go quiet I worry that one of the neighbor kids got you with one of those flat, short-handled shovels. Hey, I've got a jones to shit all over somebody's obscure band post. Any thoughts? What about my Rick Springfield --> Matthew Sweet concept?

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    1. yeah, that concept kind of sucks. Springfield mostly pre-dated Matthew, and was much more in the basic-rock/pop tradition, than Matthew (look, i met him backstage at Shank Hall, I automatically get to call him Matthew) who is way more into the Big Star/ Strawberries/Cheap Trick/ Shoes mold. Yeah, there are some common points, but only in the way that the Refreshments have common points with the Allman Brothers.

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  6. the neighbor kids got you with one of those flat, short-handled shovels.

    Piffle. The neighbors KNOW that when they need shovels, I am the guy to ask. And I keep a fucking spreadsheet as to who has my shovels...

    I repurposed my spreadsheet that kept track of the LPs I loaned out....

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  7. Of COURSE Springfield pre-dated Sweet. I'm not suggesting time travel. I'm not even suggesting direct borrowing. I'm just thinking that there is a kind of a straight substantive line between them. There's a sensibility that leads me from one to another....

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    1. I would suggest that they re a bifurcation, that they both work backwards to the Move and maybe somewhat to Cheap trick. Sweet is WAY more involved with Big Star and the Strawberries, while Springfield is more in the realm of late- 70's basic pop....

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  8. Springfield is also a pretty-boy soap opera idol. Sweet, AFAIK, has only done a background lip-synch Laugh-In type thing to something he wrote for the Austin Powers movies. So there's that.

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  9. But enough w/ the seriousness. I couldn't agree w/ you more. I've been watching politics, especially the loons, for 50+ yrs. The same cretins repeating the same proven-wrong but never die fears & delusions, & the same real-world refutations, yada yada YADA, yet over that time the extremists have only gotten louder & further tightened their grip.

    FIngers crossed for Tunisia, which I heard had a semi-legit election, but what actually positive results have come out of
    Egypt, Libya or Hong Kong?

    The most telling evidence that it's hopeless is your observation that (rantings of certain elements aside) there are no real thought police; we are pretty much free to say what we want because not one word of it makes a dime's worth of difference.

    At least the forces of wealth &power are overconfident. That, & the element of surprise ...

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  10. Gee, and all I want* is part III of Gunfights that Changed the Rules.



    *Actually, I would like to live in a world where there was a modicum of justice but that would probably mean having to fight for it including getting tear-gassed, clubbed, and maybe shot.

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