1trivial/not-trivial
Like most people in this Empire, I had to wait until the next day to discover that a Black celebrity male had raped and beheaded a smaller Black celebrity male, onstage, during The Oscars. The instigating incident was a “joke” the smaller Black celebrity male made about the larger Black celebrity male’s wife’s appearance… specifically, her hair… despite knowing that Black females are, in general, particularly vulnerable / self-conscious about that specific aspect of their physical presentation, given the culture’s longstanding Standards of Desirability. The larger Black celebrity male’s response to the joke was described by many as “riveting” and a “war crime” and a “#MandingoMoment“. Snowflakes of all ages agreed that the unexpected violence, perpetrated at the very altar to the most violent art form in history, the art form reflecting/ instructing the psyche and foreign policy of a supremely violent culture, was unacceptable. Sickening, in fact. Merkin Muffley Tweeted his shock and disgust. The rape and beheading of the smaller Black celebrity male (whose professional shit-eating Satchmo grin remained in place during the grisly 3:23-minute spectacle) sent a subliminal reminder, to smaller men everywhere, to think twice before mocking a larger man’s wife’s physical appearance to that larger man’s face, even if the wife in question is Black and the larger Black male’s natural responses appear to be held safely in check by surrounding Liberal Celebrities who co-sign the mockery*. The outrageously violent spectacle not only taught smaller males everywhere a potentially life-saving lesson in etiquette but also functioned as a psychic EMP, erasing everyone’s recent memories of dozens of White Celebrities kicking the shit out of paparazzi with no loss of fan approval/ admiration (out-of-court settlements notwithstanding). To quote a White Celeb fan’s comment on that phenomenon: “I can’t really blame the celebrities that beat up the paparazzi. Most of them are very disrespectful and have no idea of boundaries.” The raped and beheaded smaller Black celebrity male professional comedian with the trademarked shit-eating Satchmo grin, who rose to prominence making Black People seem even funnier to White People, certainly facilitated an unforgettable tutorial, for the Snowflake world, re: boundaries. Several newly-industrialized nations, with third-rate armies, expressed interest in invading North America given the “soy-softened” hysteria Tweeted by wide-hipped American males after this dramatic incident at The Oscars. The alleged probable fact that a Russian reportedly (definitely) wrote the fatal joke is being investigated.
*A roomful of celebs laughed at the woman’s baldness; hard to imagine them laughing at a fellow celeb’s fatness, blackness, blindness, big-nosedness or loss-of-looks or even at, say, John Malkovich’s baldness or Ben Affleck’s rug, eh? Imagine Chris Rock aiming a little joke at Ben Affleck’s rug. Chris Rock knew who he could cross the line against but not what would happen as a result, making the mistake of trying this joke fifteen years before subcutaneous chips are capable of disrupting anger-path neurons.
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2crucial cameltoad caveat
Q: Why are all Digital Currencies Evil?
A: Because whatever Gateway Drug you start with… Bitcoin, Ethereum, CamelToad… and no matter how “impervious to Government control” that tech is… you will eventually be forced to convert to a widely-accepted Digital Currency for all the major goods and services you need to acquire. It’s like the Internet: remember how, like 15 years ago, it seemed that the possibilities were “infinite”? Yet, now, if you want to post a video that more than 20 people will see, you’re forced to use YouTube? And, now, as well, if you want to have a Social Media experience connecting more than a few people… how many options do you have? Three? Four? You’re forced to go to a branch of one of the Authoritarian Monopolies. Meaning you’re forced to follow Authoritarian Monopoly Rules (which are subject to change according to Authoritarian Monopoly whims) and the Authoritarian Monopoly can and will Deactivate your Participation/ block your Access if you’re too naughty (I’ve seen it happen).
So: do you think Digital Currency will be any different? They have learned to use the super-slick trick of Incremental Change to suck you in and trap you.
A Digital Currency that nobody else is using will do you no good, and TFIC (the fuckers in charge) can trigger mass migration, from or to a socioeconomic convention, with the flick of a Legacy Media switch. Next thing you know, you’re using DESPOT-COIN, with no other options, because you foolishly gave up your physical cash (like I foolishly gave up my vinyl for a streaming service). With Digital Currency, their control is ABSOLUTE. TFIC will tell you where to shop, what to buy, how much to buy… and they will turn it off if they feel like it, too; they won’t need weapons to force your compliance…. (if they crash the economy, we Serfs all suffer together: if they turn off your Digital Currency, you suffer alone, which is far more terrifying)…
Hey, no more Police State! Welcome to the Pet Owner State!
Progress!?!?
Fight Digital, defend Analog, with all your stubborn might. Never forget: YOU are Analog. You need Analogue Cash in your pocket.
Analog is much (much) harder to erase.
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3linguistics
Just because you have come up with a catchy term to disparage accusations of hypocrisy (“Whataboutery”), it doesn’t mean you can use that term to answer or neutralize accusations of hypocrisy. In fact, it would be quite surprising if one word were capable of neutralizing anything.
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4″EAT THE RICH”? A singularly unappetizing suggestion
OLIVIER ZAHM — So Pacadis became your columnist. Did you get along well with him?
VINCENT DARRÉ — Yes, but he was disgusting — so dirty! With Pacadis it was always a hassle. He had this habit of taking a drink from your glass. He didn’t have teeth, just these horrible stumps, so you’d be disgusted and leave him your glass. His hair was gross and he was scruffy — like an old squid. One evening we went to his house. He’d taken in a guy who was just out of prison and who wanted to kill himself. When we got there the guy had locked himself in the bathroom and was going to drown himself in the tub. There was water everywhere. Poor Pauline had to sponge it all up. She got red blotches all over her skin because it was so dirty and greasy everywhere. Another time we took Pacadis home. We’d all gotten high — but he had pretty much OD’d. We called a doctor who told us to hold his tongue so he wouldn’t suffocate. But he disgusted us so much we held it with a little spoon so we didn’t have to touch him — when he was lying there dying. We laughed more than anything. Then the doctor arrived and saved him. He told Pacadis that after five overdoses he would die, but Pacadis said that it was about his 30th.
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5taunt
“Despite your best efforts, I am still a human. Can you say the same?”
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6unknown unknowns
(found this years ago; it should give us all pause)
“Q: Gardening That’s Too Organic: Gardening has always been a favorite pastime of my wife’s, and over the years she’s spoiled me with delicious home-grown fruits and vegetables. Last year she decided to go organic, which is harder than I would have thought. She’s the type of person who likes to figure things out on her own, and trial and error is her favorite learning method. Last year she tried using horse manure as fertilizer, and didn’t like the resulting weeds. This spring she’s decided to try a different approach—she bought a chamber pot and says she’ll fertilize the soil herself. I refuse to contribute, and I think I’ll pass on the veggies as well. My wife disagrees with me but says she understands, but she also shares our bountiful harvest with the neighbors, and I’m sure if I spilled the beans on her unconventional technique, she’d be furious. Should I tell my neighbors what she’s up to?”
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7this foul creature and his Fabian allies
Harari is working for “Elite” Genocide Enthusiasts. These people have been dumbing down Duh Masses for generations, in order to justify exterminating Duh Masses for being too stupid to live, and the test Duh Masses are failing, in order to justify the extermination, is the extermination itself: if you’re so stupid that you fail to notice that you’re being exterminated, goes the reasoning… which is how Psychopaths see it. Psychos tend to justify their cons, frauds, life-savings-destroying-swindles, drugged-rapes, Borgia-poisonings, and so forth, in precisely that way. But if they have to dumb you down in order to “justifiably” exterminate you for being too dumb, is the “improvement” of the gene-pool really the goal or an alibi for super-sickos who love the notion of mass-killing and, unfortunately, are allowed to acquire enough power (paging Madeline Albright) to see their sexual fantasies of culling-carnage realized?
The quote referenced in the image deserves scrutiny: unenhanced humans will become useless to whom… themselves? Their families, friends, lovers, neighbors? They will become useless to Harari’s bosses. He’s presenting the bald-faced prejudices of the super-wealthy (who despise us, The Serfs) as some kind of pitiless fact of progress and the sleight-of-hand only works if we aren’t really paying attention; it only works if you swallow the tacit premise. What will an “enhanced” human be? Nothing special: a Serf who’s been chipped for easy tracking and possible (as the tech advances) control. An “enhanced” human won’t be smarter, faster, stronger, or live longer. It’s a pernicious bait-and-switch and it’s targeting the young and naïve, exploiting idealism for very specifically Fascist goals. Even worse: statements like Harari’s support, subliminally, the very evil proposition that you have to be “useful” in order to deserve Life. Who decides this? Do these bastards think they’re gods? Yes, in fact they do.
8rule of thumbs
9the righteous re-print
You know what your problem is? I’ll tell you.
You’re against the psychopaths at the top, their ostentatious topiary and landing-strip-long yachts and silly cotillions and Royal Ascot hats… but you’d rather have a finger broken than attend a WWE, or NASCAR, or Blake Shelton event. Bon Jovi’s greatest hits aren’t even a guilty pleasure for you, they are Kryptonite, they are anathema, and so are Taylor Swift, Kanye, The Voice, Dancing with the Stars, anything to do with the Kardashians, TMZ, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, the pledge of allegiance, Fifty Shades of Grey, Baptist Mega Churches, et al: ugh.
The blatant but far-from-often-enough-remarked-upon joke of Life is that the awful, kitschy, idiotic and literal-minded tastes of the Ruling Classes (“Put more gold on it! Make it bigger!”) are a mirror image of the tastes of the so-called Under Class (“Make it bigger! Put more gold on it!”)… so where do you fit in?
On your fine and tiny island of the Nuanced Aesthetic, having the occasional peep, through disgusted binoculars, at the stridently vulgar Mainland, with its seasonally bombastic, flag-waving extravaganzas and daily, bear-baitingly cathartic Reality Shows: what’s it like? How isolated do you feel? You’re a Mutant Serf: a middle, or working, or under class Culture Snob. Your values are not materialist; Power and Money are not only not your gods but merely artifacts of pre-sapient primitivism, in your opinion, regrettably enshrined by an atavistic media culture that quite often, even as you sneer at it, scares the piss out of you.
The term “rock star,” used as an adjective, probably sets your teeth on edge. As do “cray-cray” and “homeland” .
So what the Hell are you?
A walking contradiction with her/his head held high and a certain ingratiating nervousness when out and among the Bon Jovi, or Snoop Dogg*, devotees in the city or neighborhood you’ll never have the money to move out of. And, yeah, you also display a certain condescending wariness (or even Species Antipathy) toward the humorlessly Rich bastards you’re forced to interact with on the job or at (say) the Art Gallery or Museum. Yes, many of The Rich have been groomed and coddled at exclusive institutions, tutored in the superficial graces, to inherit temporal power (or to operate Art Galleries), but no depth of a trainspotter’s crammed “knowledge” of Art History justifies the crime against reason, taste, beauty and Humanity that is a two hundred twenty thousand dollar watch (“free shipping”), or five hundred dollar gourmet jelly beans or fifteen million dollar Debbie Wingham heels**. Genghis Khan would blush.
The Rich and Poor understand each other all too well (ironic envy and grudging admiration and genocidal urges, expressed toward the Other, on both sides) because, face it, The Poor, given enough money, would easily become The Rich and The Rich, deprived of money, would effortlessly become The Poor. Money or no money, you, on the other hand, are a Culture Snob, with your shrinking canons of exquisite books/ paintings/ film/ music/ architecture.
The Queen of England is the global flagship celebrity of the landed gentry and The Queen likes to watch horse races wearing pimp hats. The Queen is a grinning Philistine with an IQ of 99 and you, with so little wealth or influence, look down on her. You’d run rings around her in a debate, any debate, pick the topic, name the word-game: she’d be huffing and red-faced in ten minutes. Your granny could’ve wiped the floor with The Queen on University Challenge and you could have wiped the floor with your granny but you and your granny combined are worth less than The Queen’s least-favorite Corgi’s oldest unburied sun-dried shits in the eyes of The Rich and The Poor alike. The Rich hunt pheasants and foxes and The Poor hunt deer and squirrel whereas you loathe guns. You feel twinges of guilt eating a free-range hamburger. You are poor or even catastrophically poor (give or take a medical emergency or two) but not of The Poor. Certainly not of The Rich.
Trapped between.
You never did the Macarena or touched a Fidget Spinner.
Where did you come from? How were you made?
You’re like an Oxpecker bird who knows what an Oxpecker bird is. A shabby-genteel Oxpecker on the Culture-Hippo’s back. Very picky about your ticks.
Did you cry when Lady Di died or smile about The Royal Wedding or break the Internet clamoring for a glimpse of Kim Kardashian’s ass? Do you have heated arguments with family or co-workers about People Magazine’s annual Sexiest Man Alive list? Do you clear your schedule for the day of the State of the Union address or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar TV special or The Oscars, The Grammies, The Emmies or Wrestlemania?
Would you pay half a year’s salary to lunch in a room with Warren Buffet?
Perhaps you fantasize about deposing the top of hegemony’s brutal pyramid and installing some cool, clean, egalitarian Council of Elders, or something Sci Fi like that… but The Poor frankly want to replace The Rich with themselves. The Lottery is the Poor man’s ticket to Revolution: do you or do you not know this? The Poor want nothing to do with your fucking Council of Elders (aka Communist) scheme, which is why The Rich now actually use The Poor as a mile-thick, continent-long, kilometer-high firewall against the distant threat of your feeble (noble) intellectual incursions.
You’d think it would be in The Poor’s own best interests to abolish private property: ha. You’d think The Poor would, by now, have figured out that Poverty doesn’t have to entail Ignorance, self-destructive Violence or self-abnegating fealty to the tacky notion of conspicuously consumptively Mind Boggling Wealth: ha. That’s how touchingly out of touch you are.
Yes, there will be a Revolution but come that Revolution, you, not The Rich, will be consigned to the dustbin of History.
Unless… ?
(Embraces mirror).
* these are outdated references, I know, but would you get more current ones?
**actual prices
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10dept of corrections
“Libertarians at heart tend to just want the nice orderly society that white people used to have.”
I love that fantasy! I love, in general, when crypto-Right Wingers with zero knowledge of history riff on the rosy dream of a long-lost Euro-Eden, where White people got along without class struggle, violence, rape or theft. Reading a little Foucault on the grisly bloodletting of Europe’s 15th-19th century penal systems, or perhaps just learning a little about the Irish or Italian gangs of 18th and 19th century New York might enlighten you:
“one of the most feared (among the Irish gang the) Dead Rabbits was “Hell-Cat Maggie,” a woman who reportedly filed her teeth to points and wore brass fingernails into battle. While the Rabbits mostly dabbled in petty crime, they were also famous for the events of July 4, 1857, when one of their street fights with the Bowery Boys turned into a bloody riot that killed a dozen people.”
Filed teeth and brass fingernails on that 19th century White Girl: sounds pretty “orderly” to me. Or, hey, how about that prosperous, dinner-jacketed, bossa nova era of Classy White Bourgeois Supremacy, before the Civil Rights struggle ruined everything… the Golden Age of 1960? Well…
“The Irish Mob War is the name given to conflicts throughout the 1960s between the two dominant Irish-American organized crime gangs in Massachusetts: the Charlestown Mob in Boston, led by brothers Bernard and Edward “Punchy” McLaughlin, and the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville (just north of Boston) headed by James “Buddy” McLean and his associates, Howie Winter and Joe McDonald. It is widely believed that the war began when George McLaughlin tried to pick up the girlfriend of Winter Hill associate Alex “Bobo” Petricone, also known as actor Alex Rocco. McLaughlin was then beaten and hospitalized by two other Winter Hill members. Afterward, Bernie McLaughlin went to Buddy McLean for an explanation. When McLean refused to give up his associates, Bernie swore revenge but was soon killed by McLean in Charlestown City Square.
The war resulted in the eradication of the Charlestown Mob with its leaders, Bernie and Edward McLaughlin, and Stevie and Connie Hughes all having been killed. George McLaughlin, the one who started the war, was the only one who survived by being sent to prison. McLean was also killed, by Charlestown’s Hughes brothers, and leadership of The Winter Hill Gang was taken by his right-hand man, Howie Winter and mentor, Joe McDonald. The remnants of the Charlestown Mob were then absorbed into the Winter Hill Gang, who were then able to become the dominant non-Mafia gang in the New England area.”
Hey, but let’s not focus on Irish Americans, who weren’t even considered “White” by Eugenic Racists of the era, let’s hearken right back to one of the wellsprings of post-Teutonic Whiteness… the Brits:
“The Forty Elephants, also known as the Forty Thieves, were a 19th-century all-female crime syndicate who were based in the Elephant and Castle area of the city. They specialized in shoplifting and smash and grab raids and were first mentioned in newspapers in 1873 although they are believed to have existed since the late 1700s. They worked alongside the notorious Elephant and Castle gang, a sprawling, powerful army of hardened male criminals who effectively ran the south London underworld. The Elephants were tightly run and neatly organised, operating a collection of cells whose activities extended across London and into other cities. They mounted carefully executed raids on London’s West End shops, wearing specially tailored coats, cummerbunds, muffs, skirts, bloomers and hats sewn with hidden pockets, which they would use to plunder thousands of pounds worth of goods in a matter of minutes. In the 20th century, they began using high-powered cars to outrun the police and would use the rail network to launch raids in other towns. Their most well known leader was the notorious Diamond Annie. Annie was born in Southwark in 1896 and was the gangs undisputed queen by the time she was 20. Annie proved to be a highly effective leader, dividing the gang into cells to simultaneously ransack multiple shops across the city. To the police, she was “the cleverest of thieves”. Her nickname came from the powerful punches she delivered with her diamond ring studded fists. The gang was also capable of shocking violence and guarded their territory jealously. Any thieves found to be operating on their turf were forced to pay a percentage of their takings and those who refused were often kidnapped and badly beaten.”
If only we could go back to that wonderful time before Blacks ruined everything …
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11
“I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the natural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same. And nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times persists in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in battle—for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious reasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who do not care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons bearded men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted till he died.” —Ambrose Bierce, “A Cynic Looks at Life”, 1912
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12Freudeschaden
The problem of the Nazis, for us, here, regarding the “intelligentsia,” was how much of the modern avant garde, that proto-entrepreneurial wing of the “intelligentsia,” was a response to Nazism, not as a critique but a competition; the problem is how many sadomasochistic upper-middle class imaginations the Nazis clumsily inspired to surpass them. You can’t really rightly call these psychos (Harari, Schwab, Fauci, Gates, et al) Nazis or Fascists because they are Fascism-Improvers. Doesn’t quite spring from the mouth with the satisfying fricative propulsion of FASCIST!, alone, and you can’t call the Fascism-Improvers FASCISTS! in the same sense you can’t call Christians Jews. The oedipal avant garde corrects and poeticizes and smirkingly chides Nazi practise for its lack of guile, of finesse, the lack of self-control or a sophisticated (“Arbeit Macht Frei” was the thudding-best they could do) sense of humor. This is how A MAGNIFICENT PRELUDE TO THE ART OF TOTAL CONTROL should look, feel, sound, they seem to argue: there should be redemptive pain (redeeming the pleasure the auteur takes in the contemplation of pain) and domination but not a vulgar excess of deaths…. the killing should be self-disciplined, minimalist, thoroughly explicable and clean. There should be graphs and bullet-points and algorithmical models. And in place of the Jews the subject of extreme and irreversible exertions should be The Helpless: because: why, specifically, Jews? Don’t The Helpless make a bigger (yet easier) target? Think of Robbe-Grillet’s dispassionate strangler in Trans-Europe Express, or all the heroines in Godard who, at the film’s climax, take a bullet… like a ballerina.
Wouldn’t African ballerinas make more sense?
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THE IMPERIALIST 