Category: PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS

BECAUSE THEY SAY WHO'S SMART AND WHO ISN'T, BITTER LAUGHS, HUXWELLIAN, it's okay, kids, i'm black, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

(J)WOKE  J(W)OKES  and THE BEASTS

Steven Augustine

The doctor  tells his patient “I have good news and bad news.” The patient says, “Tell me the bad news first, doc.  I can take it.” The doctor says “Well, after an exhaustive battery of expensive tests, I’m forced to conclude that I  no longer have the slightest excuse to charge you massive amounts of money for supposedly treating the terminal disease that  I previously jumped to the conclusion you may conceivably have begun to suffer from.  Without an excuse to treat you,  this also means no juicy kickbacks for needlessly exposing  you to incredibly toxic drugs that would  guarantee … Continue reading (J)WOKE  J(W)OKES  and THE BEASTS

PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, the lash or the cuddle: reviews, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

A BAD NOVEL WITHIN THE BAD NOVEL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR: A REVIEW and WARNING

Steven Augustine

Art-Making is a compulsion, when it is pure, and maybe that’s regrettable, but who are we to complain when the results can do so much to amplify the pleasures of existence? It’s my theory that you can judge the purity (the genuineness) of Art-Making according to the extent to which it’s accompanied by the parallel (perhaps also regrettable) compulsion of Truth-Telling. Great Art is an aestheticized Truth-Telling and Lie-Telling “Art” (a lá Disney) is not really Art at all but high craft at its best. So much of the greatness is in the capital-T “Truth”. But there’s the problem: Lie-Telling … Continue reading A BAD NOVEL WITHIN THE BAD NOVEL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR: A REVIEW and WARNING

MURKKA, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

JUST SAYIN’ : A FOOTNOTE or “A TOUCH OF IRONY”

Steven Augustine

So imagine a Central American nation (with a history of political assassinations) in which the former head of the Secret Police runs for office, as the Vice Presidential candidate, alongside an airhead actor running for President, and wins. Soon after this Vice President makes it into the number two spot  (the next in line for the position of President if anything lethal or incapacitating happens to the standing President), an attempt is made on the standing President’s life… and it’s reported (without much fanfare) that the would-be assassin is acquainted with the Vice President’s family;  even better: let’s  say the would-be … Continue reading JUST SAYIN’ : A FOOTNOTE or “A TOUCH OF IRONY”

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JUSTICE with a SMALL “j”

Steven Augustine

Several long-time readers (aka very strange people to whom I can usually relate) have contacted me about the “shock” election. They expect me to be ranting about Trump. What I say about all that is… A BUFFOON ran against a WAR CRIMINAL and the BUFFOON won. It’s really that simple. Neither candidate was less than laughably horrific,  although, between the two, Clinton (one half of one of the most corrupt couples in American history, if not the history of “The West”) had the bloodiest track record. Billary’s track record is bloodier than 20 Macbeths; blooodier than 100. Even a cursory … Continue reading JUSTICE with a SMALL “j”

DISNEY SYNDROME, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICSLeave a comment

On Wisdom and Satire (from 2010)

Steven Augustine

The most effective form of education is marketing. And the most effective form of marketing is disguised as wisdom. I write “disguised”, there, as though “wisdom” is an absolute, and absolutely positive, value. But what is it? It’s not a stable body of knowledge, it’s a subjective, essentially conservative category of opinion. “Wisdom” was Ronald Reagan’s shtick; the presumption being that, at his age (and position) he just knew certain things… don’t worry, I’ll take care of it: you’re still too young to know. Reagan was beloved by Americans on both “sides” of the Left/Right pseudo-dichotomy. The concept of “wisdom” … Continue reading On Wisdom and Satire (from 2010)

DISNEY SYNDROME, HUXLEY ORWELL INC, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THE STENCH OF THE NORMALLeave a comment

IT’S GREAT TO HATE (sometimes)

Steven Augustine

An early sign that the culture has entered a grim new phase of propaganda-enfeebled herdthink, in which “feeling” trumps thinking (as though feelings literally originate in the heart while the brain, that elitist seat of mere cognition, should be avoided at all costs), was the hosing-down we all got, some time in the 1990s, with all that Positivity bullshit. I can see Bill Clinton’s sinister, duping-you grin as I type the word. I can see that vacuous fauntlet Prince shaking his ass to it. People felt “empowered” to reject and avoid any and all Negativity while embracing  any and all … Continue reading IT’S GREAT TO HATE (sometimes)

BITTER LAUGHS, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICSLeave a comment

From the Dept of Utterly Ridiculous (albeit possibly professional) Bullshit

Steven Augustine

You may or may not be aware of who Cass Sunstein is, or be familiar with the material with which he’s earned the tingling spines and risen hackles his name triggers among members of Informed Paranoia’s cognoscenti, but the fellow is an old hand at mind games on the national scale. In 2008, Sunstein earned his Totalitarian wings by authoring a paper suggesting all manner of online shenanigans (including the hiring of operatives to troll chat rooms and forums with anonymous disinfo, aka, spreading “cognitive dissonance”) in order to disrupt these pesky Conspiracy Theorists. “Conspiracy Theorist”, of course, replaced “Commie” … Continue reading From the Dept of Utterly Ridiculous (albeit possibly professional) Bullshit

PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, TASED BY TRUTHLeave a comment

LINCOLN WITHOUT FILTERS

Steven Augustine

  I was looking through my notebook and found the following text from last year; I’m not sure which book it’s quoting ; in fact, I’m remembering now that this is from a webpage in which its author reviews and cites a book about Lincoln). What’s important is the propaganda-free picture of Abraham Lincoln it gives us (often citing his own words). We have been fed nothing but nonsense about Lincoln about everything from his youth to his marriage to his execution. Only bits and snatches of the Truth (the bits he himself uttered or recorded for posterity) are clear … Continue reading LINCOLN WITHOUT FILTERS

CRUSH THIS MEME, FUCKING SHIT I REALLY REALLY HATE, LIZARD BRAIN, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THE STENCH OF THE NORMALLeave a comment

HOW THE BULLSHIT WORKS

Steven Augustine

Under a “Liberal” White House, the only dissident voices are “Conservative”; under a “Conservative” White House, the only dissident voices are “Liberal”… which is the result of the adolescent impulse of “loyalty” inherent to the football-team model of Politics (just one moment of rational reflection should lead us to consider the improbability of the “Democrats” always being right and the “Republicans” always being wrong, and vice versa). But it gets worse: the “Liberal” dissidence under Bush, I noticed, was much, much quieter than the “Conservative” dissidence under Obama. When I was a kid, the loudest voices against LBJ (Dem) and … Continue reading HOW THE BULLSHIT WORKS

BITTER LAUGHS, HUXLEY ORWELL INC, INSECTS MASQUERADING AS HUMANITY, JUSTICE-AS-RAPE-TRICK, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THE STENCH OF THE NORMALLeave a comment

TRAPPED IN A NOVEL BY HUXLEY ORWELL… or IN A PLAY BY IONESCO?

Steven Augustine

  During the incident, a neighbouring passenger told a flight attendant: “Look what he’s writing.” This story is really all about the Qunt sitting next to the doodling Christ-figure of this tale; the Qunt’s empowerment to seize on the most trivial detail in order to fuck another human up, hiding behind the Bully State. The Bully State is just the facilitator here. The real enemy of decency here is that deranged quisling Qunt who said, “Look what he’s writing…” (the perfect blurb for a banned book, while we’re at it). I understand what the Bully State gets out of oppression/ … Continue reading TRAPPED IN A NOVEL BY HUXLEY ORWELL… or IN A PLAY BY IONESCO?

POPAGENDA, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICSLeave a comment

I WANT TO HOLD YOUR (Invisible) HAND (of Fame)

Steven Augustine

Read between the timelines to see the Invisible Hand of Fame at work: “The Beatles experienced huge popularity on the British record charts in early 1963, but record companies in the United States did not immediately follow up the Beatles’ successes in the United Kingdom with releases of their own, and even once they began to do so, the Beatles’ commercial success in the US continued to be hampered by other obstacles including issues with royalties[ and public derision toward the ‘Beatle haircut’ “. (Please note: before media told the Yank public what to think about it, The Beatle look was a negative; Beatlemania was by no … Continue reading I WANT TO HOLD YOUR (Invisible) HAND (of Fame)

HUXLEY ORWELL INC, LIZARD BRAIN, PHILOSOPHICAL MINUTE, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICSLeave a comment

CHANGE THE PREMISE

Steven Augustine

Change The Premise. Things will begin to make sense when we Change The Premise. Example: The War on Drugs: no progress after decades… how can this be? And why do they concentrate on the bottom of the pyramid, giving small-time dealers and users merciless sentences? We scratch our heads!  It makes no sense! But if we change the premise from “the War on Drugs is a sincere effort to cripple the Drug Economy”…  to…  “The War on Drugs is actually an effort to go through the motions while A) keeping the prices high and B) consolidating a monopoly on the … Continue reading CHANGE THE PREMISE

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DOUBLE BLUFFERS

Steven Augustine

  If A. Swartz’s death teaches us anything, it’s about the fatal error of thinking: “they wouldn’t do anything extreme to me, it would be too obvious.” Because They are all about “obvious”… “obvious” is the new “mysterious”. Propositions that can’t be true because it’s too obvious that they’re true now represent more of the look and feel of the modern world than propositions that are merely false or merely true. And the brilliant Swartz, who made of himself a major nuisance by adding much to the successful effort to derail SOPA (and who threatened to metastasize into a full … Continue reading DOUBLE BLUFFERS