Category: politics

motherfu—

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So, listen. I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist. I know everybody immediately assumed the White House Correspondent’s Dinner attempt was fake, and then immediately, in the interest of both sides-ing it or covering their ass from a litigious president, decided to pretend maybe it wasn’t.

I personally think we are right to be suspicious. Certainly, there’s arguments both ways. On one hand, President Rotting Orange has given the world more than enough reasons to hate him. Fuck all that shit about Democratic rhetoric turning the heat up – those folks are mostly cowardly, hedging their bets every chance they get. Donald, on the other hand, ratchets up to a hundred pounds of hateful rhetoric and bullshit every time he opens his mouth.

That said, maybe the hateful rhetoric spewing from his piehole (and his minions’ pieholes) is enough to spur someone to violence, in anger, in retribution, in a misguided attempt at justice (and justice does need to come, though preferably, not with bloodshed).

On the other hand, this administration and its orange cult leader have flooded the world with so many lies, so much bullshit, so much flagrant dishonesty, that you could hardly blame anyone for taking anything they say with a healthy dose of skepticism. We all immediately start asking, what are they really after? What are they really trying to do?

And that’s a hundred percent valid. You don’t fight fascism by letting it lie without examination.

Add to all this the fact that they are literally running the fascist playbook, as example after example after example of past authoritarian leaders will show you, and it’s pretty clear they’re looking for their Reichstag moment.

A moment, you’ll recall, was fake.

Butler was bullshit – a hundred percent staged no matter how you slice it. The coordination of MAGA influencer accounts and MAGA politicians who with fast came out with the same coordinated message of “build the ballroom!” within what? A hour, hour and a half of the assassination attempt?

Yeah, my credulity is strained, and it was essentially nonexistent before, again, because of the firehose of deceit that gushes out of every Republican and MAGA influencer’s mouth.

You are the boy who cried wolf, and despite the fact that no one believed you, you kept crying wolf over and over again. And unlike in the story, where eventually there was a wolf and no one believed him…

There’s still not a fucking wolf.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 987 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Against The Fall Of Night, Arthur C. Clarke (shades of 2001, this, before 2001 came to be)
Comics: Spartan: Warrior Spirit 4, Grifter 6, Zealot 3, Grifter/Badrock 2
Music: Flag Of The Shiners, State Radio

repetition

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I think it’s time I got more serious about writing and exploring kindness.

See, The Mungk took me to a dark place because I was thinking about trauma, abandonment and isolation the whole time. The Conflagration of Boor and Aghast made me angry, because tapping into the outrage machine and felt helplessness of modern politics can’t help but do so (also, didn’t help that Trump launched his reign of terror).

Father Lightning is, at its core, an exploration of kindness. So rather than bogging down in anger and hopelessness or despair, it was meant to re-centre me, and re-focus on compassion and empathy and treating people with kindness and respect.

But here I am, thinking about anger and trauma, again.

Going forward, no more pain and anger (well, some pain and anger).

The primary focus of this blog will be kindness, and everything that goes along with it.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2195 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Time For A Tiger, Anthony Burgess (when I started reading this, I thought it might be about an actual tiger, or a tiger as a metaphor for Malaysia near the end of British rule, but nope - a Tiger is a warm beer, and our protagonist spend most of their time not wanting to do anything but stop what they're doing and go have one.  Weird premise, Burgess.  I mean, I understand the sentiment, but weird thing to focus a book on.)
Comics: Voodoo/Zealot: Skin Trade 1, Zealot 1, WildC.A.T.S. 23, Team One/WildC.A.T.S. 2
Music: Five Songs And A Cover, Foo Fighters

that was kind of rude

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Like, the whole thing about Father Lightning is me exploring the nature of kindness, in the same manner I explored the concept of dualism in The Conflagration Of Boor And Aghast and trauma in The Mungk.

I don’t think I’m doing so well. The point of kindness is not that you’re a doormat; it’s also not to only be kind to those to whom it’s easy to be kind.

True kindness understands that sometimes the kindest thing is a direct truth; true kindness understands that sometimes, even those that would seem to deserve it the least are the ones that may need it the most.

It sets boundaries by shedding light on the reality of a situation; it understands that sometimes, in that enlightening, we may need to cast aside judgment.

I’m not sure I’m doing a very good job of that.

In this, I must be better.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2337 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Pebble In The Sky, Isaac Asimov
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 18-19, WildCats Adventures 6, Warblade: Endangered Species 3
Music: The First Four Years, Black Flag

taxi driver

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It’s been a while since I watched this. I forgot how uncomfortably disturbing it was; the perfect metaphorical encapsulation of America’s insanity, then and now.

Everything sick and venal about America, the glorification of guns and violence, of racism and corruption.

It is America, in its most unsettled base.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 740 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Call For The Dead, John Le Carre
Comics: WildCats Adventures 1-2, WildC.A.T.S. 15-16
Music: Firestarter, The Prodigy

can i just point out

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That the idea that somehow the market will fix things has to be one of the stupidest and most persistent lies of the past couple of centuries?

I mean, why anyone in their right mind would think that a system primarily based on a system of consumers and predators would ultimately end up being beneficial for the masses of humanity is beyond me?

The idea that a system of human interaction centered around greed and selfishness will somehow, though the magic of the invisible hand of the market somehow result in benevolence toward society and people as a whole is naive at best, and criminally stupid at worst.

And yet, supposedly higher functioning human beings, president, lawyers, Ivy league alum, they all pray to this deity called market, as though it’s God or something, instead of a collection of sociopathic hoarders who would cut their own mother for a dime.

I mean, what the fuck is that about?

Are these people so brainwashed or stupid as to actually believe that, or is it, as is much more likely, that they’re benefiting from it, so it’s worthwhile to them to continue to perpetrate the lie?

I strongly suspect the latter.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1454 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig (who inspired this post with an assuming that the market is magic and all-seeing, and somehow, not every bit as susceptible to corruption as government, particularly when it's in bed with the government, or the government is in bed with it - I agree with a separation of business and state, but for entirely different reasons than deregulation somehow being beneficial, and not an excuse for crass exploitation.  Theft is still theft, especially when it's called Wall Street or Silicon Valley, and that should be policed)
Comics: Gen 13 v2 72-75
Music: Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, The Soundtrack

march eleven

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I have a lot to say on kindness, capitalism, Donald Trump, and the true new order that needs to emerge if humanity is to survive.

Unfortunately, it’s a Wednesday and there’s book club.

Not my book club. A book being used as a club.

I have a lot to say on Jonathan Franzen.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1567 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 35-36, Gen 13: Magical Dream Queen Roxy 2-3
Music: Factory Showroom, They Might Be Giants

cinco de marcho

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I’m thinking about kindness today. It’s because I’m writing a book where it’s a large part of it, and while I need kindness to play a large role in my life and my person, I find I’m having difficulty tapping into it.

I think the past two-plus years of wallowing and anger have dulled my sense of compassion. I am an empathic being; I feel everything intensely. I am highly affected by other people’s moods.

But that makes me want to withdraw, not connect.

And what I need is connect.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 324 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 v2 26, Gen 13 Bootleg 16, Gen 12 1, Gen 13 Bootleg Annual 1
Music: February 26, 1994, Milan, Nirvana (the last of the bootlegs, I swear.  I think.  For now, anyway.)

there are times when i’m tired

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So. Goddamned tired.

How can this be a real world?

In what version of a divine being’s creation is this shit normal?

What kind of sick fuck would create something like this?

Only the cruel or the incompetent could build something so inherently awful.

Fuck you, God.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2479 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 v2 25, Gen 13 Bootleg 14-15, Gen 13 Interactive Plus 3
Music: October 30, 1992, Buenos Aires, Nirvana

yesterday’s point

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Yesterday’s post was identifying where I’d examined previously. I cover lots of little things in my smaller works, but the big themes of my life, I try to save for the canon.

The Mungk was trauma/fatalism.

The Conflagration Of Boor And Aghast is about tribalism and the pointlessness of dualism with substance, subtlety and consequence.

Father Lightning? It’s not going to be a tale of woe; or rather, it is, but there is, as there should be in all great novels of fear, a sense of humanity.

Of kindness.

Compassion.

I spent nearly a year wallowing over the hopelessness of it all with The Mungk. I spent over a year mired in the politics of mutual hate with Boor & Aghast.

It’s time for some higher focus.

It’s time to focus on a little kindness. A little compassion.

it’s time to make the world a little better place. Rather than navelgazing and moaning into the void, or raging against everyone who doesn’t agree with my side in mutually assured destruction, I’m going to learn how to be nice.

It may take more effort than I’ve got.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2506 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Comics: Gen 13 v2 22-23, Gen 13 Bootleg 11-12
Music: February 1, 1992, Melbourne, Nirvana