Missing The Point (American Revelation XVIII, Five.)

 And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

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Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

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When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

I saw this last night.

Not going to lie, I didn't have "Elon trying to start crap with Cardi B" on my right-wing-dumb-shit bingo card.

I'm sick of this crap.

I'm sick of all these mediocre and spectacularly unintelligent white dudes who think being basically anything other than *Them* and being anything but a narcissistic selfish Bastard-flavored Racist Bastard Who Doesn't Care About Anything But Money is "Stupid" and that anybody else who believes anything else must be being paid off or told to say that stuff by some amorphous unknown parties or some such other Magic Words And Phrases so these motherfuckers can, ya know, not have to think about reality.

Reality in this case being that Cardi B is a black woman, what in the hell would she even get out of agreeing with Elon Musk??

More to the point, there's the whole issue that Muskrat can't seem to understand what words like "Authenticity" or "Empathy" even mean, let alone that somebody could rise from poverty to wealth on the basis of pure talent.

Of course, to these motherfuckers, being "Authentic" means reflecting their bigotries and little else.

This Billionaire shit is basically like the incestuous nobilities and royal families of old, at this point. I guess I don't get why, though. I mean, if you've lived your entire life in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially if you've lived all of it in the midst of the titanic changes since 1973 (the year I was born) or even more so, 1950 (the year my Mom was born) why wouldn't you understand how somebody could rise from nothing to being a famous rapper??

For fuck's sake we all lived through the fall of Communism and seeing whole nations freed from enforced poverty and totalitarianism going to capitalism, freedom, and some degree of wealth. Hell, we've seen some of 'em fight (Politically and in the case of Ukraine literally) to stay that way. We've also seen Russia fall back down that rabbit hole again. Is it so hard to comprehend that one person might rise up?

In America you are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.

I've never thought it was an accident or a coincidence that the rise of stuff like Rap music to being a big thing coincided with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall (not to mention the end of the Cold War more generally) and the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, and the increased freedom of expression that those events brought worldwide. I mean, fuck, the guy who did the main vocals on the SNAP! song "I Got The Power" was a US Army soldier stationed in Germany not long before he got that gig! 

I liked it a lot better when even Republicans could appreciate a world alive with endless possibilities, just sayin.'

Some of those acts were in fact pushed a little more toward worldwide fame by recently opened former East Bloc markets, just for example.

I mean, maybe it's just me but I paid attention in the late 1980's and early-to-mid-1990's when all that literally was the name of that entire game. I mean, one way or another most of those people learned how to sing in church, some like MC Hammer were even Christian artists or preachers and shit. A fair number of the early guys (like Ice T) served in the military. Some were actual criminals and drug dealers (Death Row records as an entire group, anyone?) and started rapping to get OUT of that life. Pretty much all these people had some kind of real job at some point.

I mean, I guess it's self-explanatory why somebody like Elon Musk wouldn't have the slightest idea what's going on with any of that. When Daddy owns an Apartheid emerald mine, about the only thing you can't afford to actually buy is A Clue.

Naturally, Trump's electoral ground-game that he pretty much outsourced to Elon is a Soup Sandwich.

Also, Elon has mostly used openly going full MAGA as an excuse to act out, though if you believe what his Transgender kid has been saying (and I do) Elon was really always this way behind closed doors, all the other shit was just an act.

It's about what I'd expect from somebody who, despite having spent most of his life here, managed to totally miss the damn point of America.

Being an occasionally-maniacal micromanaging asshole doesn't help if you never understood the actual assignment in the first place.

Anybody who knows anything has been saying the horse-race and the polls were all bullshit for awhile, and went from cautious hope a few months ago to pointing out and that under the radar it wasn't looking that close a few weeks ago to saying that all we gotta do is show up starting a few days ago, to now pointing out that if the numbers hold, we're doing exactly that and Trump is cooked.

Honestly, if Trump's own behavior in the field is any indicator, he seems to know it, too.

It's like I said back in July when this whole thing started. For every minute the whole Kamala Harris thing goes forward, Trump's eventual shitty little right-wing banana republic gets a little smaller.

Keep it going long and hard enough, maybe he won't have one at all.

Maybe we won't have to have an American version of "Tear Down This Wall" 'cause the shit will never get built anywhere in this country.

Maybe all you have to do is Be A Better Citizen and show the fuck up on Tuesday.

Think on that.

Maybe Republicans (of all people!) shouldn't have forgotten what the damn point of all this stuff was?

Reagan Wept.

 Слава Україна!

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Four

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran