Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
The following is a message from the Socialist Leisure Party.
I’m sick of people living their best lives. Can’t you just be average?
I understand the impulse to be extraordinary. I lived the first five decades of my life with that impulse. I thought I had something special, something requiring me to be given space to create. I was living the drama of the gifted child, all the way up to age 50.
I’ve tried being arrogant. I’ve tried being humble. Yes, arrogance gets you more pie, but, as Dwight Yoakam says, “the pie don’t taste so sweet.” Arrogant pie is downright bitter. Humble pie isn’t as bad as they make it out to be in the proverbial world, the world of proverbials.
Listeners to this segment of the show have heard me aver many times that the people you have to watch out for are those with great ambition and great expertise. It goes deeper than that. People with ambition and drive have a vast carbon footprint. And not just carbon. They have footprints of any number of elements and compounds, including, but not limited to, plastic, aluminum, depleted lithium, 99% perspiration, chicken parts, mercury, latex, arsenic, methane, phosphates, acetic acid, essential oils, sputum, xanthan gum, and BHT to preserve color. A plethora of footprints. So many footprints. They’re the human millipedes.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the miraculous product of surgical enhancement, The Human Centipede. On this very show I compared politics to a human centipede. These, though, are the human millipedes. A human millipede is, like the Human Centipede, a collective entity, but made up of more people. It begins with a large head, and thereafter establishes its body, what you might call its “corpus,” or “torso,” or “thorax,” or “fuselage,” and attracts others to it, first with investment opportunities, then luring lesser human appurtenances with wages and, possibly, benefits. And so the human millipede forms: a big head, thorax, and myriad feet.
Of course, the head has the big idea. Sometimes it’s actually a good, helpful idea. Sometimes it is an incredibly horrible, destructive, murderous idea. But most often it’s merely an idea to take advantage of an absence in a market. Not an absence of something necessary, but of something that can be made to... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
In the fall of 1945, the United Nations began pursuing its often-failed mission of preventing armed conflict and aiding economic development in regions impoverished by earlier colonialism. It was a noble effort, and, despite its shortcomings – often blamed on the organization itself rather than the intransigence and bad faith of its members – it has in fact contributed to preventing a third World War, or at least to providing, during the low rumble of constant global warfare, an institution where diplomatic alternatives to violence can at least be entertained. One can only assume it’s better than nothing.
However, rather than welcome participation in a forum for discussing international affairs among the actual participants, some in the USA have viewed the United Nations as a kind of global government usurping the sovereignty of the world’s most active military power. It’s similar to the way Brexiteers kvetch about the EU over in England. Anything remotely unifying, that might challenge the hegemony of the dominant economic interests, is some kind of “committee” that will, by definition, design a failed animal. Unions, consumer-interest groups, boycotts, marches, climate conventions, diplomatic gatherings of nations – they’re all threatening to the iron fist of the world’s policeman, arms dealer, and number one destabilizer of regions.
Those with power want to remain in power, naturally. And part of power is appeasing the people, which requires concessions. But, as the powerful become greedier and more conservative, as the neoliberal consensus has taken greater hold among them, the concessions they’re willing to make in order to appear democratic are dwindling. It’s part of a trend.
Now, the Democratic primary season has just kicked off. The Democrat National Committee are looking for a savior. Who can excite people enough to get them on board against Donald Dump, but not get them so excited that the Democrats end up having to deliver actual change? If they go with someone like Biden, and he wins, and then does the same Democratic right-of-middle- of-the-road betrayal that Bill Clinton pioneered with his triangulation, then won’t the irate, put- upon classes make the Dems pay four years later, maybe even allowing Dump back into power.
No, the DNC reasons. If we can get the... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth, the thirst that is the drink.
I know Democrats are capable of being just as mendacious and self-serving as any human being, and have been, but the Republicans in the Senate are just stunning models of perfidy. Simply taken on their own terms, by their own standards, or ostensible standards, they’re outdoing themselves. Even taking the least flattering definition of the already disgraced label, “conservative,” they’re not coming close to measuring up.
It’s a scary night to think about how low a human being can debase himself. It’s crazy-windy tonight, strong wind swirling around us, sounds like my apartment building is being flushed down an enormous toilet.
I just watched a short video of a crowd berating Rudy Giuliani as he’s being escorted down the street by cops. “You’re a piece of shit, Giuliani!” I feel like videos like this are all I want to watch.
Now it’s morning, I’ve just finished a supply run for the axe-throwing bar job site. It’s still blustery outside, not as rollicking as last night, but a steady wind punctuated with gusts. It’s a gustery day, as famous Detroit weatherman, wisecracker, alcoholic, and Holocaust survivor, Sonny Eliot, might have said.
The morning finds Los Angeles strewn with detritus from palm trees, some fronds weighing upwards of 50 lbs. Such a piece of tree debris once came crashing through the cargo space window of my Subaru Legacy wagon. I was about 2500 miles away from the car at the time, thank fate.
Even now, palm crud is drumming intermittently on my car roof. It’s a shaggy city, raining its dandruff on us all. Out here, at the edge of the continent, the sunset edge, with Republican perfidy wafting its sickly stench across the land, I’m reminded of our nation’s dark roots, the ones we can’t hide no matter how much peroxide we use.
The first novel written here in what would become the USA was called Wieland, by Charles Brockden Brown. Remember, as I describe this, that it was written before the War for Independence, when this was still a land of people driving fence posts into the ground, every man had to drive his own fence posts into the ground, that was a thing men had to do. Mama wouldn’t do it for him. Everything was made out of wood. People were barely accustomed to science yet.
And here’s a guy writing a book,... read more
