Defunding UNRWA: From Containment to Destruction / Laura Robson

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

When I have one of those bullshit jobs, I perform as if born to the work – that is, if anyone’s watching. But a job position is a character one puts on at the beginning of the day and takes off at the end. And the worse the job, the shoddier the disguise, and the quicker it rips, loses buttons, disintegrates, until I am indecently revealed as an imposter.

I don’t respond well to commands. I would emphatically not be a good soldier. I wish everyone else in the world could say the same. Aspiring to be a good soldier is not admirable. It might be necessary at any given point in history to be a soldier, and of course one ought to do the best one can within any circumstance one finds oneself enmeshed. But that’s entirely different. The value of being a good soldier, for the sake of soldiering itself, obedience itself, and hierarchy-honoring bushido or esprit de corps themselves, is nil.

Nil! Nil I say. Nada. Naught. Nuttin’.

Nevertheless, I soldier on as a soldier in the Socialist Leisure Party, a party that esteems soldiering even lower than I do, despite myself being the party’s leader. I am a worse leader even than I am a soldier.

Even worse, I’m not a revolutionary. I’m on the fence. That’s right, I said it, I’m on the fence and proud! I might join the revolution if it appeals to me. Right now most of the revolutionaries I’m encountering do not impress me as people able to prevent their revolution from being hijacked by those with destructive designs, and by destructive, I mean destructive of life on the planet. Some might see my position as just an excuse not to take up the difficult struggle against the structure that exploits most people around the world. Maybe so.

But right now it’s a strategy to avoid following pointless commands and being coerced into doing BS jobs. It’s a nice fence I sit on. I like the view. It’s not the luxury fence the name of my party might lead folks to expect, but that is an aspiration for the future.

In the future all luxury will be public. Palaces and museums, currently private libraries, the castle Jimmy Page lives in, all privatized hot springs, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s Basquiat, the whole of Vatican City, all lands currently controlled by any religious body, Samuel Alito’s baby skull collection, and anything Elon Musk has will... read more

Welcome to your Moment of Truth, the thirst that is the drink.

Recently, I had one of my epiphanies, and this time it wasn’t due to the onset of an unexplained seizure coming on simultaneously with a mild stroke. Here it is: I think Hollywood could make faster progress in getting more women into key jobs behind the camera if it stopped killing them with trains and guns once they got there.

But more on that later.

Over the weekend I went to an excellent rock show. One of the best I’ve been to in my life. The openers were The Blasters, a longtime favorite Americana roots rock band fronted by guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist, Dave Alvin. Then a lesser-known band I will not name came on and did not disappoint because I wasn’t expecting anything. And then the stage was turned over to the headliners, X, a legendary 80s punk band fronted by vocalist Exene and guitarist/vocalist John Doe.

I wasn’t much into punk in the late 70s into the 80s, so I only knew X by reputation, and they exceeded what I had been led to expect. They were musically tremendous, and lyrically, at least the lyrics I could hear, pretty poetic.

At one point John Doe, who I believe still has the preference for progressive politics he evinced in the 1960s going to anti-war protests, said, “When the election comes around next year, remember to get out there and vote!” and, a bit strangely, I thought, the woman next to me shouted sarcastically, “And don’t be racist, why don’t you throw that in there?” That was a head- scratcher.

But a little deeper into the set, Exene said, “Happy Birthday, Brandon.” I suspected I knew what that might mean. Near the end of the show she said, “Let’s go, Brandon,” and a portion of the crowd cheered. Someone shouted, “We love you, Exene!”

I, on the other hand, said, “Oh, fuck you.”

See, earlier in the day, a statistics-cherrypicking rightwing gun rights libertarian who spouts his dreck ad nauseum at the coffee place where I hang out sometimes had invaded a Facebook post of mine. The post I posted was this:

“So, how do we head off the fascist dictatorship coming after the 2024 election? Any suggestions?”

His comment was this:

“Why ya’ll so concerned? Dem senate - Dem House and Brandon is doing a fantastic job - No? What more could you ask for.”

My response was:

“Who the... read more

I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that we are five years or less away from a fascist takeover of this nation. Those of you who say we’re already living under fascism I guess can rest easy. But we’re not, we’re living under the bare minimum of democracy, and I like democracy, in theory. I want to expand democracy, not shrink it. Trying to effect positive collective action in a shrunken democracy is like trying to think with a shrunken head. It’s very difficult, but can, very rarely, be done. Trying to effect positive collective change in a shrunken democracy is often a crime. Doing it under fascism is always a crime. I’d rather succeed sometimes.

Of course, the party half-assedly defending our nation from a fascist takeover are fine with severely limiting the public’s ability to act collectively on their own behalf, and especially on behalf of others who they see as having even worse problems. So expect total fascism in five years or less.

There is no way to fend off this onslaught of horrific, theocratic, rightwing tyranny. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s coming. I’m kind of glad, because I’ll get to be killed in an exciting way, instead of my arteries slowly hardening while I watch Netflix.

There will of course be no more legal abortions, but since all medical care will be out of reach for the majority of citizens, it won’t really be an issue. All progress toward any kind of future will cease, except for the very wealthy, and even then only temporarily.

I believe steampunk and the rise of the postmodern Victorian esthetic have been an unconscious mass preparation for what’s to come. Once the civilization-demolishing effects of global warming and climate mutilation are undeniable, we may even see the rise of cave punk. The MAGA shaman was a harbinger of the tribe punk movement, which will ultimately give way to the domination of cave punk among the masses.

Oh, you think not? I recently looked at some predictions I made on New Year’s Eve, 2004. They sounded crazy to me then, but I couldn’t deny what the visions were showing me. Oh, I forgot to explain that I sometimes get vivid visions of the future. Here’s what the visions showed me on New Year’s Eve 2004, all of which seemed ridiculous to me:

• White Supremacists will adopt a cartoon frog as their emblem and march with tiki torches and polo shirts.... read more