Hey there, fellow dudes. Let’s get out there and be good examples today.
be kind
be calm
listen
support women defending women
speak up when someone attacks women, gay/trans folks, or the rest of the far-right’s traditional targets
don’t escalate
don’t make it about you
You won’t change anyone’s mind with words. No one does. But your behavior might change someone’s heart.
P. S. Pick large fights with your enemies, not small fights with your friends. Don’t demand perfection from people trying to help you. Perfection is a corrosive fantasy.
I think it’s interesting that terms like “Luddite” and “Uncle Tom” are misused as insults by people who know nothing about the Luddites or “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. My knee-jerk opinion is that most semantic drift is caused by ignorance, but in recent years, I think malice has become a major cause, as well (see also, “woke”).
We are about 15-20 years too late to change anything, but if you are curious how this started, it was during the Clinton administration. http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/27/clinton.radio/ (CNN, 1997)
And it worked, because Democrats failed to realize that they were no longer dealing with Reagan Republicans, but were instead dealing with an increasingly deranged death cult. So they continued to rely on appeals to reason, to compromise, and to putting the good of the country ahead of (most of) their political differences.
I learned an important lesson from a boy named Brian in the sixth grade: bullies see an appeal to reason as an explicit invitation to continue the bullying. They do not care about reason, or compromise, or making the world better. They just want to be the ones doing the punching, and most people are content to stand by and watch and do nothing.
And so they have.
Comments Off on On the long-term sabotage of the US judicial system
A pity that it ended with books. Most of the art and literature created in the past century will be lost forever within the next century. Not because it was written with vibrations in the air or painted with light, but because we have ceded our cultural heritage to a handful of sociopathic billionaires (Disney, Comcast, Sony, Warner Brothers), who would — and have, and will — destroy works of art rather than fail to make a profit from them.
I have stopped sharing links to wildlife being cooked to death in the oceans, or catastrophic polar melting, or the fact we are in what future generations will regard as the early months of World War 3, etc. to Facebook. Even so, the slow-motion apocalypse (a phrase I coined and began using in 2013, although others independently did the same, some even earlier) continues its relentless approach.
I am a little surprised that World War 3 hasn’t officially started yet. My entire youth, the threat of Communist expansion was like a black cloud on the horizon, and the threat of nuclear war was ever-present. But Russia invades Ukraine, and the West can barely muster a strongly worded letter in response.
This does not bode well for Taiwan and Pakistan, but I have no input on any of it.
Meanwhile, sea life is being cooked to death in the oceans, and natural disasters and wet-bulb events are becoming more common on land. I assume the Republican death cult is still blaming homosexuals while simultaneously dismissing it as a hoax.
If Canada ever opens its borders to American refugees fleeing north from the climate crisis and the theofascist takeover of the South and the western flyover states, I think we should apply ASAP.
The air is cleaner and the sea level isn’t as high as some science fiction authors predicted. Other than that, the real world has gotten much worse much faster than this science fiction obsessed kid ever expected. Rivers drying up, corporations owning lifetime copyright on our cultural heritage, nonstop wars, a major political party turning into a death cult, more wealth in fewer hands than ever before, and the looming threat of AI making most of us useless and disposable to the corporations that actually own this world.
And the sea level is still rising.
But the air really is cleaner than it was when I was a kid. That’s pretty nice.
[I enjoy doing this sort of thing, and I think I have an eye for it. If I were a bit more ambitious, I would try to do it as a “side hustle”.]
“Psychological warfare has a new meme for your approval, Your Majesty.”
“What is this, Klytus: some new form of torture?”
“Most amusing, Your Majesty. These are a form of propaganda used on the Earth.”
(Ming examines the image)
“Would you like to explain why there is a Frigian labour beast next to the exalted name of MING THE MERCILESS, or should I call for the bore worms now?”
“Of course, Your Majesty may do as he pleases in all things, and I embrace the opportunity to display my undying loyalty. But as it happens, that is the current year according to the reckoning of the people of the planet ‘Earth’. The animal is a symbol of strength, ruthlessness, and nobility. It is known locally as a ‘jumbo’.”
“What primitive creatures these Earthlings are. And the purpose of this image?”
“Why, to grant the Earthlings hope, Your Majesty.”
“Hope?”
“Hope that you will show mercy, Your Majesty.”
(Ming pauses, then slowly claps, exactly three times)
(laughing) “Well done, Klytus. I look forward to reports on the psychological damage.”
(chuckling) “Thank you, Your Majesty. HAIL MING!”
P.S.
Being an actor must be such a strange job. You wear what someone else picked out, stand where they say to stand, and say what they wrote for you to say. And yet, it is so much more difficult to do than that makes it sound (I have only had a couple of amateur performances in my past, but it was enough to learn that much).
Then (if it’s film or whatever), you spend days, weeks, months, traveling from city to city just to sit and repeat the same half-dozen sentences about it for “interview” after “interview”. (Do they even get paid for any of that?)
And then, when the product is complete, you bear the brunt of the blame for the end result, even though you just did what you were told to do.
And whether you even get the job in the first place is dependent on factors so far beyond your control that joining Scientology or Keith Raniere’s bonkers sex cult seem like good alternatives.
Show business, man. It ain’t for sissies. (I think Betty White said that, originally, but I may be mistaken.)
I had a sombre thought today. The world I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. In some important ways, that’s a good thing. But it’s a bad thing, in a few ways. I feel sad for people who’ll never be able to live in it. Ah, well.
For no particular reason, the song “Fame”, by Irene Cara, came into my mind today. Google tells me it was released in 1980: 42 years ago. I haven’t heard it in very nearly that long, but I recall it clearly, and I even recall the name of the singer.
That is just how hugely popular that song was… briefly. And then nothing. When’s the last time you thought of it? How strange that is. The fleeting popularity of fame, so to speak.
It’s not really my style of pop song, and I still haven’t seen the eponymous movie, but even I loved the song and sang along to it, at the time. Of course, I was in my early teens then, and a boy, so I could never actually tell anyone I loved that song. It would have been indistinguishable to wearing a “call me a ‘homo’ and push me down” sign. (I’m not gay, and was even less so then, thanks to adolescent hormones, but bullies don’t place a high value on accuracy. Hopefully, my own miserable teen years helped distract the bullies from actual gay kids.)
Anyway, that’s not what compelled me to write this post. I’m writing this post because I asked Google to “play ‘Fame’ by Irene Cara on YouTube, on ‘downstairs group'” (my downstairs speakers). And, obligingly, it did (Google can be… contrary, sometimes).
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Blackmoor Vituperative
