cheese it, the cops!

MAGA -- A Rough Beast Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Not Just in Pennsylvania

"Much of cosmopolitan America holds to a progressive framework of bodily autonomy, boundless tolerance and group rights — a largely post-religious morality applied with near-religious intensity. But as a religious person (on my better days), what concerns me are the perverse and dangerous liberties many believers have taken with their own faith. Much of what considers itself Christian America has assumed the symbols and identity of white authoritarian populism — an alliance that is a serious, unfolding threat to liberal democracy." Michael Gerson, WAPO, 9-1-22

"Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood; to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life." Francis of Assisi 

Michael Gerson's lengthy but readable column on the abyss that Evangelical Christianity now straddles that Christians should read and consider while those of us struggling to understand how they got into this position should read with sadness, hope and charity. The systemic and Existentialist theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich wrote in his most approachable text, "The Dynamics of Faith" that "faith is about ultimate concerns."

The union between MAGA and "What would Jesus do?" is troubling for many reasons. Gerson's approach is to help all of us to understand how it came about as well as why it is a mistake yet perhaps as much an opportunity.

 

 

Field of Skulls...think this outlaw bit has done got out of hand?

 

New piece posted over at Veterans News Now. Looking at some of the recent local attacks and nightmares spread by basic idiocy.   

As usual, some music, although this illustration sums up well the way I'm feeling about the whole mess...Did start with something by Moby, this time. 

This ain't Moby, bro....

Embrace your inner Beaver, Republicans!

 

 

On Tom Petty's "Buried Treasure" XM Radio show, he told the story of standing with his tour manager outside a venue in Texas, where there was a creek behind the place, with shade trees and a den of beavers playing in the water. Seemed pretty arcadian, really, until one of the beavers saw the humans and charged up the hill at them. Petty asked the manager if he had his gun, the manager said yeah, (Petty's comment was something to the effect that "It was in Texas..." )and then Petty said, "Don't Beaver's have flat tails..." They were being blitzed by a big, angry rat...and Petty took the gun and shot the thing.

Well, I've tried to figure out what the hell Trump's evolving hair style really looks like, and it kind of makes him look like a blonde beaver with it's tail rolled up over his head. I realize that some of my jejune minded readers will immediately think about all the varieties of beaver, and I think that if you are a Republican, that's awful to think that way. Me, I'm a radical-liberal life-time Democrat except when Crispin actually convenes the Anarchist Party convention and we nominate Bill the Cat, so I'm at least open to consider alternatives.

So, I recommend that the Republican Party bow down and welcome it's new Beaverish Rodent-style Overlord, al la the great Kent Brockman...

As described by the Washington Post's Alexandra Petri: (Alexandra Petri February 24 at 11:53 AM) with a neat graph!

"There are three GOP candidates left in the race who are not Trump — oh wait, no, apparently Ben Carson is still running? — and this chart pretends that there are only two non-Trumps remaining, but I think it’s still a handy illustration of the problem.

"If Candidate A and Candidate B are really in it to win it: congratulations, Nominee Donald!" 

I will let Mr. Petty explain it for the some what slower amongst us...

 

  

 

ST Dominics Peview as performed by House Blissful Idiot Chorus

 

In which Crusader AXE stops by and raises some questions about whether blissful ignorance ends at the ballot box for the Dumbasses who pass laws not realizing that things like Sequestration have an impact, and the government does things with the money that they appropriate and that they control appropriations... with the help of Jackson Browne, Joan Baez and the Doobie Brothers with a quote from Phil Ochs...who would be a lot of fun if he was still here, sane, sober and not wearing a gold lame suit.

 

splanatory

People have given many explanations for the massacre in Aurora. Gun control laws, lack of compulsory universal use of psychiatric medication, the effects of red hair dye on the human brain: all have been explored with that stunning mixture of certainty and stupidity that only the social sciences provide.

Here at Crispylabs, however, we have solved the problem. With a very high degree of probability, we can declare that climate change is the culprit. 

We came up with this hypothesis because we can't stop thinking about climate change. That people we agree with about everything called it a national security crisis made us realize that climate change is to blame for everything and anything: it's a universal crisis: the cause of everything that goes wrong. 

To test our stunning conclusion, we stuck precisely a passel of extremely cute babies - a diverse population of black and white, male and female, punk and preppy, straight and gay (born that way) babies - in a room and slowly increased the heat to 136 degrees fahrenheit: yesterday's high temperature in northern Greenland. Before they expired, the babies got super fussy. Imagine what would have happened if we had issued them assault rifles! It would have been baby armageddon, just like last time.

As the world grows ever hotter, flatter, and more flatulent, things continue to be really fucked up. Coincidence? We think not, and our regression paralysis confirms us in our speculation.

If things continue at the rate established by James Holmes at 12:28 AM, everyone will have shot everyone else by 2051.That said, the tipping point will very frankly be a disconnect, or The Disconnect: a yawning abyss in which all that exists is annihilated utterly, as though by the anti-will of the inverse of God.

because every aspect of our lives has been in crisis for decades, we now have to move to other ways to express the non-stop ubiquitous disaster. thus the coinage extreme crisis. this would appear to be redundant, but is not. the healthcare crisis is acute and must be addressed immediately. however, we have been muddling along with more or less the same system since 1813. there has never been a moment in my 52 years in which education has not been in crisis. all of these gigantic mini-crises of course take place within the greatest crisis our species has ever faced: global warming, which is our biggest national security crisis.

so it's well past time we started tacking intensifiers on 'crisis,' which now refers to the normal or run-of-the-mill state of affairs in any given sphere. 'crisis,' in other words, has become synonymous with 'reality,' and just as something could be really real, a crisis could be critical. 'crisis' has lost its ability to mobilize, which was all it was ever actually used for anyway. well, i think now you're gonna need actual clubs and body armor to motivate anyone to do anything. during the next presidential campaign, for example, i think we should refer to american education as a "world-annihilating conflagration" or an "apocalypse."

however, i am already kind of bored by world-annihilating conflagrations and apocalypses, which are now available wholesale at six cents per thousand. the concept of the crisis is in crisis, in other words. so, if elected, i will try to remediate the extreme crisis crisis through understatement or perhaps a couple of centuries of absolute silence.

nostradamus wrote as follows:

"And then shall the metal bird glide over the the City of Cash, and the people shall scream and run around like lobotomized geese. Swinishness shall become a contagion. Arlen Specter shall betray his peeps, if any. And the next day, at 8:23 AM Mountain, God will destroy the cursed earth and toast your souls over the bonfires of hell as though you were, verily, marshmallows. Which you are, you pussies."

it seems possible that nostradamus was referring to this very moment! it must have been a terrible burden to see the future so clearly.