The Surreal States of America

Happy Fourth of July

If you can convince the people to believe in absurdities, eventually you can convince them to commit atrocities.

--Voltaire

In David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”, there’s a Red Room, where a fellow called The Man From Another Place helps people find the truth. The problem is that this only happens in the subject’s dreams – it’s up to them to sort out the truth when they wake up back in reality.

Those of us who Stayed Awake in Class have the habit of pointing out reality on a regular basis to the Rest of America – the problem is that we don’t get the props we should, because most of America has Gone ‘Round The Bend.

Welcome to the Surreal States of America, folks – where reality doesn’t apply.

Today, over 60% of Americans believe that a guy named ‘Jesus’ is coming back, Real Soon Now, to sort-out all the bad-people (read: ‘anyone who doesn’t believe like us.’) He’s going to raise all of the dead-people who believed just like the semiliterate assholes above-ground nowadays (you’ve seen them on Fox News and on Glenn Beck’s show; they’re the folks who think David Barton is a real historian, that Obama’s a not-so-secret socialist, and that the only way to set things straight is to listen to the dog-whistle of ‘take America back’).

When ‘Jesus’ comes back, he’s going to take his legion of Born Again Zombies and establish a Thousand-Year Reich here on earth (where, ostensibly, there’ll be no crime, unemployment, or worries about things like Kim Kardashian’s ass).

There’s a subgroup of that 60% who not only believe that ‘Jesus’ is coming back – He’s so pissed that He’s exacting ‘judgments’ on America and the rest of the world (this is why we have such an abysmal economy and why we’re mired in two and a half wars, as well as suffering from tornadoes, drought and flooding).

In their world, our economic issues don’t exist because we’ve elected a succession of Presidents and representatives who’ve Fucked Things Up, royally – it’s because of everything from gay marriage and abortion to a general rejection of All Things Jesus. In their world, if we loved Jesus enough, we’d already be living in a paradise akin to 1955 America (minus polio, lynchings in Mississippi, and the Cold War).

In their world, tornadoes, drought and flooding don’t exist because we didn’t heed the warnings of futurists who told us that too many people on the planet would create such things – they’re because ‘God’ doesn’t like what we’re doing – we need to stomp the gays; put women and minorities back in their place. Oh, and we have to support Israel. We’re ‘cursed’ if we don’t.

This subgroup of that 60% are called Dominionists – they’re bent on ‘taking America back’ (that’s the aforementioned dog-whistle for ‘let’s-go-back-to-the-17th-century’). Y’see, in spite of the lessons of history (from the Crusades and the Inquisition to one of the reasons for America’s founding – the persecution of one religious group by another), this bunch wants to form a theocracy in the United States.

The legal system is complicit in all this – if not, the Supreme Court would have shut down Bush II’s ‘faith based initiatives’ for the hare-brained, unconstitutional idea it was. Thing is, we’re now one justice away from a Fundie-dominated court. They’ve all but ignored the Constitution with rulings like Citizens United – see; in the Surreal States, corporations are now people; by allowing the government to use taxpayer money to fund religious groups, the First Amendment no longer applies, either.

According to people like David Barton, the First Amendment only applies to ultraRight Christians – all other religions are not covered – this is because the Founders somehow intended Christianity to be the nation’s religion after all. “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion” means “Congress won’t allow any but Christians to hold office or make laws.”

Gee; when you put it that way, it all makes perfect sense – that is, in a country where logic and reason play second-fiddle to religion.

Dominionists have made it clear that they want the legal system – and they’ve done a good job, both infiltrating it and creating a new crop of ‘Christian jurists’ courtesy of outfits like Liberty University; they want the military, too, and they’ve done a good job of that, also (organizations like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have raised the alarm on this one more than once).

Economically, we’re no better off. Our current President was elected on the back of a ‘bailout backlash’. We expected him to deal with a lot of the problems created by the eight years of the Bush regime; those of us who connected the dots on these things realized that he had a very narrow window in which to accomplish anything of substance; instead, he set about planning for a second term by way of pandering to people who wanted him gone in the first place.

The facts are available for anyone who wants to spend ten minutes doing some real research – everyone from the GSA to Fortune Magazine has the data – it was the Republicans who wrecked our economy. Their only solution is to let the perps off the hook and make the rest of us pay for their behavior.

Now, we have two and a half wars, one which has been going on for ten years now – and no way to pay for anything. Nearly one fifth of the country is out of work. The current status-quo is unsustainable, and the man in charge squandered his chance to set things right. The banks which got that bailout money are all sitting on that pile of cash, waiting to buy up what remains for a song and a dance when the whole thing falls off a fucking cliff.

In any sane world, most of the nation would have put an end to this a long time ago. Instead, there are two kinds of people in America now: Those who are aching for a religious-themed Fascism, and those who still believe that the current President has answers.

The first group is likely to win this fight, because they’re better organized, better focused, and more passionate about their position. They also believe that they have a deity on their side who’ll show up with a bronze-age book full of religious hoodoo in one hand and a flamethrower in the other to sort out anyone who stands in their way.

It is impossible to argue with this kind of insanity in a manner which appeals to logic and reason. The sitting President is about to learn this, and then some; it’s the lesson every pandering centrist has ever had to learn – you don’t reason with snakes. You cut their fucking heads off.

Don’t think that pointing out any of this is going to make you any friends, either. In fact, thanks to some of the caprices of the past administration, if you step out of line too very far by way of protest, you’re more likely to have a couple of taser-prongs shot into your hide and your ass thrown in a jail-cell, while the ‘progressives’ stand meekly aside and wonder what happened – violence begets violence, and we’ve had a decade of body-counts, photos of half-burned children and all that follows to desensitize us to the maltreatment of our own citizens.

America is a police state. Try applying for a passport; you’ll be asked to provide a complete biography now (hey; why pay people to compile dossiers on the citizenry – get the people to do it themselves).

Don’t believe me? Do some research. It’s all there.

Thinking about retiring in the Surreal States? Guess again. The Right isn’t content to take your civil rights. They’re coming for your Social Security; your Medicare; your private pension. They’re doing so in the name of ‘deficit reduction’. See, in their world, these programs are not funded by payroll taxes; they’re ‘entitlements’ – and hence ‘bad’, because no one deserves a ‘free ride’. This is what happens when a nation goes insane – they change the definitions; then the rules. Lies become truth. All that’s lacking is the Two Minutes Hate.

In a few days, American flags will pop up in neighborhoods all over the Surreal States, in a vain attempt to remind us of where we used to live – meanwhile, there’s no Red Room and no Man From Another Place to remind us of what’s really going on, even in our dreams. The country continues on an insane path to self-destruction, and anyone who tells the fucking lemmings that they’re marching dutifully toward a cliff labeled “Fascism” will sooner or later be sorted-out for good and all by a Big Bull Lemming with one of those tasers I mentioned earlier.

Happy Fourth of July, America.

The Economy, the Government, and The Sound Over The Horizon

The Economy's Headed For a Cliff, and There's Nothing We Can Do About It - Except Smile As We Go Over.

In spite of the best efforts of Ben Bernacke, the Fed, Tim Geithner, Barack Obama and the Usual Gang of Idiots in Congress, the American economy is poised to fall off a cliff.   For their part, the only thing the Republicans can say about it is “Kissing rich people’s asses is good!  Regulations bad!  Ugga-ugga!”, in some primal dance-around-the-fire bullshit-session, catering to the equally-primal urges of the semiliterates who make up most of their constituency.

While the Great Dickpic Scandal of 2011 has taken most of the attention and bandwidth of America’s political commentators, and the rest of America’s newspeople are transfixed by Little Caylee's murder-trial in Florida, the Fed quietly announced that it wouldn’t be engaging in printing more money another round of quantitative easing, and the Obama administration has made it clear that they’ve blown their entire load on the bedsheets by way of ‘stimulus’, with not even a goodnight-kiss to follow.

Should the Fed change its mind and provide a third round of QE, it’ll be the strongest signal we’ve had in a while that the current brain-trust in Washington is well and truly out of options – there won’t be another extension of unemployment compensation; no one will address the real issue of jobs and how to create them.  Meanwhile, all of the stats point to another recession – or worse.

When Clinton left office, the American economy could have been likened to a mansion; we were running a surplus, and if we’d stayed that course, we’d’ve had at least a fighting chance at maintaining the status-quo while we tackled the larger problems of deficit and empire.

Instead, we elected a man who couldn’t pronounce ‘nuclear’; who thought cheese curds, French-fries and gravy (‘Poutine’) was the Prime Minister of Canada, and who gave us the lovely thought that the Constitution was ‘just a goddamned piece of paper’.  The critical-mass of Worst Possible Leader and Worst Possible Event kicked us all in the collective nuts on 9/11 – and the trained-chimp we elected President had the casus belli he felt he needed to go to war with half the world.  (Think about it – ‘god’ told him to do it; what more was necessary?)

Flash forward almost ten years – and thanks to the decade-long waste of blood and treasure, the American economy now resembles a double-wide in the cedar-brake of west Texas.  The roof leaks; the plumbing doesn’t work – and the propane-tank which ‘Cletus’ Bernacke jury-rigged into the kitchen-stove is leaking. 

He’s sitting on the couch in his poly-T and sweat pants, getting ready to light a generic cigarette with his buddy “Bubba” Geithner, by way of propping up the fortunes of his buddies on Wall Street.  

His other option – continuing the QE scam by way of printing money ‘till Hell won’t have it – is the only way he’ll keep the economy going.  As I mentioned before, he can keep the double-wide together, or he can blow it off the cliff and into the next county by way of taking care of his banker-buddies;  one or the other – but whichever one he does, the other goes off the cliff.

Now, I’ll allow that there are people who've consumed the government's Kool-Aid who'll point out that the unemployment rate dropped a tick and a half last month, and that foreclosures are down – but if you peel the skin off that rotten onion for a moment, you’ll see that most of those jobs were created by a mass hiring of burger-flippers by Mickey-D, and the only reasons foreclosures haven’t gone inexorably higher is because they’re stuck in processing – Obama and his minions have managed to stave off the inevitable there, but only by way of pulling a stunt which is more reminiscent of King Canute than FDR – he’s put his throne in the surf and is attempting to order the tide to recede. 

It didn’t work for Canute, and it fuck-all isn’t going to work for Obama, either.

If you’re looking for answers, I don’t have any.  I can connect the dots, and point to a future which, if we were smart, we’d begin to embrace:  A future where we restricted our breeding; developed a smaller personal ‘footprint’; used less; worked for the common good; accepted that there are limits; etc.

Only a minority really ‘gets’ this – the rest are saying, “I don't want to go there!  Leave me alone!  I want things as they are!  No regulations!  No taxes!  Only then will we be ‘free’!”

These people are fucking idiots – and frankly, I don’t have the time nor inclination to explain why.  Those of you reading this missive who understand the reasons are among that minority who ‘get it’ – and the rest are part of the great undereducated, nose-picking, poo-flinging monkeys who don’t. If that sounds elitist, that’s fine.  Another thing I’m done with is the political-correctness of dumbing-down for the benefit of the Teabagging majority.

The tacit agreement between the Rest of Us and the rich cocksuckers who run things is this:  We more or less agreed to leave them alone as long as they agreed to pay taxes and not fuck things up.  Instead, they’ve gotten around paying taxes, and they’ve fucked things up so badly we’re likely not going to recover. Why the CEO’s and their minions – about 2,000 in all – haven’t been hung in iron cages at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York still amazes me; after this much economic pain, I’d think that a guillotine next to the big bronze bull in the plaza would be a nice touch.  After all, the French revolution shares a lot with our current condition – it was mainly economic, and was brought about by a fundamental failure in leadership.

The assholes who believed we could borrow ourselves into prosperity (you know at least a couple; they were the pre-Teabaggers and their minions who voted for all this nonsense) – haven’t a clue; they don’t hear the sound of impending doom over the horizon for the roar of the engines at the Fourth of July demo-derby.  Meanwhile, the spastic efforts of the wealthy to retain their largesse will be a pathetic counterpoint to the suffering of the masses during the Recession (Depression?) of 2012. 

In a couple of weeks, you’ll see flags pop up in neighborhoods all over the country, as people try to remind themselves not just that we were great once, but that they still live in America.  Not one of them has the foggiest idea what’s coming.

Obama, Geithner, Bernacke, the fools who run Wall Street and the greater fools with the Slurpees at the county-fair are powerless to do anything about the Sound Over the Horizon.   You can count on a lot of pontificating; a lot of speeches, hot air, and bullshit.   Lots and lots of bullshit. 

They can’t fix it.  They can make it worse, though.  Let’s hope Bernacke doesn’t light that cigarette.  

Hope is all we have left.

Get to a boat.

Astra's Batshit Roundup....

General Batshit; 'WTF' Moments; Our Favorite Fundies; Batshit Of The Week Award....

There’s a bumper-crop of batshit this week – mainly because I’ve been busy as hell and haven’t had time to entertain all of you fine people for a bit – so here goes….

This week, we were treated to the news that the economy appears headed for a double-dip recession (about six months later than I thought it would be, but there it is) – and please know, I take no pleasure in being right. Really.

While I was in Anaheim last week, I saw the HBO film “Too Big To Fail” on the hotel-telly; the questions I repeatedly asked myself were, “Why, for fuck’s sake, were these assholes allowed to succeed, when better, smarter, more-enlightened people didn’t?”, and “Why aren’t these same assholes now not hanging in iron cages at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York, with signs attached which read, ‘I Fucked Everybody in America?’”

Life is random, shitty, and wrong, most of the time. That’s why. Morons succeed, while the rest of us Eat Shit and Die.

In saving online-gems for this missive, I often come across things which aren’t so funny. By example, a gal here in my home-town of Portland walked out of a jewelry store with a $40K necklace – and the store-clerk ran her down and tackled her, putting her in an arm-hold until the police arrived. Turns out the woman hadn’t eaten for a week.

I’ve a feeling that we’re going to be looking at a lot of things which we used to think were ‘bad’, and realizing that they’re simply acts of survival desperation. The lines are blurring as you read this.

It’s time to start being good to each other, in ways we probably never thought we’d have to – because it’s a lead-pipe-cinch that the Powers That Be aren’t going to do anything remotely like look after us peons.

On with the show….

General Batshit….

This guy likes to slash his balls: Turns out that a fellow in Minnesota has thing for taking a knife to his balls. Sort of….

File this one under, “Why Is This Shit Legal?”: There’s this gal, who snorted the equivalent of Drano and Meth to gibber uncontrollably about evil spirits while she trashed a hotel room (I can’t make this stuff up. I’ve tried. Really….)

What do you do on a three-day ‘tweak’?: In this guy’s case, you steal 75lb storm-drain covers. A whole lot of them….

There’s something very, very wrong here: I imagine you could file this one under ‘Failed Children’s Book Titles’. Thing is, it’s been published. Has an Amazon listing and everything….

Vladimir Putin is a reincarnated apostle: Who knew? Some gals in Russia, as it turns out….

You, too, can spend thirty dollars on a completely useless book: In this case, it’s the Mozipedia – the complete encyclopedia of everything dealing with Morrissey (you remember him; the guy who insists he’s not gay, but sings like he is….)

What’s next? Josef Stalin’s Favorite Fart-Jokes?: Some guy has written a humor book about Adolf Hitler….

Here’s the good news – if you missed it, you can still participate: May was national masturbation month….

Note To State Board of Health – This is not how you get people to go to the doctor: The State of Washington greenlighted a bunch of billboards aimed at getting people to go to the doctor. Just which moron made that decision is unknown….

Why didn’t he just sell it at his garage sale?: A guy here in Oregon who was cleaning his garden-shed found something which looked like a bomb – so (natch) he tossed it in the ol’ minivan and took it to the police-station….

‘WTF’ Moments….

“But – officer – I was celebrating national masturbation month!”: A guy in Florida decides to have one off at the wrist – in a rather confined, yet public place….

“But – officer – they’re so well behaved afterward!”: A teacher in California encouraged her students to huff (Note: It wasn’t paint….)

Is this the same guy who invented hair tonic?: Turns out there really was a St. Vitalis….

Do parents just not think when they name their kids?: Remember this, Mom and Dad – someday; there’ll be an obituary – and it’ll read like this one….

I love my hometown. Really; I do: Except, of course, when I read stuff like this. (Understand – this guy lives maybe two miles from me. Up the hill, there are homes; gardens; stuff like that. Down the hill in the flatlands are shitty apartments and a whole gaggle of semiliterate hooligans. Like this guy, who got creative with his quick-draw technique….)

But did Medicare pay for it?: With friends like this, who needs – (I didn’t just write that, did I?) Turns out a guy recovering from surgery had a home-visit from a nurse….

Where in the world is Carmen Montenegro?: She’s in county lockup, after pushing a trash-can down the friggin’ street….

Cartman would be proud - the brown-note has been discovered:  Vuvuzelas and dogs don’t mix….

Our Favorite Fundies….

Here’s what’s keeping Huckabee from running for President: He’s created an ‘educational company’ to 'fix' the 'errors' in American history....

Janet Porter knows why we have tornadoes: It’s because of those pesky gays….

Turns out the Bible is like duct-tape – it can fix everything: Including, if we believe this book, government interference in everything from playground equipment to light bulbs….

Don’t want to do Easter dinner? Do this, instead: A cab-driver from Korea found an interesting way to spend Easter weekend. He’s dead now….

Curses; Red Bachmann!: Michele Bachmann, potential rubber room candidate and extremist Fundie from Minnesota, says we’re all cursed if we don’t support the use of white phosphorus, genocide, and other stuff. Well; not really. But really….

It’s the end of the world as we know it (redux): Don’t worry. The end of the world is still ‘on’ – at least, according to Family Radio….

More batshit from the Huckster: According to Mike Huckabee, gays caused Noah’s flood, and Obama’s a ‘Soviet mole’. (Note: The Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991, couldn’t be reached for comment….)

Batshit of the Week Award:

This one was tough. The aforementioned Michele Bachmann was a serious candidate this week, as was John Edwards (nothing says ‘love’ like spending campaign money on your South American mistress and getting indicted for it); Jerry Boykin (nothing says ‘batshit’ like accusing the president of funding a brownshirt army from the ‘proceeds’ of the healthcare bill); and Georgia representative Bobby Franklin (who accused his fellow Georgians of ‘praying to their god FEMA’).

Sarah Palin deserves honorable-mention, for rolling in to a rally on a motorcycle (albeit riding in the #2 ‘bitch’ position) to blather on about American Exceptionalism (and to kick off her ‘We The People’ non-campaign tour).

So did Mitt Romney, who doesn’t ride ‘bitch’ – flying in a rented jet to a small town in New Hampshire is more his style – but hey; he says the same things as the rest of the Teabaggers (he just does it with a little more class).

Nope – this week, there’s only one guy who really, truly exemplifies American political batshit; he’s a true professional who’s managed to gather every wingnut and bugfuck-crazy nutball in 50 states to play on his team this year: Newt Gingrich.

The Newter is an original. He’s the only guy who had an affair because he was so busy saving America from Muslims, atheists and other baddies; recommends the ravings of people like Matt Barber and David Barton; tells us ‘debt is unBiblical’ while owing half a million in credit-card debt to Tiffany’s, and makes what may be the Worst Campaign Promise Evah.

With Huckabee officially out of the race, I run hot and cold over the Newter-man. I mean, on one hand, it would be funny-as-all-hell to have a chucklefucking moron like Gingrich to laugh at, much like the poo-flinging monkeys at the Portland zoo; on the other hand, there are enough unibrowed mouth-breathers with double-digit IQ’s holding voter-registration cards to actually elect the guy.

Enjoy your fifteen minutes; Newt. I’ve a feeling you’ll need them to keep you warm in a few years when everyone’s forgotten about you.

Until next time….