Cancelled

Like it or not, we are all now living in a black and white world where irreducible moral sides must be immediately taken, to the death. Whose side are you on, freedom or tyranny? Who is good and who is evil, Israel or Palestine? Who is mostly perfect and who is an irredeemably sick fuck with no right to speak who must be silenced forever? Take a view I find hateful, after hearing just the first few words? CANCELLED!

As I recently wrote to a righteous old friend who had no intention of ever talking to me again:

In talking there is always the chance of accidentally rescuing our friendship.  In silence, only the grim certainty of continued death during life, a true shame on both of us, to share the short remainder of this brief moment when we are both alive and waste it in mutual anger.

In righteous anger you instantly, satisfyingly cancel the motherfucker who makes you angry. Boom — dead! Then, that person being dead to you, you have eliminated the risk of being infuriated again by someone who keeps maddeningly insisting there are at least two sides to a story you already wrote the fucking ending to.

The great virtue of buying into a belief system is that you don’t have to be blindsided by so-called facts, cause and effect and the rest of the exhausting, caviling so-called nuances you already firmly believe are bullshit.

Reading about the recent cancellation of a book-related event by an author who wrote a nuanced book about Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and the firings and forced or protest resignations of others who made points about the horrific conflict in a way that was deemed indelicate, I had a creepy realization. What a cohort of old, dear friends did was cancel me. I’ve been cancelled.

Back to Israel and Palestine, for a flaming example. It is apparently a deadly sin, to some, to observe that Hamas behaved like blood-crazed Nazis, 100%, when they went on a murderous pogrom, and that Israel is behaving now, even if understandably in some ways, not like non-Nazis. To slaughter a Jewish baby is a Nazi-type war crime. To slaughter a Palestinian baby, in revenge for inhuman Nazi atrocities … what do you want to call it, boss?

The conversation is apparently taboo now, you have to be very, very careful how you phrase your opinion on the ongoing civilian slaughter in Gaza as Israel pursues the demons who hellishly rampaged recently. Israel has every right to protect herself, many people believe. But if you justify the murder of children on one side, you justify it on both sides

Got to be so fucking careful these days that you may as well say nothing about raging controversies that make people ready to kill each other. Your silence, of course, is assent. Whatever is going on, whoever is holding the noose, and pitchforks, and spewing hatred with veins popping on their necks, the torch bearers, the ones outside the makeshift jail chanting “bring him out!”, by standing among them silently you are part of the lynch mob, my friend.

That’s my basic problem with the righteously silent. Fuck those putos. You may cancel me now, asshole. And happy birthday, dear.

Guilty as charged, but what’s my crime?

I found myself on the wrong side of a unanimous informal criminal jury verdict almost a year ago.   A dozen friends of fifty years sat in judgment, either silent or indignant at my crime.   My punishment was banishment until death.  

“What is my actual crime?” I was impudent enough to ask one of them, since I had not been at the secret trial.  It was an apparently infuriating question coming from someone as obviously guilty and vicious as I am.

The couple of people who told me to shut up, for my own good, or to grow up, or to begin figuring out a way to heal the terrible harm I’d done to people who love me, were aggravating enough.  But the silent ones were worse.  Their silence was a reminder of how the world actually goes to hell, how lynch mobs always operate, how tyrants rise to power and rule.  Not a peep from these righteous souls, just silence.  Good people on both sides, on all sides, on every side — only you, sir, are the problem, you with your fucking filthy toilet bowl mouth.   We cannot forgive a fucking piece of shit with a fucking mouth like that.

In the end I finally understood my crime.  When you witness the rage, discomfort and dishonesty of people who need to be seen as perfect, it is humiliating to them.   Unless you admit that all the bad feelings were caused by you, that you alone are the angry, aggressive, threatening asshole who caused all the trouble, you have committed the crime of high treason.  You are in position to make them feel unbearably bad about themselves, to make them look bad to others.  There is no crime more serious to someone who must be perfect, on pain of eternal humiliation.  Either submit to their counterfactual accusation and take all blame or face the death penalty.  It really couldn’t be simpler.

So simple, in fact, that the logic of it is impossible to refute.  You live in terror of being seen as imperfect.  An articulate, credible witness is alive and well, loved and respected by people you love and respect.  You must make people believe the potential witness is a child blood drinking liar.  You have been the subject of an unfair, vicious, sneak attack, an operation that is ongoing and without end.   You convince people how hard you tried to make amends, how many times you apologized, how brutally all of your efforts were rebuffed.  You exploit any existing beliefs people have about the former friend who betrayed you so viciously.   You refuse to speak further about the painful, painful rejection by someone you’ve done nothing but love.  Loyal love is the only possible response to this kind of display of vulnerability and the expulsion of such a reprobate from the group of lifelong friends is necessary and proper.

The reason this works is that once people take sides, they get so invested in the belief system that they cease to care what is true.  Facts will not sway them, cause and effect become irrelevant.  They believe with a perfect righteousness that is infectious and undefeatable.   

This mechanism explains why 74,000,000 people who voted for a twice impeached serial liar, later convicted of sexual assault, his fraudulent university and fake charity shut down, his infidelity to all three of his wives well known, his pettiness and cruelty known to all, as well as his disloyalty to every loyal asslicker it has ever become convenient to disown, will probably get most of those 74,000,000 votes in 2024.   Those who love him DO NOT CARE about the so-called truth.  Thus is it always with a charismatic tyrant who will kill as many people as need to die in order to prove that he would never harm a fly.

Decapitators of Congress trying to make a deal

The Chaos Caucus has one objective, the agenda of global fascist Steve Bannon and the creepy billionaires who fund him: keep government paralyzed to prove that government itself is the problem. The wealthiest keep all of their money, get even more, and get to watch everyone else fight to the death over the scarcity they impose on the divided majoritarian hoards who greedily seek “entitlements” like food stamps, medical care and other frivolities.

With a slim majority in the House, and a rule change allowing any one of the most extreme members to torpedo the Speaker of the House, these loyal chaos agents take orders directly from der chaosmeister, Herr Chrump. Eight MAGA assholes voted to oust “My Kevin”, one of the leader’s most supple and spineless puppets, on orders of the Big Guy. The ousted loyalist immediately went on TV to denounce the Democrats for unanimously voting him out.

The current GOP proves to their base, by disabling the government, that government is not of the people, by the people and for the people, but a corrupt machine to fleece the richest of a greedy percentage of their hard-earned or hard-inherited fortunes! The Makers being fleeced by undeserving Takers who feel entitled, so entitled, to take and take and take!

Jim Jordan, finally pinned after a long, undefeated college wrestling career, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom [1] by the undefeated Chrump a few days after the January 6th violence and chicanery intended to keep him in power. Why was this longtime legislator who has never passed a single bill given this honor? Ask his buddy, the guy he talks to many times a day, the man he plotted with at closed door White House meetings, the jolly good fellow with the irresistibly delicious asshole.

A loyalty medal, for service to the dream of a winner who never loses, no matter how many votes against him, how many bankruptcies, no matter how many of his businesses fail or are closed for fraud (Trump University, Trump Charitable Trust, the pending closure of Trump, Inc.). A pugnacious, shameless man who refuses to be pinned and will say and do anything for his master is hard to find. Jim Jordan is one such man, as deserving of the highest civilian honor in the country as truth-teller and oxycodone addict Rush Limbaugh.

Not for nothing did the J6 mob search for Mike Pence (next in line for the presidency) and Nancy Pelosi (next in line if anything happened to Pence) with the intent to kill both of them. That would have left 99 year-old reactionary Chuck Grassley as next in line for president and highest ranking surviving member of Congress, and he would have announced, as planned, that the election was stolen, needed to be decided by the Republican House (by states, not number of representatives) and that would have been that.

Violent fanatics, motivated by a well-funded lie about a stolen election, decapitated the government for several hours, but not quite long enough. After the riot 191 Republicans voted to decertify Biden electors in certain states, along with the Trump quorum in the Senate, Lying Ted, et al. Not one of them paid any price for that treacherous vote. Jordan was awarded the presidential medal of asslicking.

The eight diehard MAGA assholes who voted to decapitate Congress a few weeks ago wrote a sham letter to 25 of their fellow House Republicans who didn’t vote for Jordan, agreeing to submit to punishment if their fellow Republicans would stop preventing the elevation of one of the lowest among them to be Speaker of the House. Imagine if Jordan and others with advance knowledge of the illegal plans to seize power, by hook and/or crook, and were eager participants in those plans, had been hauled in front of an ethics committee right after January 6th. How many of them would not have been stripped of committee assignments, if not expelled outright? None were. Some had medals placed on their chest. Now we have this shit, as reported by the NY Times…

When I call a party that rules by obstruction, bullying, mockery, intimidation and threats of violent reprisal, a party blindly obedient to the iron will of a criminal maniac, Nazis, it is because all of these characteristics are identical to, and essential ingredients of, the core of the Nazi movement. Without the violence these folks would just be pathetic, unfunny clowns with no shot at getting or maintaining power. With the violence, and their sacred Scalia rewritten Second Amendment, they are grimly unfunny clowns with infinite money and assault rifles and you can place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

[1]

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is — along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal — the highest civilian award in the U.S. It recognizes those individuals who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Devon Nunes!!!

Do you remember that spineless Congress weasel Devon Nunes? He was one of Chrumpie‘s most debased lackeys. He stepped down from Congress to take a highly paid position as CEO of the boss’s imagined media empire. The other day, in the wake of a finding of fraudulent accounting in Trump Inc.’s fraud trial, Digital World Acquisition Corp., the “person” wishing to merge with Trump media/Truth Social amended its filings to say that it’s statement of financial condition “should not be relied on.” One billion dollars of investments evaporated. They are also paying an $18,000,000 fine and are currently under multiple investigations. Here’s the great Allison Gill, with a summary of how well Devon is doing as the steward of the Orange Polyp’s glorious media empire.

USA! USA!!!

American exceptionalism. Make America great again. Freedom is on the march. Guns don’t kill people, not believing in Jesus kills people. The election was stolen, if the MAGA candidate loses. Government is the enemy. White people are being replaced, by racist Jews . Fetuses are sacred, babies can go fuck themselves. Global warming is a hoax. Immigrants are killers. Only communists believe in ethics for the Supreme Court. Only the wealthy and corporations are entitled to entitlements. God bless these united shaiche.

The difficult art of making amends

Ask your spiritual advisor what true repentance is. They will tell you that it is sincere regret for a wrong that you did to someone and a determination to make it right in whatever way is possible.  

Repentance contains an acknowledgment that you’ve hurt somebody, with an admission that what you did to them would have badly hurt you too.  Key to repentance is a willingness to help in the healing and the promise not to do that thing, or anything like it again, to that person, a soul just as precious as your soul.

The opportunity to be forgiven is a gift a hurt person can give to another, but the words “I’m sorry” and “I accept your apology” are meaningless formalities much of the time, as many of of us have experienced.  

Most of us know how easily a formal apology can be turned into a club to beat your victim with “I fucking apologized to this unforgiving asshole ten times, it’s never enough!”

The heart of repentance is atonement, the true determination of the person being given the gift of forgiveness to return that kindness in kind.

Wannabe strongman’s snarling lapdog

From today’s NY Times (well said by Michelle Cottle):

Mr. Jordan clearly fancies himself more of a Trumpian strongman. He has never been a leader or a serious legislator but is, rather, a career pugilist who seems developmentally stuck in his glory days as a high school and college wrestler. When nominating him on the House floor Tuesday, Elise Stefanik (one of the more painful cautionary tales about the corrosiveness of Trumpism) felt compelled to cite his mad skills “on the wrestling mat.”

full op-ed here

The pugnacious pugilist’s entire brand is being a brazen bully who can never be pinned down, who is not afraid to stutter, tap dance and angrily defy when he finds himself in a tight corner (like answering questions about his involvement in the boss’s plan to keep himself in power illegally). Sounds like the ideal candidate to broker political deals and make the hard calls about where to compromise and where to fight to the death, no? The main thing, of course, is that the little bastard simply cannot be pinned down.

Brawlin’ Jim

Heather reports:

In 2017, former Republican House speaker John Boehner told journalist Tim Alberta: “Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate…. A terrorist. A legislative terrorist.” In 2021, he clarified: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart—never building anything, never putting anything together.”

source

He’s literally perfect for these Nazi motherfuckers.

The human propensity for cannibalism

Given the right horrific circumstances, every human being is capable of eating another human being. We live with this hard to digest fact the same way we live with the certainty of our own death: by putting it out of mind as much as possible.

We are social creatures, human babies are more helpless than most baby animals and need the most care if they are to survive. We feel tenderness toward babies, even if they are strangers to us, and most of us have a reflex to leap to their defense if we see one toddling into traffic. At the same time, we are also programmed to survive.

In my first semester in law school we read a British case from the height of the British empire, Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. Dudley and Stephens, sailors, had survived a shipwreck with two other guys, one being the teenaged cabin boy. There were four of them, barely alive in the lifeboat in a remote area of the ocean, day after day. The kid was close to death, but hanging on. Reasoning that the boy was going to die very soon anyway, and that they’d all die if they didn’t eat him, two, Dudley and Stephens, voted to kill the boy. They killed him, over the moral objections of the third, and all three men ate and were eventually rescued. The principled cannibal gave evidence in the criminal case against Dudley and Stephens, who were sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead.

The verdict was designed to send a message to the civilized British navy. You cannot eat the cabin boy until he is dead of natural causes. Once that lesson was imparted, the queen (Regina) quietly commuted the death sentences of Dudley and Stephens and that was that.

In real life, recently, I have seen this impulse toward cannibalism among friends I’ve had for decades. When you are under enough stress, and feel desperate enough, you will believe any lie that makes you feel alive, part of a loving group and righteous in your shared fury. It is a short trip, step by step, from angrily denouncing someone, based on an ugly lie, to hating them, to hanging them from a tree, to eating their barbecued corpse.

We are all capable of this kind of abominable group behavior, in an extreme enough situation, but some are able to do it even when there is no direct threat to their own life. I don’t want to sound judgmental, God forbid, but my best advice is to avoid this kind of grimly transactional motherfucker, once you see that hungry gleam in their beady eyes.