Month: June 2016
New Toy
A pause in the somewhat draining labor of watching the global political landscape turn itself into a Cubist exercise in sharp lines the never quite match up. I bit the bullet and got the new Photoshop. I have a lot of learning to do, but as is my wont I dove right in. Sample of first efforts.
Embracing Stupid
I’m hearing from some folks about Brexit and by and large what I’m hearing says this is a calamity. The idiots “broke the U.K.”
There were plenty of people explaining what would likely happen if they did this, but hey, what do experts know?
Well, quite a lot, actually, but that fact alone makes them unpalatable to the voters who actually cast a Leave vote. We see precisely that kind of—what would we call it?—“learning fatigue” here. Who do you think supports Trump? People who know little or all the most useless things when it comes to politics and economics and quite adamantly do not want to know, because knowing would contradict the fantasy world in which they stand forth at weekend keggers loudly proclaiming positions that might hold some value in a Game of Thrones episode, but since the folks they’re holding forth to know just as little or less, no one challenges them and they feel justified in clinging to their ignorance.…
Come Again?
The evangelical embrace of Donald Trump is, to my mind, one of the most bizarre aspects of this election cycle. The pretzel logic by which these endorsements come defies Oedipus.  If there had been any doubt before that the Christian Right (which is in substance neither) is dedicated to any program that will see the established order overturned to make room for their brand of idiocracy, this would be it.
Because the only way this makes sense is to see Trump as the prophesied Anti-christ who will bring about the Apocalypse and prepare the way for His return. Back when Bush was in the oval office, it came out that a umber of “advisors” were pushing his Middle East campaigns because it comported with their view of biblical fate. …
Phobic Identity
Here’s a the thing. If you need someone to be in some way “less” than you in order for you to feel good—or even adequate—about yourself, you have a problem. It’s not their problem, it’s yours.
This “pastor” who spewed all over Twitter that we shouldn’t feel bad about the Orlando killings because they were “perverts” is a prime example. If he’s really a pastor, a religious leader, there is no reason for him to say any of that unless he’s just trying to assert superiority. Which is entirely not the point of Christianity, as I understand it. The point is to embrace the commonalities among people, not sort them out into boxes labeled “Preferred Types” and “Types To Be Condemned.” …
The Anxiety of Innocence
I have too many reactions to what has occurred in Orlando. They clamor for attention, shove each other aside, roil and ripple. Fifty dead, and why?
Because a man decided, on his own, to “do something” about homosexuals.
Why?
I don’t think anyone will ever have an satisfactory answer to that, but it would seem to stem from the same impulse that drives certain men to beat their wives, to terrorize their children, to post hate-filled screeds on social media, and then, once they have done all these terrible things, go arm themselves in anticipation of the inevitable storm troopers they expect to come silence them.…