The Icy Flame, Mad Monk Mix

Live on, thou damned!
--Baudelaire, The Double Room

Life is the lash
Driving us on
Toward the flame
Without haste
Without pause
Calm, cruel, fixed
Indifferent to us
Its raw material that serves some purpose
We cannot know
Into the chilling fire, slave-soldiers!
Into Nature's maw!
This command the only counsel
Of a universe without conscience
And desperate Man takes his own
He imagines worlds beyond
Over and above this grave
Clear of its stench and toil
He peoples them with his beloved
Who wait there serene and knowing
Holding the Secret in trust
He blasphemes Nature's Holy Writ
As He works to will these things
He works in defiant futility
Despite Her daily proofs
Of disease and calamity
The endlessly varied forms
Her harvest of death takes, like
Myriad mutant troops enforcing Her terror
And She claims with equal indifference
Her rebels and Her slaves
But behind Her cold disdain
Concealed by Her advantage in time
Her actions reveal some jealousy
Of Man's last means of resistance
His undying imagination
And frail She may be after all
Behind that horrible beautiful face
So we may as well call Her bluff
Though we know Her game is rigged, and
Sing defiant you fading voices!
We last, we last and
We have no fear, for
In that crucible of ice and dust
In that fire that will not warm
There, final and eternal
Only there
We are
At long last my tiring friend
No longer alone.

We Come in PC

My name is ghetwI', and I'm a Mormon.

Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anemone

Rum, Sodomy, and the Rag

Fun facts encountered while looking up aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), presently anchored alongside Syria:

Reports began surfacing immediately after delivery in May of 2009 of issues with the ships toilet system. As of November, 2011, the entire system has gone down at least twice, rendering all 423 commodes in the ship's 130 heads inoperable, with many more incidents that have rendered either half of the ship, or sections of the ship, without operating sanitary facilities. In one ship-wide incident, a repair crew spent 35 non-stop hours attempting to return the system to working order. The system is said to suffer breakdowns when inappropriate materials such as feminine hygiene products are flushed down the toliets.

Lone Doof

The quality of "lone wolf" terrorists remains underwhelming:

Two law enforcement officials said Monday that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as the investigation unfolded. Both times, the FBI concluded that Pimentel lacked the mental capacity to act on his own, they said.

Ask not for whom the strife bodes...

The New York Times knows multiculturalism when it sees it (abroad):

Sectarian Strife in Diverse City Bodes Ill for All of Syria

With all these models of truly multicultural (as opposed to whatever is meant by the phrase here in the States) societies around us, you'd think our elite might question its policy of planned ethnic diversification. Because while ethnic cleansing has a long, bloody history, ethnic diversification has none at all. That is other than history's many examples of imperial powers importing one population to displace another--we are the first to inflict this upon ourselves--which has always been just a means of ethnic cleansing. What part greed and what part stupidity propel our elite's actions remains a mystery to me.

There is no crueler phrase than "life goes on..."

T-Shirt Slogan

Works for any number of disciplines.

Glib Talib

The Taliban are now deploying snark:

NATO figures show that enemy attacks declined by 8 percent during the first nine months of this year compared to the year before. The United Nations, on the other hand, reported in September that insurgent attacks had increased by 39 percent in the first eight months of this year.

Referring to the gradual drawdown of military forces that has begun in Afghanistan, the Taliban statement read, “If [Nato Secretary General] Rasmussen and all his allies leave Afghanistan completely then the attacks on them will reach zero and he can propagate the notion even more and say that the number of Taliban attacks have fallen further.”

Needs work, but looks like some aspects of Westernization are taking hold.

Contextualized for Your Protection

I love this. Tintin is being sold with a familiar, reassuring paper band:

A spokesman said: “This is why we took the unusual step of placing a protective band around the book with a warning about the content and also included an introduction inside the book by the original translators explaining the historical context.
(...)
The warning reads: “In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Hergé reflects the colonial attitudes of the time…

“He depicted the African people according to the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation that some of today’s readers may find offensive.”

A Waterstones spokesman confirmed that the book had been switched to the graphic novels section of its stores four years ago, and that since then its position had not changed.

In the social realm what is conventionally meant by “progress”, now, is the direction of societal drift, whatever it may be. The aggregate of all those liberated, loosed souls, whose beneficent effect is presumed. Social Progressives concern themselves with identifying the general direction of this drift, so that they may then name it, and approve of it as, Progress.

From the Untethered Newswire

October 31, 2021, Stamford CT (UNS)

In an incident experts are calling unprecedented, a veteran daytime talk-show host died today when his soul fled his body.
"At approximately 12:59 this afternoon Maury Povich died of multiple complications resulting from the catastrophic, sudden detachment of his soul from his physical body,” a spokesperson at Stamford General Hospital read from a prepared statement hours later.

Povich, 76, collapsed during the taping of his television program Maury, which has been running in one form or another since 1991. In the recording of his final, incomplete show, disseminated on the Internet within minutes of his death, Povich appears to become disoriented, massaging his chest before taking a seat on the edge of the stage and waving off a concerned assistant. Then he loosens his tie and, smiling pensively, says, "you know I've done about a thousand of these paternity tests by now..."
At that point (warning: disturbing content at 10:58) his voice becomes unintelligible as he appears to physically implode. To the horror of his crew and the confusion of audience members, Povich collapsed in a gelatinous heap, unrecognizable as human, within seconds.

The studio audience reacted violently, as some bolted for the exits, some laughed at what they, perhaps, took to be a stunt, and others jockeyed to photograph or prod Povich's remains. At one point a man, who had just learned he is the father of three children, can be seen trying to cut away a piece of the former host for a souvenir. Stamford police took several hours to contain the chaos, making several arrests.

Loquatious DeVonne, 36, a participant on the program, was nearby when it happened.
"His voice got all weird and blubbery, like he was underwater or something. Then he just went all like a big rubber baby, you know, that was all hollow inside. I was like damn!"

Dr. Hal Ashborne of the Institute for Scientific Theology, after examining the tape, said the incident is vindication for the religious belief in the existence of a soul as the "core element of the human person." Dr. Ashborne played and analyzed the recording for reporters.
"Right here, just as he begins to collapse in on himself, we can clearly discern the implosion beginning in the chest, proving a longtime, nearly universal human intuition wrongly discredited by science--that of a soul extant as a physical reality within the human breast. And then here, precisely at 10:59:06, you can actually see Mr. Povich's soul leaving his body."

Ms. DeVonne and others could not confirm the soul's departure from their eyewitness accounts.
"All I know is it got real smelly up in there right when he fall down and he kind of made this loud fart sound." She said.

In an historic news conference scheduled for tomorrow, several of the world's top scientists and theologians reportedly will join to assert the death has demonstrated conclusively the existence of the soul as a "physical and ontological reality."
"I know. I couldn't believe it either." Richard Dawkins, celebrity atheist, said, shaking his head. "But what other explanation is there?"

The debate over the nature of the soul has only just begun, however, according to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, head of Connecticut University's theology department.
"The question remains as to the disposition of that soul. The soul is known to depart the body following death, not to precipitate or cause death. What became of it? Was it destroyed? And if it was, then has the existence of the soul really been proven? The soul is supposed to be immortal and immutable. Or is it subject, with enough time and effort, to degradation the same way a biological entity is? The question remains: can a man lose his soul?"

Dr. Mitchell reassured those concerned about meeting a similar fate. Povich was an extraordinary case, he said.
"One thing is clear. After years of intense, unremitting assault upon the seat of his own humanity with utter disregard for its well-being, Povich has unintentionally proved the existence of the soul, providing us here with the first recorded image of it. But it required concerted effort over a lifetime. It's unlikely there are very many people capable of scaring their soul from their own body, even if they tried."

Mitchell suggested the death of Jerry Springer, another veteran daytime talk-show host, may have to be reexamined in light of today's event. According to a police inquiry, Springer was killed in 2017 when a stage-light fell on him during a staple of his show, his "final thoughts" on the day's program. Yet several in the studio audience insisted they saw a lightning-like electric current passing from somewhere overhead and through Mr. Springer, who was reduced to ash in seconds. Controversy has surrounded that incident and was exacerbated when the recording of the program turned up missing. Mitchell isn't prepared to link the two deaths, but insists the degree and nature of Springer's injuries have not been adequately explained and should be reevaluated.
"This was no lighting accident."

Birth Fangs of Democracy

Too bad for Hillary Clinton, so proud to stand on "the soil of a free Tripoli", so humbly furtive in arriving there, as our declining prestige (born largely of just the sort of intervention she was celebrating) warrants yet another secret Mideast visit from the Secretary of State (shuttle diplomacy has given way to touch and go diplomacy). Consequently, she just-missed the world's newest democracy taking its first tentative baby steps. They're so cute at that age!
And I'm sure they're just getting started. Maybe Ms. Clinton can drop in on her way home (in secret, of course), to have her picture taken with the corpse, trophy-hunt style. Hurry Hil, that thing's got to be ripening quickly.

The hush was almost deafening

From the Apotheosis:

The statue, representing a "Stone of Hope," sits forward from a "Mountain of Despair."

In reality it's made to appear as if MLK has split the mountain in two and is morphing out of the granite like some great, sullen chthonic deity. After complete societal collapse the site will be suitable for virgin sacrifices and the like.

Visitors pass through the mountain on their way to King's statue and an expanse along the basin rimmed with an inscription wall covered with stone carvings of some of his most famous quotes. The four-acre area will also feature the iconic cherry blossom trees that draw thousands of tourists to the Mall each spring.
"The very first time that I came to the site, I was almost overwhelmed," Martin Luther King III said. "I really was impressed by this artist. He was able to capture the essence of my dad."

What does he know?

Sculptor Ed Dwight, who has made seven statues of King, objects to the memorial's depiction of the icon -- and to the artist chosen to create it.

"This idea of having this 30-foot-tall sculpture of this man, and this confrontational look, he would not appreciate that, because that was not him," Dwight argues.

Dwight is a black American artist, which might have seemed to make him an ideal candidate for the job, but he doesn't have access to a Chinese quarry and the indentured laborers who come with it.

You try steal happy family lucky civil rights! And cigarette lighter! Good for you we no white racist! Stop looking at girl! Up against wall!

[Chinese artist Lei Yixin], for his part, said America did not have sole claim on King.
"Martin Luther King is not only a hero of America, he's also a hero of the world," he said.

They could not find a capable black sculptor. They would not have a white one. Or they simply didn't want to pay a decent wage. So the Chinese, who disdain democracy and embrace ethnic nationalism, who despise blacks and view America's experience with multiculturalism and diversity as "chaos" largely because of the civil rights movement, who have contributed nothing to the advancement of individual or minority rights--they have the same, or greater claim to the civil democratic tradition than an American of European descent, whose forefathers have been dying for centuries to advance the cause.

A Communist Chinese national creating an image of an African American to harry European Americans about legal and political rights. And none dare note the ironic affront. This is the inverted empire of American multiculturalism, where hypocritical foreigners use the perverted language of civil rights to impose upon us an oppressive mediocrity.

He's all yours, Mr. Lei. But just between you and me, he ain't really all that. Then again, I suspect you knew that already.

Joseph is so money...

Jon Favreau on Robert Downey's resurrection: "Not since Joseph in the Bible went from prison to prophecy has someone elevated themselves from so low."

Minimum Wage the Hard Way

Cashier Fights off Attackers.* But what's that annoying white woman on about?

*Translated from the Drudgespeak: "Cashier Savagely Attacks Customers at MCDONALD'S..."

Gulls on Parade

Is it me or is the Left adopting a National Socialist aesthetic? Here's the president's iEnemies site (note the link may re-direct to Obama's main campaign site):

Report lese majesty here. Or else.

Bringing to mind the SPLC's longtime paranoid theme for its Hatewatch. An interrogating eye emerging from pixellated obscurity immobilizes the viewer with its aggressive gaze:

Jeepers, creepers, it's the virtual panopticon! "Here's looking at you. And you. And you..."

And this poster from a minor Occupier faction apparently isn't parody:

The Starbucks Putsch.

Then of course there's Martin Luther King as the Mall's forbidding doorman:

"Free at last? Nah, man. There's a cover."

Its heroic gigantism calls to mind Hitler and Speer's ambitions for Berlin. As sculpture, its scale makes modest the far superior works of National Socialism's Arno Breker (Richard Spencer on the subject here). At least Breker's heroes gaze romantically off into the distance or benevolently upon the people.

The Left's triumphalist/paranoid style is incapable of benevolence, only condemnation or condescension. After all these years it's still a mirroring response to fascism, substituting contrition in place of achievement as the noblest of individual or national ideals (that will show those mouldering Nazis!).

So MLK must glower forever downward in sullen, lizard-lidded reproach upon generations of American schoolchildren touring their capital; no matter how many more disappointments come from the promise of civil rights, whatever degradations remain for us, a maudlin tyranny of the mediocre etched crudely in stone.

This exceptionalism is distinguished from the fascist brand by the accusatory, inward focus of its aggression. I don't see how this recommends it. America must now phrase its boasts in the fawning language of minority rights; the most craven imperial adventure or corporate mission adopts it to advantage. Having made a fetish of contrition our sins become magnified, numerous--and jealously guarded by those for whom they have proven lucrative. This is imperialism for the postmodern Left. This is its nationalism. Why and where else would the cultural elite assent to such confident, earnest kitsch?

This is why we elected Barack Obama, our Cipher-in-Chief. After the crimes, humiliations and, finally, the economic collapse of the Bush administration we lost confidence and faith; we turned with unrecognized nostalgia to what we've been conditioned to see as our greatest achievement and finest hour--the black civil rights movement. This is what America does right! This was what we did in our uncorrupted past. Pastoralism for Progressives. That impulse is spent. Multiculturalism, unchallenged by anyone in power and vulnerable only to reason, empiricism and history, has nowhere now to go but reaction when confronted by change or critique.

When Barack Obama slighted American exceptionalism (a perfectly defensible thing) he wasn't being honest. He does not reject American exceptionalism as such; he merely improvises on it. Obama has reminded us time and again what is exceptional about America: him. Only America, remember, could produce the wonder that is he.

Obama is an improvisation on our theme of national greatness, made incarnate. How dare they. The president reveres American exceptionalism.

The MLK monument is a fair representation of the now cynical civil rights narrative after decades of black failure--perpetual condemnation from an obscenely aggrandized figure.

If a tyrant pays himself tribute on such a scale, its purpose is clear. Those beyond his reach denounce his ambition and mock his vanity. Just who does this man think he is? We call him mad.

Likewise, just who does the Left think MLK is? Whose madness is this? What is their ambition?

Are we beyond its reach? Because in this curious case, American citizens have little more freedom than that tyrant's subjects to meaningful dissent.

Black Americans remain atop the hierarchy of grievance by virtue of their now proud helplessness and dysfunction. By achieving political success by virtue of failure everywhere else, black America has created a disastrously effective demagogic model, giving impetus to an ever-increasing host of ethnic and other factions mimicking the chauvinism and hostility of the black political identity. For this they pay their tribute in return, defending the narrative; but like resentful mafiosi kicking back upstairs to a decrepit godfather, they jockey among themselves, bide their time.

Had black America risen, as was expected, to the extraordinary, continuing measures adopted on its behalf at the advent of the civil rights movement, achieving a true equality, the movement might have passed into history a success. But this hasn't happened, so we've adapted by declaring the old expectations quaint and the original ideal--equality before the law--racist, burning the boats that brought us here.

Like the fascists before them, with whom they remain obsessed, our generation's revolutionaries co-opted their nation's racial mythology with disregard equally for religion, custom or decency. Revolution quickly became rule, and here in its most deliberate artistic expression it makes of MLK a static, reactionary bulwark against dissent, built to last a thousand years. The movement, like its monument, is derivative. Worse than a crime, a cliche.

What damn poor timing for MLK's apotheosis though, with the economy going to hell and youthful black lynch mobs cleansing the streets. In the present those insensate eyes, that petulant scowl, the schoolteacher's accusatory stance are an unearned and dishonest condemnation issuing from mediocrity and failure. Fitting for our inverted empire and its hectoring project of division and displacement directed upon its own. The MLK monument is an opportunity, a teachable moment as they say, to reflect on the wisdom and justice of that project.

The Roost is on the Left

Making themselves to home.

The latest alienated, homicidal incompetent to personalize the sort of racial pandering the president is presently cranking to eleven for the 2012 campaign was shot and killed by police today. And we're off:

"He used to do so much for the community. Something must have happened to make him flip out like this", said Pastor Oscar Dace of Bible Way Christian Center. "Everybody just can't believe that this has happened".

Recall Omar Thornton's (no doubt to his mind heroic) final testament:"this is a racist place". What child-like confidence he had in its power to absolve him of cold-blooded murder (racism is the universal moral solvent, present in all human agency); that confidence was quickly validated by the unconscionable coverage that followed.

The comparison to Thornton isn't apt, though. Omar was an apolitical dullard. Shareef Allman has been identified by his friends and neighbors as a "pillar of the community" and, with the grim-comic oblivousness only black Americans can manage, a "kind-hearted mediator of conflict" who hosted a public access show and even got to interview Jesse Jackson on camera. This was a black man politically active in his community, an intellectual and emotional imbiber of the Narrative,* exacting retribution for, as he sees it, discrimination. How much more explicit does racial-political violence have to get for the topic to be broached by the High and Serious of the media?

*At this point I don't know the level and nature of Allman's activism. Sure would like to get a look at those public-access shows (the crazy sh-t you find yourself saying!).

update: I just got my wish. This was not a politically sophisticated fellow. A standard issue idiot. Met a hundred of them. God help us.

A Belated Introduction to Your President

New and improved, 10/4
Updates below

The hits just keep coming for the Wonder Brother.

I discount the president's more explicit race-baiting; he's never more full of shit than when he's adopting that phony gospel intonation for such as the naive souls at Trinity United. Sinister as it is, the president's fervor is depressingly dull. He remains the void he set out to be--only we no longer project onto His Blankness the illusion of--whatever it was the liberals were on about--but now its disillusion. The former magnified his image, the latter reduces it. And still we ask--who is this man? His life has been about contriving an identity--now he has none.

The world's been turned upside down: now for advantage one assumes a black rather than white identity. But it's still true that you can pass but you cannot hide. Your life is a loop, you come from a mother and return to one. That's the inexorable pull that draws us to authentic origins--religion, ethnicity, family--as we age. To where will you return, Mr. President? Will there be anything there?

There is nothing exceptional behind that visage, other than a yearning ego, a sort of psychological greed. Obama never expected to do what his acolytes took for granted: to reconcile black and white America. He wasn't here to change anything, but to keep the movement on track, tightening the cordon around the white boys. That's what we get for being so good to him in Hawaii--perhaps we should have bullied him like the Indonesians. He took to the White House the plan and model he'd had for Chicago: the implementation and solidification of a permanent non-white regime, maintaining power by distributing your wealth throughout a network of identity-advocacy groups in league with corrupt business interests. What an asshole.

The president and his attorney general are small men (preceded by small men) who cannot see far. Whatever imagination they have is spent on their private psychodramas. But Holder and Obama's aggressively racial-political Justice Department letting those buffoons off for their voter-intimidation stunt* looks more enticingly actionable than ever. Darrell Issa just lost control of his bowels.

*update: that is in light of these new allegations of one "Malik Shabazz"* signed in as a visitor to the White House. Imagine what a Nixon meets Elvis moment that might have been. I'll pay good money to any reporter who'll ask: "Mr. President, did Mr. Shabazz wear the fascist get-up for his tour?"

*correction: not new at all, and previously explained by the White House as "another" Malik Shabazz, along with another Bill Ayers, when releasing the logs as a transparency gesture (presumably a separate visit--I mean, if you brought too many of the more ferocious elements of Obama's base together at the same time it'd resemble the bad-guy casting call in Blazing Saddles, complete with scowling reconquistos declaring their contempt for the rule of law).

That voodoo you do. BHO exhorts the multicultural minions of Project Vote: "To stamp out runaway decency in the West..."

I wonder if anyone has seen the actual signatures, which might be subjected to verification--because if even the absurd appellation M. Shabazz can belong to anyone now (I mean how far can you take this: "Oh, that's another Bernie Madoff"?), then the gesture's transparency only reveals it to be hollow.

"Log book? We don't sign no steenking log book!"

Vying Slave

Missing puppy. Answers to Sarah. See dog-tag to identify owner.

The Wages of Glib

The Amanda Knox trial has been decried as a "witch hunt", largely because of its show-boating, race-baiting prosecutor and his blatant nifongery.*

At least he had a genuinely reprehensible crime to prosecute. Another less lurid witch hunt may have lost its prey as well today, as David Starkey was cleared by British regulators of charges of racism, incurred when "hundreds" of exquisitely conditioned BBC viewers reacted with despair--despite the fact that Starkey was clearly speaking for himself and his fellow news-chat co-panelists reacted with the proper intellectual hysterics--to an impolite but undeniable assertion: that London's rioting white chavs have adopted black culture as their own.

In its headline the Telegraph did the right thing by placing the child-like charge in its proper context--between a pair of mocking quotation marks--and Mr. Starkey stands by his remarks. Progress, then.

*I suggest "nifong" be adopted as a verb for such cases as these.

I Can't Seem to Forget You...

As for the president's Freudian slip, I'm reminded of a Sega Genesis commercial from 1994. Quarterback Joe Montana is taking a Rorschach test; as the psychiatrists (out to learn everything possible about football) flip through the images, Joe peers intently at each and repeats: "Reggie White...Reggie White...Reggie White...".

Rule #1 in politics: know who's Reggie White.

How Many Electoral Votes Do They Have?

Who says the president has a Jewish problem?

Original Sin

I was nothing
Before I came to be
I was contentment
I was obscurity

Then I entered the world
And the grave world entered me
The world in terror I cursed
The world in return cursed me
with this bond: Eternity

Little Dragon, Seconds
video by taheenu

Remember When?

Slate's Jacob Weisberg, (b)oracle, August 2008:

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Spot on as always, J-Wee. Can't wait to see what you've got for 2012.

more:
Isn't it amazing how much this

The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

sounds like a condemnation of the failing Obama Movement and the liberal hysterics which produced it, made, I don't know, yesterday morning? It really is prescient.

Paranoid-in-Chief

Via Drudge, it appears the White House is calling on some of its strengths from 2008--the power of the Internet, the gullibility of Youth, the paranoia of progressives--to compile a massive enemies list, with a fervor and reach in which Richard Nixon would find evidence of mental instability.

They've set up a "watchdog" website employing a vaguely sinister stark-alarm aesthetic (think SPLC's "Hatewatch") where you can report suspicious activity unfair criticism of the President's policies, politics or person. They have a list of refutations of common smears--first up: "...the President is a friend of Israel..."* (Ben-yo's finger-wagging notwithstanding).
USA. Mad from the top down.

*Somebody tell Manhattan's Jews not to worry: America is the nation Obama is intent on destroying through the displacement of its majority ethnicity, not Israel. Sillies!

Teeth long past repairing
picket a gape, perpetually despairing,
beneath a thousand-yard stare
(as if requisite, bad hair);

Bulbous nose--Satan's choice!
blame it for the toad-fart voice
(Yes it must be Lucifer;
for what divine engineer
puts a head this heavy on a neck this austere?);

With pock-marked skin
and gap-toothed grin
(granted, a not-bad chin):
one mediocre specimen!

His malformed charm,
his fellowship too,
draw only the alarm
such desperate figures are due;

(silence insulates he from you)

And through that silence he says:
alive, still, no less than you...

Self-Portrait, August 2o11

Melobama

Mother Nature's about to learn the cost of interrupting the president's golf game:

Obama takes charge at hurricane command center.

That's the actual headline. The Administration is determined to use this (pardon pun) overblown crisis to implicitly juxtapose Obama's action stance against Bush's lame Katrina performance. Maryland's Democratic governor assured Meet the Press: "This is a much better FEMA than the olden days". Irene makes a better crisis too--or the Eastern Seaboard has only President Obama's leadership to thank for averting complete societal breakdown.

But the accompanying photo suggests the president is bawling-out government employees for the slow pace of sandbag production, or something:

"I'm not going to be the one telling Michelle you guys couldn't get Tyler Perry!"

Bulk Mailer

A message from the Southern Poverty Law Center:



"Racists are everywhere...People denying the existence of racism may be racist themselves."

Infernal Refugee Rag

I've got a little time left and nothing to lose. You have too much of both. Everything you do is contingent on your future; I have none. You must take care; I will take advantage. You pay your tithe in hypocrisy. You're invested. I'm busted. But I won't go away. I'm that crank with the uncertain means of income. I'm your village atheist. I won't humor your gods, and I'm ten feet tall. I am familiar and unsettling, something you've heard of but have never seen. I'm always there, in the back, glowering, moving through the dim edge of the mass. My features are never clear to you, always in shadow...

You have bought in, like everyone else, to get by; you have incurred an unexpected debt. I am here to collect. No more payment in the counterfeit that is your condescension--I'll break your legs. We had a trust, you and I. You declared it invalid, and me contemptible; I am the perpetual loser. But what happens when the game is up? I am of the psychic barrens left behind by your rapacious bacchanal. Those wastes are always with me. You don't know shit. I want to bring them to you. You pass me on the street, looking away in distaste; I grab you by the collar, pin you up against the wall; listen here you bastards...

The old neighborhood rises up around us; I am momentarily overcome; you try to break free but I have the strength of the manic and I hold you by the neck at arms length, your legs squirming in air, with one hand while wiping my averted eyes with the other...

You owe me an explanation. I am your incorrigible white trash, your embarrassing relations, your loud neighbors overhead going at it, fighting, fucking, going mad. Trust your instinct; don't come up to complain. I will be gone soon enough. Then you'll miss me. You haven't met my understudy. Just wait...

Yes, wait here a while. I'm just getting started.

Hate's Not Here, Man

updated below

Our Vigilant Elite: "Nothing to see here..."

From the AP:

WEST ALLIS, Wis.—West Allis police are releasing new details about some arrests on the opening night of the Wisconsin State Fair, but say none of those incidents possessed elements that would prompt their prosecution as hate crimes.

WTMJ-AM reports ( http://bit.ly/roRWMr) the Police Department issued a statement Tuesday with new information about a handful of the more than two dozen arrests made last week.

Witnesses reported the opening night attacks seemed to be racially motivated with young African Americans beating up white fair goers, but police say as of now there isn't enough evidence to support those claims.

Time for the Justice Department to bring its resources to bear?
And where are the intrepid reporters, holding local authorities to account, investigating the race-terror networks that organize the pogroms? Where are the features you might expect to see--telling the stories of the various decent folk descended upon by racist savagery?
Racism, violence, official deceit, heinous villains and sympathetic victims, scary visuals, all part of a nationwide, perhaps global,* trend; this should be where careers are made in journalism and federal law enforcement. Why the dereliction? Where is everybody?

It's elitist vanity, rather than decency, that finds the story so repugnant. People are being proven disastrously wrong. Thus their confusion. It's like the fog of war--not that we're saying there's a war or anything! It isn't as if hate criminals declare their motives for all to hear. Like everyone walked around with cameras recording it all!
Evidence is tough. Reality is hard.

SPLC finds a thicket. "This is a very complicated case Maude, a lotta ins, lotta outs...what-have-yous...lotta strands, man."

*

This summer's inconveniences should at least prompt the debate: apply hate crime laws in earnest or repeal them.

I had assumed its proponents were cynically aware of hate legislation's dubious necessity. They were just another species of demagogue, cultivating fear and loathing as leverage to power. Liberals become extreme law-and-order conservatives here (no longer liberal, but "progressive"). As in the case of rape, invoking another tenet of the faith, it's Damn the Constitution. White racism is for the progressive left what communism once was for the right (and liberalism, to tell the truth), the great enemy against which it defines itself. There is no Islamic terrorism waiting, so this Cold War must self-perpetuate. We will always be at war with Racist Eastasia.

But my faith in their cynicism is shaken. It seems they truly are that foolish: they thought the real race problem was the white redneck remnant. They really do see racists around every corner, and white racism in every instance of black failure. They are as blind to black bigotry as they appear--after all these years of purporting to make a study and concern of bigotry as such. That jig is up.

That proponents of hate crimes legislation weren't deterred by the potential for blowback--the chance the laws might affect more black and brown criminals--is striking. They are either that stupid, or that confident in their ability to force their hypocrisy upon the whole nation through the selective application of these laws. So far this is what they've done. Of course they didn't anticipate the summer of thugs.

Hate crime legislation, ironically, did. At some point it becomes appropriate and necessary--when the violence is no longer bearable. Once racially motivated crimes become a distinct problem. The left demanded these laws on the basis that they already were. They've been arguing dishonestly for years that hate crimes are a serious and growing threat--always in potential outbreak--suddenly they're right, the dumb bastards!

We say never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity. Our progressive establishment, like their uncontrolled street-vanguard, seems to feed one with the other. With blithe confidence they created--for their despised white majority--a draconian remedy for black hatred with--well looky here!--hate crime laws. Whatsay we take these babies out for a spin?

Let's assemble that prison population of hate criminals the left has been clamoring for. Let its demographic composition mock their obstinate faith. If we were a serious country we would use or lose these laws, which our black children--for whom they were drafted, with tears and concern--mock with furious glee. I suspect we'll choose door number three. Maintain the lie.

*Oh shit, do we owe the world another apology? Mr. President?

update:
from the West Allis police department:
"As you will see from the press releases, the West Allis Police Department has NOT stated that it will not seek the [Wisconsin] penalty enhancer* for hate crime."
Pardon me, officer.

Burial, Forgive
video by shiqaqa

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace*

The answer to the still smoldering problem of black flash-mobs (now pirate raids for plunder as much as anything else) has always been with us, sadly:

The Police Department on Monday also announced the launch of SafeCam, an online program that allows residents and businesses to register their security cameras with the city, to help police apprehend suspects quickly.

Networks of surveillance cameras supporting quick-reaction police tactics, and re-purposed social media surveillance:

...Ottawa Police’s criminal intelligence section...keeps an eye on anarchist websites and the like — which sometimes will write about intentions to disrupt major events in the city, like diplomatic or Royal visits, and G8/G20 meetings.

“It’s very challenging to pin-point smaller events,” Sweet said. “It’s all new, but we’re in the middle of a project — a strategic response to social media.”

This will save us from North America's black children, and the need to admit how terrified we are of them. We in cities where the Youths' numbers aren't at critical mass (alas!) may not be in physical peril, but we all have to swim in the same civil-legal waters--a little muddier now with the latest innovatory trend in black malevolence. And we are grateful for our degraded privacy and the diverted resources. Everyone a little less free, a little more safe. Those little bastards really don't get enough credit for their malicious achievements.

*Title lifted from the Adam Curtis documentary.

Fairy Queens v Feral Negroes

For certain people it's open season on certain other people. But some people you just don't fuck with. Beating a breeder to a pulp is unfortunate, but gay slurs are evil!
A hierarchy is established.
The divisionals were a blowout. Moving into the higher bracket, where it's Pouncers versus Flouncers,* take my money off the blacks and put it on the gays. Just as the Chicago authorities have done.

*These political allies have absolutely nothing in common. The slogan of the insurgency against multicultural imperialism: "exploit the contradiction!"

This ain't the Summer of Love

"Really? Is this really happening?"
--Flash-mob victim

This ain't the Garden of Eden,
There ain't no angels above,
And things ain't what they're supposed to be,
And this ain't the Summer of Love
--BÖC

The post-racial dream has become a nightmare. The use of social media to take over public space by surprise (the definition of “flash mob”, alas) for the purpose of recreational racist terror is this summer's trend.

Affected municipalities across the country brace themselves ahead of heat waves and large public events; holiday weekends loom like potential squalls on the horizon. Recession-lean budgets strain to add police ("...we have deployed additional officers..."): more police aren't always enough ("...shootings happened despite a high police presence..."). Businesses lose money and fear for the safety of employees. Some are harassed for closing their doors to the chaos.

Suburbanites surrender the city and stay home; events are cancelled, scaled back, starved. Organizing ad hoc via social networking for the purpose of amusement, black adolescents terrorize parts of the country like al Qaeda only wishes it could.

It all seems so long ago now. Once, liberal Americans anticipated with perverse ecstasy a violent racist reaction to an Obama presidency. This is not what they had in mind.

In the burlesque of Obama's first presidential campaign, the occasional white rube documented fretting over emboldened black racists was a recurring act, eliciting satisfied shivers in the Good, and proving all the more the need for absolution by Obama. Fear of “uppity blacks”—how quaint! What a reassuringly familiar theme! How comforting, to see the good narrative, the one we've been steeped in since childhood, playing out as scripted, in one's very own lifetime, with the promised marquee villains hitting their marks and the handsome black hero in charge. Less loftily, one could stick it to a despised Other (other white people—topsy-turvy world!) and claim the moral high ground in doing it. Everything was so easy then—virtue especially.

The production was on schedule until the wrong crowd showed up for the mob scene. Who cast these extras? Without script or direction, public officials are improvising--and the dialogue just gets worse (the beatings were "barbaric", said Milwaukee's police chief, but crime, like love, is “colorblind”).
But the dominant culture has taken too big a stake in Barack Obama's role as racial healer to let the public focus-group this ending. The problem is today’s reality plays out like the earnest speculative fiction of 2008's presumed-phobics:

In the president’s adopted home of Chicago, political and cultural center of black America, networking teens—emanating from the same streets as young Barack Obama, community organizer—randomly form in bands, terrorizing non-blacks and forcing the closure of parts of the city before melting away like guerrillas—excelling a national trend in just this sort of racist mob violence. Small-town Pennsylvania remains dormant.

To deny his city was under siege, new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, of all people, was forced into embarrassing public obstinacy: fears of “heat stroke” in the 88 degree weather, and nothing else, prompted the city to close beaches along the lake into which black adolescents happened to be throwing bicyclists for amusement. He was roundly mocked.

The new mayor accepted the necessity of this humiliation. Like one of the victims he won't acknowledge, Rahm checked his dignity, took his beating and endured the taunts. Add the self-respect of one of the most influential people in the world to the casualty list. No mean feat for the feral children of Chicago's south side.

The trust Emanuel and his brand-new police superintendent (I presume) hope to establish with Chicagoans will have to wait. Superintendent McCarthy blithely invoked trust, while repeating the lie once more with feeling for the heckling crowd. The irony was lost in all the irony. But trust was established: the mayor has demonstrated, to whoever it is runs his city, that he knows how to keep his mouth shut.

With fellow feeling the major papers will ignore this latest example of a public official misleading citizens about a criminal threat to avoid offending the same criminals--or black and liberal sensitivities. Faced with a nation-wide outbreak of racist violence our political and journalistic classes collude in Soviet levels of disinformation. This debasement of our discourse is yet another consequence of the violence—precisely, of the need to deny the nature of the violence.

Thankfully, the Great Recession is a massive plausibility-generator. The general angst of the present. Catastrophic unemployment. Cutbacks in summer programs. I don’t discount these things. Responsible public servants will recourse to them so they can do what they can while preserving the lie--and themselves. Invoking the general downward trend in crime is already a common, if fallacious, means of distraction.

But obscurity has its consolations. We get to ask. Does the recession explain the trend? Not on paper. Black Americans poll disproportionately optimistic about the future. President Obama inspires their pride and confidence still. Black Americans are feeling much better than other Americans about their prospects, because we have a black president. This contradicts the hoary stock reply that black racism and violence always stem ultimately from righteous grievance.

Neither does the video support the recession ruse: the flash-mobbers (so confident in their indemnity they document their crimes on camera for later boasting) are amused, giddy, joyful even. What is expressed (often verbally) is not resentment of white privilege but disdain for white weakness. This is an expression of power, not powerlessness.

The world is turned upside-down. The grandchildren of the civil rights movement now riot and plunder out of a sense of entitlement.

The respectable media, perhaps comforted by the fact the criminals are relatively few (barely seen from the commanding heights), have cordoned off the story (with "context" and "perspective" their Orwellian bywords) to keep the creepy white racists out. The thing will play out, to whatever end, with no indelicate commentary from them. In that silence is the tacit agreement: the physical damage of the mobs is nothing as compared to the psychic damage the truth will bring.

Where is the president? Where is that promised leadership on race? It's difficult to imagine a white president addressing the problem squarely, as an issue of black responsibility; Barack Obama could. No single man has had--or will likely have again--this level of moral authority among blacks and this much political power. But the president will remain silent.

The fact is that rather than being uniquely qualified to address the issue, Obama is uniquely hampered. This same story that made him the most powerful man on earth romanticizes and politicizes black racism. Our rapidly degrading reality stands out in relief against this inviolate, rigid narrative. There is much embarrassment, and I hope a little shame, in the silence of our race-rioters' apologists.

The narrative holds that we've failed black Americans. But reality demonstrates black America is failing the rest of us.

Regrettably, I hereby revive this blog.

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Roll Credits

Beck, Lost Cause


Baths, Pop Song


Richard D. James, Quino-Phec

Outreach, Concluded

Final tally. Dennis as existential stranger.

"Yes. Sexual predators infiltrated the social networking component of the site... "
--"Ryan", The Office

...the Darndest Things!

Monday one of the feral teens involved in the economic-recreational beating death of Seattle's "Tuba Man" was arrested for something called "unlawful bus conduct." This is his second arrest after serving a nominal sentence for the killing, committed when he was just fifteen. His first (known) fatality remains a source of considerable pride for the youngster (see below), now 18 and just whiling away the brief period between that and the blessed release that will be his own death or long-term incarceration.
Somewhat reassuringly, the high correlation of violent crime to gross stupidity is here in evidence, suggesting that indecent interval will be very brief indeed. Unsurprisingly, his sophistication regarding the criminal justice system hasn't yet matched his precocity for criminal violence, and his conspicuous lack of shame regarding the killing (or appreciation for the mercy shown him) suggests that on his block he's something of a celebrity:

"While he was being searched by Deputy Hill and Deputy Nix, (the teen) bragged to them about being one of the juveniles who killed the Tuba Man," according to an incident report. "He bragged how his lawyer, John Henry Brown (sic), got him off with only three months for stomping Tuba Man to death and how he would get him off for these charges too," a deputy wrote in an incident report.

However, John Henry Browne was not the teen's attorney on the Tuba Man case, in which he received a sentence of 30 to 72 weeks and served all 72. His attorneys were public defenders Daewoo Kim and Hal Palmer, according to the King County Prosecutor's Office.

An Uncanny Recognition

From The Onion:

NEW YORK—According to media analysts, the nation's TV commentators and political pundits have proved uncannily accurate when describing the deeply disturbed inner thoughts of accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner. "It's strange, but when it comes to getting inside the mind of this human being who seems to possess no empathy, sense of morality, or hold on reality, and who is motivated only by personal animus and self-glorification, the nation's major political pundits have been amazingly adept," said Horizon Media analyst Bob Cullen, who has studied extensive tape of commentators on all major TV news programs and found their remarks on "what the killer is thinking" to be consistently thorough and detailed across the board. "It's almost as though they have some way of knowing, firsthand, exactly what this demented and highly dangerous individual with the eyes of millions upon him is going through." Researchers at Horizon Media also reported that a number of prominent TV pundits appeared to be mimicking the exact same chilling gleam in Loughner's eye for what they could only speculate was "dramatic effect."