How Soon is Now?

When you say it's gonna happen now
 Well when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
 And all my hope is gone
--The Smiths

I don't expect this to stop. But can we at least stop pretending? I accept that history and the apparently inexhaustible malice of black America means a debt incurred in perpetuity. We will pay (as long as there is a "we"), in money, peace, dignity--with our lives, yes, for this deficit between our demonstrated humanity and theirs.

The wages of the sin of slavery are--another sort of slavery, visited upon the descendants of all. We are slaves to fear and loathing. We are silent as slaves before the endless  humiliations of the bulked-up, uninhibited brute descendants of the poor brutes our forefathers broke down and chained. Force the detachment on yourself, and marvel at the absurd symmetry of our tragedy. Imagine the hatred in the hearts of those slaves. Do they see its redemption? Do they smile? Could they ever have imagined?

But when do we get to just tell the truth? When will the last laughable shred of plausibility fall away from the tyrannical order? How much hell has to be raised before the heavens fall?

Howdy Doody, Master of the Universe

Via Zero Hedge, here's WINEP warrior Patrick Clawson  lamenting the prospects of a successful "crisis initiation", read false flag operation (or suggesting one, I can't really tell; he appears to be responding to a question from the audience here), to provoke a war over the resistance of President Obama, Congress and the Pentagon. By his lights this is the "traditional way America gets to war" (and here would be "best for US interests").
He also suggests escalating the current covert war on Iran from sabotage and assassination to, say, sinking an Iranian submarine (but he's not "advocating" it, mind you), delighting his fellow ghouls with this bit of mischevious wit (I've got to party with you, man!):

Diversity is...

...military failure:

The Taliban's ability to infiltrate throughout the Afghan National Police (ANP) and Army (ANA) may have been facilitated by efforts to "homogenize" those forces in 2007 and 2008. Initially, many units in both forces were organized along regional or ethnic lines. Existing regional and ethnic divides were thus institutionalized - hardly a way to create national unity and lessen tensions among groups that have been at war for three decades .  

The new plan was to create units that were roughly proportional to the ethnic makeup of the country: Pashtun at 42 percent, Tajik at 27 percent, Hazara and Uzbek at 9 percent each, Turkmen at 3 percent, and several smaller groups, including nomads, making up the remaining 10 percent.

It is believed that it was at this time that the Taliban were able to insert sleeper agents into every major ANA and ANP unit throughout the country. These agents are now being awakened and given missions designed to demoralize ISAF forces and drive a wedge of mistrust between trainer and trainee.

Sounds like the Pentagon replaced the traditional accommodation of diversity, divvying up institutions by ethnicity, which no doubt hinders the creation or fiction of a national identity, with our own naively radical notions of proportional representation and desegregation.

Scene Stealing

Raging Bull, 1980

warning: prosthetic penis at 1:47

Boogie Nights, 1997

Alas, YouTube has pulled the above scene because of (simulated) nudity. The point was that Paul Thomas Anderson ended his classic with this sly homage to an earlier one. I'm not sure he's ever told anyone, or that anyone has ever pointed it out before. No dick jokes please (unless they're really funny).

Ch-ch-ch-changes; turn and face the strain...

Today appears a new verification page attached to title searches at my local library's website:

The feature you have selected is associated with data in your customer account. Such data may be accessed by law enforcement personnel without your consent. See our Confidentiality Policy which can be accessed on our Home page under Policies.

This Headline Should Read...

Chicago Teachers Strike for Better Students

Daily Affirmation, Dale Style

Life is defined by that irregular, indefinable hard boundary--like a rocky wall hidden in the mist—that is our individual nature, that is to say our limitations, against which our ambitions, and pride, are repeatedly dashed unto the end of our days.