From a draft I started prior to the student protests –

A confusing thing that the false “health freedom” opposition has repeated from about 2021 when the ruling class was really trying to make covid stick is this hand wringing worry expressed in a number of ways about legitimacy. How they worried about us little people lacking confidence in “our institutions”. And it can be dangerous place to be when they are no longer legitimate, but it is more than a matter of faith. RFK Jr and pals really want to make a boatload in the coming years and that actually depends on a facade of institutional legitimacy to do so. Of course it’s always been a facade when discussed in terms of what “the public” seeks. Most people you talk to on any given day have no faith in american institutions, and covid wrecked that even further. They may rely on them to an extent, but most adults willing to go the mile to have their grievances really heard and acted upon know the battle and limitations. It goes without saying that it’s crazy making by design to boot. So this crisis of confidence or legitimacy rhetoric from that quarter doesn’t give us anything insightful or actionable, it just leads to more of the same. And maybe worse!

A “crisis of legitimacy” isn’t strictly academic though. This was evident from the very beginning of lockdowns in the US, as comprehensive and all-encompassing as the fascist vanguard wanted it to appear. For all the authoritarian apparatuses that cover this continent, not one was willing to take up the mantle to enforce it as a single entity even though those were the orders from the top. [And I would argue that’s also not happening now; there are protests on campuses throughout the US and there is still not a single entity coordinating everything, at least to the public eye. There is a patchwork response from various offices, but they are either not responding as a continuous bloc or they have not been given orders to. What is up with that?] They were perfectly legitimized [back then], right? No one wanted the deadly coof. Some of these entities filled skate parks with sand and some nailed boards over basketball hoops, real tough shit. State policing institutions like highway patrols were in no way going to stick their necks out and stop and arrest people “not abiding” lockdown and several smaller county offices refused to enforce governor-issued diktats as they viewed them as unconstitutional.

As much damage that was done and that we’re still reeling from, legitimacy was a huge problem for them. They know this and all the domestic military installments are running drills for whatever is next. Nothing new but nothing to scoff at because of idiotic movies made by utterly clueless pampered “edgelords” (see: that “civil war” dreck. or not!).

As usual, I’m in the middle of three other posts of which maybe one will be published on this here blog. But I wanted to take a moment to write a few words on Beyoncé Knowles’ ass, believe it or not. I noticed that with her latest, she has promotional shots with it hanging out there under her ridiculous stars and stripes getup. Of course, it is against the law to speak harshly of Knowles in a majority of the contiguous US as it is both Sexist and Racist, and You Probably Don’t Get What She’s Doing anyway. I think I may be exempt in this jurisdiction, so let me go on. And as we all should know by now, her ass is bigger than its position on her backside; it wouldn’t be in our faces without the work of a lot of people – financiers, skilled professionals, and manual laborers alike – all part of humiliation and demoralization campaigns collectively known as the “entertainment industry”.

It is often said to be internalized misogyny to speak negatively about what other women wear, but it is the most internalized misogynist when such speech happens to be directed at women whose net worth is between seven and around twelve figures. Last month, I made some comments on a vexingly popular influencer’s outfit and was accused of internalized misogyny for noting that she was likely wearing it to receive a certain kind of attention on a certain trip she was verifiably husband-free on despite their newlywed status. In fed-ridden internet spaces (what isn’t any more, unfortunately), such sentiments are tantamount to saying any woman being flashy or daring is deserving of sexual assault, and all other behavior is to be factored out of such observations as well. She, whoever she may be, has the mystical, sacred ability to appear from nowhere for no one and “express herself”.

Continue reading →

I first watched the television series The Prisoner in my mid-20s, so about 20 years ago now. I’ve watched it several times since and in my opinion anglo television should have ended then, and not just because of its technical and artistic achievements. It should have in spite of them – the biggest achievement of all is that it perfectly demonstrated why television (and consequently all the surveillance tech that stemmed from it that the show gives a frighteningly prescient rendition of) should have been dismantled as an industry with its airing. I’m not really a television enthusiast, but like anyone else under this order, I’ve seen my share whether I like it or not (by hook or by crook). I can’t think of any other shows I’ve taken the time to watch that have left me seriously thinking about how awful the whole endeavor really is.

Maybe that’s naive and provincial of me, maybe I should watch more to get a better impression of why I shouldn’t! As much as such a contradictory statement could possibly be true, I cannot with these majorly media-covered and “acclaimed” series, don’t really want to, and in not so small part thanks to this show and the things I’ve taken away from it. I was not really raised on television and that mostly followed through into my early adulthood – I didn’t have the time for it and didn’t care. Then “prestige television” came along at a time I was insisting that television was dying and we should welcome its demise. That one didn’t turn out so well, did it. But then again I didn’t have anything to show my work, just a general feeling of unease and realizations of what it means to stay alive as the tides turned internationally into something even more grotesque.

Continue reading →

My husband and I turned on what is now known as television the other night – a show of our “choice” from a limited menu of what is “free” via streaming services that will now charge you another $35 a year or so to not see additional ads.¹ But this had really terrible ads, and it was an old series: Forensic Files, kind of a misnomer with regard to what all forensic evidence entails in my opinion. The emphasis on these dubious forms of what now defines forensics to the point of confusion is comparable to automobile technicians being thought of mechanics these days, in a way. Admittedly that’s not quite right, not the most apt comparison. But the gist of this older school media was to catapult awareness of DNA and other forms of microscopic evidence in order to solidify this guarded science as a form of direct evidence in the mind of the public, which it is not. That is somewhat beside the point, but it grates at my soul when I think and read on it, so I wanted to make note.

The case in this particular episode we were halfway paying attention to was heinous and well known at the time, mid 90s. A young woman, Shannon Melendi, was disappeared, raped, and murdered. The case had turned cold, finally solved by the “miracle” of DNA technological advancement. It was easy to feel sorry for the parents of the deceased, whom they interviewed. Funny thing, the audience doesn’t know who exactly interviewed them. Certain highlights of their interviews conducted by persons off screen were voiced over by a beloved narrator to FF’s diehard fans, and yes, they exist. Melendi’s mother remarked toward the end of the episode that she doesn’t even want the perpetrator, one Colvin Hinton, to be executed or to die for his crimes. She wanted him to suffer something much worse than death, but presented as if this desire for prolonged, painful (psychic and/or physical) death locked away forever is virtuous. It reminded me of post-9/11 “discourse” – “but torture doesn’t even work!” in response to batshit warhawk cheerleaders. Work, okay, but for what exactly? So much of the liberal rhetoric ended there, so you didn’t get an explanation. It was just a thing to say to “get” an alleged opponent.

Continue reading →

I truly do not care what people have faith in, or what they practice, as a reasonable person. The most important “big ones” to us collectively can be applied practically to make sense of material reality. They are also misapplied and exploited, yes. I think most sagittarians would agree with me when I say things like, it’d be splendid to launch an arrow through the guts of the Joel Osteens of the world. Ha! Just kidding. They need to be stripped of all their ill gotten gains and detained prior to trial. Maybe they can pay back all of that they have stolen, or maybe they will die, according to the people’s will and a jury.

Okay so I do in fact care what people have faith in. It is a shared belief in what happens on this earth and in this life is important and meaningful, and that justice is attainable.

Something eerie about how the pandemic shutdown presaged postpandemic austerity/forced homebodying

-zzyxx

The propaganda over the summer regarding the movies the title alludes to was suffocating and oppressive in so many ways it’s hard to know where to begin. I don’t really want to so much, but overall Oppenheimer and “the bomb” were a grade or middle school discussion; Barbie was something you desperately wanted to avoid and feared (as an image) among certain populations around the same age. I’m not that old – I mean these mundane facts of what secular life has been in the US isn’t so alien to whatever fucking audience the media managers are trying to sell to.

Now I feel the predictive intent of this media storm was actually intentional, but predictive programming as a kind of analysis deployed in parapolitical circles doesn’t account for our response to it, by and large. At that point, it’s just, see: Bernays. All your senses belong to jooz. But I think it is illustrative of the intent of plastic for we, bombs for thee, according to this collective sentiment the rulers wish to instill among the public.

They really are putting plastics directly into ppl and masking it with this mRNA gibberish. PEG = polyethylene glycol which is a thermoplastic polymer. What is it allegedly encasing? It's not "mRNA" which controlled oppo endlessly theorizes on as cover https://t.co/g88k7C6vPU

— 🇵🇸 KF stands with the DPR and LPR (@flak_kari) December 9, 2023

How we wish to ignore the plastic bomb, and as we become big fat polymerized consumption and button pushing blobs that can be zapped dead at any time. It’s a cartoonish description of a cartoonish goal that comes across as very real when we aren’t connected to the numbing effects of the ‘net. Dropping dead months after being coerced into injected poison that led to an undetected clot that finally grew to a point your brain couldn’t do automated functions – well they are figuring this all out and it’s happening. Does a random 24 year old male taking his child to school pose the most dire corporate intelligence threat? He might if he resists the order in totality and isn’t in a place such as Gaza that makes him an easier target.

For a while during my 20s, I was all “er fuck thanksgiving colonial holiday”. It’s not that deep of a sentiment actually, because the holiday is for people getting together who have all been touched by settler colonialism in some way, no matter the stated intent of who it’s supposed to “honor”. That’s what happens. And sometimes it’s the only time that it could happen in a year, a decade, or a lifetime. But it proves a lot, doesn’t it? And you in part become who you think you should be for the thoughtful in this land.

Americanized and weaponized standards of whiteness and racism are in a state of flux I’m not sure the watchers or managers, algorithm fuckers or whoever have fully caught on to yet. There’s a fuller understanding of history as the world comes together in support of Palestine and our places in it – we aren’t destined to be anything based on skin tone. We are free because we are human. The figuring of white, black, and what’s in between in the US is a total farce online. The diversity of humanity is so fascinating and wonderful to behold. The likenesses shared between maybe just one ancestor and one great grandchild emerge all the time creating a true fabric, endlessly multicolored and different in some ways and similar in others, that connects us all and reminds us why we honor the dead who truly brought us here. These standards and measures cannot be placed over the people of Palestine and simply be read as data points or whatever. They are the bravest people on earth and what is apparent before all else is their humanity.

I was thinking recently of Jacobin’s “white working class” nonsense prior to Trump. And I am prone to just calling it nonsense any time I’ve posted about it online! It addressed nothing real of course and was strictly fascist propaganda. Really think about it – how many strictly White families have you ever known? It’s telling that the Jacobin editors have some experience here. The working class doesn’t self-segregate actually, there is vast diversity in even smaller families, but we are always pressured to. I think this is why most white americans would shudder at thinking they were ultimately a product of slave owner AND slave. Colonizer and colonized is true as well of course, and according to these White academic terms is acceptable and desirable since they represent a fascist eugenic legacy of blood quantum laws and legislation that were designed to legally outlaw indian-ness. Appearance is what many americans get hung up on because why wouldn’t that be the case but it includes socialization and connection to the land, and not some particular parcel as the nativists imagine – the entire land, all of earth at any given time because it is OURS to share and tend to, and what it offers us and what we owe to it in our station – what our duties are to each other and every living thing.

Colonizers nearly wiped out the elk population in western North Carolina entirely. There have been efforts to reintroduce them into the wild and about 200 roam the Appalachian regions today. There haven’t been that many since before America™. How the fuck do you do that? How in the hell do you make it an objective to nearly drive a species to extinction robbing the inhabitants of them also? It makes me sick to think about, how such blind disregard for humanity and the earth that sustains us all led so many people to do so many terrible things. And they may have not benefited much individually, and it’s likely that their descendants are taking place in healing the wounds they caused. It should go without saying that these efforts under our current regime come with all the expected strings attached, but the institutions that cause them to be pulled in one direction or another are in a state of trauma and incomplete healing because the people they need to maintain them are thoroughly broken from the last three years. Scar tissue isn’t so strong actually if it’s just constantly dug into again and again. There is no branded recovery we can expect to read about from a headline, and there is no other kind of authentic recovery without fighting for true liberation.

I’ve spent the majority of my life around public education in some way, either as student or worker. I’m considering going back to teach next year because the need is so dire, and never in my life have I seen anything like it. It appears to be a nationwide crisis, but who among us wouldn’t have seen that coming? Here I have compiled a list with links of teachers who have died suddenly this year without explanation, but this list is by no means exhaustive as demonstrated by Dr. William Makis who has documented more with greater focus on his Substack.

Continue reading →

An interesting synchronicity that several true crime personalities are flat out ignoring: just last week, in Tallahassee, FL, one Charles Adelson was finally put on trial in the murder of his former brother in law, Dan Markel, a professor at FSU and celebrated legal mind. The state rested its case on Wednesday November 1, throughout the time I’ve spent posting on this. Markel was only 41 when he was shot in his car as he was trying to leave his own damn home in the summer of 2014. Probably to go pick up his children he was desperately fighting for in a wacky custody battle with his ex wife, Wendi Adelson, and her parents, but mostly her mother, Donna.

It’s taken nine years of legal maneuvering to secure an indictment against Charles. He was arrested last year and denied bond which is not nothing for a periodontist earning seven figures a year in South Florida, where he and his other immediate family members are based. Three other conspirators have been tried and convicted since the crime occurred. The state’s theory is that Charles enlisted the help of his ex girlfriend Katherine Magbanua who hired the father of her children and on and off “common law husband”, Sigfredo Garcia, who then brought along his brother-in-arms Luis Rivera to do the job. They rented a car in Miami, headed north, surveilled Markel twice, and took his life for the total price of $100,000. Magbanua, however, was able to secure years of payments beyond that. The state has made up some movie plot fantasy of Garcia and Rivera being part of the “Latin Kings” gang, but it may be strategic. The Adelsons seem to be so delusional as to pretend they’re “making” people, as if mafiosos rake in a whopping $2m in revenue yearly, but really it’s just some guys trying to survive who had a little more dignity before they were caught up in this mess.

Continue reading →

We’re on the flip side. This, this has to be understood well by anyone in north america trying to move anything – at all, for anyone – forward in north america –

Israel is trying to carry out with success, in the 21st century and against Palestinians, a similar genocide to the one carried out by the US, in the 19th century, against Native Americans.

— Carlos F. de Cossio (@CarlosFdeCossio) October 22, 2023

Native American and/or American Indian (the latter is what I usually use) history and literature was a year of my undergrad studies, and it almost killed me. I’d never felt so suicidal even after knowing and hating (as reaction) two people for doing it themselves. I can describe the pain as knowing why it’s perfectly logical to go through with it. And that’s, really, it. There’s no “ok well and this is why I didn’t”. You just crawl back from the recesses of your motherfucking HUMAN mind properly reacting to abject horror and devastation reined down on civilizations that existed in cooperation with others from all over the damned world for millennia and go, answer phones at a call center or whatever. The firsthand accounts, the source knowledge, isn’t so fucking far behind in the annals of history. The blood spilled remains within every road and building here, and I don’t mean that figuratively. This continent was trampled upon, and war was brought upon people who had no interest in starting one themselves.

I became acquainted with this semi-sniveling busybody who can’t shut the fuck up but I like her, and that’s probably mostly to her advantage. During our initial introduction, she spilled out a bunch of stuff that she viewed as altruistic, some of it is (selling and propagandizing native plants), but at the same time she is manipulative without fully understanding why, or maybe why she’s not very subtle and gives herself away in short order. After agreeing to purchase some plants from her, she gave me a handout on the importance of keeping native plants and avoiding all the typical landscaping ones from “Asia”, simply a huge foreign landmass whose plant exports in totality are going to throw everything off balance here in “the americas”; it’s a sentiment expressed in a way that I can imagine a racist democratic socialist from the 1910s attempting to articulate. She’s a well-to-do Catholic from Northern California, and because of those regional and religious inclinations, I felt like telling her to calm down a bit about the whole situation, as it exists now. Just take it down a notch, indulge in some locally made whiskey. I did not mostly because I appreciate the efforts to restore indigenous plants and pollinators for numerous reasons, but not everything that’s developed here was achieved by settler magic or by force. Evidence of contact and diplomacy between large civilizations and apparently just “the people who were here before us without one of their own” that demonstrates how this continent was affected by varied forms of trade and socialization is flatly ignored to really a psychotic degree. Off Vesta’s tweet and the excerpt he commented on encapsulates this ideological trajectory based on widely-spread, institutional/ized alibi –

Malthus is so stupid it's vertiginous, almost frightening. Even if we could leave aside here the obvious and quite conscious racism his argument is still "people will have more children than their limited resources can support, when the limitation of limited resources is removed" pic.twitter.com/vJFm3BqZwI

— ethan (@OffVesta) October 21, 2023

I skimmed the page she left with me. The malthusian elements were glaringly obvious without having to read it in depth – we (who?) need these plants that in part help naturally maintain the “carrying capacity” of our one and only mother earth. I quickly crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. What would we do without this white magic?

There are social media accounts that communicate fence-sitting and apologetics for not committing themselves to the struggles of actually existing indigenous people for existing while trying to appear as on the side of peace, and these are the people who will aid in bringing us to worldwide digital Gaza. In saying that, I think it’s obvious that Israel is reaching its expiration date, and most certainly not the other way around as the old school, BC (before covid) dixieland nativists have it, but the supremacism is the same, and it advanced significantly under covid with an HFCS glaze. Why oh why were Israelis protesting the green pass so massively ignored? Well the Americans of heavily sponsored Progressive pedigree said this is the way forward, so that’s that.

This politically organized supremacism is the same screaming insanity that served several purposes here before having to put it down like a rabid pit bull that’s not even satiated by the death and destruction it brings, because by that point, it’s let’s make a deal, spin the wheel in our nice suits and dresses. What will the dissolution of Israel bring? As Mobb Deep informed us, there’s no such thing as halfway crooks.