The Civil War: Brought To You By The Dread Shot Decision

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Here we go, kids! Mark your calendars. Hundreds of thousands of troops are currently refusing to get vaccinated, we have China poised to ‘reintegrate’ Taiwan, and we have global supply chains slowing to a crawl. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, unless they’re moored off the coast in a cargo ship. As for the pandemic, in a functional society the WHO would make the recommendations and we, as adults, would follow those guidelines. After all, you can’t be on a plane with TB, but where do you draw the constitutional line in these trying times? If you haven’t noticed, this is clearly not a functional society. I was against the vaccination mandate for precisely this reason: trust in the government is at an all time low and polarization is at an all time high. Am I vaccinated and did I want us to reach herd immunity? Yes. Did I think it was ever going to happen, or was worth the trouble? No. Are things as bad as 1860? Tough to say, because I was a very young blogger then, but I have been watching and reporting on this particularly malleable and potentially volatile demographic for decades. The GOP’s steady involution is kind of like reading Origin of Species backward. If huge swaths of our troops and police force refuse to get vaccinated, we have a problem. What do you do you do with these folks? I’ve been asking myself this very question for a long time. Of course, top republicans and the former president himself recommend getting vaccinated, but the monster the right-winger’s created, as predicted, has broken through the chains and is heading for the windmill again (which we now know causes cancer).

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The Rise Of The Leftwaffe And Why Comedian John Cleese Is Right: There’s No Hope

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A lot of folks are asking me why I keep harping on liberal authoritarianism. Kidding, one of you is. Look, we know what the rightwing is and stands for, so there’s zero mystery there. They are irredeemables. And, yes, the only group who hasn’t figured this out yet—on the entire planet—is our republican friends themselves. Further proof comes from comedian John Cleese’s recent diatribe, citing the Dunning-Kruger effect as the main culprit (or see my related coverage from the early Pleistocene, here). Cleese said, “If you’re stupid, how could you possibly know how stupid you are? …this explains, not only Hollywood but almost the entirety of Fox News.” Rightwingers, nixed the Fox News part and repackaged the Cleese quote to make it look as if he was solely directing scorn at liberals. Laughably, this reworked meme rifled across rightwing social media, eventually arriving in my box as well. This only proves Cleese’s point, in a rather spectacular fashion. So I understand why liberals are so angry. In 2021, republicans have a lot to atone for and yet seem to be the only ones wholly oblivious to this fact, but that doesn’t mean we can lose sight of the Constitution. The Atlantic is finally covering this rising leftist version of fascism, which means, yeah, it’s happening.

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The Compassion Police Are Now Hiring: To Observe And Detect

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Neo-liberalism, as best personified by Reagan and Thatcher, is officially dead. Amen. But I’m not here today to bitch about zombie politics, although I loved Trickle Z and 30 Days of Right. Lately, it’s this Maddow-level-green version of liberalism that is really getting my goat. The issue with identity politics and all of its joyous facets isn’t new, but our society’s culture-warrior rot runs far deeper than I imagined. Today, a dysfunctional progressive movement is not in its infancy but has reached its misinformative years, which at least matches the emotional maturity of the average canceler. Cancel is an infection across the industrialized west as highlighted by Canada’s well-established racism tribunals and Japan’s Olympic committee’s recent decision to banish anyone who farted in public since 1972. If you don’t want to read my blog for sensitivity reasons, fine, but please spare me the fines. Look, I both understand and predicted an overreaction to all the horrors of MAGAville—or Brexitville, or all of the current global nationalistic horrors abound—but such a response must be grounded in constitutional principles. There’s no wiggle room here. It certainly seems like some libs want to ditch our founding documents because “Jefferson owned slaves, man.” You’re cancelled. I identify as an Ubermensch, but the term ‘Superman’ is acceptable. Mensch is German for ‘people,’ so use the word ‘Superman’ at your linguistic, or cancel-vulnerable, peril.

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Rome Wasn’t Buggered In A Day

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This post is a response to a James Fallows article over at The Atlantic. Fallows has published a series of articles comparing the fall of Rome to the US’s current trajectory. I called the US’s point of no return a couple of years ago here on The ‘Cord. Although Fallows started his US- deathwatch around that same time period, he falls short of any direct prediction surrounding our fate. He is still waiting for that point of no return—or some Ceaser crossing the rubicon moment—as if it’s still somewhere in the future. I think Fallows has the right idea, but I am not sure why he has to see a guy fiddling in front of a burning city to climb out onto this particular eschatological limb.

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Don’t Buy All The Bull About Kabul

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My goal for this piece was to find an insightful article about this twenty-year plight. I failed. This is, in part, due to the hijacking of our search engines as a whole. Back in the day, one could search Aghanistan War or Taliban back to the table and actually get somewhere. Today, since the first 1,000 pages are sold to the highest bidder, you end up with: You want to buy a comfy afghan? and Towels? We have lots of towels! Great stuff. Ultimately, I settled on one article from nearly a decade ago that really nailed this schitznik …my own.

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How Liberals Will Flunk Their Midterms

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Three days after my Illiberal Hillbilly post, Bill Maher took up the Olympic ‘Woke’ torch by focusing on the same firing of the Director of the Olympics for a joke he uttered in 1998. Maher mentioned two more incidents that I missed involving another dismissal for ‘bullying in grade school’ and yet another for a private ‘fat’ joke. As per my last post, everyone goes through a bullying stage during their own development, some in kindergarten, others in the third grade, and still others during their first administration. Kidding, he never moved beyond that. Again, denying consciousness growth or basic child development is a mistake on the liberal’s part, potentially a costly one. Maher calls this an ongoing purge. Ya think fat jokes are in bad taste? Wait for Donald Trump’s Grover Cleveland impersonation, because that could be the next act on the docket, kids. Yeah, there’s a lot at stake here. You forget that many red states are shifting blueward. Why derail that trend for crap like this? These examples are from Japan, but it’s the same mindset here that needs addressing.

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The Illiberal Billies And The Cultural Hill We Will Die On

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Liberals are proof that you can come from a place of compassion, yet still do a lot of damage. No easy trick. For all my pomp and circumrants, I remain a moderate liberal and my ideological drift leftward can be wholly attributed to a reactionary GOP-repulsive force. Electo-MAGAtism? The growing danger the GOP poses to humanity is why I blog, however, today, I’m officially calling out the cultural-warrior-faction of my own party, in Fatboy Slim style, aka Right Here, Right Now. My chief concern with the rise of the Language Police is how the coming Sayless Witch Trials could hand the GOP another underserved victory in the midterms and beyond. Woke, as it relates to supporting diversity is a good thing, but Woke as it devolves into some racist chasing tribunals …well, let’s defund those police before we ever hire them. Language penalties and jail time may well be on the horizon for such offenses. You don’t believe me? It’s already happening in the Great White North. Cancel 2.0 must be kept in check in the good ole US of A. We must encourage a societal shift toward acceptance, diversity, and a more conscientious discourse and yet there’s nothing liberal about punishing people for less than stellar usage issues. What next, the IRS doles out syn-taxing penalties? Does this mean I am rallying outside schools that insist on teaching a more balanced and accurate account of American history? No. In all-or-none thinkingville, many of you have already switched my brand to card-carrying member of Team Batshit, but that is false. I’m just issuing another warning: we have one legitimate political party left in this country and if you fuck this one up, too, there’s nothing here worth fighting for. As I move to post, the head of the Olympic committee over in Tokyo was just fired for a joke. Kentaro Kobayashi was dismissed for using the phrase, “Let’s play holocaust” during a comedy act the same year the X-Files movie aired in 1998. Personally, I am a holocaust joke denier. I don’t think he ever said it, but the truth is out there. In the western world, the green dragon has awoken, sooo how do we slay this beast?

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Adding Grand Larceny To The Republican Scorecard

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The constant barrage of democracy-widdling republican moments is ceaseless, or at least since I started blogging …in the late 1800s. This week, the highest court in the land green-lighted voter suppression laws and fist-bumped a Dark Money/Big Donor combo package, putting the ‘dick’ back into national jurisdicktion. Unjust for today? The indictments levied against the Trump Organization yesterday pale in comparison to this ruling. But for rightwingers, it’s just another walk in the park. Pack a lun—well, pack something. It makes me want to build a Jewish Space Lasar.

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Postcards From The Grassy Knoll

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The republican descent into paranoia and madness has plagued me long before the arrival of this current scourge.  I started venting about rightwingers around the time of the Spanish flu, when Woodrow Wilson rather controversially referred to it as the Spic-ey Sick-ey. And, yes, that’s a joke making fun of racists, so you mindless cancelers can fuck off as well. Meanwhile, our MAGA citizens remind me of that old Kinks’ song, Paranoia, self-destoyer. My blogvesary still resides in some Illuminati-style cave under a Free Mason building built on the flat-earthy side of Lemuria. Half of our nation’s citizenry seem lost in the weeds of this grassy knoll. On that fateful day, my friend would have thought, “Now there’s a good Texan, practicing his God-given 2nd Amendment rights. He’s creeping up into the grassy knoll of freedom! But why did Kennedy demand I do something for my country? Sounds like liberal oppression of the highest— [cue the motorcade footage].”

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MAGA Journalism And More Fail Pattern Boldness

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Cognitive political biases and dissonance go hand and hand with today’s political scheissgiest, but will it be enough to brand this new republican reality? Watching my blogvesary operate lately, well, think Dunning-Kruger meets the Hulk on Testo-Max. Time and time again, I’ve questioned just where this enduring conservative confidence comes from. If I screwed the prognosticative pooch over 90% of the time, I’d like to think I’d be aware of that fact. On the flip side of this phenomenon, I was always concerned that if our rightwing friends ever did sink their teeth into something semi-legitimate, we would literally never hear the end of it. The liberal media has just breathed new life into Qville.

Enter the Wuhan…

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The Election Wasn’t Stolen, Your Brains Were

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My blogvesary recently inquired into my mission here at The Discord. What are you doing, Zano? Art as entertainment? I actually agree with him on this one, which is why I’ve shifted the bulk of my energies from writing to inventing the first DMT snuff pouch©. This doesn’t change the fact I spent a couple of decades trying to point out this country’s mounting idiocy and our imminent descent on the world stage. Bad management is ultimately bad for business. Who knew? Reaching back toward an ‘industrialized west status’ won’t be easy for this new president, which might explain why my worldview lists toward the septic side of dystopic. But I would like to remind my blogvesary of another of my key predictions; namely, the arrival of you and your ilk, a group impervious to reality, swayed by the yellowist shades of journalism, and forever ready to wage war on reason. So what’s left to discuss after this pack of Unreachables has established itself on US soil? You arrived on schedule, safely. I hope you enjoyed your flight …into madness. I suppose if one glances over to the GOP wreckage, liberal ‘art as entertainment’ sounds nice, at least comparatively. Although, I understand you’re also not good at comparisons either. My friend is currently hyper-focusing on three main conspiracy theories, but not for the reasons he thinks…

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Chernobyl Plans To Lift All Distancing And Mask Restrictions

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Pripyat, RU—The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, has announced its intention to “get back into the gamma *cough* …the game.” In a recent interview with that Two Ferns guy, the #4 Reactor said, “We had a board meeting in March and thought, heck, with all the UFOs, pandemics, populism, and world strife, it’s probably time to climb back on that pale horse. Our facility is pretty safe these days, well, comparatively. We also finalized our new slogan: Chernobyl: Beats Detroit. We really wanted to reopen in 2020, but our project manager had a total meltdown. Ha, ha, ha, yeah, that one never gets old, but it does seem to have a half-life. So come on down and see our grand reopening! BYOB! …which means Bring Your Own Beta-radiation-detector. We are out.”

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The GOP’s Hijacking Of The Ghost Of Christmas Past, Present And Future

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There’s a different kind of War on Christmas occurring, and it’s a little more Ghostbustery than Grinchy. Something occurred to me during a recent conversation with a couple of republicans, well, besides the usual masochistic implications. Another dimension of rightwing madness availed itself, a kind of republican Wrinkle in Le’Guin. The first rightwinger feared our imminent return to communism under more liberal leadership, no surprise there, while the second conveyed a cresting China-angst as Beijing now sits poised to eat our lunch. “Better learn to speak Mandarin, Zano.” So on one side we find a Soviet-style communism, with all the Stalinesque trappings, no doubt courtesy of our Veep and her trusty sidekick, AOC—both secretly from Venezuela—as for that other side, we find China’s quantum economic leap amidst the pandemic. As for these Christmas Ghosts, well, the first is absurd and apparently the threat of China sprung from the void on January 20th. But let’s forget the merits of these arguments for a moment; what struck me is the elegance of the Fox News effect. The GOP keeps its viewership off balance and split-focused between these two ghosts. In this way, all problems occurring today, what many of us refer to as the present, can be duly ignored. Thus we can bypass anything resembling a solution to any problem, indefinitely, which is really cost-effective if you’re, say, Mr. Burns over at the power plant. This also explains how the rightwing position never evolves in an unwanted direction, or, more precisely, in any direction whatsoever. It rings of John Boehner’s recent comment, “What does the GOP stand for anymore?” Were this a chess game, D would have moved their pawn, donning a Lollapalooza shirt, and R would then start to talk about their next move and scratch their collective head. Eventually, Zeno of Elea would be proud, as the sun would gradually deplete its hydrogen supply before their first move. MAGA only pawn in game of life.

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A Quick Quiz Courtesy Of Q’s COVID Cue

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The COVID virus recently celebrated its world tour anniversary, or Around the World in 80-million Lungs. Here’s a quiz to find out where you stand on the basic COVID facts after being inundated with information, some good, some bad, and some ugly. This quiz was inspired by a recent conversation with a republican friend, who, despite a raging global pandemic, didn’t seem to pick up on even the basic key takeaways. The nearest equivalent would be wandering around 1350s Europe, asking, “What’s with the giant stack of corpses outside your shop, Fred? Fred?! Hey, where’s Fred?” While some of us were glued to the set in an effort to inform ourselves of the best strategies to keep ourselves and our families safe, others drifted Trumpward or Qward.  I admit I was in the middle. I followed the story, learned some stuff, but tried not to obsess about every new strain or development in COVIDville. But how, over one year into this mess, do we end up with the least informed bunch on the planet? Guatemala kicked our butts on this one, those savvy metropolitans.

Please hit read more and take this important informational quiz!

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