Day 21 of 1456

Day 21 of 1456 in trump's America.

Waiting for the clampdown. Trying to push the tide before the inauguration in under two months. Acting like that's when it'll start. "We have to do something before then."

So now we've put all our hopes in two things: Jill Stein running a recount in three states that would swing the electoral points in Hillary's favor, or the electorate themselves choosing our next president – which they legally and constitutionally could do, saying fuck-all to the entire process of democracy – but something tells me the entire singular sources of heroism, courage, and counter-revolutionary bravado for the country as a whole doesn't reside in some odd-hundred electoral college representatives. They'd probably all be dead before the next morning show.

And that's the issue at hand. I don't feel like it's conjecture to point out that even if Jill Stein's bargain gets Hillary in the White House, the point for this blog will still stand: that there's a lot of angry, racist, hate-filled Americans out there who want to hurt other Americans, and even more Americans who want to ignore it while it's happening. And those things began percolating during the campaigns, and they got their green light 3 weeks ago. The inauguration is just the store's Grand Opening Celebration, with the streamers and parade. But they've been running business well beforehand.

But far be it from me to be a hypocrite. As I mentioned last week, we'll need a multi-pronged attack everyday for the next four years. I'm not about to shit on openings and "maybes". We can cheer on multiple possibilities and concerns. Shit, we'll have to. Everyone has to multitask now. Inviting queer gendered friends to your lunch table, learning initial first impression greetings in a thousand different languages, knowing how much & why we're protesting for a higher minimum wage, better college assistance, environmental concerns, medicare and medicaid, gas prices and renewable resources, indigenous people's rights, deportation practices, arguments for immigration amnesty, gun control & mental health, food stamps & government assistance, safety nets for returning veterans, and literally 8 million other things that I could not finish listing here before the sun comes up in another 12 hours from now. Anyone who expects a mere human being to take care of those things themselves is asking for violent anarchy.

The government's only real necessity at the bottom of everything is to help get you things you can't get yourself. I'm not going to use words like "need" because that's an ironically subjective phrase. But if we're talking highways, electricity, health insurance, clean water, natural landscapes, street lights, stop lights, sidewalks, shoes that fit, gasoline, cars that drive, restaurants where you can actually eat without playing "spin the wheel-a diarrhea!" – all these things require an oversight ability the likes of which could only be maintained with millions of boring drones being paid billions of boring dollars to do trillions of exponentially boring chores.

No one elected who will take power on January 20^th is interested in keeping those things going – they're just going to get them small and useless enough just before they get so bad that we start setting things on fire – and no one who voted for those people is interested in improving those things, just narrowing the list of people who get to use them.

I've been thinking a lot about methods of knowledge this past week. Why does reading & teaching work on children, and it's failed in adults? There's some point in the development where a human being will go "Prove it", and then that's the only thing that will work. Words come up short.

And whereas I'm a proponent of skepticism for the most part, that doesn't apply to wondering whether or not my brother is my equal. He is. I don't really need to be convinced of that. But if someone is not taught that, and they get old enough to do something with that hate, how do you make them turn that corner? You clearly can't simply tell them – with words – that people different from them deserve the same rights as they do. We've established as a given that that does not work.

There's very little I can think of doing besides getting out in front of these people. The only thing that can shock a brain out of its own rut is a visceral experience. Even then, it's a crap-shoot. You don't know how one interaction could be taken over another one. There's biases, blind spots, literal physical hallucinations that spring up just before the brain sees something it doesn't want to see. Our social systems are stacked against us, and our literal physiological bodies and brains are stacked against us ever getting along.

So what is the point? It certainly can't be for opportunity. There's a hundred other countries out there. Some with provably better social mobility statistics. It can't just be that This Is Where Home Is. Every single person here is either descended from immigrants, or – just to include the American Indians on this list – have been forcibly emigrated from their land. So locale has very little to do with it. What is there worth standing for in this stupid gross land made and run by teenagers in suits who can't stop jacking off over everything they get their hands on and their gizm runs like black oil over the hair and face of the trees and the rivers and the homes of people less white and straight than them? Why am I even writing this garbage?

Because I saw some stupid little words, written by stupid little men, who said some stupid little things. Something about saying fuck you to kings. Something about taking rights from their creator. Something about refusing to give somebody a head start over somebody else. Something about telling you that it's okay and important to yell about something. Something about telling you what you can do to the government & telling the government what it can't do to you. Something about people.

And somehow that turned in to something about being able to learn 7 languages just because you fucking feel like it. And somehow that turned into something about being able to eat at a different continent every meal everyday for a week, just because you fucking felt like it. And somehow that turned in to something about being able to watch a movie or hear a song in every goddamn dialect you could or even couldn't possibly imagine. Something about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Something about traveling to 5 separate climate zones and distinct cultural areas without even needing a goddamn passport.

There's something about a place with so many goddamn questions about itself that you suddenly realize people are coming up with some very interesting answers to it all.

America. The Great Zen Experiment.

The only rule of the game is that you're not allowed to tell someone else they're not allowed to play. That's called fascism. And that is not welcome here, thank you very much.

Day 14 of 1456

Day 14 of 1456 in trump's America.

Has it been two weeks? Years? How many months have we lived like this now? Every day is a clock, now. On duty for the long, wet, hateful winter. Broken bottles and faces, heil salutes and Somali hate crimes on buses. Everything we've ever talked about that we've somehow never prepared for.

What's it like when the concept of "country" has telescoped down and now it's on your lap? When it's not an abstract concept held aloft by Something Else, or Process, or System, but it's a heinous an unstoppable responsibility to decide every second with what you're going to do to change today what it's going to look like tomorrow. Freedom is a zombie black angry bitch, who will never stop asking you, again and again, what you're doing to deserve it, where it's going to go, and what it's going to look like when it gets there.

In the short 16 years since The Century That Will Be Decided By The Internet has begun, we've seen things the human mind couldn't have fathomed with a thousand infinite rooms with a thousand infinite monkeys with too much time and caffeine on their hands who tried to see what the future had coming. I was talking with a friend two days ago, that this election is the first time we may have realized how badly things could go when we underestimated our new toy. We turned our back for what felt like a second, and it swallowed our children and our gay neighbors and our friends who aren't white enough and shat them out into the heart of the black star.

So now we're trying to come to grips with how it all happened. What Rubik's cube of angles and turns could've gotten us this mangled, and we try to straighten it all out. And there's a new awareness for journalistic quality – or lack thereof, to make a hack notice already mentioned a thousand times since Thursday – and far be it from me to besmirch the necessary purge of failed media, but it's still a battle of facts. Those are not the rules of the game anymore. Ignoring the fact that Progressives are literally trying to teach each other how to read at a 9^th grade level again, and all the embarrassment that entails, but it's not a question of straighter facts. Facts have never been hot enough to cook something like Political Victory. Never once in this country's history. It's certainly not going to start working now.

In the Presidential election on 1828, it was John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson. Adams had served in quite literally nearly every government position our young country had come up with at that point, and probably invented a few on his way to the top, and was the Presidential incumbent, which is the closest thing you can get to a guarantee in American politics. He was a storied, qualified, and experienced politician, with a resume that hadn't been seen yet up to that time.

Andrew Jackson was a pretty good war general who liked to shoot his personal enemies in the heart when his hands got tired from beating them with his cane.

Jackson won, and delivered a genocide – on American soil, mind you – to its American Indian inhabitants. To be more technically accurate, he didn't invent it, but he did kick it into fifth gear.

This is the possibility we're left with now. Consider the cesspool of hate we've been aware we're living in right now, just in the last eight years, when we had a black president who actually spoke out against these police killings. Who tried to do what he could to stop them. This shit has been restrained so far. Look over those sentences again, because it hurt me to see my fingers typing it, too. Imagine what racist water-heads will think they can get away with when they know daddy won't yell at them.

This is what cowards do. And occasionally a coward will come along of such ungodly bottomless depravity that he will shock beyond anything a culture's natural immune system has ever had to deal with before. Journalists and academics and politicians and artists and experts will never expect something of such massive magnitude to strike so blatantly at the deep empty nothing that every human being lives with. The Abyss grows legs and spreads asexually to each man, woman, and child, and they cheer for the apocalypse.

Facts are soft weaponry for this fight. We are out organized. We are out motivated. Telling people what's going to happen does not turn the tide of what's going to happen. And if I stopped here, I would be worthless as a writer and most likely a human being. Because that is all I've done so far tonight. Explaining Where We Are. Because I want to know exactly where I stand and what I think the stakes are. Chop off and burn the stump of each head of the Hydra until only one is left and you can look it in the face.

The one and only superiority Progressives have ever actually had is diversity. And I'm not talking something as simplistic as racial or gendered diversity. That's a boring conversation that's been solved, decades ago. We are – without a scientific, moral, economic, on-every-label-and-level-you-could-comprehend doubt – better, stronger, and faster as a species when we allow humanity with different external characteristics to the party. That's an obvious fact. You'll notice I didn't say I was throwing out facts. Just noting their weakness. And you'll notice that fact hasn't gotten us very far, has it? No, it hasn't. Because no one's impressed with that anymore.

The flaw that might kill us all is the idea that We need to figure out A plan to deal with this New World Order. That is dangerous short-sighted bullshit. You need to accept the fact that there are other people with other ideas, and if you expect a banner of mental coagulation around a single spear-headed approach, you will march the entire goddamn human race off the cliff single-handedly.

And don't think for a second I'm talking about "unity" or "calm" or any other wet bullshit about figuring out where trump supporters are coming from so we can bridge that gap. I'm talking about us right now. I'm talking about the only people who claim vocally to give a shit are actually jerking themselves off in public hard enough to kill our children that haven't even been born yet.

Let me give you a clear example, so you know what I'm talking about.

Let's go with the safety pins. The chest flair that was suggested as a public signal that you're a safe ally to sit next to in public, or to contact to ask for help if you're a minority that feels threatened. Let me walk you though every article I've read talking about the pins vs. My Internal Monologue.

"The safety pins are a nice idea."

Yes.

"But they are just a symbol."

Of course.

"They need to be supported with direct action and training."

Obviously.

"So everyone should take them off."

Fuck you I hope you get hit by a bus.

You need to actually explain to me how I'm making it worse. You're just bitching. You don't do things the way some other people do them, so you've stopped trying to fix any problems, you're just trying to come out on top. You're having an angry pillow fight in an alley over an infected mattress while a millionaire who lives in the mansion next door jams his brass knuckle covered fist into something that used to look like a human vagina.

We have a unified purpose, but that does not mean in the slightest that we need to have a unified method of assault. The human mind is and always has been a spectacular tool of creativity and fight/flight. It's pure survival. And we're the best at fighting shit when we come at it sideways from 17 different angles, asses first maybe, arms akimbo to the sky. Do not force a singular approach, because a singular approach only needs to be stopped once. And we do not have time to hit the drawing boards again. This has all already started on us. Our friends whose lives are literally at stake do not have time for that.

The happiest moment I've had this whole last week was from a car crash. I was driving home from dropping a friend off, and I passed a fender bender. There wasn't any damage or smoke. Other than the sight of two cars paused on a merging lane, there was nothing really to draw the eye's attention to the scene. If I blinked at the wrong time, or was staring off in the wrong direction I would've missed it.

Two cars were bumper to bumper on the merging right lane, and the two drivers were already out of their cars. In the 7 seconds I took it all in, I saw them finish a conversation, hug, and break apart. I know they weren't related. The two drivers – a man and a woman – were different races. Races I refuse to divulge to you, because those are useless specifics. But different enough to make my point. Two different lives, leading to two different minds, obviously. But they had at least come to some kind of conclusion of how to face the scene at hand. There would be no force on each other. Just mutually assured confrontation with the scenario. Between the two of them they could take care of it. It was nothing. A speck on two people's lives. But they knew they had something better to do than argue with each other. Something better to do than play the Angry Brain-Clay Molding Game that most people think is a fun way to pass their time with other human beings. These people knew it. Like the bard said, "We've Got Bigger Problems Now".

Day 7 of 1456

Day 7 of 1456 in trump's America.

Greetings.

This is the first post of a blog I'm starting, for several reasons we'll get to later. I don't expect anyone to be reading these now, since I haven't told anyone about them. But I figure by the time YOU might be reading them – hello – I've probably told a few people, once I have a bit of an archive to offer. Which means people are reading this now. Hopefully.

Anyway.

As an initial reason, let's just go with the date. This blog will be updated, with whatever my thoughts might be at the time, every Tuesday. "What time?" Tuesday is an insane question. This isn't about you. I just want a regimented schedule to make sure I keep myself accountable.

I intend to use it to help me count. It's a reminder couched inside a countdown. From November 8^th, 2016, until the next presidential election day – November 3^rd, 2020 – it is 1456 days. Today is the first Tuesday after Black Tuesday when trump won the electoral college to become the next president elect. We will be counting up.

This is to keep the despair from that night fresh in my mind. This is a forced soma cure. Everyone needs one. We'll be selling Ludovico Technique Eyelid Wrenches & Tape to keep you focused and open, sponsored by RayBan. Watch the numbers go up. Watch us get closer to the end, but knowing that everyday that passes we're not actually going higher, we're getting deeper.

Even in this opening week, I've heard people wonder if trump is just a fool, a moroon, a charlatan. Someone to give a chance and see what he does. That misses the point. Even if he flipped back on every promise he made to put him in phone call's distance to The Final Chapter for Everyone, the problem is what he unleashed to get there. Pandora may have made a great nun, and saved a bus load of Greek children from being swallowed by Charybdis. It doesn't matter. She still opened the box. Even if trump doesn't know what he's doing, he's leading the way for several dozens of people who do know what they're doing. And will do it. He's a Trojan Horse filled with tumors.

And the people he loosed from his no doubt shriveled and mangled loins, the monsters that think they have carte blanche to spread the most hate-filled human nature every decent person's been fighting since we invented words & farming, they are who we will be dealing with now. They are maniacal cerberuses, and they will not stop until they are spanked electorally, violently, and told to shut up, and disabused of the notion that certain members of our race are inferior than others, much less the idea that someone could be rewarded politically for that kind of heinous drivel that would make Satan weep.

But one of them was. And he is here. Which of course raises all sorts of interesting questions about the Rule of Law vs. Right & Wrong, but I don't have time, patience, or frankly the excitement for hack philosophy I admit I used to jerk off to in my 20's. He Is Here. We have allowed him among us. And he will pass. America has been through the same, and worse. But you must understand. Not only will "he pass". He will also BE passed. There will be blood, there will be violation. You'll think it's just a regular situation. You've had bad deals before, but you came out fine when they came out the other end. This will not be like that. You'll feel the contractions, but nothing is coming. You'll worry the turd is climbing back upwards. You can feel it pressing against your bladder, possibly the bottom ridge of your stomach. You don't know. It's feels like forever. But that's happened sometimes. Just be patient. And eventually you feel downward movement. Now you think gravity will kick in, and the human digestive biology will do what it has done since time immemorial. It will eliminate waste. But as you look down to get a glimpse at this fecal behemoth you now have some weird respect for due to the pure challenge of a worthy adversary, you realize you're looking at a pair of eyes staring back at you, below hair that looks like hay from an irradiated haystack! This creature is pulling up for freedom, and wrenching at your skin, waist, gonads, and face! How could this be, you think! There's no way! The laws of the universe don't let post-digestion fecal matter grow follicles, sentience, and make a thing with an ungodly otherworldly scream like that thing coming out from inside you? Food does not do that! Food does not become that!

But there he is. In the bowl. Writhing for you, and your life, and your friends' lives. And you will stab him in the heart with a plunger, and jam his existence into the porcelain. And tomorrow you will have to do it again. 1,456 times in a row. And shriveled, and beaten, like you have left your blood and muscles on the tile, because he tried to rip your innards out through the prolapsed rectum that was formerly his ungodly uterine home, where he gathered his power, to strike you at your weakest and most vulnerable. He is The Great Movement.

That is what is happening. That is what's at stake. It will not happen forever. But it might happen for 2,912 days. Those are your options. You have no choice.

This is where we are. Fight it, or it will kill your entire neighborhood.