Day 84 of 1456

Day 84 of 1456 in trump's America.

I'll be honest: when you take a week off from this shit, it feels really hard to jump back on the wagon. I was barely staying on top of it from a week to week basis. Now that there's twice as much as usual, it's overwhelming. Add that to the fact that I don't even know what these blog post are doing or what they're for, it can be tough to keep your bearings. It's hard keeping your eyes on the prize when you don't even know what the prize is.

And you try to remind yourself that this is one of their tricks: throwing everything at you all the time so you eventually get burned out and let them roll over you.

But I know the solution is simpler than I make it out to be. The initial fault is with my method when I write these. I try to bash in everything that's happened in the last 7 days down to one three hour crash session, without any forethought, notes, or planned structure. In one week – 7 days – that's 168 hours. At the rate this presidency is going, that's somewhere around an average of 336 mind bending developments of a deeper moral horror than most of us would imagine we'd see in our lifetime.

So as far as what to talk about this week, I'm not sure. I've had many thoughts. Impeachment vs. Mike Pence. The Women's March, which was quite possibly the largest coordinated protest in recorded human history. The Muslim travel ban and it's respective record breaking fund raising weekend for the ACLU (6 years worth of fundraising achieved in one weekend). More Russian developments, Godzilla movies, as well as a comparison between Mad Max movies and jihadist suicide bombers that's been itching my head for months even before I started this blog.

So this is my promise to you and me. I'm going to start writing these things sooner than 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night. There's more going on than I can siphon down into one shape in that small of an amount of time, and it's not fair to me to give myself a stroke forcing it, or you to put up with my panic attack ADD topic jumping. These will have shapes and points now. It's been 70 days of practice. Now the wolf is in the building. Getting our shit together starts at home.

Day 70 of 1456

Day 70 of 1456 in trump's America.

We're in the closing days. In less than 72 hours, donald trump will be sworn in as the President of the United States of America.

Ten weeks of typing and I can still barely imagine it. Will the Bible burn his hands? Could lightning strike? I wrote on the internet a couple weeks ago about imagining a scene of a thousand bald eagles descending on the podium to mangle him limb from limb, vicious racist orange blood spewing in fountains in every direction, a black cloud to blot out the sun as they kept coming, secret service powerless to do anything, not that they'd honestly try very hard to stop it, probably.

A process got him there, which means that process is vile. That's the evil tautology.

One of the "plans" I've heard mentioned relates to TV ratings. "Don't watch the inauguration!", they say, "Don't give him the attention!" "Watch something else!", they say. Turn your channel to anything else, to show that your cable works, you're just not giving him the satisfaction. "It'll definitely hurt his feelings if we ignore him really hard. That'll help." I honestly don't know which is worse: that Watching Television The Right Way actually counts as political activism, or that we're going to have a president that plan actually works on. How depressing is it that his poor ratings might actually make him sad, and also he's in charge of every civil service for the next four years? Fuck you, your revolution sucks.

We need to establish a distinction between Actions & Words Really Hard. I'm fairly certain that's the only way we're going to get out of this alive.

There's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut – who I personally put on my list of one of the top 5 smartest human beings the universe has ever known – that I've always had trouble understanding, and unfortunately I feel like I understand it now.

"When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high."

I never bought in to that. I always believed – naively, in retrospect – that artistic effort could do some good. But the truth of the matter is that it depends on someone listening. Those two last words in that sentence should let you know what a futile exercise that would be right now.

I can't speak for a lot of people, but I can say that the possibility that Someone Important Is Listening has crumbled for me. What could anything we do convince anyone in charge to do anything better? They've already gutted healthcare, vaginas, abortions, the intelligence community, conflicts of interests, minorities, sexual consent, nuclear safety, religious tolerance, marriage eqaulity, and the right of the supreme court, and he's not even actually sworn in yet. You got a poem to fix this shit? Something for them to See The Light? Lick my balls.

I have to admit, I'm finding this post a bit harder to write than any other one so far. I am a bad writer, we've established that. But I also feel like there's a lot of things I wish I didn't have to admit. These are teeth I'm pulling.

Like the fact that one of the last things it seems art might be capable of is communicating with people who already agree with it. And I am not usually a fan of circle-jerking jack-off parties. But we've established that Art Pointed At Fixing doesn't actually do anything. I'm not willing to throw out the entire premise absolutely, but I know it doesn't work as well as I thought it did 71 days ago.

But Art cannot march. Art cannot sign petitions. Art Does Nothing. We've established that. Art may be Words Really Hard, but it is not Action. And I've had to come to grips with that.

Or, one of the last things it seems art might be capable of is communicating For people who already agree with it.

Putting into flat words and sounds all the things we know already. And that would be preaching to the choir, which I've always hated and still believe is the problem that got us here in the first place. And now as I write that sentence, I'm back to out of ideas again.

It seems like there's no escape. Is it just good for ignoring problems? That's absurd. That's like telling people the chefs only have crackers. I know better. I've felt better. I've been taken places by things other people have made. Not done. Made. Actions versus words. I know that's a fact. My life and understanding is better for it.

And yet here we are again in the ugly circle. Swirling down a racist black drain. Does the issue stem from people not knowing When they're creating art? Because if you're writing, you're creating art. That might be a clutch solution. What if we saw every long status and yelling as a work of art? If we reminded ourselves that we're not Actually Doing Anything.

I might have to try that. Play the game in my head. Try parsing a long screed – even one I agree with on the tenets – as a work of art. And then try to decipher whether or not they've done a cogent job of explaining themselves. Or an artistic one. If we take away the opinions and stand on its merits of talent, or lack thereof. But whatever you do, we cannot reward them as if they were being proactive or productive. We've established that doesn't work. You don't get a cookie for yelling. You win by doing.

If we start looking at our Yelling as Art instead of Function, we'll realize that there are a lot of really shitty artists out there. No patience or subtlety. No command of the facts or pacing. Most of them can't even manage paragraph breaks, on both sides of the aisle.

Communication got us here. Overestimating communication got us here. We can't keep doing that shit. We can't hurt these people with our TVs from our living room. Guitars won't do it. Pens won't do it. Cameras won't do it. Microphones won't do it. All that's good for is the troops. It's got an amazing reach into the hearts and minds of people who feel the way you do. Or people who might feel the way you do, I'm even willing to go that far. But you also need to know who's too far gone. Those are the ones that need to be beaten with muscle.

Have music and art and writing and poems and sounds and laughter at the rallies. Have them at the tents. Have them on the stages, with the lights and fire. But you can't take it with you. It doesn't count. It's not enough.

We need to establish a distinction between Actions & Words Really Hard. That's the only way we get out of this alive.

Day 63 of 1456

Day 63 of 1456 in trump's America.

Our President is a Piss Fiend.

I'm drunk right now – and sipping wine, so I assume that will continue – so I wanted to be sure to get that sentence down first.

Right now I feel like we're done with questions. "Where do we go from here?" "What does this mean?" "Do we judge him for his sexual proclivities?" This is beside the deeper point. Think right now on how bad he is at keeping secrets. Or, in fact, if this is a secret he felt like keeping. We're either dealing with an intelligence failure, or an absence of shame. Not that piss play is automatically a sinful activity. But objectively, it's up to the character to decide when to reveal that. Or, they don't give a shit if you blow the lid for them.

Our President is a Piss Fiend.

I've always functioned with the assumption that every human being in power is engaging in excesses – sexual or otherwise – that would be beyond the mere mortal pale of simple novelty and enter into the realm of blistering incestuous degrading insanity. This is just a fact, as far as I'm concerned: Most of them have lived in a world of no stop signs. They go beyond anything that a Regular Human with a Regular Job and Regular Responsibilities could possibly begin to imagine. And to be honest, as long as all players involved were within consensual age and within consensual agreement, there's nothing wrong, a priori, with being a Piss Fiend.

Because our President is a Piss Fiend.

But as long as all characters were engaged and expectant with that – there was no Piss Rape, he typed in a sentence in reference to the President of the United States – then there's really nothing Wrong with the Act in Itself. We're talking about looking at it from the Far View. Either he did a bad job of hiding it, or he doesn't care. He's either stupid or a sociopath. Those are our options today. And those have been our options from the beginning. Either everything's changed or nothing has. There's no way I believe for a second that he and this are the most deviant things becoming of men of power, either in worldwide history or in the American Presidency.

In simpler, stupider times, I used to attend a church camp. While I was being forced to sit through one of my two daily sermons that day, the priest said something that has honestly stuck with me, for several, several years. In all of human history, humans haven't invented any new sins. We might see a change in quantity, but the bares bones are there. And they don't change.

Think. Real hard. Over the centuries. Can you honestly look me in the face which is currently your computer screen and tell me with a straight face that you think donald trump is the first man due for the White House who enjoys piss-play? Or anyone with a sexual deviancy. Take your pick. There's rumors that Abraham Lincoln was gay. I'm making a larger point about restraint, so stay with me.

On a social measurement, people probably felt more uncomfortable about homosexuality in 1865 than we do now in 2017 about piss-play. Now take it one step further with me. Compare how long, how many decades, we're still only suspicious of Lincoln for having non-heteronormative tastes, versus trump with his tastes. We haven't even made it to the inauguration yet. If politics is the art of controlling your environment, we're dealing with someone who will either:

A) Be ram-rod by every head of state every day for the next 4 years, either at home or abroad, into doing whatever they want him to do. He probably couldn't beat Kim Jong-Un at checkers at this point.

OR

B) So unimaginably shameless that nothing, no one, nowhere could stop him. He'd probably try to launch nuclear weapons at protesters if they were blocking his motorcade on its way to the golf course.

Because The President is a Piss Fiend.

This is when science fiction comes in handy.

Yeah, the wine's kicking in.

Human beings being so weird that we've already seen things coming.

What does it mean to be so prepared for the next stage that you've already carved out a place for our species in the coming Strange? There are uncertain proofs that we might be the only life form in reproductive intergalactic population. And some of us have already looked ahead, assuming we're still going to be here when all the smoke clears.

Because sci-fi isn't just Technology Literature. It's a glorious optimism, that no matter how bad it might get, some of us will be around to make sure it Keeps Going Again.

We have things happening that we've never considered as possibilities. But like I said, we have to accept the fact that they have happened, but we've lived through them. It's not THAT they're happening. It's that we KNOW about them better than we ever have. And the species will rise to the challenge. A challenge that we gave ourselves. We put this here. And whether we can solve it isn't the question. It's whether we can survive it.

But with what? With whatever we used to get through everything up to this point. Sheer numbers, insanity, a push towards Again.

Our President is a Piss Fiend. We've dealt with weirder. We've survived stupider. Can we do both at the same time? I'd bet we can.

Day 56 of 1456

Day 56 of 1456 in trump's America.

Happy New Year.

We have to start noticing when we're leaving people behind.

There's a reason it's called The Safety Net. It's not really about coddling people to make them lazy. It's about avoiding the social consequences of what happens when we let them hit rock bottom. Desperation is not a manageable resource.

If society is a machine, trust is the lubrication that lets it run. I wish there was a less whimsical metaphor to use, but I'm a shitty writer and you're not paying for this stuff anyway.

Do you know what the FDIC is? Yeah, me either. I have no idea what the letters stand for, but I know one of the things it does. Every bank account in America is guaranteed up to $100,000 dollars in the event of theft or destruction of the bank that your funds are actually held in. Now think of the weight behind that: we can promise that up to that amount of funds are safe in our vault, even if the vault itself is not actually safe. Now that's money of yours that's safe for you to use, and safe for the bank to use.

Panic isn't actually good for markets. If you knew your risk was safe, you'd be willing to risk a lot more, wouldn't you? Excusing the fact that I haven't taken an economics class since high school, I'm well aware that a fair amount of capitalist gains depends on risk. Risking on crazy fucking ideas, and huge insane plans. If people know they're not actually risking "everything", they'll be much more likely to risk more often. Even be able to bounce back and risk again after their first one goes tits up. How many American stories came true after 7 or 8 tries? It's one of those Dreams we all like to jerk ourselves and immigrants off about all the time. And they've happened. I'm not pretending they haven't.

Excusing the fact that I can't remember the last history class I took, I remember hearing a story about welfare. That the Romans invented it. Not because they particularly liked poor people, but because if you gave them a little bread, they wouldn't have to stab senators walking on sidewalks. Most likely I false-remembered some of those facts, but even if most of it's not true, it's enough to use to make my point. Being a rich person who helps poor people isn't just the Right Thing To Do, it can even literally be selfish if you want. It's literally a very stupid thing – in the scale of your own self-preservation – to not do at least a little bit to stop people more poor than you from losing their goddamn minds. You can't wait until Wall Street's been burned to the ground; then no one gets any money. It makes good business sense to help people. We don't even have to bring Right & Wrong into this.

Do you know the heroin addiction fatality rates in the Appalachian range? I don't. Do you know how many cities have worse lead in their pipes than Flint, MI? I don't. I just heard about both of those things this week. What can we do about those things besides just mention them and add the statistics to the mnemonic vault of misery we're all carrying in our heads every second of every day now? I don't know. I do know a lot of people voted because they felt left behind. They made irrefutably the worst presidential vote in the 240 year history of this country – I'm not disputing that – but I want to repeat here something I've mentioned in conversation and give it some more detail: Other than Hillary voters, EVERY vote this year was a protest vote. That's how you got people doing things like switching their support from Bernie Sanders to Gary Johnson, even though they had nothing in common with each other politically. I've already mentioned a couple weeks ago that American voters have never been that great voting with facts anyway, but this year definitely wasn't going to do it.

No one has ever cared what trump has had to say, they've only ever cared that he was saying what they wanted to hear. You wouldn't have been able to bring a supporter in and make him look at two different trump speeches and expect him to be shocked or dismayed at any inconsistencies or dishonesty. These were abandoned people.

It doesn't matter that statistically they'd be more likely to hold a CEO position, or that statistically they'd be more likely to be treated fairly by the cops, or any other of the myriad other aspects of white privilege that they have access to – I'm not disputing that white privilege exists – what matters is what's in their face and how they feel. Their selfishness has damned us all. Their stupidity is entirely their fault. But the first thing that happened was that they were shafted by people with more money than them. Which is always the first step. Then the people on top find someone for the people on the bottom to blame. Then everything burns.

I feel like the only hope we might have is how unbearably bad he's going to be at this job. He's not actually going to fix any of these problems. He wouldn't know how to, and no one he's hiring has any interest in doing that either. Things are going to get bad, in a hundred hundred ways that I can't predict, and a couple dozen that I can, depending on how rotten my mood is. But I still feel like if we sign on for Division, we're playing their game. I feel like that's definitely true. They're banking on us still hating each other, 56 days after the fact. That's the only opening we've got. An angry orange man lied to them and got what he wanted and left them in the dust. These stupid, sad, angry, selfish people. People who still aren't going to be helped if we kick them to the curb. I'll remind you they can all still vote. We still have to keep this at only 1,456 days.

And I have gay friends that I'd never ask to bridge the divide. They're too scared, and angry, and have too much to lose. And I have minority friends that I'd never ask to bridge the divide. They're too scared, and angry, and have too much to lose. I'm a White Guy. I've got about the only chance to out of anyone to be a Secret Agent.

This isn't White Savior shit. This is functional responsibility. Each of us has something we're good at, something we can use to fight The Plague. It just so happens that apparently Skin Tone is a tool in the tool box, now. I'm the only person that most of the people of the Other Side would even tolerate an opening for even 5 seconds. We can't imagine a lot of patience happening for someone else on Our Team, could we? Imagine if a minority came into a lion's den and tried to bridge the divide. They'd probably be ignored, best case scenario. We can't ask that. They've already had so much taken from them. We can't expect them to give anymore.

I'm white and straight. I haven't lost anything yet. I've got shit to spare. That's who goes on the front lines now.