#500

So here is the problem. The problem is simple, and the solution is simple. It's just that no one wants to see it, I guess, out there where they wear suits and ties and have nice timepieces to wear on their wrists.

The problem is you see a dictatorship destroying your country. 

They are actually doing everything you have ever read about dictatorships doing in Africa, in Eastern Europe and Russia, in Latin America, in Indochina and the South Pacific, in all these places that used to be comfortingly somewhere else, all these magazine article places and Hollywood movie trend places--it is finally happening here, as was always warningly spoken but never followed through, like, never a "and then the thing to do is..." because the idea was the warning should be enough.

Kids have been hurting themselves in spite of the dire warnings provided by their parents for 500,000 years bare minimum and STILL somehow we think warnings are ever enough.

Anyway, it's happening, and the reason no one seems to know what to do is they seem to be looking for a legal solution to the problem.

But though the problem is simple, sadly, there is no legal solution. That time was before. The Rubicon lies some ways behind us.

When dictators are in power, acting against them, trying to deter them in any way, even to disagree with them, is immediately framed as antisocial and from there, criminal. That's why the news people and the congresspeople and the feds that suddenly aren't feds anymore don't want to see it. To actually resist this process is to risk that precious bank account, that vaunted feeling of safety and accomplishment that comes with having been favored and eventually beatified by the system.

That is over now. 

To resist autocracy is to be a criminal. There is no other way. This is because in an autocracy, to say that the law is more important or more powerful than the people in charge is to break the only law that matters anymore.

If you are not a criminal, you either will be in due time, or you are on the other side of things, for as long as that is allowed to last.

That is why the executive and the sycophant bloc in "congress" turning against the judicial system has been so swift and complete. It is why they can never again admit wrongdoing or weakness, no matter the blunder or callous disregard--those days are past. It is why our intelligence security and military power was so immediately and swiftly compromised--so that the instinct of wounded animal is awakened within that institution, and it can be turned towards conquest, and the deterrence laid upon other conquerors might be lifted.

Dictators do not deter, they only aggress. They only take vengeance. They respect only strength, for awhile, but in the end they respect nothing, and will destroy themselves in their attempt to destroy the world, for the world is God's, not theirs, and that is unforgivable. 

That's the kind of people that they are.

When it comes to the type of people that are currently brandishing their chainsaws and putting other people on lists, the only reason not to fuck you today is to fuck you later.

Redress for the failures of the political left is not forthcoming. They will continue to fail. To hope otherwise does not strike me as prudent, though, as always, I could be wrong in each particular and the general sense, too.

Not that I concede that. It's a dictatorship now, and shit is very bad. This here, all this, I am calling it. I'd call it at this point anywhere else geographically, and we the American people have proved something beyond the final shadow of a doubt: there is no exceptionalism here. We are all of us the same shitty primate the world over and there is no soil or water that will cure any of us of our human, all-too-human marks of hubris, hatred, pettiness, and self-annihilation.

When it comes to the type of people that are currently brandishing their chainsaws, the only reason not to fuck you today is to fuck you later.

*

So. So! The solution is simple: join or decline. I hate the word resist; it has been truly stripped of every last shred of its meaning or resonance by modern pseudo-activism, coupling the word as it does with lawful obedience to the status quo in all things, every habit of mind and deed.

To decline means to risk everything you have and everything you are, while you are alive. But that's all right, because the chances are extremely excellent you will be executed by the state. It's never been a more flatly impossible time to rebel against state power--the technology that me and the boys dreamed would free the world and help us achieve a heroic new stage in human evolution has been completely and entirely consumed and weaponized by predatory wealth mechanisms and fascist surveillance ghoul-and-devil butcherwork--a mechanism to turn the clock back rather than bravely step forward. 

Guess it's the only reasonable thing to do, though, unless you just want to pretend it isn't happening or pretend acting normal long enough will mean it blows over like most bad things do. I know it is very idiotic to be told that everything is against you and there is no advantage and you should still fight.

Hey, shit. Maybe. 

Declining really is the only thing, though. So it goes. It doesn't feel great to me either. Nobody wants to be told that it's time to choose to die. 

*

Hey, you know what? I'll offer an out. I like Heidegger, and he turned in his mentor Husserl to the Nazis so he could live in Nazi Germany and teach in Nazi universities in hopes he could renounce it all later--if he is to be believed. He was a cuck, and his choices made him a Nazi even if he wasn't one in his heart, and he was never sorry because he made an admittedly impermeable philosophical argument that showed no one ever has to be, for anything.

And I can accept that. Dying is final, and sometimes we have to choose life, not for ourselves alone but for those who cannot choose, for a distant but more vital hope than I have in my own life. I just can't accept it from myself. But I can accept it, for reals. I am not a person of blame or recrimination. And I am asking a lot after laying out some stark terms. I can be an asshole--even a hypocrite. I don't like hypocrisy, but I don't think anyone's immune.

*

Yeah, it should be recognized that I'm stepping forward with some real big talk for a no-account rascal. I realize that. What are any-sized words worth, coming from an unemployed paranoiac artist with no social life, no social gravity or pull, and no resources beyond the house he increasingly has problems leaving? I have never joined a protest or march of any kind because I do not believe in such things and plus because crowds of that type freak me out and I am allergic to being subsumed by group dynamics. I am not a member of any party or movement or club or lodge or anything at all resembling that. 

Still, I have my dignity and my principles, even if I don't have shit-all else. And I have my words and this stupid blog. So.

*

Donald J. Trump is no king of mine and the cadre of sycophants and stormtroopers under him are criminals and fascists. I demand their recusal from their positions, I deem them unfit to serve the public, and I name them renegades who speak and act in bad faith and a spirit of spite and underhandedness. I do not accept this government as legitimate and do not trust that it will loose its grip on power at the duly appointed time. 

Nothing I can do except say so, but I do say so, in the strongest possible terms.

Further, to repeat: I decline. I decline to abet or aid in word or thought or deed the actions done in this cruel and vengeful spirit, this waking nightmare that dogs our shared reality and our collective unconscious.

No. Fuck that. It is paramount to act against it and vote against it and speak against it and think against it. 

I am an American citizen and I recognize no king and no tyranny of any kind, not of any oligarchy or theocracy, not of the economy, not of the masses, not of any person or party, and in no uncertain terms I want to state that no man is my master simply because he has wealth and I do not. As a citizen I am free in body and mind and spirit and will not be compelled to submit to any other justice than the true law of this land, as laid out in its constitution. The law which though imperfect seeks justice, not the scribbled writ of tyrants or the jingling of some robber baron's pockets. The law. 

No tyranny of any kind. It will not be borne.

*

Kind of wish I could have had fun with the five hundredth post of my shitty stupid blog, but times being what they are, futile gestures come first.

--JL