OK, lemme see if I have this straight. …
A fascist “leadership” that has installed felons, eejits, bullies, tools, and fools in positions of authority, unleashed a small army of masked, murderous thugs on the population, opened and filled gulags, started a needless, ill-considered, economy-strangling war it can’t seem to conclude, raised the cost of everything save labor while hoovering up gazillions for itself, its enablers, underwriters, and collaborators, insulted and/or shaken down nearly every international partner it has, revived dormant diseases, and constructed a convoluted, comical, rub-and-tug cult of personality, is suddenly clutching its stolen pearls and squealing about the perils of … communism?
Gloriosky, tovarisch! The capitalists have reached the bottom of their red-white-and-blue bag of tricks!*
You never saw Karl Marx tweeting shit like, “From each according to his ability, to … me.” But then this is the same crowd that was screeching about “tyranny” because a half-Black centrist was in the White House, mostly not fucking it up.
As we know, FreeDumb® is the most expensive kind.
We’ve never come within a gnat’s whisker of communism, not even when the Party was in its heyday. Neither has anyone else. That derned ol’ State just keeps refusing to wither away.
But we’ve gotten a pretty good look at actual tyranny. So, excuse the hell out of me for proclaiming myself a proud Groucho Marxist.
*Made in China.
Mad Blog Media 
Don’t forget occupying DC with 5000 armed soldiers for months, a first. Or, how about the first multi-year appropriation ever passed for ICE that funds them until 2028. First attempted insurrection. First federal executive interference in an election. First felon president. First president to make over $400,000 a year hawking merch out of the oval office. First first family to bilk $60 million out of customers for a knock off Chinese phone they never delivered. First president to bilk supporters out of billions of bucks for worthless meme coins, and claim $643 million in fees in one year. First to pardon people for assaulting cops. I’m tired of all the firsts.
I wanted to keep the post under 10,000 words. Haw!
The Berlin Wall came down because all of those East Germans were smoking ditch weed cigarettes and driving two-and-a-half cylinder Trabants, but they could get their hands on Western media enough to know there was a better world out there.
Communism has its own problems that will never let it come close to full implementation. But Communism has never been our real enemy. It has always been the fascists dressed up like commies that had us looking under the bed in the middle of the night.
But Red-baiting and commie hippy yippie bashing has worked before, and no reason to think it won’t work again. Steve Jobs was talking about media when he said, there is no conspiracy, no bastards to shoot, because they are just serving up what we really want. But he could have been talking about politics just as easily. We all want to be fooled, want a story that makes the other side look bad, no matter how unbelievable it is.
How do we get folks to realize that going back to watching Sid Caesar on the Sylvania also comes with a Hudson River that can catch on fire, DDT in our groceries, white and black drinking fountains, and Triangle Factory fires on the regular?
I dunno if there’s any going back. The national attention span barely extends from A to B these days.
They yell “Boo!” We yell “Eek!” Rinse and repeat.
Tell you what: I’ve gotten pretty quick at thumbing “Delete” and “Report Junk” on the ol’ iPhone. But it’s not doing shit for my arthuritis.
As H.L. Mencken (or Upton Sinclair or Paul Krugman or William Jennings Bryan or Kurt Vonnegut or any of the usual suspects) once pointed out, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.
Similarly, when getting fooled all of the time starts to feel good, it’s hard to turn off that spigot.
Here in the Mitten State our perspective has changed in the last 48 hours. You cannot see across my property as wildfire smoke has decended to a Code Red level. I mean it’s really bad. Yet, I drove forth in a sealed vehicle and saw many cretins walking dogs, mowing lawns and many a work crew on street paving projects. And not ONE wearing a mask. I can literally wipe particulate matter off my front deck and consider what that would do to one’s lungs over an 8 hour shift fixing potholes or roofing a house. Oh… and the “feel like” temp was 100 with actual at 90. Commies? Hell,we have indeed met the enemy and it is US! We can kill ourselves off just fine without any help from commies, anarchists or those infidels who come here trying for a better life. Yessir, we’ll just keep on sending nut jobs and grifters to Washington and finalize our own extermination thank you.
Here in the Mitten State our perspective has changed in the last 48 hours. You cannot see across my property as wildfire smoke has decended to a Code Red level. I mean it’s really bad. Yet, I drove forth in a sealed vehicle and saw many cretins walking dogs, mowing lawns and many a work crew on street paving projects. And not ONE wearing a mask. I can literally wipe particulate matter off my front deck and consider what that would do to one’s lungs over an 8 hour shift fixing potholes or roofing a house. Oh… and the “feel like” temp was 100 with actual at 90. Commies? Hell,we have indeed met the enemy and it is US! We can kill ourselves off just fine without any help from commies, anarchists or those infidels who come here trying for a better life. Yessir, we’ll just keep on sending nut jobs and grifters to Washington and finalize our own extermination thank you.
Here in the Mitten State our perspective has changed in the last 48 hours. You cannot see across my property as wildfire smoke has decended to a Code Red level. I mean it’s really bad. Yet, I drove forth in a sealed vehicle and saw many cretins walking dogs, mowing lawns and many a work crew on street paving projects. And not ONE wearing a mask. I can literally wipe particulate matter off my front deck and consider what that would do to one’s lungs over an 8 hour shift fixing potholes or roofing a house. Oh… and the “feel like” temp was 100 with actual at 90. Commies? Hell,we have indeed met the enemy and it is US! We can kill ourselves off just fine without any help from commies, anarchists or those infidels who come here trying for a better life. Yessir, we’ll just keep on sending nut jobs and grifters to Washington and finalize our own extermination thank you.
Here in the Mitten State our perspective has changed in the last 48 hours. You cannot see across my property as wildfire smoke has decended to a Code Red level. I mean it’s really bad. Yet, I drove forth in a sealed vehicle and saw many cretins walking dogs, mowing lawns and many a work crew on street paving projects. And not ONE wearing a mask. I can literally wipe particulate matter off my front deck and consider what that would do to one’s lungs over an 8 hour shift fixing potholes or roofing a house. Oh… and the “feel like” temp was 100 with actual at 90. Commies? Hell,we have indeed met the enemy and it is US! We can kill ourselves off just fine without any help from commies, anarchists or those infidels who come here trying for a better life. Yessir, we’ll just keep on sending nut jobs and grifters to Washington and finalize our own extermination thank you.
Here in the Mitten State our perspective has changed in the last 48 hours. You cannot see across my property as wildfire smoke has decended to a Code Red level. I mean it’s really bad. Yet, I drove forth in a sealed vehicle and saw many cretins walking dogs, mowing lawns and many a work crew on street paving projects. And not ONE wearing a mask. I can literally wipe particulate matter off my front deck and consider what that would do to one’s lungs over an 8 hour shift fixing potholes or roofing a house. Oh… and the “feel like” temp was 100 with actual at 90. Commies? Hell,we have indeed met the enemy and it is US! We can kill ourselves off just fine without any help from commies, anarchists or those infidels who come here trying for a better life. Yessir, we’ll just keep on sending nut jobs and grifters to Washington and finalize our own extermination thank you.
Damn, that’s a lot of Herbs! I saw that smoke alert in Detroit. Unhealthy is what.
That’s a lot of Herbs for real for real. And a couple of Shawns to keep them company.
I guess I gotta ping the “Happiness Engineers,” see if there’s a solution to the site’s multiple-personality disorder.
Dear Herb, Herb, Herb & Herb. Oh, and the other Herb too. I hope you get some nice light cool winds soon to blow the smoke away. Perhaps up the biggest loser president’s cornhole. In the Pacific NW where I’m at, the winds have kicked up (15 to 20 mph) and the temp has dropped down into the 60’s. It’s very nice. A nice day to help my Mom off to another life.
May all you scoundrels enjoy a pleasant bike ride tomorrow.
Dear Herb, Herb, Herb & Herb. Oh, and the other Herb too. I hope you get some nice light cool winds soon to blow the smoke away. Perhaps up the biggest loser president’s cornhole. In the Pacific NW where I’m at, the winds have kicked up (15 to 20 mph) and the temp has dropped down into the 60’s. It’s very nice. A nice day to help my Mom off to another life.
May all you scoundrels enjoy a pleasant bike ride tomorrow.
Shawn, am I just not properly caffeinated or is your mom on the verge of heading west? I hate to pry, but I do it anyway.
You are correct. I mentioned my Mom because, early yesterday morning she passed on and I am relived. All is better for her now. As I’d inferred here over the years, she was afflicted with dementia / Alzheimer’s and it had advanced through all the debilitating stages. Now begins the process of sorting and redistributing, and taking some time to ride in places out of the recent-years mandated groove.
Thank you for asking.
I’m sorry for your loss … and appreciative of your relief. We both felt likewise after our mothers passed. We did what we could for them — maybe not the best we could’ve done, but what we were capable of doing.
And while we were sad to see them go, they were no longer the people we remembered, and we wondered whether there was any joy left in their lives. There’s no way to know until we reach that point ourselves, I suppose. And even then, will we know?
It’ll make you crazy if you let it. Mourn her, and set aside some time for yourself.
Cannot add anything to that. Perfectly expressed.
Such a horrible disease. Every time I see the latest tech news (like this robot/drone that swims in the ocean but then can launch itself osprey-style into the air), I think, we can’t cure cancer, can’t slow down Alzheimers, but we’re so good at inventing shit we don’t need.
Just awful. It treats a mind like a vampire hitting an artery. And once you’ve seen it happen a few too many times — as though once isn’t enough! — you freak out every time you forget a name, or a password, or where you put your goddamned reading glasses (check the top of your head, Brainiac).
It’s my No. 1 fear. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never be smart, but holy hell, I don’t want to pull a U and roar back to my infancy. I wasn’t very cute even then, and I’m a lot less so now.
Dammit, Shawn. Lost my dad three and a half years ago. But it seems more like twenty because … well, you know. Alzheimer’s takes their memory but also messes with our memories. Can’t tell the fact from fiction, behind every turn is a contradiction.
May your memory of her always be a blessing.
testing your comments
Good morning Herself!
Still waiting on a human here. A.I. has given me a referral, but all the filthy meat-things seem busy elsewhere.
Could be “theme-level behavior,” which would not surprise me, as this is an old theme, which is one reason I like it.
More as I learn it.