Category: Agitprop

Who’s your daddy?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 33 Comments
Knock knock. Who's there?
Knock knock. Who’s there? Oh, shit! Oh shit who?

My parents never divorced, though I sometimes wished they would.

We were not a close-knit clan, especially after I hit my teenage years. Mom and Dad didn’t seem to like each other much by then, and being an ungrateful little shit I found them an impediment to self-exploration, so I spent a lot of time away from home, either living in my head or completely out of it.

Some of my friends’ parents had split up, and their lives seemed very different from mine. Sometimes it was the dad who had left, and sometimes the mom, but no matter which player had left the game there was always a hole in the disciplinary line you could drive a Mack truck through. A one-parent household infested by teenagers can give you a few hints about how anarchy might play out in the real world.

And if mom or dad remarried? Sometimes that could get even wilder, because when conventional weapons failed the kid could always drop The Big One: “You’re not my [insert absent birth parent here]!” That would always throw a 20-megaton monkey wrench into the social order and open up a little maneuvering room, though it also left Ground Zero slightly radioactive for a good long while, if not forever.

Fast-forward a few years and it was my friends who were getting divorced, sometimes more than once. Heartbreak, vitriol and vengeance; wash, rinse and repeat. Families shattered and scattered to the four winds as I observed from a different perspective, but still a safe if not exactly comfortable distance.

Now here we are on the brink of a national breakup, and I think I’m finally starting to get a personal feel for the experience.

Dad seemed OK, an eat-your-spinach type and a bit of a geek, to be sure, plus a little too shameless about thumbing through your journal to see what you were really up to while you were pretending to be a good citizen.  Still, he was smart, and he tried to be cool, and sometimes he even succeeded.

But one day he’s gone and this other dude is sitting in his chair.

You have brothers and sisters, and some are saying how they’re glad Old Dad is gone and how New Dad is a real wild man, works in TV or real estate or something, and anyway he has a lot of money and we’re all gonna get some. And some others are saying, no, fuck this guy, he talks a line of shit but that’s all it is, and have you noticed he never really seems to go to an office or anything? Plus his kids are all dicks and his friends are all creeps, and we don’t like the way he looks at our littlest sister.

For sure he thinks he’s tough, tough enough to shove your brothers around, anyway, especially the adopted one. And you know one day soon he’s gonna have a go at you, too, and he looks soft, but he’s still pretty big and it’s been a long time since you got into a fight.

And as you look around the table, waiting for the deal to finally go down, that’s when you realize that some of your brothers and sisters are OK, some are assholes, and the rest don’t give a shit who Dad is or what he does as long as they don’t miss the next episode of “Game of Thrones.”

 

What is to be done?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 53 Comments
What, indeed?
What, indeed?

Yes, the headline is the title of a book by Lenin. …

“I am the Walrus.”

You know what I’m trying to say. …

“I am the Walrus.”

I’m not advocating a communist uprising here, but. …

“I am the Walrus.”

Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!

(deep breath)

Anyway: Lenin, Donny and the Walrus aside, the question remains: What is to be done?

As my ideas are probably no better than yours or anybody else’s, including Donny’s and Lenin’s, I’m going to throw the blog open to a discussion about how we, the perplexed citizens of the freshly declared People’s Republic of Kakistostan, should move forward given the “objective conditions,” as my old commie pals used to say.

Some of us have taken to the streets, others to their heels (O, Canada!) and still others to drink, I expect. Also, and too, despair.

So, what next? What now? What is to be done?

Leave your thoughts in comments.

Chill

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Baby, it's cold outside.
Baby, it’s cold outside.

This morning the furnace fired up for the first time this fall.

If this had happened Tuesday evening, I might have considered it an omen. But on Thursday? It’s November, man. It had to happen sometime.

And so, too, probably, did Donald Trump.

Maybe Wisconsin should have been our canary in the coal mine. This former case study in the practical application of progressive politics has turned into its Bizarro World doppleganger, inexplicably clinging to its numbnuts Gov. Scott Walker like some sort of smelly security blanket and telling Russ Feingold to go fuck himself.

Walker the presidential candidate didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses, dropping out of the race in September 2015, and we all had a good laugh about how his lame little act wasn’t ready for prime time.

And then Insane Clown Pussy made it all the way to the finish line.

You’ll find any number of analyses for why this played out the way it did, but I find myself agreeing with Kevin Drum and Charles P. Pierce, who think it has a lot to do with what Drum politely calls “racial and cultural identity,” Pierce calls “nativist racism,” and I call “assholes.” (Hey, I don’t have any advertisers to take offense.)

What does it all mean? There are plenty of deep thoughts about that floating around too, and I imagine you’ve already seen, heard, read or had many of them.

But for starters, it means that once again the GOP has done an “Exorcist”-style about-face on just about everything it’s claimed to hold dear whenever Democrats are in charge: Filibusters are bad; the Electoral College is good; and only “spoiled crybabies” dare question the legitimacy of a duly elected president.

What do we do next? Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back after it — hopefully a little wiser for the experience.*

As E.J. Dionne writes: “(W)e cannot allow fear or anger to drive us from the field. If ever our nation needed a determined, thoughtful and creative opposition, it is now.”

* Speaking of “thoughtful and creative,” let’s not burn any flags, OK? Bad optics, don’t you know. I thought that shit was stupid even when I was a hippie.

 

The levers of power

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
Don't just do something, sit there. After you've voted, of course.
Don’t just do something, sit there. After you’ve voted, of course.

The big day has finally come.

Here in the Land of Entrapment 40.7 percent of registered voters cast their ballots early, for good or ill. Elsewhere, The Hilldebeast has already claimed victory over Insane Clown Pussy (4-2, in Dixville Notch, N.H.)

Now we wait for the returns to come trickling in from everywhere else.

I got my Bill Hicks on last night as a sort of tuneup, the way you might have a couple pops before the party gets started, and he dropped a name I wish I’d heard earlier in the campaign — “Beelzebozo.”

Bill was referring to himself, having just paused in the midst of an epically filthy tirade to announce that he was “available for children’s parties.” But it seems better suited to the GOP’s standard-bearer, a truly evil clown, and I regret stumbling across it so late in the game.

I voted early, and for The Hilldebeast, and all y’all should be well aware by now that I was not excited about it. This was my 12th election, and in all those outings I have only voted for two candidates — George McGovern and Barack Obama. In all those other elections I was voting against someone, as is the case this time around.

Over the long, long years I have pulled the lever for Democrats, socialists, independents and libertarians, but never for a Republican, and this was not the year for experimentation along those lines. This was another delaying action, what Steve Earle called “getting into gear for four more years/of things not getting worse.” Or so we hope, anyway.

For those of who who have the liberty to follow the election news throughout the next two days, both The New York Times and The Washington Post have pulled down their digital firewalls and you may browse their sites to your hearts’ content. Keep one eye aimed squarely down-ballot. It would be useful to reclaim majorities in the House and Senate; a dozen governors’ gigs are likewise up for grabs, as are a right shitload of seats in state legislatures, on school boards, you name it.

To paraphrase Pat Frank, the battle for America is being lost in counties like Bernalillo. Remember that while the barking carny up front holds your attention, his minions are working the rubes, lifting wallets.

Me, I’ll be spending a fair amount of time bringing the snark on Twitter. But check back here for the occasional pithy observation if you’re so inclined.

• 9:30 a.m. — Kevin Drum at Mother Jones weighs in with his predictions: “So my final guess is: Hillary Clinton wins by 4.7 percent in the popular vote; the Senate ends up 51-49 Democratic; and the House ends up 235-200 Republican.”

• 11:55 a.m. — Agent Orange is already suing people, beginning with the registrar of Clark County, Nevada, over something the registrar is required by law to do (leave voting stations open for all those who were in line when the station was scheduled to close). A Nevada judge gives this the hee, and also the haw.

• 12:05 p.m. — The Atlantic is live-blogging today’s election.

Sam and I horsing around in the hills north of El Rancho Pendejo. It was a little late in the day and the lighting left a little something to be desired.
Sam and I horsing around in the hills north of El Rancho Pendejo. It was a little late in the day and the lighting left a little something to be desired.

• 4:15 p.m. — Took five to shoot a little video of the Sam Hillborne. OK, so it was more than five. More like 90. It was a beautiful afternoon and I don’t regret a single solitary second of it.

• 4:25 p.m. — Voting is said to be going smoothly in the Duke City and its environs. My favorite quote so far comes from registered nurse Nanette Vela, who told the Albuquerque Journal: “Hillary was not my first choice, but voting for Trump would be like voting for myself, because I don’t completely understand how government works, either.”

• 4:35 p.m. — Insane Clown Pussy has regained control of his Twitter account. We can only hope that this is akin to seizing the wheel of a pirate ship shot full of holes and taking on water fast.

• 4:52 p.m. — Funny you should mention it: Kellyanne Conway is already sniveling that ICP didn’t have the full support of his party, merely because he was stark raving mad. I’m sure her résumé is already making the rounds.

• 5:28 p.m. — Live chat from The New York Times.

• 6:04 p.m. — Clinton takes my birth state, Maryland. That my brother-in-law left the state for a job in Florida may have been pivotal. Now we’ll have to see what that does to the tally in Florida.

• 6:15 p.m. — Marco Polo Rubio wins re-election to the job he dislikes so much. Don’t expect him to keep it long. 2020 is just around the corner.

 

It can happen here

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Impressionist, que no? I shot it through the window. Hey, it's raining out there. You want I should get a camera wet for free?
Impressionistical, que no? I shot it through the window. Hey, it’s raining out there. You want I should get a camera wet for free?

We’ve finally gotten a little rain after the second warmest October on record, and maybe one of the driest, too; more than a quarter inch of precip’ below normal.

As with most things, this is both good and bad.

The good? When things are wet, they often fail to catch fire. Also, water is nice for drinking, bathing and growing things to look at and/or eat.

The bad? Sitting as it does at the bottom of a cul-de-sac at the western edge of a mountain range, El Rancho Pendejo is already a little on the dark side, as is my outlook most days. And when the sun goes away for a spell, things in these parts can get blacker than a sleeping MacBook’s display.

So with each fresh poll the equivalent of a cherry bomb in a chicken coop I’m getting a mild case of The Fear as the 2016 election staggers to a close.

Anybody who tells you s/he knows that all will be well in the end is full of shit to the sideburns. Americans are already pretty la-di-da about exercising their franchise, our least-difficult path toward effecting change, armed insurrection being slightly more onerous (or so I’m told). And the GOP has been busily scratching that oh-hell-why-bother itch by turning what should be the simple act of casting a ballot into the sort of customer-service experience we already enjoy in the private sector.

Here’s Charles P. Pierce on the voter-suppression battles being waged from coast to coast.

Here’s Ari Berman of The Nation on the reduction in polling places following the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here’s The Guardian reporting on the upshot of Insane Clown Pussy’s call for his shock troops to monitor what he’s said will be a “rigged” election.

Can't it? We'll see.
Can’t it? We’ll see.

And so on. Look around, you’ll find more examples.

The Republic has weathered a lot of storms, and this may be nothing more than an especially nasty stretch of rough weather before the sun pops out again.

But I keep thinking back to the old Red Lewis novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” which I read ages ago, and which the Berkeley Repertory Theatre turned into a play, which wraps tomorrow.

If you haven’t read the book, do so. The language is a little dated, and it can seem wildly over the top at times. But so can this election, and yet there it is, happening right before your eyes.

“It Can’t Happen Here” certainly opened the eyes belonging to writer-director Tony Taccone, who called the parallels between the fictional struggle and Election 2016 “shocking; they’re honestly shocking.”

“What it says, what it really puts out there is, if you become complacent or lazy or you think that the issues that are being discussed in Washington, the politics doesn’t have an effect on your lives, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. The decisions that are being made — by the Congress, by the Supreme Court, by the local legislature, by your city council — affect your life,” Taccone said.

“And it is in your interest to understand as best you can what those issues are, to try to find a voice and agency inside of those issues, to find a community and help them to build a dialogue,” he added. “And my God, if that isn’t the lesson of the last nine months, what is?”

So you think it can’t happen here? Read the book, take a good look around, and get back to me.