May 9, 2020

20% of colonists supported the British during the Revolutionary War.

Now more than 40% embrace the cause of white supremacist fascism and Russia, and the unraveling of all that makes us American.

Heavy lift. We've been manipulated, betrayed, weakened in all respects -- and that 40% reflects ignorance, fear, stupidity and small-minded cruelty brought about by the purposeful destruction of public education and the malignant twisting of the founding concepts of the nation for power and profit. Most of them know not what they do.

I will never give up. And I look forward to the turning of the tide. May we learn from this naked display of darkness to forever drive money from politics, conservative piracy from the marketplace, and primitivism from the halls of wisdom.

May we never again forget what the cost of relaxing vigilance in all of these these things means.

February 6, 2020

I feel that same exhilarating terror every human fighting for progress has ever felt.

Scary, scary, scary. But win or lose I walk in the light alongside the Best People Ever. And this is Our Moment.

Love this place. Love the Democratic Party.

January 8, 2020

I offer the inimitable words of my old buddy Steve.

Draw a line of human social development starting thirty thousand years ago -- it goes up. Whole lives, whole generations spent going down, going up, living through the bounce. But it goes up over time, steadily.

And it goes up from the smallest of things. Human hope, usually put into words but not always. People that were treated cruelly that raise kind children. Bits and pieces and lost moments of the Better Humans, swept away by the rending darkness of the Ancestor -- but those stories live to inspire future generations to overdo the Better Human thing.

I saw the first black president happen, twice, and the first female president though they could not stand it and took her from us. I saw rights for many seriously disenfranchised minorities enter the conversation if not yet into permanent law. I see the younger people skewing politically way left, and in a solemn and informed manner that shames my lost generation.

We are living better lives than 99.99 percent of all human beings that have ever lived. Democratic freedom is under attack, and the disproportionate response of time will be that this story rescues the future. The villains are clear, the momentum of history is true (even if we feel it as darkness), and I love that I get to be here and serve as one of the truly faithful Americans that WILL NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.

We'll save ourselves, and our children, and their children, and the world, and all the creatures of this world and we'll emerge to be Better Humans after all -- I do believe this.

And you help. Just by being here.

Thanks for that.

November 2, 2019

Getting ready to pay for my beautiful yellow star.

The Magnificent Democratic Underground.

I'm so connected to it. What I've learned from it -- the sustenance I've gained from it, the personal strength -- has been of incalculable value to me.

This place does not represent the 'left side' opposing a right side. This is the right side opposing the wrong side.

In my life I've had deeply personal experience with cruelty, misogyny, racism, and greed. I've met and worked with people who were barely more than animals, incapable of reason, permanently filled with darkness and dedicated to it, as if that was all there could be in the world.

They survive because we light their darkness. If all Blue Hearts disappeared tonight, those remaining would be all dead in a few years. That's who they are, the walking dead: without us.

They would turn in on themselves so swiftly -- like a black hole collapsing under its own mass, ::fwoof:: it would all be over. Their reality is so utterly based on opposing all that is green and good about humanity -- they are leaning with all their weight on the pulsing power of our reality in such a furious attempt to stop it that they no longer stand anywhere. They mean nothing but Antigood. They have become Shadow.

We are dragging our walking dead with us into the future. So much more slowly, so much more dangerous -- but that is the nature of Union. Their children will be smarter and better than their primatish parents only because we care, and choose to help. Their lives will be longer and more comfortable because of science and critical thinking they disdain. Without our voices and words this nation would be little more than a long chute leading to an abattoir. We have been dragging their sorry souls forward for hundreds of years because that is what Good American Person means.

So be proud to be on the right side of American History, and Human History. If you are one of the lonely Blue Hearts surviving inside the Red Weirdness, awash in their disconnected, poisoned, papered-over hidden heartless empty lives, be prouder.

And be proud of supporting this venue. It is clean and true, and it holds power. Feed it. Write your truths. Read the others. We are The Lighters Of Darkness. It is the most difficult and most important act an earthling can choose to undertake in a lifetime. We will save the world, for them as well as us. This place is a Focus for that cause.

Long live the Magnificent Democratic Underground.

September 7, 2019

There's a horse loose in the hospital.

Still the finest analogy for the Trump presidency.

September 5, 2019

Because This Is How It Ends.

July 29, 2019

Karl Popper on Trumpism.

From The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper, 1945:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. 

In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law. and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

I find this passage quite moving at this moment in time.

July 25, 2019

Posted. Without. Comment.

July 20, 2019

The only thing worse than Donald Trump is Donald Trump tomorrow.

Ignore the spray and full throats. Ignore the projection and Gollum-speak.

Pull together. Show up. Try. Press forward.

Fucking win.

July 12, 2019

Trump supporter tries to turn Toastmaster Table Topic into a pro-Trump statement, gets pounded

by a new Guest Member, a young African American female who responded with grace, alacrity and truth under pressure.

I got talked into joining this club a few months ago. Don't need it. I was a double-ruby-with-distinction hired gun for a nationally ranked debate team, plus theater degree.

'Give back', was the argument from a coworker. Sigh. So, it's been all right. Fun, even. This one guy, though -- doesn't work in the building, lives with his mom, doesn't shower, one crazy eye and gives really dark speeches that let everyone know he's got Serious Problems -- gets to pick the Table Topics for this meeting. I've been friendly with him until now -- he seems to really like me for some reason.

He knows politics is verboten. Nonetheless -- the only questions offered are --

'Why are people so upset by Donald Trump's 4th of July celebration?" Twice for that one. And the kicker:

"You're in an alternate universe where you're a Trump supporter. Talk about why people should have loved Donald Trump's 4th of July celebration."

Three people were chosen. The first was a brand new guest, a young African American Lyft driver. She talked about the concentration camps, and asked why anyone would think it was all right to celebrate while children were being ripped from their parents. Everyone else in the room was nodding, but the Trump supporter took exception.

"We're so different in how we view things, I think that's all mischaracterized, blah blah" -- completely breaching the protocol of Toastmasters. The person running Table Topics isn't supposed to comment on anyone's response, not all all, ever.

The second person is a chemist who works in the building, basically the same response as the first person, eliciting yet another rebuttal from Troubly.

The third question -- the new president of the club took that one, and kind of punted just to get it over with. She was clearly embarrassed that anyone would hijack the meeting that way, but wanted to avoid a full blown confrontation. At the end of the meeting she reminded everyone of the rules concerning controversial political topics.

Troubly followed me out to the elevator. 'I'm Donald Trump's first fan, since the day I read his first book."

"He didn't write that book," I responded.

"He didn't?" Troubly was mystified by this.

I'm a pretty open-minded guy, used to be able to talk to Republicans quite freely before 12/11/2000. It's gotten harder and harder, and now I can't say a goddamned word without starting to immediately lose my temper. The word 'Nazi' just comes out of me, and I get serious fight-or-flight -- so no, not going to freak out at work and lose my job.

But it was a good window. This guy -- has a serious mental illness. If you told me he shot up a mall full of kids with an AR-15 I'd just nod my head. All he did with his rude little tactic was isolate himself and get the rest of us to bond.

It's getting down to the concentrated dark insanity. No one else can go down that road but the totally effing crazy unwashed basement-dwelling lunatics and the Devoted To Evil.

I don't have contact with these people often. But when I do, I get it.

Crazy, Evil, or both. No one else. A razor-sharp line. There is no gray area anymore, and there won't be again until everyone from my generation and my children's generation has passed on.

Sharp. As a razor.