I never bought into the whole Obama hysteria thing. I probably should have. I was his target demographic back in 2008. A naive, idealistic, first time voter who despised Bush and was totally in love with some version of the 1960's that only really exists in the hearts and minds of the very young. Obama's whole song and dance seemed to be designed with me in mind but I just wasn't buying it. Something just didn't quite smell right. Maybe it was the way he could say so much, so beautifully, without really saying anything at all. Maybe it was the fact that his voting record as a first term senator was suspiciously non-existent. But mostly I think it was the way he used antiwar rhetoric to condemn Iraq while simultaneously pushing for intensified involvement in Afghanistan, as if a "good war" could somehow cancel out the acidic karma of a bad one. I tried explaining these things to others on the left to no avail. I vividly remember trying to convince my 12th grade journalism teacher, one of the smartest men I've ever known, that voting for this smooth talking used war salesman would blow up in his face like a firecracker and I remember the totally blank look on his face, as if I was speaking to him in Swahili.
I dearly wish I could tell you I was proven wrong but not nearly as dearly as I wish I could tell you that my generation of left-wing voters realized that they were. But people only see what they want to see and presidential legacies are a lot like presidential campaigns, all smoke and mirrors and malignant mythology. A great example of this phenomenon is the collective memory of former president Jimmy Carter. Regardless of whether you consider yourself left or right or somewhere in between, you likely see old Jimmy the way most of the rest of the country does- as a soft-spoken, ill-equipped but well-intentioned peacenik. The facts however don't represent this illusion.
While Jimmy made a few peace deals to fill his otherwise bleak presidential library, his most lasting impact can be felt from his decision to back Zbigniew Brzezinski's plot to send Islamic mercenaries into into the newly secular republic of Afghanistan in order to suck the Soviet Union into a brutal and unwinnable quagmire. This plot became the still ongoing Afghan war and these mercenaries, dubbed Mujaheddin, would become the founding fathers of the Islamic terrorist menace that haunts us to this day. This was hardly an isolated misstep for President Carter either. He also OK'd the use of American Army hardware for South Korea's Kwangju Massacre, which gave Tienanmen a run for its money, resulting in the deaths of as many as 2000 peaceful student protesters and similarly kept weapons flowing to Suharto's Indonesia during the height of the East Timorese Genocide which cost the tiny island nation nearly a third of it's population. But this isn't how America remembers Jimmy Carter. Instead he's nearly universally revered as a Nobel Peace Prize winning elder-statesman. I fear this wholly undeserved fate of illusion is also what awaits soon to be former president Barack Obama as well.
Much like Mr. Carter, Mr. Obama is responsible for a couple of outstanding peace deals, namely with Iran and Cuba, but those achievements are largely legacy projects designed to boost the president's flagging international PR. They stand alone as exceptions to a very violent rule. Also like Jimmy, Obama's largest impact will undoubtedly be his contribution to the proliferation of international terror. Aside from his promised bloodbath in Afghanistan (ironically the one promise he kept), the Nobel Laureate vastly expanded the playground of head-chopping Salafist psychopaths with his gruesome regime change experiments in Libya and Syria, the ripples from which are only beginning to expand, from the empowerment of Boko Haram to the European Refugee Crisis. All over gold-backed Dinars and strategic oil pipelines.
Obama has also built on the Bush legacy of constitutional degradation and executive authoritarianism by awarding the presidency all the powers of judge, jury and executioner with his grossly expanded use of homicidal drone warfare, checking off the names of civilians to be slaughtered one by one from a list delivered to him by the CIA weekly like the Sunday paper. He's also approved the expansion of the surveillance state to damn near Orwellian proportions and hunted down any soldier or civil servant brave enough to expose these crimes against democracy like dogs, even if he did decide to let a couple of them go. All this from a man who promised my generation a new era of transparency. It almost sounds like a sick joke in retrospect.
But this isn't how the 44th President of the United States of America will be remembered. Just turn on CNN and listen to an endless procession of putrid homilies to the historic legacy of America's first black president, as if his race automatically transforms the man from LBJ to MLK. And the saddest thing about this whole gross spectacle is that I still feel like the only leftist of my generation who's not fucking buying it. Seemingly righteous kids from Occupy to Black Lives Matter gather in mourning of the election of Donald Trump as if it were the end of a second Camelot rather than a simple changing of the guard. But people only see what they want to see and until children grow up, they'll always prefer the comfort of illusion to the sobering harshness of reality.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Sure, Fine, Fuck-It, Whatever
2016 was a harsh year. The weather sucked and everyone who mattered died. But mostly it sucked because of the election. A dizzying circus of whole-sale horse-shit that felt like it would never fucking end until, finally, it did. A grabby, race-baiting, reality TV personality somehow managed to beat a seasoned, Wall-Street, murder machine. Sure, fine, cool, fuck-it, whatever. I was just glad it was fucking over and I'd never have to right about the goddamn thing again. I could go back to writing about obscure foreign conflicts and gender dysphoria. You know, easy shit. But to quote Al Pacino in the worst Godfather movie- "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!". You see, dearest motherfuckers, the 2016 Presidential Election is the Christmas gift from hell. It just keeps giving all bloody century long. 2016 never fucking ends.
It all should have ended on November 8th. When the American electorate defied the Washington/Wall-Street establishment and their dickless harpies in the mainstream media by voting down their precious Lord Killary in favor of an unsanctioned ass named Donald Trump. It wasn't a clean win. The Donald took the Electoral College, while the queen of war took the Popular. But the Donald beat Killary fair and square by the establishments own stupid fucking rules. Needless to say, the establishment was not pleased. In fact, they were downright apoplectic. Watching the idiots on MSDNC squirm in their shit-caked britches as they realized how clueless they were is probably one of the few truly happy moments I experienced during the election. It wasn't supposed to go this way. The media elite and their DNC puppet masters had only egged Trump on in the first place because he was the only creature on earth more repulsive than the Clintons. Donald was a candidate designed to lose. But they had underestimated how truly disgusted the American people had become, not just with Teflon oligarchs like the Clintons but with the crooked media who exalted them. Trump was a fuck-up. He got 1.5 million fewer votes than that country-club Ken doll, Mitt Romney did. But Killary fucked up way worse. Pulling in a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did in 2012, getting shellacked the worst in Rust-Belt states like my native Pennsylvania, where Trump took nearly every county (I voted for Stein).
To put it simply, the establishment fucked up. They had taken working folks for a ride one too many times. This should have been clear during the primaries, when Killary had to cheat just to beat a Fabian fossil like Bernie Sanders, who got zero press time and went out of his way to shoot himself in the fucking foot. All the polls showed old Bernie massacring Trump in a regular election but the establishment didn't listen. They just kept pushing their rotten candidate down peoples throats. Never mind that Killary had become a symbol of everything that was wrong with Washington. A trigger happy, globalist, Wall-Street shill that never stepped foot on a country she wasn't willing to bomb and never flew over an American factory she wasn't willing to outsource. She was the home-team fave and Trump was a grabby jackass who pretended to be a billionaire. He was the guy the cool kids invited to their parties just so they could get him drunk and bet him to bark like a seal. But Trump didn't matter. They could have put Seymour Butts on the ticket and he would have won. People had just had enough. They didn't vote for Trump. They voted against the establishment.
The Democrats and the media could have learned an important lesson here. They could have took this sobering moment to learn a lesson about taking advantage of the people you depend on. But that's not their style. So they decided instead to piss on these people and call them all dupes of the Kremlin. They went back to that tired, old warhorse that failed to get their lazy asses across the finish line during the election and blamed all their own failings on the Russians. According to them, Killary didn't lose because she's a repulsive excuse for a candidate. She lost because of a massive, convoluted conspiracy involving FSB hackers, Wikileaks and "fake news" sites like this one with the dastardly Vladimir Putin playing the part of the man behind the curtain, pulling all our levers. Never mind that they don't have a lick of verifiable proof to support this preposterous farce. And never mind that even according to their own hopped up conspiracy, the worst the Russians are guilty of is educating the American public about the Democrats own dreadful behavior behind closed doors. The establishment is pissed and their gonna have their fucking hissy-fit even if it means starting World War 3. After all, if Killary couldn't give them their precious nuclear holocaust they would just have to get it themselves.
So here we are. It's 2017, Donald Trump is my president and McCarthyism is alive and well. Sure, fine, fuck-it, whatever. Can I go back to writing about Rojava and vagina envy now? Because if I have to write one more article about this stupid, goddamn election, I swear to Kropotkin's ghost, I will literally die. Fuck 2016 and give it back to the Russians. I've had enough.
Peace, Love and Begrudging Empathy- CH
P.S. This post is dedicated to the two trolls on YouTube who threatened to rape me yesterday for being a mouthy genderqueer feminist. The rage they provided me with was the fuel I needed to tare through my seasonal depression and finish this piece. Keep it up, you malignant cunts. Your stupidity gives me wings.
It all should have ended on November 8th. When the American electorate defied the Washington/Wall-Street establishment and their dickless harpies in the mainstream media by voting down their precious Lord Killary in favor of an unsanctioned ass named Donald Trump. It wasn't a clean win. The Donald took the Electoral College, while the queen of war took the Popular. But the Donald beat Killary fair and square by the establishments own stupid fucking rules. Needless to say, the establishment was not pleased. In fact, they were downright apoplectic. Watching the idiots on MSDNC squirm in their shit-caked britches as they realized how clueless they were is probably one of the few truly happy moments I experienced during the election. It wasn't supposed to go this way. The media elite and their DNC puppet masters had only egged Trump on in the first place because he was the only creature on earth more repulsive than the Clintons. Donald was a candidate designed to lose. But they had underestimated how truly disgusted the American people had become, not just with Teflon oligarchs like the Clintons but with the crooked media who exalted them. Trump was a fuck-up. He got 1.5 million fewer votes than that country-club Ken doll, Mitt Romney did. But Killary fucked up way worse. Pulling in a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did in 2012, getting shellacked the worst in Rust-Belt states like my native Pennsylvania, where Trump took nearly every county (I voted for Stein).
To put it simply, the establishment fucked up. They had taken working folks for a ride one too many times. This should have been clear during the primaries, when Killary had to cheat just to beat a Fabian fossil like Bernie Sanders, who got zero press time and went out of his way to shoot himself in the fucking foot. All the polls showed old Bernie massacring Trump in a regular election but the establishment didn't listen. They just kept pushing their rotten candidate down peoples throats. Never mind that Killary had become a symbol of everything that was wrong with Washington. A trigger happy, globalist, Wall-Street shill that never stepped foot on a country she wasn't willing to bomb and never flew over an American factory she wasn't willing to outsource. She was the home-team fave and Trump was a grabby jackass who pretended to be a billionaire. He was the guy the cool kids invited to their parties just so they could get him drunk and bet him to bark like a seal. But Trump didn't matter. They could have put Seymour Butts on the ticket and he would have won. People had just had enough. They didn't vote for Trump. They voted against the establishment.
The Democrats and the media could have learned an important lesson here. They could have took this sobering moment to learn a lesson about taking advantage of the people you depend on. But that's not their style. So they decided instead to piss on these people and call them all dupes of the Kremlin. They went back to that tired, old warhorse that failed to get their lazy asses across the finish line during the election and blamed all their own failings on the Russians. According to them, Killary didn't lose because she's a repulsive excuse for a candidate. She lost because of a massive, convoluted conspiracy involving FSB hackers, Wikileaks and "fake news" sites like this one with the dastardly Vladimir Putin playing the part of the man behind the curtain, pulling all our levers. Never mind that they don't have a lick of verifiable proof to support this preposterous farce. And never mind that even according to their own hopped up conspiracy, the worst the Russians are guilty of is educating the American public about the Democrats own dreadful behavior behind closed doors. The establishment is pissed and their gonna have their fucking hissy-fit even if it means starting World War 3. After all, if Killary couldn't give them their precious nuclear holocaust they would just have to get it themselves.
So here we are. It's 2017, Donald Trump is my president and McCarthyism is alive and well. Sure, fine, fuck-it, whatever. Can I go back to writing about Rojava and vagina envy now? Because if I have to write one more article about this stupid, goddamn election, I swear to Kropotkin's ghost, I will literally die. Fuck 2016 and give it back to the Russians. I've had enough.
Peace, Love and Begrudging Empathy- CH
P.S. This post is dedicated to the two trolls on YouTube who threatened to rape me yesterday for being a mouthy genderqueer feminist. The rage they provided me with was the fuel I needed to tare through my seasonal depression and finish this piece. Keep it up, you malignant cunts. Your stupidity gives me wings.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
16 More People Who Don't Suck!
It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since my first annual List of People Who Don't Suck! A lot has happened since then. I may still be an agoraphobic hermit but I can no longer call myself a shut-in. I leave my house every week to commune with other charmingly damaged souls at my local psych-rehab, many of whom I've come to see as friends. I've come out of the closet with my long, silent struggle with gender dysphoria and I've found a sense of community within the queer movement that I've been searching for my whole life. I still don't technically have a job, unless you count being an unapologetic well-fare-queen (better my toilet paper than another smart bomb), but I am looking into volunteering at a local radio station, so Radio Free Happy Valley could be in my crystal ball. I've also managed to get a lot more people to this sight. Not nearly as many as I'd like but I've made a few tiny earthquakes out there in cyberspace and I promise you, dearest motherfuckers, it's only the beginning.
My original idea for this list came from the fact that the few people closest to me often complained about my widespread pessimism and general negativity. They would often ask me things like, "Is there anything you do like?" So I decided to devote an entire post at the end of the year to 16 people who actually don't suck. People seemed to dig it so I decided to make it an annual thing. So here I am a year later with 16 more people who don't suck. There are renegades, visionaries, iconoclasts and even a few people who I've come to consider friends. They're a tight minority of people who can actually manage to illicit something resembling hope from a wretch like me. I love them all and you should too.
* Ajamu Baraka- I had every intention of putting Jill Stein on this list. She ran a decent campaign as 2016's only pacifist choice for president. Sadly, however, since the election Jill has chosen to allow herself to become a pawn of the DNC's latest Russophobic witch hunt, calling for a Rust-Belt recount that could only benefit the queen of chaos, Killary Clinton. So, since I can no longer in good conscience say that Jill doesn't suck, I gave her spot to someone who actually fucking deserves it. Her VP, Ajamu Baraka. A legit black radical in the tradition of dudes like Stokely Carmichael and W.E.B. Dubois, who had the balls to call his former running mates recount bullshit and hopefully, just maybe, will have the balls to deny her the Green Party nomination in 2020. Come on Ajamu, we're counting on you.
* Angela Keaton- Since childhood, I've always secretly wanted a sister. Chalk it up to being a genderqueer child in a mostly cis-male household. But for whatever reason, I've spent most of my life collecting sister figures. None have been finer than Angela Keaton, antiwar.com's dangerously overworked executive director and all around libertarian riot grrrl. Bikini Kill's classic "Rebel Girl" could have easily been written about her. No one online has been more helpful, more giving, more patient or more kind to me personally than AK. In fact, there is probably about a 90% chance that if your looking at this site right now, it's probably largely thanks to her. I'm proud to call her a friend, an allie and a mentor. Angela Keaton is who I want to be when I grow up.
* Colin Kaepernik- I hate football but Colin Kaepernik is my favorite football player. Mostly because he seems to have devoted himself entirely to pissing off the average jock. I can't tell you dick about his stats or skills or weapons or whatever the fuck sports people care about. I can tell you, however, that whenever he makes the news, whether it's for protesting the National Anthem, calling out the American police state, defending the late Fidel Castro or refusing to throw his vote away on a sick fuck like Trump or Clinton, it puts a big shit-eating grin on my face. Keep up the good work Colin. It's nice to see an athlete in the news for something other than knocking his wife's teeth out. Steven A. Smith can eat my hairy asshole.
* Adam Reed and Matt Thompson- The mad genius' behind treasured TV cult classics like Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo, not to mention the best animated show on television, Archer. Adam and Matt have been making brilliantly sick cartoons since the turn of the Millennium and they have yet to disappoint me once. Absurd, vulgar, literate, profane and above all endlessly quotable- "Phrasing, boom!" "Slideshow! she's in it." "Chinatown's got something for errvrybody." -Their work has served as the airbag for the endless car crash that is my life.
* Tulsi Gabbard- Slideshow! she's in it.... Sorry, hard to turn off, but aside from being in my own personal slideshow (if you have to ask, don't), the Representative for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District is also probably Washington's most consistent voice for peace since Ron Paul's retirement. Showing an endearing, Kucinich-esque willingness to piss off the cruise-missile progressives in her own party, the Iraq war vet and current Army National Guard MP has, in only the past few weeks, broke party protocol by becoming the first Democrat in Congress to meet with he who shall not be named at Trump Tower (wait, oops) in an attempt to convince the President Elect to stand by his word (or one of them at least) and fuck off out of Syria, then punctuated the point by introducing the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, which would finally block tax payer dollars from flowing to ISIS, Al-Nusra or their derelict sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If Tulsi keeps this up, I might have to rejoin the Democratic Party to vote for her in 2020. Not sure if I should thank or curse her for that predicament but she's definitely earned her place on this list.
* Thomas L. Knapp- Though he'll always be Tom the moderator from antiwar.com to me, Mr. Knapp has spent a lifetime righteously raging against the machine. From Act-Up to A.N.S.W.E.R. to his unofficial role as the Don Quixote of doomed third party candidacies, including his own, Tom is a tireless crusader for all the right things in a world too mad to appreciate it. He's also a friend who never stops teaching me new things, whether I want to learn them or not. He's made me a better writer and a better revolutionary and I thank him for this. You can find his work on his blog Kn@ppster and the Garrison Center where he serves as director and senior new analyst.
* Mitski- Mitski Miyawaki was already the best thing to happen to alternative rock in ages before she released her fourth album, Puberty 2, this year. A reverb drenched, heart breaking and fearlessly naked self-portrait of a biracial twenty-something woman trying to figure herself out in an increasingly xenophobic and chauvinistic nation. Puberty 2 is far and above the greatest album of the year, plunging Mitski into the realm of feminist rock visionaries like Patti Smith, P.J. Harvey and Courtney Love.
* Beppe Grillo- Beppe Grillo is insane. He also might be the best thing to happen to Italy since Antonio Negri (Google it, you rube). The politically incorrect, Ferrari driving, stand-up turned blogger turned cyber-anarchist anti-hero is kind of like a perverse mix of Ralph Nader, Abbie Hoffman, Willy Wonka and Tyler Durdin. At the helm of his equally idiosyncratic Five Star Movement, Beppe has repeatedly taken on the notoriously corrupt Italian establishment and won, most recently with his triumph over Italian Prime Minister and NATO play-thing Matteo Renzi's attempt to castrate Italian democracy via referendum which ended with Renzi's resignation after the Five Star lead "Vote No" movement left his dreams of Duce-dom in tatters. What's next for Beppe's radicals? Hopefully an even bigger victory in 2018 then their 2013 general election upset, which may see Italy join it's northern neighbors, Switzerland, in embracing direct democracy and rejecting the EU. Fingers Crossed.
* Matt Stone and Trey Parker- In 2012, Matt and Trey, the cheeky bastards behind America's most beloved, foul mouthed, animated social satire, South Park, found themselves at a creative in-pass. After over a dozen seasons and the surprise success of their Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, they were bored with their meal-ticket but trapped in a long-term contract with Comedy Central. Most animators would have simply sucked it up and phoned it in. But Matt and Trey aren't most animators. They decided that if they were stuck in South Park then South Park would have to change. The results of this gamble? Miraculously, the show got even better. Stretching their brutally honest and poignant brand of satire into story-lines that lasted entire seasons and diving deeper into the development of their characters, Matt and Trey built on their already near flawless legacy and made the last several seasons of South Park, the best seasons of South Park, with this years twentieth season, an epic exploration of the nature of Trolling, sexism, anti-trolling and anti-sexism, brash and brilliant enough to enlighten and enrage everyone, myself included. Bravo.
* Birgitta Jonsdottir- I love Iceland. The Volcanoes. The black sand beaches. The quirky art rock bands. It's little wonder that the island is my go to destination whenever I threaten to leave this goddamn country for one reason or another. And, in spite of global warming, Iceland's actually getting cooler, thanks largely to the rise of Wikileaks vet Birgitta Jonsdottir and her Pirate Party, who threaten to return the island to it's anarchist roots, with their recent electoral gains based on their promise of direct democracy, net neutrality and the worlds first crowd-sourced constitution. They are also pushing to offer full refuge and citizenship for Edward Snowden. Save a cottage for me Birgitta. I should be along shortly.
* Mariela Castro- There's a new revolution going on in Cuba and it's better than radical, it's queer. After decades of stagnant Soviet era homophobia, Cuba has jumped to the forefront of LGBT rights in the global south and it's largely thanks to Mariela Castro, the daughter of current president Raul Castro and late feminist revolutionary Vilma Espin. As director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, Mariela has nearly single-handedly made queer liberation an integral part of the Cuban Revolution, even going so far as to pass a measure that provides sex-change surgery free of charge as part of Cuba's National Healthcare Program. Mariela has added to the already legendary revolutionary legacy of the Castro's and seems poised to bring that legacy into the Twenty-First Century.
* St. Vincent- There are far too few truly unique voices in music today and you would be hard pressed to find one more unique than Annie Clark's who has set college radio on fire as St. Vincent. Her music is undefinable. A veritable genre upon itself, shape shifting seamlessly between pop and avante garde, digital and analogue, overt and subliminal, until the borders evaporate entirely, the distinctions are non-existent and what your left with is something akin to a new language. One no one can speak but her. But one we somehow all understand regardless. St. Vincent isn't an artist. She's an alchemist, a magician, a witch. And I can hardly wait to hear her next spell.
* Adam Kokesh- I was born in 1988 but I miss the Sixties. I'm not talking about Woodstock, the Kennedy's and all that Tom Hanks approved, limousine-liberal bullshit. The hippies can eat their flowers. I wanna know where did all the flaming dollars go. The Sixties I miss were defined by Malcolm X, the MC5 and Karl Hess. And that's why I love Adam Kokesh. The one modern-day activist who truly embodies that renegade spirit of yesteryear. Whether he's shouting down war pigs like like Alberto Gonzales and John McCain or loading a twelve gauge on Freedom Plaza, the decorated Iraq War veteran is the living embodiment of the Second American Revolution he has promised to peacefully ignite. And Adam has saved his greatest stunt for 2020, when he aims to mount a campaign for the presidency on the platform of liquidating the Federal Government entirely. Don't get me wrong, that's one revolution that this mutualist well-fare-queen isn't quite ready for yet. But that doesn't mean that the very thought of it doesn't put a great big smile on my bearded face and a great big hard-on in my panties. Mmmmmm! You smell that? Smells like flaming dollar bills. Smells like 1969.
* Lisa Reid- They say that behind every great man is a great woman. Well, behind every great gendequeer there's a great mother. After all, they made us this way, didn't they? Regardless, they don't make them any greater than mine. Lisa Turner Reid is more than just my mother. She's my best friend. And if that makes me a fag, then I'll wear that slur with pride. Our relationship is kind of like the Gilmore Girls, only Lorelei is a Catholic zealot and Rory is a 300 pound, bearded, anarchist with gender issues. Through everything, through the blasphemy and the mental illness and the Lyme disease and the gender dysphoria and the foul language and the prescription drugs and the blatant anti-Americanism, my mother, the conservative daughter of a Marine Corps. officer has stood defiantly by my side and I couldn't possibly thank her enough, so this spot on my blog will have to do. Mom, you're politically and spiritually nuts but you definitely don't suck. To quote Neko Case- This tornado loves you.
Well that's it folks. That's my fucking list. Sixteen people who matter. Sixteen people who make this fucked up planet worth fighting for. Sixteen people who don't suck! Since this will probably be the last post I write this year, I wish you all a happy holiday, regardless of whatever that fucking holiday is. And if you don't have one, make one. If you've taken the time to read my latest ramblings, you more than deserve it.
As always,
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
My original idea for this list came from the fact that the few people closest to me often complained about my widespread pessimism and general negativity. They would often ask me things like, "Is there anything you do like?" So I decided to devote an entire post at the end of the year to 16 people who actually don't suck. People seemed to dig it so I decided to make it an annual thing. So here I am a year later with 16 more people who don't suck. There are renegades, visionaries, iconoclasts and even a few people who I've come to consider friends. They're a tight minority of people who can actually manage to illicit something resembling hope from a wretch like me. I love them all and you should too.
* Ajamu Baraka- I had every intention of putting Jill Stein on this list. She ran a decent campaign as 2016's only pacifist choice for president. Sadly, however, since the election Jill has chosen to allow herself to become a pawn of the DNC's latest Russophobic witch hunt, calling for a Rust-Belt recount that could only benefit the queen of chaos, Killary Clinton. So, since I can no longer in good conscience say that Jill doesn't suck, I gave her spot to someone who actually fucking deserves it. Her VP, Ajamu Baraka. A legit black radical in the tradition of dudes like Stokely Carmichael and W.E.B. Dubois, who had the balls to call his former running mates recount bullshit and hopefully, just maybe, will have the balls to deny her the Green Party nomination in 2020. Come on Ajamu, we're counting on you.
* Angela Keaton- Since childhood, I've always secretly wanted a sister. Chalk it up to being a genderqueer child in a mostly cis-male household. But for whatever reason, I've spent most of my life collecting sister figures. None have been finer than Angela Keaton, antiwar.com's dangerously overworked executive director and all around libertarian riot grrrl. Bikini Kill's classic "Rebel Girl" could have easily been written about her. No one online has been more helpful, more giving, more patient or more kind to me personally than AK. In fact, there is probably about a 90% chance that if your looking at this site right now, it's probably largely thanks to her. I'm proud to call her a friend, an allie and a mentor. Angela Keaton is who I want to be when I grow up.
* Colin Kaepernik- I hate football but Colin Kaepernik is my favorite football player. Mostly because he seems to have devoted himself entirely to pissing off the average jock. I can't tell you dick about his stats or skills or weapons or whatever the fuck sports people care about. I can tell you, however, that whenever he makes the news, whether it's for protesting the National Anthem, calling out the American police state, defending the late Fidel Castro or refusing to throw his vote away on a sick fuck like Trump or Clinton, it puts a big shit-eating grin on my face. Keep up the good work Colin. It's nice to see an athlete in the news for something other than knocking his wife's teeth out. Steven A. Smith can eat my hairy asshole.
* Adam Reed and Matt Thompson- The mad genius' behind treasured TV cult classics like Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo, not to mention the best animated show on television, Archer. Adam and Matt have been making brilliantly sick cartoons since the turn of the Millennium and they have yet to disappoint me once. Absurd, vulgar, literate, profane and above all endlessly quotable- "Phrasing, boom!" "Slideshow! she's in it." "Chinatown's got something for errvrybody." -Their work has served as the airbag for the endless car crash that is my life.
* Tulsi Gabbard- Slideshow! she's in it.... Sorry, hard to turn off, but aside from being in my own personal slideshow (if you have to ask, don't), the Representative for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District is also probably Washington's most consistent voice for peace since Ron Paul's retirement. Showing an endearing, Kucinich-esque willingness to piss off the cruise-missile progressives in her own party, the Iraq war vet and current Army National Guard MP has, in only the past few weeks, broke party protocol by becoming the first Democrat in Congress to meet with he who shall not be named at Trump Tower (wait, oops) in an attempt to convince the President Elect to stand by his word (or one of them at least) and fuck off out of Syria, then punctuated the point by introducing the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, which would finally block tax payer dollars from flowing to ISIS, Al-Nusra or their derelict sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If Tulsi keeps this up, I might have to rejoin the Democratic Party to vote for her in 2020. Not sure if I should thank or curse her for that predicament but she's definitely earned her place on this list.
* Thomas L. Knapp- Though he'll always be Tom the moderator from antiwar.com to me, Mr. Knapp has spent a lifetime righteously raging against the machine. From Act-Up to A.N.S.W.E.R. to his unofficial role as the Don Quixote of doomed third party candidacies, including his own, Tom is a tireless crusader for all the right things in a world too mad to appreciate it. He's also a friend who never stops teaching me new things, whether I want to learn them or not. He's made me a better writer and a better revolutionary and I thank him for this. You can find his work on his blog Kn@ppster and the Garrison Center where he serves as director and senior new analyst.
* Mitski- Mitski Miyawaki was already the best thing to happen to alternative rock in ages before she released her fourth album, Puberty 2, this year. A reverb drenched, heart breaking and fearlessly naked self-portrait of a biracial twenty-something woman trying to figure herself out in an increasingly xenophobic and chauvinistic nation. Puberty 2 is far and above the greatest album of the year, plunging Mitski into the realm of feminist rock visionaries like Patti Smith, P.J. Harvey and Courtney Love.
* Beppe Grillo- Beppe Grillo is insane. He also might be the best thing to happen to Italy since Antonio Negri (Google it, you rube). The politically incorrect, Ferrari driving, stand-up turned blogger turned cyber-anarchist anti-hero is kind of like a perverse mix of Ralph Nader, Abbie Hoffman, Willy Wonka and Tyler Durdin. At the helm of his equally idiosyncratic Five Star Movement, Beppe has repeatedly taken on the notoriously corrupt Italian establishment and won, most recently with his triumph over Italian Prime Minister and NATO play-thing Matteo Renzi's attempt to castrate Italian democracy via referendum which ended with Renzi's resignation after the Five Star lead "Vote No" movement left his dreams of Duce-dom in tatters. What's next for Beppe's radicals? Hopefully an even bigger victory in 2018 then their 2013 general election upset, which may see Italy join it's northern neighbors, Switzerland, in embracing direct democracy and rejecting the EU. Fingers Crossed.
* Matt Stone and Trey Parker- In 2012, Matt and Trey, the cheeky bastards behind America's most beloved, foul mouthed, animated social satire, South Park, found themselves at a creative in-pass. After over a dozen seasons and the surprise success of their Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, they were bored with their meal-ticket but trapped in a long-term contract with Comedy Central. Most animators would have simply sucked it up and phoned it in. But Matt and Trey aren't most animators. They decided that if they were stuck in South Park then South Park would have to change. The results of this gamble? Miraculously, the show got even better. Stretching their brutally honest and poignant brand of satire into story-lines that lasted entire seasons and diving deeper into the development of their characters, Matt and Trey built on their already near flawless legacy and made the last several seasons of South Park, the best seasons of South Park, with this years twentieth season, an epic exploration of the nature of Trolling, sexism, anti-trolling and anti-sexism, brash and brilliant enough to enlighten and enrage everyone, myself included. Bravo.
* Birgitta Jonsdottir- I love Iceland. The Volcanoes. The black sand beaches. The quirky art rock bands. It's little wonder that the island is my go to destination whenever I threaten to leave this goddamn country for one reason or another. And, in spite of global warming, Iceland's actually getting cooler, thanks largely to the rise of Wikileaks vet Birgitta Jonsdottir and her Pirate Party, who threaten to return the island to it's anarchist roots, with their recent electoral gains based on their promise of direct democracy, net neutrality and the worlds first crowd-sourced constitution. They are also pushing to offer full refuge and citizenship for Edward Snowden. Save a cottage for me Birgitta. I should be along shortly.
* Mariela Castro- There's a new revolution going on in Cuba and it's better than radical, it's queer. After decades of stagnant Soviet era homophobia, Cuba has jumped to the forefront of LGBT rights in the global south and it's largely thanks to Mariela Castro, the daughter of current president Raul Castro and late feminist revolutionary Vilma Espin. As director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, Mariela has nearly single-handedly made queer liberation an integral part of the Cuban Revolution, even going so far as to pass a measure that provides sex-change surgery free of charge as part of Cuba's National Healthcare Program. Mariela has added to the already legendary revolutionary legacy of the Castro's and seems poised to bring that legacy into the Twenty-First Century.
* St. Vincent- There are far too few truly unique voices in music today and you would be hard pressed to find one more unique than Annie Clark's who has set college radio on fire as St. Vincent. Her music is undefinable. A veritable genre upon itself, shape shifting seamlessly between pop and avante garde, digital and analogue, overt and subliminal, until the borders evaporate entirely, the distinctions are non-existent and what your left with is something akin to a new language. One no one can speak but her. But one we somehow all understand regardless. St. Vincent isn't an artist. She's an alchemist, a magician, a witch. And I can hardly wait to hear her next spell.
* Adam Kokesh- I was born in 1988 but I miss the Sixties. I'm not talking about Woodstock, the Kennedy's and all that Tom Hanks approved, limousine-liberal bullshit. The hippies can eat their flowers. I wanna know where did all the flaming dollars go. The Sixties I miss were defined by Malcolm X, the MC5 and Karl Hess. And that's why I love Adam Kokesh. The one modern-day activist who truly embodies that renegade spirit of yesteryear. Whether he's shouting down war pigs like like Alberto Gonzales and John McCain or loading a twelve gauge on Freedom Plaza, the decorated Iraq War veteran is the living embodiment of the Second American Revolution he has promised to peacefully ignite. And Adam has saved his greatest stunt for 2020, when he aims to mount a campaign for the presidency on the platform of liquidating the Federal Government entirely. Don't get me wrong, that's one revolution that this mutualist well-fare-queen isn't quite ready for yet. But that doesn't mean that the very thought of it doesn't put a great big smile on my bearded face and a great big hard-on in my panties. Mmmmmm! You smell that? Smells like flaming dollar bills. Smells like 1969.
* Lisa Reid- They say that behind every great man is a great woman. Well, behind every great gendequeer there's a great mother. After all, they made us this way, didn't they? Regardless, they don't make them any greater than mine. Lisa Turner Reid is more than just my mother. She's my best friend. And if that makes me a fag, then I'll wear that slur with pride. Our relationship is kind of like the Gilmore Girls, only Lorelei is a Catholic zealot and Rory is a 300 pound, bearded, anarchist with gender issues. Through everything, through the blasphemy and the mental illness and the Lyme disease and the gender dysphoria and the foul language and the prescription drugs and the blatant anti-Americanism, my mother, the conservative daughter of a Marine Corps. officer has stood defiantly by my side and I couldn't possibly thank her enough, so this spot on my blog will have to do. Mom, you're politically and spiritually nuts but you definitely don't suck. To quote Neko Case- This tornado loves you.
Well that's it folks. That's my fucking list. Sixteen people who matter. Sixteen people who make this fucked up planet worth fighting for. Sixteen people who don't suck! Since this will probably be the last post I write this year, I wish you all a happy holiday, regardless of whatever that fucking holiday is. And if you don't have one, make one. If you've taken the time to read my latest ramblings, you more than deserve it.
As always,
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Legalize Everything.
In this current age of Trumpian dystopia, what with the unexpected rebirth of the radical right in this country, it's easy for leftists like myself to feel down (Clinical Depression doesn't exactly help either). But, believe it or not, dearest motherfuckers, there is some reason for hope. In the long run, the great arch of history tends to veer towards the left-lane of liberty. The clearest example of this is the Culture War. Less then a decade ago, the idea of pot being all but legal, in one form or another, from Colorado to Pennsylvania, was nearly unthinkable. Gay marriage being legal nation wide seemed even less likely. But here we are, gay folks are getting hitched, everyone's getting baked and there's not a goddamn thing Trump or his jackbooted fan-club can do about it. But that doesn't mean the war is over and this is one war that this pacifist doesn't want to stop. Not until everyone is free and everything is legal.
When it comes to most things, I'm basically a libertarian socialist. When it comes to matters of vice and virtue, however, I'm more of a libertine socialist. My basic philosophy is that if it feels good and it doesn't hurt anybody but yourself, then it's a gift from god worth indulging in responsibly and it sure as fuck isn't anybody's business but your own. With all that being said, in regards to the good news on dope and gays, my response is, why stop there?
Marijuana is fantastic. It's like green Tylenol. It's good for everything. Got Arthritis? Smoke a joint. Feeling depressed? Smoke a joint. Can't get to sleep? Smoke a joint. Nothing interesting on TV? Smoke a joint. As far as I'm concerned, pot should be legal everywhere for everyone. But why stop there? Ecstasy and psychedelics can do wonders for mental health when used properly. Prescription heroin has been used to successfully keep long-time junkies at bay in Holland for decades and it's far less toxic than that corporate methadone sludge we still push in the States. Hell, even cocaine has fueled some of the greatest cinema ever made (thank blow for Taxi Driver). As far as I'm concerned, if it grows out of the ground, legalize it. Marijuana, salvia, peyote, psilocybin, shit even Coca and Opium. Hill tribes and mountain farmers have been using both peacefully to get through the day since Christ wore short-pants. As for all that grotty chemical shit, I say decriminalize it. We've been bashing our bloody fucking brains out with prohibition for over half a goddamn century and where has it got us? In debt and enslaved by the Prison Industrial Complex. Legalize it!
Marriage equality is basic common sense. Marriage is a simple contract between consenting adults. Why regulate it based on genitalia? But, once again, why stop there? Thousands of people practice polygamy in this country for both religious and personal reasons. Why force them to live beneath the shadows of lunatics like Warren Jeffs? What makes their love any less legitimate than anyone else's. And if you wanna get all Christ-y about this shit, just try slinging a cat through the Old Testament without hitting a polygamist. There quite literally everywhere. So? Out of the Bible and into the streets! Legalize it!
Polygamists and queer folks aren't the only sexual minorities that face oppression in this country either. Discrimination against the BDSM community remains wide spread and totally politically correct. LGBTQ+? BDSM? I happen to be a member of both of these maligned alphabets. Why should it be anymore exceptable to bash me for being a toe-sucking submissive than it is for me being non-binary? I wasn't exactly given a choice on either matter. And while it may not be illegal to be queer, polyamorous or a sadomasochist in this country, it's also not illegal to be fired or thrown out into the streets for being any of the above in most states. I'm not saying lets lynch the landlord but can we at least keep him out of my fucking bedroom? And as long as we're on the subject of sex, why is paying for it still illegal. What's the difference between a prostitute and a psychiatrist? Seriously! They both offer emotional relief for a price, only hookers give you a hell of a lot more bang for your buck. Why should one get a corner office and the other get a jail cell? I say unionize the working girls (and boys), kick out the fucking pimps and legalize it!
And last but certainly not least absurd, there's gambling. Everybody does it. Everybody knows that everybody does it. But still it's illegal or rather should I say "illegal". You can buy lotto tickets, bet on the ponies and buy stock in Uber but shooting dice behind the bodega is illegal? What the hell kind of fucking sense does that make? Why should Nevada get to have all the fun? Just because there a barren, god-forsaken, hellscape? Have you been to Altoona? There is no reason why I shouldn't be aloud to walk into my local fag-bar and bet the drag queen next to me fifty bucks that Mike Pence doesn't get busted for butt-fucking rent-boys by 2020. It's my goddamn money! Legalize it!
Who gets to make these stupid fucking rules? And what gives them the authority to run our lives? The answer to both these questions is the state and they do it because they can, respectively. Which is why I'm a libertarian socialist and banning the state is the one form of prohibition that I'm down with. But until my dream of a stateless society can be realized we'll have to settle for small victories to keep us going. So I say if consenting adults want to smoke opium, shoot craps, get pegged by a dominatrix, get a sex-change and marry her, all the power to em. What with all the war, blood, guts and murder on this boiling planet, don't we have better things to do then regulate consensual human behavior? Bong rips and scissor fights are the tits but, mark my words, its only the beginning. The American electorate may be dumb as bricks but there smart enough to know that prohibiting victim-less crimes is bullshit. Which makes them twice as smart as the dipshits they elect. If that's not a silver lining on the Trump cloud then I don't know what is.
Keep it up, dearest motherfuckers. Live free and legalize everything.
Peace, Love, Anarchy and Empathy- CH
When it comes to most things, I'm basically a libertarian socialist. When it comes to matters of vice and virtue, however, I'm more of a libertine socialist. My basic philosophy is that if it feels good and it doesn't hurt anybody but yourself, then it's a gift from god worth indulging in responsibly and it sure as fuck isn't anybody's business but your own. With all that being said, in regards to the good news on dope and gays, my response is, why stop there?
Marijuana is fantastic. It's like green Tylenol. It's good for everything. Got Arthritis? Smoke a joint. Feeling depressed? Smoke a joint. Can't get to sleep? Smoke a joint. Nothing interesting on TV? Smoke a joint. As far as I'm concerned, pot should be legal everywhere for everyone. But why stop there? Ecstasy and psychedelics can do wonders for mental health when used properly. Prescription heroin has been used to successfully keep long-time junkies at bay in Holland for decades and it's far less toxic than that corporate methadone sludge we still push in the States. Hell, even cocaine has fueled some of the greatest cinema ever made (thank blow for Taxi Driver). As far as I'm concerned, if it grows out of the ground, legalize it. Marijuana, salvia, peyote, psilocybin, shit even Coca and Opium. Hill tribes and mountain farmers have been using both peacefully to get through the day since Christ wore short-pants. As for all that grotty chemical shit, I say decriminalize it. We've been bashing our bloody fucking brains out with prohibition for over half a goddamn century and where has it got us? In debt and enslaved by the Prison Industrial Complex. Legalize it!
Marriage equality is basic common sense. Marriage is a simple contract between consenting adults. Why regulate it based on genitalia? But, once again, why stop there? Thousands of people practice polygamy in this country for both religious and personal reasons. Why force them to live beneath the shadows of lunatics like Warren Jeffs? What makes their love any less legitimate than anyone else's. And if you wanna get all Christ-y about this shit, just try slinging a cat through the Old Testament without hitting a polygamist. There quite literally everywhere. So? Out of the Bible and into the streets! Legalize it!
Polygamists and queer folks aren't the only sexual minorities that face oppression in this country either. Discrimination against the BDSM community remains wide spread and totally politically correct. LGBTQ+? BDSM? I happen to be a member of both of these maligned alphabets. Why should it be anymore exceptable to bash me for being a toe-sucking submissive than it is for me being non-binary? I wasn't exactly given a choice on either matter. And while it may not be illegal to be queer, polyamorous or a sadomasochist in this country, it's also not illegal to be fired or thrown out into the streets for being any of the above in most states. I'm not saying lets lynch the landlord but can we at least keep him out of my fucking bedroom? And as long as we're on the subject of sex, why is paying for it still illegal. What's the difference between a prostitute and a psychiatrist? Seriously! They both offer emotional relief for a price, only hookers give you a hell of a lot more bang for your buck. Why should one get a corner office and the other get a jail cell? I say unionize the working girls (and boys), kick out the fucking pimps and legalize it!
And last but certainly not least absurd, there's gambling. Everybody does it. Everybody knows that everybody does it. But still it's illegal or rather should I say "illegal". You can buy lotto tickets, bet on the ponies and buy stock in Uber but shooting dice behind the bodega is illegal? What the hell kind of fucking sense does that make? Why should Nevada get to have all the fun? Just because there a barren, god-forsaken, hellscape? Have you been to Altoona? There is no reason why I shouldn't be aloud to walk into my local fag-bar and bet the drag queen next to me fifty bucks that Mike Pence doesn't get busted for butt-fucking rent-boys by 2020. It's my goddamn money! Legalize it!
Who gets to make these stupid fucking rules? And what gives them the authority to run our lives? The answer to both these questions is the state and they do it because they can, respectively. Which is why I'm a libertarian socialist and banning the state is the one form of prohibition that I'm down with. But until my dream of a stateless society can be realized we'll have to settle for small victories to keep us going. So I say if consenting adults want to smoke opium, shoot craps, get pegged by a dominatrix, get a sex-change and marry her, all the power to em. What with all the war, blood, guts and murder on this boiling planet, don't we have better things to do then regulate consensual human behavior? Bong rips and scissor fights are the tits but, mark my words, its only the beginning. The American electorate may be dumb as bricks but there smart enough to know that prohibiting victim-less crimes is bullshit. Which makes them twice as smart as the dipshits they elect. If that's not a silver lining on the Trump cloud then I don't know what is.
Keep it up, dearest motherfuckers. Live free and legalize everything.
Peace, Love, Anarchy and Empathy- CH
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Godspeed Comandante Castro
I write this post to you, dearest motherfuckers, with a heavy heart. I write this post early because another one of my heroes has died. On November 25 in this year of the devil twenty-hundred and sixteen, Fidel Castro- revolutionary, lawyer, freedom fighter, dictator and all around contrarian bad-ass motherfucker shuffled off this mortal coil into the pantheon of oblivion at the age of 90. I know what some of you must be thinking. That I'm fucking nuts or, even worse, a hypocrite. An outspoken genderfuck anarcho-transfeminist defending a crusty old Leninist strongman. And you're right to judge me this way. Castro has done some horrible things that I wont even attempt to defend. He locked up his critics and followed the homophobic Soviet company line of sending queer people to the sanatoriums. I wont pretend like he was an angel. He wasn't. He could be a real cunt. He was an undeniably flawed human being. But these facts don't change the other facts. The fact that Fidel devoted his life to his people and to poor and maligned people across the globe. The fact that his lifetime of service to these people far overshadows the heinous mistakes he made in their name. And, perhaps most importantly, the fact that this simple son of a school-teacher went toe to toe with the most ferocious empire the world has ever known for over half a century and won. History may or may not absolve the good Comandante Castro but this is one queer anarchist who will be caught trying.
Fidel began his life pretty square. The son of middle-class landowners, he excelled at sports and academics. After a failed attempt at a pro-baseball career, he became a lawyer and then a moderately reformist politician before Yankee backed strongman, Fulgencio Batista liquidated what was left of Cuba's banana democracy and pushed young Fidel into a lifetime career as a revolutionary agitator. In 1953, Fidel led a failed revolt at the Moncada Barracks. After his arrest, the former lawyer chose to represent himself and electrified a nation with his unbowed and unapologetic defense of his crimes against the state and his thunderous condemnation of the very system that he had found himself at the mercy of. He was fearless. The Batista regime and their American handlers didn't know it then but Castro had already one the revolution before it even began. Fidel served two years in prison before being released as part of an amnesty. He fled to self-exile with his brother Raul and a handful of comrades in Mexico City where he plotted his next move.
The Castro Brothers returned to Cuba in 1956 with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara and 79 others on a rickety old fishing boat known as the Granma. After a crash landing the tiny army found themselves the victims of an ambush. Only 12 of the original members of the 26 July Movement survived the onslaught. Fidel led them limping into the Sierra Maestra Mountains where for the next two years they led a popular rebellion that somehow snowballed into one of the centuries greatest and unlikeliest triumphs against tyranny. By 1958, Fidel and his movement road into the capital of Havana to a heroes welcome. But these brave sons of the Southern Hemisphere had pissed on a wasps nest. Their whole country would have to pay a heavy price for their courageous stand.
The moment that it became clear to the Mandarins in Washington that Castro would not allow himself to be perverted like Batista it was decided that the new Cuban Revolution would have to be strangled in it's cradle before it could gain the strength to take its first step. As Castro ordered that the wage-slave-plantations be returned to their rightful owners, the peasant farmers who toiled in them, and that the nations oil wells should belong to its citizens rather than the American conglomerates who stole them. As he shuttered the Mafia's Casinos and whorehouses and returned dignity to the streets of Havana, the United States gathered the Batista's disgruntled thugs along with a melange of fascist mercenaries and together they launched a reign of terror upon the tiny island nation that would last for more than half a century.
Fidel wasn't always a communist. Far from it. His original intention for Cuba was to hold popular elections once the last remnants of the Batista dictatorship had been thoroughly decimated. But before he could make this happen, Fidel found his nascent revolutionary government under siege by foreign funded terrorists and saboteurs. Trains were derailed. Harbors were mined. Crops were torched and scores of innocent civilians were slaughtered in cold blood. Once it had become abundantly clear that Uncle Sam was the source of this wave of madness, Castro was left with nowhere else to turn to but East towards the Soviet Union. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was the final straw. Castro had selflessly joined his own soldiers in personally thwarting off that American siege. He returned to Havana a very shaken and changed man. He came to the hard conclusion that democracy would have to wait until the threat of American Imperialism subsided. Sadly this day never came. Cuba joined their allies in the USSR in becoming a stifling state capitalist bureaucracy. The once bright and vivacious Cuban Revolution had been rendered to a permanent warfare state.
This was America's aim all along. The boys in the Beltway decided that if Castro couldn't be bought off or overthrown, he would be pushed by the threat of violence into suffocating his own revolution under a wartime dictatorship of the proletariat, Just as the Bolsheviks had. You see, the Americans didn't fear Castro for his nationalism or his flirtations with socialism or even his close friendships with Marxists like Che. They feared Castro's dream of a a successful anti-capitalist, post-colonial democracy. They were scared shitless of the prospect of Cuba becoming an example of hope to Uncle Sam's other banana republics in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. So they goaded Fidel into sabotaging his own revolution in order to defend his people from a greater tyranny. Tragically, it worked. Sort of.
Cuba's revolutionary democracy may have never came to fruition and the nations savior may have been pushed into the unwanted position of dictator, but Castro refused to let all of the revolutions promises die the same death. In spite of being shackled by the most brutal international blockade in world history, Cuba managed to develop healthcare and education systems that rivaled that of the First World. As illiteracy and infant mortality went the way of the Dodo, Fidel sought to export his nations hard gained bounties. Sending doctors to the poorest parts of the globe and trained revolutionaries to the most oppressed. Castro supported Nelson Mandela's fight for freedom while Washington still backed apartheid. He sent troops to aid Angola in fighting off a South African invasion. He gave a helping hand to the Sandinista's Nicaragua and Maurice Bishop's Grenada when the Soviet Union couldn't be bothered to give a damn. He even offered to send a thousand Cuban doctors to New Orleans after Katrina. Bush said no thanks. He preferred to let poor people drown as long as their floating bodies were black.
Most importantly, though the US succeeded in turning Cuba into a dictatorship, albeit a decidedly benevolent one, they ironically failed to prevent Fidel Castro's greatest threat of a good example. The children of the South, who watched in awe as this bearded mestizo defied the greatest empire on earth, dodging assassination attempts in the hundreds, grew up to lead the kind of revolutionary democracies Castro had failed to create in his own country. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. One after another, nearly fifty years after the Cuban Revolution, a Pink Tide of Latin American nations declared their independence peacefully and Democratically from their Northern overlords. In a strange way, Fidel Castro had to sacrifice his own revolution in order to save Latin America from greater American imperial tyranny.
Perhaps inspired by its radical progeny, Cuba didn't turn out so bad either under the circumstances. Decades after the Soviet Union fell, they stand proud. Poor but free, at least from foreign domination. Most countries in the Third World can't say the same. And they've even come a long way in the formerly dismal department of queer rights. Several years back, Cuba made history by becoming one of the first nations in the Global South to offer free sexual reorientation surgeries for their trans community and has also repealed their deplorable anti-gay laws. Speech is becoming more free, small business is thriving and the dreaded embargo fell before Castro did. Proof positive that it's never to late to change the world and good things can still come to those who go down swinging.
Was Castro a perfect man? No. But he was a courageous leader in the global fight against imperialism until his dying breath. He continues to stand tall as a hero to the poor and oppressed and ignored across the globe, from Columbia to Palestine and even right here in Happy Valley. At a time in my own life when mental illness and gender dysphoria made me a prisoner of my own home, heroes like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro gave me the courage to persevere over the oppression of my own demons. I read volumes about the guerrillas of the Sierra Mastra and it gave me hope, not just for myself but for my own seemingly hopeless country. I may not consider myself to be the hard line Marxist-Leninist that I considered myself to be back then but I will always be a Castroite at heart.
Godspeed Comandante. This is one queer anarchist who salutes you.
Peace, Love and Solidarity- CH
Fidel began his life pretty square. The son of middle-class landowners, he excelled at sports and academics. After a failed attempt at a pro-baseball career, he became a lawyer and then a moderately reformist politician before Yankee backed strongman, Fulgencio Batista liquidated what was left of Cuba's banana democracy and pushed young Fidel into a lifetime career as a revolutionary agitator. In 1953, Fidel led a failed revolt at the Moncada Barracks. After his arrest, the former lawyer chose to represent himself and electrified a nation with his unbowed and unapologetic defense of his crimes against the state and his thunderous condemnation of the very system that he had found himself at the mercy of. He was fearless. The Batista regime and their American handlers didn't know it then but Castro had already one the revolution before it even began. Fidel served two years in prison before being released as part of an amnesty. He fled to self-exile with his brother Raul and a handful of comrades in Mexico City where he plotted his next move.
The Castro Brothers returned to Cuba in 1956 with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara and 79 others on a rickety old fishing boat known as the Granma. After a crash landing the tiny army found themselves the victims of an ambush. Only 12 of the original members of the 26 July Movement survived the onslaught. Fidel led them limping into the Sierra Maestra Mountains where for the next two years they led a popular rebellion that somehow snowballed into one of the centuries greatest and unlikeliest triumphs against tyranny. By 1958, Fidel and his movement road into the capital of Havana to a heroes welcome. But these brave sons of the Southern Hemisphere had pissed on a wasps nest. Their whole country would have to pay a heavy price for their courageous stand.
The moment that it became clear to the Mandarins in Washington that Castro would not allow himself to be perverted like Batista it was decided that the new Cuban Revolution would have to be strangled in it's cradle before it could gain the strength to take its first step. As Castro ordered that the wage-slave-plantations be returned to their rightful owners, the peasant farmers who toiled in them, and that the nations oil wells should belong to its citizens rather than the American conglomerates who stole them. As he shuttered the Mafia's Casinos and whorehouses and returned dignity to the streets of Havana, the United States gathered the Batista's disgruntled thugs along with a melange of fascist mercenaries and together they launched a reign of terror upon the tiny island nation that would last for more than half a century.
Fidel wasn't always a communist. Far from it. His original intention for Cuba was to hold popular elections once the last remnants of the Batista dictatorship had been thoroughly decimated. But before he could make this happen, Fidel found his nascent revolutionary government under siege by foreign funded terrorists and saboteurs. Trains were derailed. Harbors were mined. Crops were torched and scores of innocent civilians were slaughtered in cold blood. Once it had become abundantly clear that Uncle Sam was the source of this wave of madness, Castro was left with nowhere else to turn to but East towards the Soviet Union. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was the final straw. Castro had selflessly joined his own soldiers in personally thwarting off that American siege. He returned to Havana a very shaken and changed man. He came to the hard conclusion that democracy would have to wait until the threat of American Imperialism subsided. Sadly this day never came. Cuba joined their allies in the USSR in becoming a stifling state capitalist bureaucracy. The once bright and vivacious Cuban Revolution had been rendered to a permanent warfare state.
This was America's aim all along. The boys in the Beltway decided that if Castro couldn't be bought off or overthrown, he would be pushed by the threat of violence into suffocating his own revolution under a wartime dictatorship of the proletariat, Just as the Bolsheviks had. You see, the Americans didn't fear Castro for his nationalism or his flirtations with socialism or even his close friendships with Marxists like Che. They feared Castro's dream of a a successful anti-capitalist, post-colonial democracy. They were scared shitless of the prospect of Cuba becoming an example of hope to Uncle Sam's other banana republics in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. So they goaded Fidel into sabotaging his own revolution in order to defend his people from a greater tyranny. Tragically, it worked. Sort of.
Cuba's revolutionary democracy may have never came to fruition and the nations savior may have been pushed into the unwanted position of dictator, but Castro refused to let all of the revolutions promises die the same death. In spite of being shackled by the most brutal international blockade in world history, Cuba managed to develop healthcare and education systems that rivaled that of the First World. As illiteracy and infant mortality went the way of the Dodo, Fidel sought to export his nations hard gained bounties. Sending doctors to the poorest parts of the globe and trained revolutionaries to the most oppressed. Castro supported Nelson Mandela's fight for freedom while Washington still backed apartheid. He sent troops to aid Angola in fighting off a South African invasion. He gave a helping hand to the Sandinista's Nicaragua and Maurice Bishop's Grenada when the Soviet Union couldn't be bothered to give a damn. He even offered to send a thousand Cuban doctors to New Orleans after Katrina. Bush said no thanks. He preferred to let poor people drown as long as their floating bodies were black.
Most importantly, though the US succeeded in turning Cuba into a dictatorship, albeit a decidedly benevolent one, they ironically failed to prevent Fidel Castro's greatest threat of a good example. The children of the South, who watched in awe as this bearded mestizo defied the greatest empire on earth, dodging assassination attempts in the hundreds, grew up to lead the kind of revolutionary democracies Castro had failed to create in his own country. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. One after another, nearly fifty years after the Cuban Revolution, a Pink Tide of Latin American nations declared their independence peacefully and Democratically from their Northern overlords. In a strange way, Fidel Castro had to sacrifice his own revolution in order to save Latin America from greater American imperial tyranny.
Perhaps inspired by its radical progeny, Cuba didn't turn out so bad either under the circumstances. Decades after the Soviet Union fell, they stand proud. Poor but free, at least from foreign domination. Most countries in the Third World can't say the same. And they've even come a long way in the formerly dismal department of queer rights. Several years back, Cuba made history by becoming one of the first nations in the Global South to offer free sexual reorientation surgeries for their trans community and has also repealed their deplorable anti-gay laws. Speech is becoming more free, small business is thriving and the dreaded embargo fell before Castro did. Proof positive that it's never to late to change the world and good things can still come to those who go down swinging.
Was Castro a perfect man? No. But he was a courageous leader in the global fight against imperialism until his dying breath. He continues to stand tall as a hero to the poor and oppressed and ignored across the globe, from Columbia to Palestine and even right here in Happy Valley. At a time in my own life when mental illness and gender dysphoria made me a prisoner of my own home, heroes like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro gave me the courage to persevere over the oppression of my own demons. I read volumes about the guerrillas of the Sierra Mastra and it gave me hope, not just for myself but for my own seemingly hopeless country. I may not consider myself to be the hard line Marxist-Leninist that I considered myself to be back then but I will always be a Castroite at heart.
Godspeed Comandante. This is one queer anarchist who salutes you.
Peace, Love and Solidarity- CH
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Trump's Hybrid Moment
"If you're gonna scream, scream with me. Moments like this never last." Those were the first words, lyrics from an old Misfits song, that came crashing through my skull like a Katyusha rocket the moment I learned that our next president would be reality TV rapist and spray-tan enthusiast Donald Trump, followed shortly by "what the fuck?!" I, like most of the rest of the known universe* didn't see this coming. Not that I was hoping for a Killary win, far from it. I've long been one of the few leftists to take the decidedly politically incorrect position that a Trump presidency, while undeniably loathsome, would be far less dangerous than a reign by the self-anointed queen of chaos. But I had prepared for this outcome, both emotionally and pharmaceutically. Shit, I literally swung by my shrink's office on my way to the ballot box to stock up on Valium so I would have something to dull the shrill sound of the victory speech Killary has been rehearsing since preschool.
In case you folks aren't aware, old Comrade Hermit is just a tad bit agoraphobic. Which means I don't exactly handle change very well and as far as change goes, a Donald Trump presidency lands somewhere between an alien invasion and Tupac showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still not sure how exactly I should feel about all this mass hysteria, about Trump's hybrid moment, the strangest end to the strangest movie I've ever lived. The million dollar question on everybody's lips seems to be, how the fuck did we get here? And more importantly, who do we blame?
The Democrats and their loyal surrogates in the media already have the second part covered. The blame-game has become a cherished pastime for these malignant twats. Every time one of the Dem's sacred cows gets slaughtered in a presidential election they go on a finger-wagging shaming spree, blaming everyone but themselves for their own shortcomings. Naturally, with their queen dethroned by a moron, this year was hardly an exception to the rule.
This year the shouting heads have a veritable rogues gallery of malicious villains to shout about. Blame Wikileaks! They yelp, for picking up the mainstream media's slack and reminding us what real fucking journalism looks like. Blame Jill Stein! For giving lefty-peaceniks like me a non-violent alternative to Trumpizmo. Blame James Comey! For finally caving to feds sick of giving the Clintons a lifetime pass for every fucking crime in the book (before chickening out again, naturally.) And blame Putin! It's always his fault somehow, isn't it? Yeah, that's right shitheads, blame everybody! Everybody but yourselves, that is, for trying to pass a trigger-happy, Wall Street, oligarch off as an agent for desperately needed change.
The stone cold truth of the matter is, and neither side wants to hear this shit but they both need to, Trump didn't win the election, Killary lost. In spite of all the bullshit about Trump's great white surge, Clinton lost the white vote by virtually the same margins that Obama did to Romney in 2012. Trump got 1.5 million fewer votes than the viciously thrashed Mitt-ster, period. This should have been an easy win for the Dems and it would have been with almost any other candidate. But Killary got a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did last election. The reason for this is clear, or at least it should be by now. To put it bluntly, the bitch is simply unelectable.
She's unelectable to working class whites who watched her husband sign their futures away to NAFTA. She's unelectable to blacks, five percent fewer voted for her than Obama, who have had to sit through decades of her patronizing pseudo-Baptist revival bullshit while she sold their kids out as "super-predators" to the prison industrial complex. She's unelectable to queer people like me who aren't buying her conveniently timely bromides about tolerance after years of DOMA. She's even unelectable to Trump's favorite scapegoats, Latinos, six percent fewer voting for her majesty than Obama, who, surprise, surprise, were paying attention when the latter wiped his ass with their votes and shipped their loved ones back over the border in record numbers.
When it all comes down to it, in spite of all of Trump's bigoted bullshit, this election wasn't about race or gender or the identity politics that Killary invested as much time into divisively exploiting as her competition did. It was about class and even next to an obnoxious, old money, slime-ball; poor folks could still smell Killary's elitist bullshit from a mile away. Apparently, we're all fucking deplorables now ("Jesus Christ and my mother too!"). So if you're going to blame anyone for this mess, high-holy-liberal-people, try taking a look in the fucking mirror. You blew it, not us.
As much as I may fear and loath the new president elect, a deep, sick, twisted part of me has no choice but to salute this hybrid moment, if for no other reason than that it insures that, after a lifetime of getting away with one crime after another, the last line of Queen Killary's obituary will undoubtedly read, "Finally put out of power by reality TV star." Yes karma certainly is a mean bitch and so am I.
If your gonna scream, scream with me, dearest motherfuckers. Just let me pop a few more pills before we start this terror ride.
* The only person that I know of who even came close to predicting the election results is my friend Tom Knapp over at Knappster.blogspot.com who called every state that Trump won except for two, back in fucking June and got a mountain of shit for it. Apparently he's some kind of libertarian wizard and he runs the second best blog online.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
In case you folks aren't aware, old Comrade Hermit is just a tad bit agoraphobic. Which means I don't exactly handle change very well and as far as change goes, a Donald Trump presidency lands somewhere between an alien invasion and Tupac showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still not sure how exactly I should feel about all this mass hysteria, about Trump's hybrid moment, the strangest end to the strangest movie I've ever lived. The million dollar question on everybody's lips seems to be, how the fuck did we get here? And more importantly, who do we blame?
The Democrats and their loyal surrogates in the media already have the second part covered. The blame-game has become a cherished pastime for these malignant twats. Every time one of the Dem's sacred cows gets slaughtered in a presidential election they go on a finger-wagging shaming spree, blaming everyone but themselves for their own shortcomings. Naturally, with their queen dethroned by a moron, this year was hardly an exception to the rule.
This year the shouting heads have a veritable rogues gallery of malicious villains to shout about. Blame Wikileaks! They yelp, for picking up the mainstream media's slack and reminding us what real fucking journalism looks like. Blame Jill Stein! For giving lefty-peaceniks like me a non-violent alternative to Trumpizmo. Blame James Comey! For finally caving to feds sick of giving the Clintons a lifetime pass for every fucking crime in the book (before chickening out again, naturally.) And blame Putin! It's always his fault somehow, isn't it? Yeah, that's right shitheads, blame everybody! Everybody but yourselves, that is, for trying to pass a trigger-happy, Wall Street, oligarch off as an agent for desperately needed change.
The stone cold truth of the matter is, and neither side wants to hear this shit but they both need to, Trump didn't win the election, Killary lost. In spite of all the bullshit about Trump's great white surge, Clinton lost the white vote by virtually the same margins that Obama did to Romney in 2012. Trump got 1.5 million fewer votes than the viciously thrashed Mitt-ster, period. This should have been an easy win for the Dems and it would have been with almost any other candidate. But Killary got a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did last election. The reason for this is clear, or at least it should be by now. To put it bluntly, the bitch is simply unelectable.
She's unelectable to working class whites who watched her husband sign their futures away to NAFTA. She's unelectable to blacks, five percent fewer voted for her than Obama, who have had to sit through decades of her patronizing pseudo-Baptist revival bullshit while she sold their kids out as "super-predators" to the prison industrial complex. She's unelectable to queer people like me who aren't buying her conveniently timely bromides about tolerance after years of DOMA. She's even unelectable to Trump's favorite scapegoats, Latinos, six percent fewer voting for her majesty than Obama, who, surprise, surprise, were paying attention when the latter wiped his ass with their votes and shipped their loved ones back over the border in record numbers.
When it all comes down to it, in spite of all of Trump's bigoted bullshit, this election wasn't about race or gender or the identity politics that Killary invested as much time into divisively exploiting as her competition did. It was about class and even next to an obnoxious, old money, slime-ball; poor folks could still smell Killary's elitist bullshit from a mile away. Apparently, we're all fucking deplorables now ("Jesus Christ and my mother too!"). So if you're going to blame anyone for this mess, high-holy-liberal-people, try taking a look in the fucking mirror. You blew it, not us.
As much as I may fear and loath the new president elect, a deep, sick, twisted part of me has no choice but to salute this hybrid moment, if for no other reason than that it insures that, after a lifetime of getting away with one crime after another, the last line of Queen Killary's obituary will undoubtedly read, "Finally put out of power by reality TV star." Yes karma certainly is a mean bitch and so am I.
If your gonna scream, scream with me, dearest motherfuckers. Just let me pop a few more pills before we start this terror ride.
* The only person that I know of who even came close to predicting the election results is my friend Tom Knapp over at Knappster.blogspot.com who called every state that Trump won except for two, back in fucking June and got a mountain of shit for it. Apparently he's some kind of libertarian wizard and he runs the second best blog online.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
Thursday, November 3, 2016
The Madness Of The American Way
As I scratch out this latest post on a crumpled piece of white computer paper at my local psych-rehab, it is less than one week until election day and this emotionally unstable blogger is desperately fighting the urge to swallow his/her own tongue. Yes dearest motherfuckers, after what feels like a century in this foul election season, your favorite genderfuck anarxist is finally fucking losing it or at least whatever's left of 'it' to lose. I'm seriously considering upping my Valium dosage, shit, I'll try fucking Thorazine at this point. Anything to calm the demons in my head. Only they're not in my fucking head. Their on my phone and my machine and the radio and YouTube and every motherfucking goddamn TV channel and sweet zombie Christ!
I feel like Ray Liotta in the last scenes of Goodfellas. Coked up, freaked out, searching for helicopters from my speeding Cadillac as Harry Nilsson caterwauls "We can make each other happy!" in the background. Be cool. Maintain. I can just hear my inner Raul Duke trying to coach me through this hell like a trip sitter preaching the gospel of calm to an audience of jimsonweed addled Mansonites, "Never mind these sick visions of American apocalypse. In spite of the rapidly growing mountain of evidence to the contrary, Helter Skelter is not in fact coming down." Oh but it is Dr. Duke. It most definitely is. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I don't even give a shit anymore. Go ahead and nuke the globe you goddamned oligarchs. Anything to end this fucking circus ride. Cause I just can't fucking do this shit anymore.
I can't watch Donald Trump yelp his way through another white pride rally, denying that he ever fucked that sexy endangered aardvark at the Bronx Zoo. Not because he wouldn't but because his day-glow orange dick is clearly too YUUUUGE! to fit inside that poor, raped to death critter. Plus she was a fatty. Never mind the tiny claw marks on his baby-doll hands. Just focus on the hate speech.
And I can't listen to Killary wretch about James Comey being Putin's latest puppet for committing the high treason of caving to his own agent's refusal to drink another gallon of lukewarm Clinton piss and bury yet another of their skeletons in the fucking basement next to Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edna's evening gowns. As for the latest child prostitute covered in Bill's jizz, well clearly she's also a part of the vast Russian right-wing conspiracy to deny Queen Kill-em-all's coronation. Aren't we all at this point.
And I can't stomach seeing another ostensibly liberal celebrity that I once admired pretend to be inspired by the prospect of voting for America's preeminent neocon chicken-hawk just because she's technically a Democrat and just because she happens to possess a vagina, even if it is loaded with scatter-bombs. If World War 3 is the price trendy people have to pay to break the glass ceiling than so be it. World peace is so 2008 anyway.
And I can't watch the "liberal media" make all of Roger Ailes bullshit lies true by openly campaigning for their beloved Clinton's and against Trump. Not because he's a race-baiting career con-artist or a knuckle-dragging malignant narcissist but because he's committed the unspeakable atrocity of using the podium they gladly gave him (Ratings! Ratings! Ratings!) to suggest MAYBE calling off the new Cold War to make nice with Russia. A crime apparently worse than rape in today's mass media zeitgeist.
And I will literally fucking die if I have to read one more deluded softcore Trump puff piece from my former favorite paleolibertarian muckraker, Justin Raimondo, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else still listening that the Donald is the second coming of the Old Right just because he accidentally sounds vaguely antiwar in every fifteenth sentence he barks out. Apparently even our renegades have gone batshit fucking mad.
I just can't fucking do this anymore. Voter fatigue is one thing but when you mix it with the host of other festering mental ailments I'm already infected with you get something that resembles psychological mustard gas, scarring the lungs of my imagination. What makes it even worse is that regardless of which megalomaniacal psychopath happens to win next Tuesday, they will undoubtedly be the worst president this already wretched nation has ever seen. No matter what there will be more war, more death, more innocent blood drowning the howitzer cracked streets of planet earth's poorest cities. My heart feels like it could vomit hydrochloric acid right now. My brain feels even worse. And of coarse election day has to fall just days after the end of daylight-savings plunges my universe into months of seasonal affective darkness. If this sick fucking charade qualifies as democracy than I have officially had enough of it. It's times like these that made me desperate enough to look towards despots like Castro and Lenin for hope during my youth. And maybe that's the point. The same way that public schools murder free thinking by making "learning" an insufferable chore. The American election season spoils whole generation's appetites for true democracy by turning it into a mental illness. That's the sick, twisted madness of the American way. Is it really any wonder that the majority of Americans don't even fucking bother showing up at the ballot box?
But not this basket case. For me voting amounts to an almost sadomasochistic act of protest. A sort of electoral propaganda of the deed, if you will. The more people that vote for legitimate, renegade, third party candidates, the clearer it becomes to those poor souls who don't vote that the tyranny of the two-party cartel is nothing more than a demented illusion. We can opt out. We can tear it down. So next Tuesday, I aim on dragging my fat fatigued carcass out of bed. Driving down to my designated voting place, in a fag-bashing baptist church, naturally, and voting for Jill Stein and Amaju Baraka and any other third party candidate I can find on the ballot. Then and only then will I return to the relative safety of my basement to pop Benzos, light candles and hyperventilate.
Stay sane if you can, dearest motherfuckers, it's already too late for this twisted bitch but it's not too late to vote for real change. If I can do it, anyone can.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
I feel like Ray Liotta in the last scenes of Goodfellas. Coked up, freaked out, searching for helicopters from my speeding Cadillac as Harry Nilsson caterwauls "We can make each other happy!" in the background. Be cool. Maintain. I can just hear my inner Raul Duke trying to coach me through this hell like a trip sitter preaching the gospel of calm to an audience of jimsonweed addled Mansonites, "Never mind these sick visions of American apocalypse. In spite of the rapidly growing mountain of evidence to the contrary, Helter Skelter is not in fact coming down." Oh but it is Dr. Duke. It most definitely is. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I don't even give a shit anymore. Go ahead and nuke the globe you goddamned oligarchs. Anything to end this fucking circus ride. Cause I just can't fucking do this shit anymore.
I can't watch Donald Trump yelp his way through another white pride rally, denying that he ever fucked that sexy endangered aardvark at the Bronx Zoo. Not because he wouldn't but because his day-glow orange dick is clearly too YUUUUGE! to fit inside that poor, raped to death critter. Plus she was a fatty. Never mind the tiny claw marks on his baby-doll hands. Just focus on the hate speech.
And I can't listen to Killary wretch about James Comey being Putin's latest puppet for committing the high treason of caving to his own agent's refusal to drink another gallon of lukewarm Clinton piss and bury yet another of their skeletons in the fucking basement next to Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edna's evening gowns. As for the latest child prostitute covered in Bill's jizz, well clearly she's also a part of the vast Russian right-wing conspiracy to deny Queen Kill-em-all's coronation. Aren't we all at this point.
And I can't stomach seeing another ostensibly liberal celebrity that I once admired pretend to be inspired by the prospect of voting for America's preeminent neocon chicken-hawk just because she's technically a Democrat and just because she happens to possess a vagina, even if it is loaded with scatter-bombs. If World War 3 is the price trendy people have to pay to break the glass ceiling than so be it. World peace is so 2008 anyway.
And I can't watch the "liberal media" make all of Roger Ailes bullshit lies true by openly campaigning for their beloved Clinton's and against Trump. Not because he's a race-baiting career con-artist or a knuckle-dragging malignant narcissist but because he's committed the unspeakable atrocity of using the podium they gladly gave him (Ratings! Ratings! Ratings!) to suggest MAYBE calling off the new Cold War to make nice with Russia. A crime apparently worse than rape in today's mass media zeitgeist.
And I will literally fucking die if I have to read one more deluded softcore Trump puff piece from my former favorite paleolibertarian muckraker, Justin Raimondo, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else still listening that the Donald is the second coming of the Old Right just because he accidentally sounds vaguely antiwar in every fifteenth sentence he barks out. Apparently even our renegades have gone batshit fucking mad.
I just can't fucking do this anymore. Voter fatigue is one thing but when you mix it with the host of other festering mental ailments I'm already infected with you get something that resembles psychological mustard gas, scarring the lungs of my imagination. What makes it even worse is that regardless of which megalomaniacal psychopath happens to win next Tuesday, they will undoubtedly be the worst president this already wretched nation has ever seen. No matter what there will be more war, more death, more innocent blood drowning the howitzer cracked streets of planet earth's poorest cities. My heart feels like it could vomit hydrochloric acid right now. My brain feels even worse. And of coarse election day has to fall just days after the end of daylight-savings plunges my universe into months of seasonal affective darkness. If this sick fucking charade qualifies as democracy than I have officially had enough of it. It's times like these that made me desperate enough to look towards despots like Castro and Lenin for hope during my youth. And maybe that's the point. The same way that public schools murder free thinking by making "learning" an insufferable chore. The American election season spoils whole generation's appetites for true democracy by turning it into a mental illness. That's the sick, twisted madness of the American way. Is it really any wonder that the majority of Americans don't even fucking bother showing up at the ballot box?
But not this basket case. For me voting amounts to an almost sadomasochistic act of protest. A sort of electoral propaganda of the deed, if you will. The more people that vote for legitimate, renegade, third party candidates, the clearer it becomes to those poor souls who don't vote that the tyranny of the two-party cartel is nothing more than a demented illusion. We can opt out. We can tear it down. So next Tuesday, I aim on dragging my fat fatigued carcass out of bed. Driving down to my designated voting place, in a fag-bashing baptist church, naturally, and voting for Jill Stein and Amaju Baraka and any other third party candidate I can find on the ballot. Then and only then will I return to the relative safety of my basement to pop Benzos, light candles and hyperventilate.
Stay sane if you can, dearest motherfuckers, it's already too late for this twisted bitch but it's not too late to vote for real change. If I can do it, anyone can.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
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