Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Jocko Told a Joke and Has Been Dead Since May

Ebbing compulsion to grid the clusterfuck, not worry I'm anybody the muskgestapo tracking (despite the tens of thousands of pings daily by googlebots and amazonbots and Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Singapore, Vietnam, and Russian bots, and, new in the last month, something called the US *ntelligence *gency, which pings me thirty seconds after every new post), but seething boredom at boring seething, impotent barking at my barking impotence. New for me, I assume it will pass - it has in the past when I had lesser strains - and this is not an announcement of anything except I release myself from the obligations to seethe and bark I never owed to anyone but me



For the past three months I've refused to buy more gouache and acrylic ink and clear elmer's glue and the ketchup-bottle squirters I use to apply the mix and will run out of everything before I buy more not because I plan to quit making these things but because I'm learning techniques in composition and application I wouldn't have in an age of surplus, an unintentional intentional subconscious fine metaphor abounding during Life in the Assholocene while simultaneously - and this is the good news - NOT thinking about quitting during an enforced period of painting (and forgiving myself the use of the verb *painting*) austerity. Strangest days of my life




"This argument comes up regularly, and it has nothing to do with how progressives are talking to young men. It has a lot to do with the way misogyny is normalized in homes and schools and churches"
The Undying Appeal of White Nationalism
"The message is clear: Symbols of Black power and resistance are disposable. Performative gestures are easy"
"It’s maybe the worst time to try to restart democratic liberalism from first principles, but it’s worth a shot, I guess. Unfortunately, liberals are gonna need to get way more comfortable with breaking the law for the sake of those principles and very quickly"
"$343K in one year to stand around at protests. He made more in OT than his base pay. You can have 2 teachers & 2 counselors for that money. The greatest domestic source of waste is police, but too many ppl are too racist to see that"
I've been in Athens three times, it's cool, Athens, and Athens County especially can't afford to lose $4M a year, we drove around southeast Ohio extensively when C was at Bamgier, it's beautiful but deep deep Appalachia poor
"If justice meant anything, a cop convicted of sex crimes would be headline news for weeks, but the right-wing propaganda machine won't touch it. There won't be any Fox News panels over this" because it doesn't fit their narrative"
Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
"Few​ things expose the potential for illogicality, hypocrisy and cruelty within the Christian tradition more clearly than its attitude to sex"
2025 March First Draft, This First Draft of the First Draft Already Dead
The pathetic irony here is that if Democrats WERE the party crackerstanis claim they are with the legions of Soros paid mercenaries (he still owes ME money) Khalil's arrest would be a rallying event, not a We Are Concerned, Due Process, Please Go Away, pain in their ass
"So ICE has effectively disappeared a student for protesting Israel's genocide, separating him from his 8 month pregnant wife. Pure fascism"
"Since Obama administration, at least, leftists/radicals repeatedly warned that Dems pouring cash into ICE and militarized police was not just evil in its own right, but laying the groundwork for open fascism. We were dismissed, with various degrees of vitriol, for pointing this obvious fact out"
Where the fuck *is* motherfucking Obama hiding that no one can stick a microphone in his face and ask him about Khalil?
"Joe Biden and every single liberal politician or media figure who demonized anti-genocide protesters as anti-semitic extremists, who called for or engineered mass repression of the campus encampments, is deeply complicit in Trump’s repression today. Absolutely shameful"
"The leadership of the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress are from the state a legal US resident was just effectively kidnapped from by the Department of Homeland Security and they have said literally nothing about this"
"To my colleagues at Columbia: if you were wondering where the rubber hits the road, this is where the rubber hits the road"
"The White House personally ordering the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is the exact kind of thing liberals were screaming about happening to the fucking Lincoln Project or whoever if Trump were allowed to win. Except you don’t hear a single word from them because Khalil is Palestinian"
"Columbia appears to have facilitated the state kidnapping of one of its students, illustrating once again that not only are elite universities not protectors of democracy, critical thought, and free speech but are—when conditions are right, as they are now—their direct opponents"
Columbia Bent Over Backward to Appease Right-Wing, Pro-Israel Attacks — And Trump Still Cut Federal Funding
It does need saying that at this moment in America only people criticizing Israel are being deported, it's strange that's not strange
"Again, if the Mad King can just disappear legal residents on personal whim, he can do it for any citizen of the Republic. And if he can do that, without consequence, then I have no idea why you still believe the 2026/28 elections are going to be free, fair, & competitive"
"This is it. I know that sounds hyperbolic – or perhaps naïve depending on how far down the slide you think we are at this point – but this is in fact the turning point. The detention and disappearance and planned deportation of Columbia student and legal resident Mahmoud Khalil for invented charges at the order of the president will determine the near future and perhaps entire future of this country. Are we or are we not a country of law anymore? Does the Constitution still exist?"
Even More Assaults On Free Speech To Silence Criticism Of Israel
Police assaults on free speech to silence criticism of Israel
Trump's Cultural Revolution"Trump is attempting to replace capitalism with corporate fascism/authoritarianism while juggling the tricky task of keeping his disparate benefactors happy with his performance and trying to silence any media that fails to fall in line"
What’s a Rebel Pundit to Do in the Age of Trump?
"Bernie is attempting to rally the public while Kamala, Hillary and Obama hide from it, and Biden drools. And in three years, Bernie will channel all this energy back into the Democrat establishment that produced hollow corporate servants like Biden, Kamala, Hillary, and Obama"
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Democratic Resistance!"
"It’s hard to even convey how dire things are without sounding like a loon"
Trump is privatizing America
Maggie'sWHAT CAN WE DO?Schattenblog
Hattic in Fremmed{ feuilleton }
Aspects of EmilyIshiguro interview
Motion & energyNo mention of a new novel
I will be in Maine but Bonnie Prince Billy playing DC first week of August in a venue I've never heard of in Capital Hill





THE LETTER

Mary Ruefle

Beloved, men in thick green coats came crunching
through the snow, the insignia on their shoulders
of uncertain origin, a country I could not be sure of,
a salute so terrifying I heard myself lying to avoid
arrest, and was arrested along with Jocko, whose tear
had snapped off, a tiny icicle he put in his mouth.
We were taken to the ice prison, a palace encrusted
with hoarfrost, its dome lit from within, Jocko admired
the wiring, he kicked the walls to test the strength
of his new boots.  A television stood in a block of ice,
its blue image still moving like a liquid center.
You asked for my innermost thoughts.  I wonder will I
ever see a grape again?  When I think of the vineyard
where we met in October—when you dropped a cluster
custom insisted you be kissed by a stranger—how after
the harvest we plunged into a stream so icy our palms
turned pink.  It seemed our future was sealed.  Everyone
said so.  It is quiet here.  Not closing our ranks
weakens us hugely.  The snowflakes fall in a featureless
bath.  I am the stranger who kissed you.  On sunny days
each tree is a glittering chandelier.  The power of
mindless beauty!  Jocko told a joke and has been dead
since May.  A bullethole in his forehead the officers
call a third eye.  For a month I milked a barnful of
cows.  It is a lot like cleansing a chandelier.  Wipe
and polish, wipe and polish, round and round you go.
I have lost my spectacles.  Is the book I was reading
still open by the side of our bed?  Treat it as a bookmark
saving my place in our story.
 
(here the letter breaks off)

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