Thursday, December 11, 2014

America Is Not That Kind of Husband





  • This is true: I forget that most people don't get !!!! at Will Oldham songs like I do.
  • I was going to give you seven more Will Oldman songs but three will do.
  • False hopeRadical politics in the US was badly derailed by the destroyed hopes and betrayed illusions of the early Obama years (not a few of those who occupied squares in the 99 per cent movement voted to give him a second term, despite the wars and drones and a refusal to hold Bush, Cheney and gang responsible for manufactured lies and torture). Has the worm finally turned or will we see a similar outpouring of joy for Hillary Clinton, led this time by deluded feminists? If a mixed-race president could not move towards a post-racial society, what chance is there of another warmongering Clinton (with dodgy positions on almost everything including abortion rights) paving the way towards post-patriarchy? We need a break and perhaps this generation will provide one. Perhaps.
  • OK, spit it out: the torture report - yawn. Triskelions are delighted with the torture report, and delighted with the overall American yawn. 
  • How it works - those of us who angrily insisted that America has, is, and will always torture and were attacked as un-American when American Exceptionalists denied American has, is, and will always torture will now be attacked as un-Americans by the very same American Exceptionalists who now celebrate that America has, is, and will always do the very torturing the American Exceptionalists once denied happens. 
  • This is a feature, not a bug. 
  • The Triskelions' hired Friedmans will write tortuous anguish over torture, mind, it's of course part of the indoctrination.
  • The ethics of torture.
  • We are not us.
  • Dark Age America: The Edge of the Shell.
  • Tell me again America is not a racist society.
  • Kicking Judge Browning's bootie.
  • Motherfuckering cops are everywhere.
  • Of course the motherfuckerers run false flags.
  • This is Hollywood.
  • From personal experience I can vouch that Business and Econ professors are more likely to be abusive assholes to the help than other disciplines. Go figure.
  • Purple Line. Fuck Chevy Chase.
  • Lispector, for those of you who do.
  • Mondegreen: on mishearing lyrics.
  • Claudia Rankine, for those of you who did. I didn't until very recently, so happy I did.
  • Claudia Rankine interview.
  • Crooning on Venus: mouth music.







CHARLES GRANER IS NOT AMERICAN

Geoffrey Brock

Let’s get this straight: Charles Graner   
is not America. America would never   
hold a knife to his wife’s throat, then say
when she woke that he was considering
killing her. And America’s wife in turn
would never call her husband “my own
Hannibal Lecter.” Am I right, or what?   
Charles Graner may be Hannibal Lecter,   
but he is not America. America is not that   
kind of husband. Nor would America email
his adolescent children photos of himself
torturing naked Iraqi prisoners and say
“look what Daddy gets to do!” Am I right?
America is not that kind of father. America   
would never torture naked Iraqi prisoners.   
Let’s be absolutely clear about all of this.
And America’s ex-lover and co-defendant
would never whisper to the sketch artist   
at America’s trial: “You forgot the horns.”   
Charles Graner may or may not have horns,
but America is horn-free. America does not
torture prisoners. America may render them,   
fully clothed, to Egypt or Syria, for further   
interrogation, or to men like Charles Graner,   
but America is not, ipso facto, Egypt or Syria,   
and Charles Graner is not now nor has he ever
been America. And don’t talk to me about
Guantanamo. Please! Let’s get this straight.   
You and I know who America is. We know   
what America does and doesn’t do, because we
(not Charles Graner!) are America. Am I right?   
Is this all clear? Tell me—am I right, or what?



1 comment:

  1. At some point the world only becomes better when we say “no, I’m not going to do evil whether or not I perceive an advantage to it.”
    ~

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