Normally I'd gleefully rush to post a new Lambchop song, Lambchop in the inner circle of rotating bands and musicians in My Sillyass Deserted Island Game (which Jim serendipitously mentioned on twitter yesterday the same day I discovered a new Lambchop song), but the new Lambchop song released yesterday, meh!, that's now 0 for 2 of new songs from the as yet unreleased new Lambchop album (pre-ordered already at Bandcamp), this happened recently in fiction (the new Vollmann novel just sucks) and poetry (the new Ruefle doesn't suck but doesn't sing), strange days, the fuck is wrong with me, but it hasn't happened with my cats, have last night's Naploaf, this guy more indoor each passing day
- The Gonzo Constitutionalism of the American Right: Over the last several years, liberals and Democrats have characterized the power (and the threat) of the GOP in a particular way: Trump and the Republicans are seen as lawless enemies of the Constitution who rely on a combination of rabid rhetoric and mobilized masses to wreak havoc upon established institutions. It’s true that Trump’s tweets are toxic; the thrum of his rallies is ominous; the violence and possibility of more violence are unnerving. But that’s not, in the main, where Trump’s power, or the Republican Party’s, lies. The unsettling fact of the current regime is that it depends, ultimately, not upon these bogeymen of democracy—not on demagoguery, populism, or the masses—but upon the constitutional mainstays we learned about in high-school civics. The most potent source of the GOP’s power is neither fascism nor authoritarianism; it is gonzo constitutionalism.
- Capitalism versus democracy
- The Road to Revolution
- Helmetball is and will forever be the best metaphor for US: College football is all the ugliest facets of U.S. society: unapologetic racism, violence, raw exploitation, and endless harm all so that powerful people and institutions can make a buck. It’s no wonder that Trump literally shouted out his complicity in restarting the Big Ten season during the Presidential Debate.
- Why imperialists work to keep populations propagandized
- Yes, today in duh, Hunter Biden is corrupt
- Today in Rhetorical Questions!
- An American lynching
- I am telling you three times, this motherfucking cracker gonna cracker your life for decades
- Now I am become death
- Avedon Carol's occasional links
- Massive balls
- On The Recognitions, I've bought the new NYRB edition, my 1974 Bard/Avon mass-market can't survive another rereading
- A beginner's guide to Coil
A PERFECT MESS
Mary Karr
I read somewhere
that if pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross
Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,
the whole city
would stop, it would stop.
Cars would back up to Rhode Island,
an epic gridlock not even a cat
could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl
of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved
the unprecedented gall
of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand
up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.
They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical
as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,
the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black
as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant
it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.
For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,
paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.
And it was my pleasure to witness a not
insignificant miracle: in one instant every black
umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone
still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,
the sails of some vast armada.
And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress
to accompany the piano movers.
each holding what might have once been
lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next
the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled
under the corner awning,
in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles
zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette
around. The city feeds on beauty, starves
for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,
to my deserted block with its famously high
subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure
longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon
opened its mouth to drink from on high ...
Interesting. As a Southern Baptist growing up (and subsequent seminarian), I witnessed first hand the fundamentalist's takeover of the SBC through its appeal to "Biblical inerrancy", that every word of the Bible was true. They used it as a cudgel to undermine and ultimately capture more liberal or moderate institutions (such as my school and, more importantly, the controls of the finances). They badgered and deemed anyone who opposed their political machinations as "heretics" and insufficiently Christian. Likewise, I witnessed first hand the early days of the Federalist Society in law school. I thought their 'originalism' was a joke—in fact, it's as easily dismissed intellectually as fundamentalism. But when Scalia managed to use originalism to read "well-regulated militias" out of the Second Amendment, I realized that their political agenda was taking root—however disingenuously. The Baptists ultimately split with the founding of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group more inclined toward the Roger Williams Baptist ideal of moral but non-political engagement as opposed to the current SBC which is overtly political. The question is: will this Federalist constitutional originalism achieve a takeover of the political institutions of the country (e.g., the Supreme Court? we're nearly there) and cause good people (not radicals) to want to leave or break away? In my observation, we're not there yet.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"Lost Americans": A national ballad of history and tragedy
We came across the ocean
fighting through the stormy waves
We carved out our dominion
And planted it with graves
We built a mighty nation
on the backs and blood of slaves
And sang our praise unto the Lord
for the blessings that He gave
In a covered wagon
rolling cross the endless plain
the earth was dark with carcasses
of the buffalo we’d slain
We sent our soldiers out
to make the Indians feel the pain
And swore our souls were white as snow
without a crimson stain
We’re the lost Americans
The lost Americans
We came into a land that knew us not
We made the world again
With God and law and sin
While others paid for everything we’ve got
Every now and then
A champion would arise
to speak of truth and justice
And tear the veil from people’s eyes
But every single time
they got a bullet in the head
And lots of pious praise
when they were safely dead
Now we take the names
of our conquered native foes
we give em to our weapons
as around the world we go
Blasting anybody
who might get in the way
of the pure and holy goodness
of God’s own USA
We’re the lost Americans
The lost Americans
We came into a land that knew us not
We made the world again
With God and law and sin
While others paid for everything we’ve got
Words and music © 2020 by Chris Floyd
http://www.chris-floyd.com/mobile/articles/lost-americans-a-national-ballad-of-history-and-tragedy-22102020.html