The Rise of The American Taliban

Today’s US Democratic Party was started by two Southerners, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Against the wishes of fellow founders George Washington and John Adams, the political party approach to US government was born. It was actually called the Democratic-Republican Party back then. Its platform was tainted from the start, very much protecting the “economic interests” of the South - A.K.A. slavery. 

Fast-forward to FDR, 1930's. By then an entire lifetime since the Civil War had come and gone. Many northerners had flocked to an evolved Democratic Party, one that somehow managed to acquire a soul. Except of course for the Southern Democrats. They took their politics into their own hands, creating an underground society called the Ku Klux Klan. 

Fast forward again, this time only half a generation to President Johnson, mid-1960’s. When Johnson signed and passed the Civil Rights Act, most Northern Democrats and most Republicans supported the Act. But the Southern Democrats rose the specter of the Civil War again, politically for the time being. By Nixon’s election in ‘68 the Republican Party had sold its soul to the devil, courting the average American Southerner for votes. Thus begun the Republican Party's obsession with winning at any cost - by hook or crook.

They were able to keep that devil more or less corked in a bottle between 1968 and 2001. On September 11, 2001 the devil uncorked itself from the bottle and The American Taliban was born. They staged a coup of the Republican Party. George Bush Jr. was the last conservative from the Party of Lincoln. That party was all but dead by the time Barack Obama became president, because Obama became president. After Obama, Le Déluge: Donald Trump became the first American Taliban Party president.

True to form of political oppression disguised as a legitimate party, the American Taliban party has yet to win a presidency through a popular vote. And that’s in spite of the most flagrant gerrymandering in the history of democracy. But gerrymandering may not be enough: fascist sleeper cells have been dog-whistled to awaken, through the systematic installation of Taliban Party judges. If Donald Trump's short presidency managed anything it was to set in place a number of party-loyal judges across America's democracy. Like explosives set in a controlled implosion. What we recently witnessed in the Ritterhouse case was the full-on awakening of the American Taliban Militia. A dystopian bookend to a year that started with a fascist insurrection in the formerly-sacred US Capitol.

The specter of the Civil War is no longer a ghost. We may be witnessing the beginning of the second coming of America's Civil War. Except this time there is no Republican Party to win it. There's only the party that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison - two slave-owning Southerners - started.

Political Parties And The Death of Nations

Twelve score and five years ago the United States of America declared independence from the oppression of a single, arbitrary monarchy. Imperfect as that declaration was it was a big step in the right direction. More people gained liberty from oppression, though sadly not exactly for all. 

So that challenge from day one, the one on page one of the constitution, was much more of a mission than we've ever bothered to understand: go forth and form a more perfect union. It was the founders way of telling us that they knew they weren’t perfect. Because a threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And as God was their witness they knew damn well that they never quite honored that “all men are created equal” bit.

Seven score and nineteen years ago the northern side of an almost one-hundred year old union set out to correct that “liberty and justice for all” brain fart. It was the bloodiest conflict the Union had, and still has ever seen. No foreign enemy has ever incurred more deaths on Americans than Americans themselves. I mean, don’t get me wrong: had Hitler or the Soviet Politburo not been stopped that self-owned wound would have been tragically dwarfed. 

One score ago some cave-dwellers hijacked four commercial aircrafts and weaponized them against our imperfect union. A union they accused of all the evils in the world - as if the evils that they incur on their own people are magically exempt from their messed up sense of cave-justice. 

The US today is not so much at a crossroads as it is at the edge of a cliff. It has managed to successfully fight oppression from monarchy, slave mongers, fascism, and even Stone Age cave dwellers. It’s been at the edge of this cliff before. Cornered here by itself actually - seven score and nineteen years ago. But something ominous has happened: the same two internal forces that drove us to that Civil War cliff never quite went away. Sadly, one of those forces went into “sleeper cell” mode. The kind we often accuse foreign threats of spawning, like the alien mother in hibernation.  

One score ago America’s domestic sleeper cell was awoken, on the day the two towers were fallen. The no-longer-sleeping alien mother took one look at the two ruling parties of America and picked one to assimilate by eating its insides. Temporarily disguised as a legitimate political party it swiftly pushed the US back to the edge of the cliff. 

The enemy within always has and always will be our own worst enemy. We are now way overdue to declare independence from an archaic party system. A party system that has incurred more damage on our own people than monarchy, fascism, communism, and stone-age cave dwellers combined. I’ve crunched the numbers already, like a hundred times since I thought to myself: this can’t be right. I’m not going to rehash those numbers now, please do your own math. But no matter how you shuffle the numbers, these two American parties, whether you think one is benevolent and the other one is an Alien bitch, are not going to walk away from their gravy train. Even if they know it might save our country, they will sooner conduct it off the cliff. 

Et Tu, YouTube?

Most of the time I really don’t have much use for trying to defend vaccines, or why masks are important. And therein lies our cross to bear. The truth is the majority of people, even the fairly well educated ones, are never going to be experts in most, if any, scientific fields.

I’ve read the occasional books, journals, articles, none of which ever turned me into a scientist. So then what… are we destined to blow a lot of hot air without ever really knowing what we’re talking about? I mean, it’s practically written in our DNA: “Go forth and talk out of your ass because there is ZERO chance you will EVER understand where you came from and where you’re going.” I mean, only the entire meaning of life, that’s all. 

And yet we all get over that existentialist kick in the ass fairly quickly. Well, maybe not that quickly. We spend our first four years on earth (give or take), crying, whining, and throwing tantrums like we are being tortured within inches of our lives by our own DNA. Perhaps in some incomprehensible way, we are. 

But once we figure out how to break the cycle of being stuck in the first Four Stages of Grief (Kübler-Ross Model) during our initiation on earth, our hazing if you will, we eventually find the labyrinth’s exit to that fifth and final stage: Acceptance. The wisest of religious folks even came up with a prayer (The Serenity Prayer for those of us who were raised Catholic) to sooth and remind us of that rite of passage: “God give me the strength to change the things I can, the patience to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I always thought it peculiar that we have to ask a mystical being for that, when we essentially have zero choice in the matter. We might as well pray for oxygen.

Fine. We are more practically “born” into this life the day we discover Acceptance. The Shangri-la of our brief journey through this thing we call life. Just in time to be deemed self-manageable enough to be shipped out of the house for the first time. Away from the mothership, to something us Westerners call Kindergarten. Of course some moms or parents may scoff here, reminding me of the ground zero of kindergarten: Day Care. But not a lot of self-manageable skills there, let’s agree on that.  

So back to our quest to understand science, or undermine it in the case of those who never quite found their way out of the first four stages of grief (especially Anger). Maybe our part is to at least try to understand the basics of science, in order not to stand in the way of ourselves. Besides, it’s true enough: there are a few “mad” scientists out there. There’s nothing wrong with being on guard. 

Upon reading about a certain subject, enough to poke thru the surface, I often proceed to entertain the devil’s advocate for a bit. After all, even science teaches us that to prove something you should also explore how the opposite is or isn’t true. 

So far so good. But all good intentions, if milked for too long, lead to a rabbit hole. In the realm of undermining science, that hole is known as mental masturbation. AKA conspiracy theory.

Which is probably how Occam’s Razor came to be, if I were to take a wild guess. “All else being equal the simpler explanation is the better one.” Seems fair enough, except I’m pretty sure old Occam’s razor cuts both ways.  Oversimplification and overcomplication, opposite  sharpenings of the same blade, will invariably and soon enough make the knife disappear.

……

I was perusing recently through humanity’s new Encyclopedia Brittanica, AKA Google, about the science of masks. To understand better how they work, and sure, how they don’t. So Dr. Google refers me over to the YouTube department, for some dynamic visuals on the subject. As I scroll down the list of lessons on the subject, I notice something a little disturbing: the first two or three video posts are created to positively explain the science behind masks, fair enough. But the subsequent eight or so try to lure you into that rabbit hole of semi-science, pseudo-science, and just downright anti-science. Good grief. Really, YouTube? But more importantly, why. Or should I ask in the new lingo of abbreviations: WTF?

Et tu, Brute? You might as well change your name to YouHub, because you KNOW what the pre-fifth stagers are doing in there. Oh yeah, you perverter of science: they are masturbating their minds like their mental penis will never fall off. And I use the word “penis” in its non-binary form here.

But every dark cloud does eventually collapse down to the earth’s surface, every dark tunnel does invariably have a light at the opposite end. It was at that precise bewilderment that I experienced an epiphany. Those poor souls that dive into the rabbit hole of skepticism without ever resurfacing from it, instead digging deeper down to the second, third and fourth circles of pseudo and anti-science hell, never set out to understand anything in the first place. They set out to kill. They kill what they fear, they fear what they don’t understand. That’s what happens when the unfortunate ones never find their way out of the first four stages of Kübler-Ross. It’s a deafening, maddening pinballing between anger and depression. A nightmare where dark clouds never collapse, where dark tunnels have no light at the other end. 

……

At the end of one of the first realistic disaster films (Earthquake, 1974), Charlton Heston’s gritty semi-hero character has to make an existentialist Sophie’s Choice: survive in the ever-after aftermath of the planet’s worst mega-earthquake ever, along with his young, hot and fleshy lover, or jump into a savage torrent of flooding to rescue his nagging old wife, with the obvious understanding that it would be a certain and fairly instant death. I think you know which one our semi-hero chose.

Apparently that’s what’s required of us: never leave a fellow human behind. Maybe there’s a sixth stage of life, beyond acceptance. A stage where we no longer merely survive. A stage where we thrive. Rather than ridicule, or worse, condemn our fellow humans stuck in the fourth circle of Kübler-Ross hell, maybe we need to jump in the foxhole with them sometimes. Stretch our arm as deep we can down that rabbit hole, in hope that we can pull them up. No need to self-sacrifice in the process, unless it’s that important to you. But the alternative, perpetual disdain and contempt for them, is only going to turn you into the monster you are fighting.

......

“I believe humanity will not merely endure: it will prevail.”

 - William Faulkner on his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

This American Carnage

One of the greatest paradoxes of our political time is the contempt for government that the radical conservative fracture proclaims. And yet, here they are: it doesn’t get much more power usurping than the eve of an executive, senatorial, and congressional coup d’état. 

To begin with, all logic has taken leave of absence from reality. The votes that have placed the Republican congresspeople and senators in power are legitimate, but any vote for a democratic candidate is fraudulent? Or is it only any vote in excess of a Republican vote? 

It’s those illegals, isn’t it. The caravans finally made it through, while Antifa and BLM distracted Stephen Miller, OAN, and Rudy Giuliani. Caravaners were immediately dispatched to their sleeper voting cells. From there they printed fake voter IDs for themselves, and for millions of dead Americans. And then, after the election was officially over, the ballots kept rolling in. Not just a few thousand, mind you: millions of them. The instructions couldn’t have been any more clear: fill-in the BIDEN circle. Leave the rest blank, or better yet, randomly fill-in some Republican candidates on the ballot. Not to look suspicious, of course.

This American charade has ceased to be shocking. Or fearful. Or even distracting. It is both embarrassing and enraging, if those two emotions could ever share center stage. I am embarrassed for a formerly great nation. A nation that was great all the way to January 20, 2017. A day that will live in infamy. An inauguration speech that resembled a dark dystopian speech from the Hunger Games. A fifteen minute speech that is supposed to inspire the people of a great land, on both sides of the country. What we heard instead was a rambling four-and-a-half minute opening that culminated with, and I quote, “this American Carnage”. Little did we know that those words were a prophecy on what was to come.

As for the rage part. Mr. President, perhaps you didn’t hear us: get the hell out of the White House on January 20th or you will learn the meaning of an American Carnage. You, as always, will be unscathed. But the wake of death and misery you will unleash as American cities burn will only add to your pathetic Covid-19  legacy. 

Your scorched-earth policy is done, your time is up: Get. The hell. OUT.