406

Well, Wafers: Trumpi has the virus, and is revealed to all and sundry to be a colossal shmuck. Except for his base: they'll find a way to spin this in his favor. And then that absurd "debate," which revealed to the world the complete dysfunction of the American empire (if other countries didn't know this already). Gore Vidal once remarked: "Stupidity excites me." Jesus, I dunno when I've been more excited. And now the election is a month away, which Trumpi may or may not win. Either way, Alexander Pope's words capture our situation now:

"Thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored/Light dies before thy uncreating word/Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall/And universal darkness buries all.”

We have no future, amigos. How many times can we say it?

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405

Well, as many of your posts suggest, we continue to go to hell in a basket. The election is only a few weeks away; either way, it will change nothing. Except that Trump will make things even worse, should he be reelected. The bubbas are armed; the progs have their heads rammed deeply in their buttocks, and roll around like donuts. You do the math.

Interview with Guy McPherson (Nature Bats Last)

Wafers-

Here's a bit o' fun:

https://youtu.be/hhKLrm8QWrU

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The Larger Perspective

Wafers-

I thought this might interest you all: a documentary, now about 10 years old, called "Surviving Progress." It gives a larger perspective to our current American political dilemmas--la longue duree (the long view), as the French would say. There are some silly interviews toward the end, regarding how technology can supposedly save us--which actually fall into the category of what Ronald Wright calls the "progress trap"--but these are countered by a few folks who know better. On a planetary scale, the doc suggests that we have two options: colonize Mars, and fuck that planet up like we did the earth; or become a very different type of human being, right here at home. Switching from limbic system to prefrontal cortex is I guess what the latter option would entail. I can't imagine it, myself: this is the path of those thinkers of a window of about 1,000 years--Christ, Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius--who discovered "second-order thinking," i.e. the type of reflexivity that occurs in meditation, for example. Before you act, you step back and assess what you are doing.

So imagine that you come across a Karen in the midst of a vicious tirade, and you say to her: "This is not helpful behavior, going postal just because a store asked you to put on a mask." Or you say to Shaneka Torres, just as she's about to shell a McDonald's with her machine gun because they forgot to put bacon on her cheeseburger: "Better not, my dear; you'll just wind up in jail for a very long time." What are the odds, really?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGyU6MEstjU

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402

Wafers-

Poor America. Stuff like this seems to be happening almost every day now: the murder of innocent children:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/13/us/north-carolina-boy-killed/index.html

The killer was arrested; nothing is known of the motive so far. A life snuffed out, and for what? We do need to think about what may lie beyond the national collapse, but clearly, the transition is going to involve a lot of tragedy.

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Trump (and America) Revealed

Hola Wafers-

Well, that Trump interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios has to be the most damning interview in the history of the world. The man-child was revealed as a callous buffoon, a clown living in an alternative reality regarding the pandemic and the stats of suffering (medical and financial) of the American people. A real horror show, that was, and with the exception of his base, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the president of the US was a moron and a jackass. Which, from a declinist point of view, is a good thing. The late Roman Empire had similar emperors at the helm, who did much to bring the civilization down. I'm personally not happy about the suffering of millions of people, but this is how empires typically end. As Hegel famously remarked, History is a slaughter bench. Or to put it another way, you don't get History for free.

Of course, it's a safe bet that his base--something like 40% of the voting population--will see the interview in a positive light: "I guess he showed them!"--that kind of thing. As Trumpaloni once said, he could shoot someone in Times Square and his base would still vote for him.

The real issue, however, is not Trumpo per se. The man is merely an icon for the rest of the country. Whether progs or bubbas or Karens, 99+% of the nation believes in the American Dream, and the American Way of Life. Like Trump, they just want to get back to hustling. They just want to make America great again, or save it. Only a few declinists and Native Americans understand that the place was a mistake from the get-go. "Possessions are a disease with them," said Sitting Bull. How many Americans agree with that? Left-wing 'heroes' certainly don't, any more than does Trumpalump. The Lump is ridiculous, but he is hardly the cause of the mess we are in. Look to the people, said H.L. Mencken, George Carlin, Gore Vidal. That's where you'll find the core of our failure as a nation.

-mb