I thought my life was going to be sort of “normal” the whole way through. I mean, even a cursory examination shows my life to be rather unusual at any point in my timeline, but I never imagined that it would be because of external wall to wall American crises everywhere I look.
Silly me.
I don’t know why. Perhaps I lack the historical sense to know that calamity is cyclical, and comically predictable in ways. And just because we have become technologically advanced and have all the information we could possibly want doesn’t mean we apes know what’s good for us.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about what’s been happening in America at the moment. It isn’t that I don’t care; it’s just that better writers have beaten me to the hot takes, and that probably comes as no surprise to those few weirdos who lurk here. You’re all watching it unfold in the same manner as I am, you don’t need me to point at all. It’s a full on FUBAR situation without a clear end. Americans are pinned between a psychotic virus and a psychotic police presence in its midst. Scylla and fucking Charybdis. Judging from the protests in other countries, we are not the only citizenry who has had enough with the brutality at the hands of the ruling class. We are no longer reacting to a few bad apples drunk on power. In biblical terms, the whole system is in the balance and found wanting.
I started this entry last night at about 7pm while I was trying to cancel my New York Times subscription. It’s now two o’ clock on the following day and I am still on fucking hold. I first began with a text message, to spare myself having to explain why I wanted out. I wanted out because I can’t enable the paper to give voice to fascists who want the US military to crack down on protests anymore with my money. It is not the first time they’ve lent seditious barking lunatic and senator from Arkansas Tommy Cotton a platform. He likes to play fast and loose with the truth, choosing instead incendiary rhetoric and I am still not sure to this day whether we are dealing with an idiot here or a Harvard educated soldier (those categories are not mutually exclusive). Either way, he’s a sadistic geek who was probably on the business end of a few wallings against lockers in school, and how better to avenge your wounded pride by joining the military and dehumanizing someone else at gunpoint? As a lanky geek myself, I know I flirted with the idea of joining the Marines to get tough and show people what I was made of but decided to downshift to regular Army at the wire, content that it would do what I wanted it to. I was lucky, embedded with medical units when I went to Iraq. Cotton went on to be an ranger, airborne and air assault infantryman and did Iraq and Afghanistan in that capacity. For that I give him props, he’s accomplished a lot as a soldier. I figure in time he must have developed that contempt for the powerless people he was supposed to protect that so many doorkicking units develop. I don’t know how better to apprehend his moral compass. He’s from Arkansas, but so is Bill Clinton.
Here’s some words I’ve already cobbled together about Senator Cotton. That’s thousands too many.
Now that the times has finally granted me release from my monthly subscription (at frigging four o’ clock today, about 21 hours wait), I’m going to speak no more of Tom Cotton for now (I am pretty sure this won’t be the last we hear of him-he’s got GOP presidential candidate written all over him) and give my newfound 16 dollars a month and bring it to Raw Story, who won’t be giving voice to violent authoritarians any time soon.