Still waiting for any of the usual defenders to pop up and defend the idea that over two decades Hillary truly had no idea that her friend and benefactor Harvey Weinstein made a habit of sexually assaulting women in his employ. Waiting in vain, no doubt, as the best approach here is just to let…
Category: Politics
So Here’s What I Think
an ongoing series by Yours T Ruly Movies are going to shit because they are more beholden than ever to an official morality. Every story, for reason of some abominable fusion of ethics and capitalism, must illustrate the superiority of this morality. It reminds me of a line from Roger Water’s song, It’s a Miracle:…
Deep Thoughts on Tyranny #1
as received by Yours T Ruly Everyone is ultimately a prisoner to themselves. Thus, no people or persons can ever be truly freed. This is not to say that external bondage does not exist, but only that we are all bound by reality, and further bound within reality by ourselves. There was a leader in…
This Thursday’s Prophecy #1: There’s Always a Baby; There’s Always Bathwater
When I first started Highhorseman of the Apocalypse [now widely ignored as the Internet’s Finest Unread Blog], somewhere short of two years back, I thought of the name in large part as a bit of self-deprecating humor. It was a sardonic embrace of what we might call – in the verbiage of yesteryear – my…
STRANGE THOUGHT OF THE DAY: EPISODE #1: Oppression and the Genius of Heresy
For many a month now I have been bothered by an uncomfortable thought – a thought that, if true, is highly inconvenient, insofar as politeness is a primary convenience. I find it hard to say exactly what this thought is. It goes something like this: Ethical correctness, beyond a certain point, becomes the enemy of…
The Centre Will Not Hold
“So essentially what we can get out of this is we butchered our plan to sort of have a response for the national anthem and respect everyone’s opinions.” -Alejandro Vllanueava I’m sharing this as evidence in support of the proposition that “the center will not hold.” This proposition is taken from the start of Yeat’s…
The Problem with Targeting Nazis, in a Nutshell
What could be wrong with ‘targeting’ Nazis for abuse? In a nutshell, Godwin’s Law, IRL. For those of you unfamiliar with Godwin’s Law, who don’t want to click on the link, it’s this: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.” I suggest this is particularly true online…
The Fascist in the Mirror
The comparison of fascists and anti-fascists is entirely apt and completely in line with both the historical record and authoritarian intention. There are, of course, well-meaning dopes who don’t really know the game; but those with any sophistication know that the aim of violence is not simply to stop a fascist take-over, but to drive…
Between Antifa and Evergreen
Think Antifa is defending an open society? Think again. Interesting to note that I feel absolutely no reservation about posting anything against neo-Nazis, or the KKK, or Trump. Nothing could be easier. To call out Antifa and the intolerance on Left, however, always gives me pause, because I know it opens me to becoming a…
Make Music, Not War
Had a great time playing outside 16 Tons last night with Zac. It is such a pleasure to play with a soloist, especially an exceptionally skilled and musical one, because it allows me to switch between leading and supporting, and in so doing to enter more fully into the experience of the music and the…
Another Brick in the Wall
I am driven to wonder how much of this whole issue of The Wall is even real. As far as Trump is concerned, it was just a rhetorical device, red meat for the crowds… and Mexico is gonna pay for it! It was, in short, a con job from the start – only a fraction…
A Man, All in All
Clicked on this video to hear what Hedges had to say, but it starts off with the head of the Souther Poverty Law Center. I’ve cued the video to just before the moment he declares that Benjamin Franklin was a member of the Radical Right. Yup. Benjamin Franklin. I don’t think we need to counter…
Shades of Blue and Gray
Here’s an interesting article on the tangled family history of slave and slaveholder, which nonetheless veers into a sort of certainty that I find historically and rationally untenable: The president has asked, “Where will it end?” Will the removal of General Lees lead to upheaval for Thomas Jefferson? Trigger the end for George Washington? I…
The Hall of Mirrors
“There is always in the adventure great danger of what is known to psychology as ‘inflation,’ which is what overtakes the psychotic. He identifies himself either with the visionary object or with its witness, the visionary subject. The trick must be to become aware of it without becoming lost in it: to understand that we…
Socialism’s Shadow
Given a choice between Hitler and Stalin, I choose FDR. Moral crusades tend to grow inherently unscientific; even those nominally based on a rejection of religion. This, because the ethical usage of words supersedes the technical or literal usage. This confusion of ethical and literal further demands that the literal be erased. This is what…
You Say You Want A Revolution
A letter written to the Eugene Weekly in response to their report titled Setting Terms After Charlottesville What does Naomi Strawser suggest we do with the “known neo-Nazis [living] comfortably within our boundaries”? Seize their property by eminent domain? Criminalize their thought and speech so we can lock them up? Hound them into fleeing? Form…
The Literary Life #1
(fascinating reflections on a life spent reflecting) Having a new appreciation for the phrase: damned if you do, damned if you don’t, as regards our current political climate, which in turn serves as an instance of the beginning and end of human civilization. In short, I am convinced by the traditional view of the human…
From Narcissus to the Heroic State
So here’s a funny thing: The mantra of our age, the sentiment that is both liberational creed and the essential marketing sentiment for every product, is some version of “be yourself”. Hence our culture’s secret admiration of the Narcissistic Psychopath. That Dude is Killing It. But how do you know if the self your being…
The Revolt Against Beauty
I’ve saved lots of images I’ll never look at again, but there’s one I didn’t save that I wish I had. This image was a photograph of graffiti spray-painted onto the wall of some crumbling and dilapidated building. The reason I wish I’d saved it is so I could recall the exact wording, which not…
The Best of the Worst
Reading the EW’s “Socializing with Socialists” article from last week, it struck me that the problem with being anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, and all similar things is that the negation of hierarchy does not in itself solve the problem of hierarchy. Hierarchy, in short, reasserts itself, covertly at first, and then again in the fresh bloom…
The Perils of Illuminism
Back in the days of Socrates, in the mind of Socrates, their lived what we might call a keen but highly dangerous and unpopular idea that people weren’t fit to govern themselves. More, and it seems strange, this lack of fitness relative to self-government was exactly paralleled by a mysterious prohibition Socrates had picked up…
The Eugene Weekly Takes on Fake News
THE BITTER PILL #5 A fight to the death of journalism. I’m not at all surprised that Camilla Mortensen’s fake news buyer’s guide was a hodgepodge of vaguely related ideas and platitudes. On the other hand, the hectoring tone of her opening did come as a shock. Rather than a photo of NPR’s Elizabeth Jensen,…
A Sort of Blueprint
Megan Burbank’s note to readers suggests to me a sort of blueprint, though I’m having trouble quite summing up what for. This mysterious something is more than a meme but less than a manifesto. Perhaps I can awkwardly describe it as a Platform for Political Action, though that’s not really quite it. Anyway, maybe I…
Great Achievements in Social Engineering #1
Rand Paul Is Right: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants – Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept The transformation of opinion on ‘the Left’ as regards the National Security State over the past 15 years has been striking, if slow to unfold. Back when Bush was King, the revelation of warrantless wiretaps – which was just…
Just Another Day in the Age of Universal Deceit
This picture does a nice job summing up everything that’s wrong with people on the Internet. Well, ok, it doesn’t do all that. It does, though, demonstrate how complete and casual the disregard for truth is in the construction of clickbait. It’s not merely that this picture never happened, that there never was a tour…
Very Much Like a Newspaper
The Bitter Pill #4 I have to hand it to the Weekly: it looks just like a newspaper. They seem to have gotten a firm handle on the whole matter of arranging words according to the familiar pattern of Headline, Sub-Heading and body text. The illusion suckers me in most every time. Even though I’ve…
Wound Consciousness and the Flower of Enlightenment
I am approaching an idea about wound/wounded consciousness. In part, the dampening of awareness that serves as an anesthetic brings as a corresponding cost a loss of those cognitive skills that have the potential to transform, and even transmute, the experience. Reducing something to a dull ache numbs the pain, but at a cost of…
Errors in StereoScopic Thinking
HAMLET For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now…
Bounded in a Nutshell
Tom Perez elected DNC Chair Completely predictable outcome for a party gearing up to avoid any real change. The Dems will keep playing on the strength of Trump’s hideousness, while ignoring the populist revolt against the regime of financial, legal and industrial globalization that is sweeping the Western world. I was quite wrong in thinking…
Thou Shalt Not Ghost The Ghost
There are deeper parts to why this professor bugged the shit out of me, as we used to say. His final invocation of Hamlet was icing on the cake of my outrage, the pyramidion completing my pyramid of dissatisfaction. It was perfect, and I haven’t really spelled out the perfection. I want to connect his…
Hamlet and the Historical Sense
This essay came out of a futile Facebook exchange. I’m making a practice lately of not letting my interlocutors define what I think about… which is tricky, because I am always more animated by dialogue, and argument, than by just thinking of things on my own. Blending energy and clarity is tricky… perhaps even the…
Pious Hypocrisy and the Lesser of Two Evils
You will all have noticed that your political opponents have no concern for truth. Or rather, they only have concern for and allegiance to truth when such truth is inconvenient for you. Have you noticed, though, that your side is essentially the same in this regard? This isn’t about whether your values or theirs are…
Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina
It’s fashionable to admire, in the abstract, the iconoclasts, the rebels, the kids in high school fighting to keep their minds alive in the face of a system designed, consciously or not, to reduce them to mental servitude. As that Apple ad made plain some years ago, these figures are the idols of our age….
Golden Showers For Everyone
It’s been interesting to watch Chris Hedges’ path from the heart of intellectual and moral dissent under the Bush Administration to the political Siberia of RT. This path saw him first fired from the NYTimes for expressing opposition to the invasion of Iraq too far in front of the curve, to his current exile beyond…
Man Walks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. You’ll never guess what happens next.
You know how it is with us humans, always seeking after some answer, some new tool or toy. Behind it all, as the gurus tell us, is a feeling of insufficiency. The appropriate response to this information has become almost self-evident; and when you hear that phrase it helps to remember how far Thomas Jefferson’s…
Birthering Trump
I’ll give you this: the birther campaign to delegitimize Trump is vastly more sophisticated than the birther campaign Trump came to lead. It is, in any case, worth noting the parallel themes, as this is apparently the new norm of American politics. One group elects a president and the other group declares this person illegitimate…
The Art of Noise
Beyond Greenwald being highly cogent as usual, the BBC interviewer demonstrates the propagandistic bent of most media presenters. The essential skill of these presenters lies in distorting information in real time, to serve to an implied structure of authority. Propaganda is natural to the human mentality. It’s not, then, that media presenters and organizations are…
Welcome to the Ongoing, Irreversible, Fragmentation of Consensual Reality
In considering this image, which I fashioned myself using one of those online highway sign makers, I am reminded of John Stewart’s summary image of how a sane society ought to behave. It is an image that predictably came from a person raised in New Jersey, with aspirations of going somewhere. A sane society, as…
Bush, Hamlet, and the Age of Aquarius
An observation that’s been a long time coming: Real life is subtle. Real people are subtle. Real history is subtle. And so, from this we might conclude that Real Politics is subtle. Political narratives, on the other hand, are simplistic. They are stories. They are myths. As such, they are easily recognized as fiction by…
Disinterested Survivor
Dreamed I was on a Survivor-type dating show, except we were all dressed as Vedic deities. I was Hanuman. A few of the people were discussing the nature of disinterested action, and coming upon them I declared (authoritatively, as you might imagine) that the essence of disinterested action lay in not trying to be disinterested….
Modern Miracle: The Election of Trump Proved Everyone Right
I’ve noticed something miraculous over the last couple days. The election of Donald Trump has proven just about everyone right. Not in terms of their predictions – obviously most people predicted the outcome of the election incorrectly – but in terms of their preconceptions. Miraculously, a host of varied preconceptions have all been verified by the…
Common Ground in America
I overheard something today that struck me as a perfect statement of what is perhaps one of the few unifying experiences among all politically-inclined Americans. It is our most salient cognitive Common Ground: “If you don’t understand why your way of thinking is fucked up, I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
Here’s a Happy Thought: Winning Solves Nothing
Here’s a happy thought: The worst part of this election is going to be after the votes are cast, given that the only source of hope for a large part of this country’s population is the thought that there’s a chance of stopping either: a massive criminal enterprise, possibly led by baby-killing demons…or the forces…
Pyrrhic Victory: A Political Prediction
It has always struck me as a delusional premise that progressives are going to help elect Hillary Clinton and then somehow pressure her into being the president they want. The Right is not going to go away. After progs are rallied behind Clinton to #StopTrump, they’ll be rallied, for example, to defend her from the…
Meru to Mordor: A Poetic Consideration of the Deep State
We stand before You, Great Mountain of the State – who breaks the clouds and causes rain to fall – wondering whether to call you Meru or Mordor, Olympus* or Doom Regarding Olympus, it is worth remembering that supposedly Greek innovation, whereby the divine beings were made more like humans, with the passions of individual…
Suck it up, Bitches!
And by “Bitches” I mean white, heterosexual, men with dicks, and possibly beards, too You might have wondered how it is that the Eugene Weekly can derisively refer to some musicians as “white guys with beards and dicks”; how columnist Sally Sheklow can declare that straight men smile “like they have spinach in their teeth”;…
An Opening and Closing Comment on the Perfect Horror of it All
I can think of no more succinct statement of the ethical bankruptcy of the American political process than the fact that regardless of which major party candidate is declared winner of this election, come January 2017 a man accused of multiple sexual assaults will be living in the White House. Supporters of Hillary who object…
Trump’s Only Play
There’s no way Trump can walk back comments revealing his penchant for celebrity sexual assault. The only play he’s got is to go forward, following a path he’s already blazed in other areas. Just as Trump got in front of his donations to Democrats by saying he was only playing the corrupt political game, and…