On the eve…

Nothing to celebrate either way.

Hominid Skull, Graphite on paper

It’s now Friday evening. The election a few days away.

There’s no way to take in what’s going on and maintain any illusions that there will be a “better” result.

For my whole life; and most likely since election day was moved to a few days past Halloween; american political parties have played the scare-game. Each inciting the worst from the other. Each driving any possibility of actually addressing how a society might deal with its conditions farther and farther from the minds of voters. Each insisting that if they’re not elected Hell will reign on Earth.

Much easier, and more conducive to dominating control, if the electorate is brow-beaten into submission.

Nothing has changed. Perhaps this is the most difficult aspect of our present Revelations. Normal has always been horrific. Not in that “bad things happened even though most people are good” sort of way either. Everything we consider normal is mortally corrupted and was always that way. Mortally, not morally. So many, so much, dying.

My hunch is that the Oligarchs luck out one more, last?, time. And by that I don’t mean that their favorite will win, but that the ongoing operating system of empire and destruction will carry on under current management. We end up like Britain with Starmer, not Argentina with Milei. The “stalking horse,” even when riding “the Pale Horse,” will have done its job.

The ringleaders enjoy their games of manipulation and they tend to be good at it. Of course they have that combination of privilege and fortune that, well, a…, a great Fortune does provide.

Manipulation and abuse has worked for thousands of years. It’s only failed from a perspective the ringleaders cannot fathom, let alone consider; it only runs in one direction. It takes a living planet and a diversity of human cultures and turns them; has turned them all; into extinction, impoverishment and a mono-culture. A “society,” in which everyone is infected by a singular, belligerent, violent, and competitive system of belief. Human relationships turned into a human “marketplace.” Autonomy and agency replaced by authoritarian control. The whole thing worked/works so well…. Just as it would best suit Nemesis….

The level of Hubris required! Not just what we see in Trump, Clinton, him and her, Biden, Musk, Bezos, etc.; the public face, the second tier? The owners. Our owners. They loom large in their own minds.

You see, this is what’s been normal all along, and again that means as long as our memory, however long that is.

There is no result Tuesday that will be “better” than any other. Certainly neither of the visible, “pragmatic” choices. Even if, as we may see, the “adults in the room party,” The Cheney Democrats, we might say, win. It will be with the smallest turn-out on record and the lowest winning total ever. A much more likely outcome than their getting a “landslide win!” Then, of course the theater of “accepting the results….”

The show must go on! And if that means “taking it to the edge,” then, “So be it!” It’s always been about doubling down.

---

Sunday morning. Fall Back in America….

There may be what will be passed off as a “Landslide Victory!™ after all. All the King’s horses, etc., may not be able to keep Humpty’s yolk from running out and seeping into the ground. As with Biden, tempus fugit and decrepitude can only be swept under the rug for so long. Real nasty Nazis are creepy and showing their hand too soon can lead to second thoughts….

People are wondering if a Trump win might mean the “End of Democracy.” Again, resorting to normality as a haven. Second only to The Future!™ as a refuge from having to consider how deep our failures have been.

Trump 1.0, and 1.5, were convenient. Still those times presented a release. Not just for the garbage despicables, but for every Neo-liberal fan of the West Wing. Don’t miss the sequel dominating the charts on Netflix right now. “Pussy hats” and “babies in cages!” “Real Nazis are so mean!” That let off enough steam so that, in a sliding, slippery-slope Overton Window sort of way we could get to where we are today.

Trump 2.0 just might not hold together long enough to cross the finish line. That Cheney Democrat Victory will be as close to a line in the sand that voters and their manipulators will ever get to insist not be crossed. The most stable version of ecocidal, democidal authoritarianism will prevail.

This is not anything to celebrate. Antifragility is an important element in the evolution of life and the universe itself; but when it’s a property of something vastly destructive it only delays needed change. At a time like this that delay has already proven fatal to many.

“It’s futility stupid!” That’s how I would paraphrase the monster in retrospect that did so much to lock in the Reagan Revolution. Futility and how we address, or ignore it, has always seemed to me to be a central question. Recognizing futility and then acting on it is the only way out of double-binds. It’s also tremendously difficult and painful. Especially if we hang-fire and remain on the edge of recognition while continuing to succumb to the perversity of going on anyway.

Futility is deeply misunderstood. It’s taken as a given that recognizing futility we must go on as before only embracing absurdity and the heroics of Sisyphus. No wonder so many Existentialists and their followers ended up at the bottom of a bottle.

Futility is the way a creature is made to experience that what got it to this point won’t get it any further. Futility is a heuristic that change has to be addressed. That what appears to be the only way has to be dropped. For most of life on Earth for most of the time this has been and continues to be a recognition only truly faced in the moments immediately preceding death.

I’ve been voting for 64 years. The truth is this Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her about policies or ideas and then as we have done for centuries….” Harrison Ford

This sentiment presents the conditions we labor under at the present moment. Someone whose “authority” derives from playing fantasy characters in corporate media is presenting us with a partial truth. The Cheney Democrat party’s candidate will…, well, not actually protect – just look at the state of college and university protesters against genocide – she will acknowledge that you disagree; but she will do nothing to change what the owners want to happen. The non-sequitur ending. I know it’s a quote from a longer presentation, but why was this polished and professional presentation truncated at this point?

Manipulation is not about “changing minds.” It’s about domination and it’s a form of abuse. It can always be recognized because it always includes a note of contempt for those it addresses. “This is a reasoned statement made by a kind, avuncular, celebrity you’ve ‘known’ all your life.” And, “I will conclude with a fragment of gibberish vaguely hinting at some kind of ‘tradition’ or other….”

---

Tuesday afternoon…

I’m still not sure if I want to finish this and post it. The only thing holding my attention here is that the whole purpose of farce elections and fake democracies; or republics, if that’s you favorite flavor; is to force our lack of agency and the active domination and humiliation that holds us in our double-bind is to beat us, not just into submission, but complicity in our own destruction. We’re expected; we’re driven into a theatrically manipulated space where, “All we can do is wait.”