billionaires

HSoB: Dawg Dayz

Ronnie Hays, a man whose summer spirit animal was likely a slightly singed tumbleweed, had come to the nation’s capital with the best of intentions. The Hot Springs or Busk tour, a grand delusion hatched during a particularly brutal February, was predicated on the simple, Nietzschean idea that purposeful suffering builds character. Having already suffered enough, Ronnie decided to route his nation-wide tour to stay in climate zones ranging from fifty-five to eighty-five degrees, the sweet spot of human endurance, the crucible of the soul! He’d envisioned himself a Thoreauvian guitar hero, strumming universal chords amidst humanity’s waxing and waning.

Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated, desert-baked bullshit.

The “Heat Dome,” as the local news charmingly called it, wasn’t a dome at all. It was more like being trapped inside a giant, sweaty armpit, the kind belonging to a long-haul trucker who’d mainlined lukewarm coffee for three days straight. The air in Ronnie’s trusty Sprinter van, Rocinante, felt thick enough to chew. He’d envisioned festive busking celebrations, though getting him no closer to Saturday Night Live, would render enough spare coin to grab a meal at the local sandwich shop. Instead, he found himself sweating under a near ineffectual ceiling fan, each morning waking up feeling like a poorly wrung dishcloth.

So, the busking gear gathered dust. The call of the troubadour was drowned out by the siren song of the mall food court’s air conditioning. After a productive shift dodging rogue toddlers and the whispered anxieties of the internet-addicted masses at the public library, Ronnie would retreat to this muzak-infused oasis. There, amidst the clatter of plastic cutlery and the pervasive aroma of lukewarm orange chicken, he’d tap tap tap away on his tablet, crafting ironic insights (or at least, moderately coherent sentences). Roughing it, his ass. This was more like politely surrendering to the crushing reality of climate change and a distinct lack of masochistic tendencies.

He pictured himself now, a bumbling, modern-day Don Quixote, sweat beading on his five-o-clock shadow. His armor traded in for a Hawaiian shirt that clung to him like a damp second skin. On his head, not a gleaming helmet, but a decidedly un-gleaming bucket hat, perpetually askew. His trusty spear replaced by a backpack, its hydration bladder more vital than any lance against the oppressive thermal foe. Rocinante, the wheezing van, stood sentinel in the D.C. Metro Branch Avenue parking lot… a tin can beast of burden in this concrete desert. In the hazy distance, a monstrous broadcast tower pulsed with invisible signals, a modern-day malevolent windmill against a humidity-choked sky, a reminder of the information war that had lured him to the proud highway in the first place.

He’d braved the sweltering streets of D.C., a city buzzing with a nervous energy thicker than the humidity. The political air crackled with a pre-apocalyptic fervor, the news a constant barrage of impending crisis. A grumpy waiter here, a train car full of faces etched with worry there. And then, the memes. Oh, the memes. Those digital harbingers of discontent, the unfunny, menacing pronouncements hinting at a redux of some long-ago, blood-soaked uncivil conflict. Ronnie, with his comfortable former life in the ivory towers of academia, knew he was on the wrong side of that particular partisan divide, labeled with that delightfully reductive term: “woke.”

He’d spent hours wandering around the fenced-off National Mall, the intended epicenter of his social exploration just out of reach. Denied entry to the Pride Fest because of his backpack – a water bottle deemed a potential weapon, for Christ’s sake – he felt like a character in some absurdist Kafka adaptation. The irony wasn’t lost on him: all this purposeful social exploring he’d signed up for, only to be thwarted by something as mundane as a plastic water bottle and transparent back-pack.

He thought of Churchill, of course. That eternal optimist (or perhaps just a bloke with a stiff upper lip and a fondness for the drink). “Americans can be counted on to do the right thing once they’ve tried everything else.” Ronnie clung to that like a life raft in a sea of digital vitriol and oppressive heat. This flirtation with the dark side, this collective descent into the fever swamp of ethnonationalism – it was just a phase, right? A particularly sweaty, anxiety-inducing phase. Eventually, the fever would break, and they’d stumble back towards something resembling pluralistic sanity.

He hoped.

The Metro ride back to Rocinante was a sweaty, sullen affair. The promise of the night in a tin can under a sky slow to cool was less than appealing. Just weeks ago, he’d been shivering in that damned mummy bag, wishing for a single degree of warmth. Now, the thought of trying to sleep in a pervasive coating of sweat felt like a prelude to spontaneous combustion.

He’d had enough. This noble experiment in “Hot Springs or Busk” had devolved into a sweaty, keyboard-tapping surrender in a mall food court. Protest season in D.C.? They could have it. The call of the open road, the beckoning of cooler climes further north… that was the only pursuit that held any appeal now. Time to point Rocinante toward the hazy promise of something less… apocalyptic. All that said, and with all the hassle of dodging heat stroke, he’d still take these dog dayz over winter frostbite and existential dread any damn day of the week. Over and out, he muttered to himself, the glow of the tablet screen reflecting in his weary eyes. Over and out. Time to get back to the original plan. Time to head NORTH. And for the love of all that is holy, someone please convince the powers that be we REALLY don’t want to turn Earth into another Venus. Can we please get back to that Post WWII spirit of sacrifice in the face of collective crisis? Can we, PLEASE, start prioritizing a life-friendly climate over billionaires’ bank accounts?

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

Below the Earth – Above the Sun: Freedom?

Well, well, well… it seems we’ve reached the final stages of a long process dismantling the Rooseveltian status-quo. And with the reinstallation of D.J.T. in the White House, there’s a concerted effort to make these changes as permanent possible, given the constraints of the original constitutional design. With that in mind, and considering the current electorate’s chronic division, this would be a good time to gut-check where our neighbors are coming from. That is, if we care to avoid uncivil conflict.

Now, i think we can agree there are forces benefiting constant news cycle chaos, keeping potential voters focused on differences over commonalities. It keeps their eyes off the various power grabs going on behind the scenes. It keeps the respective tribes feeling threatened and fearful. This works for those who practice the “art of the possible.” I mean, not long ago, the possibility of having an ethically-challenged flim-flam man occupying the White House was patently absurd. I’m not saying the swamp didn’t need some scrubbing bubbles and a stiff brushing, it certainly did, but the intellectual gulf between someone like Gary Hart (a known philanderer) and Donald Trump (even worse) is unfathomably wide. For some reason, our fellow citizens decided expertise and competence was no longer as important as loyalty to their respective “identity” clubs (Ted Coppel summarized it best).

My decision to wade into this toxic pool was motivated by what appears to be an unfortunate side-effect of this “tribal” urge. Specifically, it appears the forces of Christian Nationalism have risen to the top of the power struggle in DC. This is alarming for me as a strong proponent of maintaining the church/state separation. Over the years, i have observed with dismay the rightward creep of our political overton window. I dread the possibility that, when the dust settles on the Trump era, we find ourselves in a totalitarian theocracy, the kind predicted by Frank Zappa in the 1980s. But then reason kicks in, i follow the money and no, i don’t believe the theocrats will end up on top.

That said, what’s coming up behind the theocrats concerns me more. That is the billionaire tech-bro libertarians lapping up Curtis Yarvin‘s notions of “corporate monarchy.” Not that he doesn’t have some interesting ideas, he does. And when he’s riffing at his trolly best, it’s a super entertaining read. However, i’m no historian, but i do pay attention, and it seems pretty clear that we’ve already litigated the divine rights of kings (1776), and we’ve already litigated totalitarian fascism (WWII), we’ve already defeated totalitarian communism (cold war), and we’re currently contending with totalitarian theocracy (global war on terror). Oh… and the planets, including ours, are spherical, not flat (i can’t believe these things have to be said out loud).

Anyway, Mr. Yarvin’s corporate monarchy is a libertarian pipe dream. He says “democracy is incompatible with ‘freedom,'” i say monarchy is… but again, we’ve already litigated this, right? Unfortunately, Mr. Yarvin’s now defunct Unqualified Reservations blog is all the rage with the billionaires backing the MAGA electoral coup. He says things like progressivism is a monolithic cathedral, not a bustling marketplace of ideas, and the Rand-worshiping self-interested billionaire tech titans lap it up like caviar. They know their ideas can’t prevail in the marketplace bazaar, let alone a functioning democracy.

And so… we have to address it. The contrast of Eric Raymond‘s thesis on the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and the reality of the Yarvin-inspired Project 2025, in fact, morphing the US Federal Government into a right-wing, totalitarian dictatorship before our eyes really does feel like a glitch in the Matrix. Will they succeed? Jury’s out, but if it comes down to the federal judiciary, Trump and Mitch McConnell have effectively stacked the deck for the MAGA version.

How will they do it? Well, by now, most of us are savvy to MAGA’s “flood the zone” strategy. That is keeping the press and those that follow along buried in outrage after outrage effectively wearing down resistance due to fatigue. Now, Yarvin’s musings can be seen in a similar light. In that, his “Open Letter to Open Minded Progressives” is 300 pages of cherry-picked history, and troll-speak blather making a scant few interesting points. Who has time to pour over 300 page troll manifestos? For Christ’s sake, get to the point, and move on.

For those unfamiliar, here’s a bare bones outline:

  • Progressivism is an orthodoxy every bit as monolithic as Catholicism.
  • He suggests the press and universities are part of this distributed monolith. He calls this monolith the “Cathedral,” a totalitarian society, lacking central coordination.
  • Conservatives are captive of the Christian Cathedral, and Leftists are captives of the Progressive one.
  • Progressive-inclined voters are the American equivalent of Brahmans in a class-stratified society (the ruling class).
  • The doomed are “untouchables” in this metaphor… he offers some provocative ideas on what to do with them… wow.
  • Conservatives are everyday middle-of-the-road work-a-day citizens… Yarvin calls them, “Townies.”
  • Yarvin believes the Prog-Con duopoly needs to be smashed in favor of a neo-reactionary monarchical structure (back to the classical future), very much like the modern corporation, leveraging the latest technology replacing human bureaucracy with technology-assisted autocratic rulers (CEOs) answerable to appointed boards of directors.
  • He says the current system is incompatible with “freedom” and suggests military rule or restricting voting rights as part of the transition from democracy to a more libertarian-friendly patchwork of autonomous city-states.

Yay… no more participatory democracy… no more stupid voting… woohoo!

FREEDOM!

Ok… back to the original purpose of this screed (appreciating our neighbors’ definition of the word, freedom). There’s way too much assuming going on these days. What i mean is, when we hear someone talking about “freedom” whether accompanied with Manosphere chest thumping or NPR-style hushed tones, we are rarely treated to a specific definition of the term.

With that in mind, let’s start with the Oxford English Dictionary (freedom): As you can see, there are many ways to apply this Swiss Army Knife of a word, but i would argue a couple angles are of paramount importance within the context of our current crisis of incivility, 1.) freedom to exploit market opportunities, unhindered by cumbersome regulations (or taxes), 2.) freedom of agency and lifestyle choices unhindered by the dictates of patriarchal culture or the dogmatic demands of a particular religion or ideological concern.

Based on what they take from Yarvin’s Dark Enlightened vision, here’s what i think the MAGA brain trust plans to ram up Red (Con) and Blue (Prog) America’s backside:

1.) All will be free of the maddening obligations of participatory democracy.
2.) All will be free to trust gov-corp to deliver value for the customers (citizens).
3.) They will, because we know customers vote with their feet when they find conditions in their current “patch” (autonomous city-state) unsatisfactory,
4.) All will be free to move to a friendlier patch. One that caters to their particular cultural, legal, tax-code, healthcare, travel, climate, recreation and professional opportunity preferences.

Don’t like it…? lump it…
Are you ok with any of this…?

What are you going to do about it?

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

Hot Springs or Busk: Chapter VI (class bamboozle)

America, that grand experiment in democracy and greasy cheeseburgers, has split in two. It’s a nation of Penthouse and Outhouse, caviar dreams and dumpster diving. And in San Francisco, the poster child of this cracked reality, the divide slices cleaner than a Zuckerberg algorithm.

On one side of the looking glass, you have the Tech Titans. Think smooth-faced whiz kids who probably still get carded for rated-R movies, but their bank accounts have more zeroes than the national debt. They cruise around in their self-driving Teslas, sleek as chrome beetles, sipping twenty-dollar green smoothies. Their fortress-like penthouses look out on the city like bored gods on an anthill. At night, they gather at fundraisers you couldn’t buy your way into with a suitcase full of pirate treasure, nibbling on edible gold and discussing the colonization of Mars. It’s enough to make a regular Jane want to scream into her tear-stained pillow.

Then, there’s the other side… the sidewalk crew. These are the folks who exist in the blind spots of the digital aristocracy. Tents sprout like poisonous mushrooms along cracked concrete, faces etched with a lifetime of hard luck, and eyes that mirror the dull sheen of discarded iPhones. They push their worldly belongings in shopping carts, a symphony of rattling wheels and despair that no noise-canceling headphones can drown out. The smell of unwashed bodies and stale urine hangs heavy in the air, a constant reminder that while some worry about stock options, others worry about their next meal.

The great irony, one that would have Kurt Vonnegut cackling into his cornflakes, is that these two Americas need each other. The tech overlords, for all their billions, would be lost without the army of delivery drivers, baristas, and dog walkers that keep their designer lives running like clockwork. And let’s not forget those poor souls who clean up the aftermath of their all-night coding binges fueled by energy drinks that could power a small nation.

Meanwhile, the street folks are an endless source of moral hand-wringing for the penthouse set. They fuel charity galas, anguished blog posts, and the occasional guilt-ridden donation tossed to a panhandler like a bone to a stray dog. It’s a sick kind of symbiosis, the way their high-tech kicks need the muddy puddle to prove just how awesome they are.

H. L. Mencken, the old cynic, would have a field day with this mess. We can practically hear him snorting into his whiskey highball: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Ouch.

The thing is, nobody seems to be doing anything about this chasm that grows wider with each passing Uber Eats order. Politicians, as usual, are flapping their mouths like beached fish, some spinning promises about fixing a broken system that’s been cracked since before iPhones were a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, others still blaming the poor for not pulling on their bootstraps hard enough. Both sides, with a few rare exceptions, not even trying to hide the fact that they are bought and paid for in a system of abject corruption. They’re too busy eyeing their campaign donors in those sterile fundraisers to actually do anything that might rock the boat.

So it goes. While the tech wizards dream of space colonies and the sidewalk crew prays for a dry patch of pavement, the rest of us stand somewhere in the middle, bewildered and nauseous from the whiplash. The great American experiment, once a beacon of hope and hotdogs, now resembles something more like a Salvador Dali painting… melting, distorted, and just plain bizarre.