White House

The Chool Bus (ch17)

CHAPTER 17: Professor T explains the rationale for his research.

Professor T has some well defined opinions about the nation’s fibrillating heart. Indeed. But also, he tries to keep personal opinions to himself when discussing research as a general rule. After all, it’s about the study’s participants and data, not the researcher. That said, he’s fairly open with the Forks and Buck, especially after a couple of margaritas. Something about returning to his grunge-metal roots in Seattle filled him with a blustering swagger that can only be interpreted as flow state channeling.

To set the scene: It was the gang’s last night in Seattle. As a fitting sendoff, they chose a place frequented by their favorite artists, the Central Saloon.

“Woohoo, air-fried vittles and libations!” Jack was hungry and the gang was stoked to commune with their favorite grunge ghosts. This was the place. In the 1970s the Central Saloon helped introduce live blues and rock to the neighborhood. In the 1980s it played a role in the rise of Grunge, hosting shows by the genre’s leading lights.

“Yup… that sounds like a solid plan,” said Mork T.

Now, when Professor T gets all liquered up…deep into one of those no-holds-barred-rages…he starts grumbling about the Great Flyover. He’s been known to echo the likes of HL Mencken, lamenting how sectors of the rural South and Midwest are vast, Dollar General wastelands where intelligence is a mark of shame and systemic prejudice clings like barnacles on the ship of culture.

“We are what we think and the American media is currently a swamp of rot and resentment,” said Professor T. “The national heart isn’t just skipping beats… it’s in a full-blown, fibrillating code-blue emergency.” According to the Professor, a glowing ember of white resentment turned into a goddamn inferno the moment an intelligent, scandal-free black man ascended to the White House without an Anglo-Saxon overseer holding the leash. This sent the small-town bourgeois…those without skills to join the laptop/air travel class or too proud to mount the struggle bus…into a total psychological aneurysm. “Many find themselves lifetime members of the doomed underclass… they know it and somebody has to pay. This paves an express-lane for demagogues promising retribution.” Mork T was approaching a tequila-fueled angry flow state.

Through the din of house music (a bit too loud) and the compensating murmur of the bar patrons, Professor T, fueled by top-shelf blue agave continued, “Let’s get down to brass tacks. This tooth-gnashing fury, in part, can be traced to the degradation of an indispensable social asset…whiteness…it’s a bank account that’s fast approaching zero.” Practically yelling over the din, and channeling Mencken, he referred to the phenomena as anthropoids reacting to civilized humanity… a primal, beastly shriek to reestablish an hierarchy nature was busy flushing down the toilet. “I actually feel a twisted sort of compassion for their apprehension. Imagine the sheer, bone-chilling terror of realizing a person from a traditionally marginalized demographic was actually the smartest person in the room, especially if that person is a woman, and you’re standing there with nothing but fading ethnic/gender privilege and a bad attitude for consolation.”

“And that’s just one pole of oscillation,” Jack was familiar with Professor T’s 19th Century Wildian musings regarding the attractive and repellent forces of science and religion.

“Right! Religion, the opiate of the masses,” Professor T extended the segue. “You have that end times doctrine… the ultimate supernatural shell game. It’s a beautiful grift, really. The apocalypse has a 100% failure rate, but hustlers never run out of marks,” said Professor T.

Jack was beginning to tap the flow. “It’s a perpetual motion machine of dread. Every time the world doesn’t end the year and month predicted they chalk it up to a clerical error by a god who apparently can’t read a Mayan Calendar, and the believers line up for more disappointment a couple years later.” Jack was yelling to be heard over the din just as one song was ending and before the next began. Of course nearby patrons heard the outburst and turned to look at the Forks’ table. Some snickers, some frowns, mostly disinterested staring. It was Jack’s second pint of Imperial IPA, so he was feeling particularly uninhibited. In response, he gave the gawkers a take a picture, it lasts longer countenance, sorta dancing in his chair to the next song’s groove.

“Why do they buy it?” asked Billie.

Professor T put on a disinterested, deadpan countenance. “The outlook is grim. For one, Their Rapture represents a cosmic revenge for disenfranchisement. It lets the ‘pious’ picture their godless neighbors being slow-roasted in a lake of fire while they sit on a cloud playing their golden harp.”

Billie snickered, “Good one,” she winked. She had always marveled at doomsday ravers’ ability to willingly suspend disbelief regardless of how many end times deadlines come and go.

“It’s a bitter-kiss theology of spite,“ Professor T chimed in. He had always found the whole thing absurd. “You’ve got people who swear the world is ending next Tuesday yet they’re fighting like cornered rats to control the local library board on Wednesday,” nods from the table. “It’s not about saving souls… it’s about will to power exercised with willful ignorance,” said Professor T.

“Right.” Jack was hanging in there. “The Evangelical Ethnonationalist is just a person who wants the Kingdom of Heaven because the Kingdom of Earth…with its books, its reason, and inconvenient facts…is too goddamn hard to navigate.”

Buck, attentively taking it in, offered his take. “It seems we’ve gone from bread and circuses to grievance and retribution, politics designed to keep the populace alarmed and clamoring for a leader to save us from an endless parade of imaginary threats. One day it’s a Black man in high office… tomorrow it’s holy war waged against a veritable parade of boogiemen.”

“The circus never leaves town because the customer never changes,” said Professor T. The former bourgeoisie still remembers when the world handed them all privileges at the front of every line. But now, they’re being asked to make room for formerly disenfranchised minorities. They fear the truth and revel in the freak show.” Professor T was fading.

As if a powerful amphetamine-laced turbo-hallucinogenic mind-jacking recreational street substance had suddenly taken hold in Billie’s brain, she gave the boys a look that can only be described as lucid, psychotic, reptilian predation. She addressed Jack first. “Were you going to let the good professor leave it at that? What about the war waged in kitchens and bedrooms everywhere, always. Have you forgotten about the fact that Western Civilization only granted women personal agency in the last century.” This made a significant impact. The room was still quite noisy so Billy had to up the volume several notches above her comfort level. But there was no indication of physical strain, and she didn’t appear rattled, but the boys knew, they were in for an ass-chewin’ like they haven’t experienced since their porch-monkey days.

“I’m sorry, Billie.” Jack knew there was only one logical response to this oversight, contrition.

“In fact, the rise of Feminism and the reactionary Manosphere are factored into the survey and focus-group methodology,” said Professor T. “We haven’t begun looking for patterns as we’ve only just launched the focus-group tour.” Professor T realized his explanation to Buck and Billie had not included this element, but he knew the advocates for Patriarchal dominance was playing a big role in the social/political disunion.

“It seems to me, this may be the most impactful conflict right now,” Billie was on fire. “The idea of society digressing, shoving women back into subservient roles, turning the clock back on Women’s Suffrage, the feminist bra burning of the 1960s, and all those Rosey the Riveters getting a post-war taste of bringing home the bacon, enjoying the independence that comes with earning her own way.

Buck was no stranger to the phenomenon of strong women, his mother’s sister was an architect. But not until an unfortunate scene in her first marriage convinced her to go back to university.

The scene went thusly:

HUSBAND (Jake): “If i wanted your opinion, i’d give it to you.”
AUNT JASMINE: “Excuse me?”
JAKE: “That’s right, look (he throws a pair of his jeans to the floor)…
I am the dictator and you are the subordinate. We’ll have sex when i say so, and you’ll serve up the sandwiches on command. This is a one-way monogamous relationship. You stay home, tend to parenting, my libido, my sandwiches, etc, and i’ll take care of whatever side action i please. Someday, when the world finally wakes up and takes the red pill, i’ll take multiple wives. And that’s how it is. You can contradict these dictates as soon as you can put on those pants… (he points to the jeans on the floor).”
AUNT JASMINE: “Thank god i’m not pregnant.” (she plans her escape)

“I wonder why she didn’t see that coming before the marriage?” said Jack.

“They need to include red flag training in high school,” said Professor T.

“We need to elect a woman in the White House,” said Billie.

“I’m sorry, Billie, i won’t forget the battle of the sexes ever again,” said Professor T.

NEXT WEEK:
The Forks crash through the dense Oregon forests, dodging Sasquatch and coastal pirates.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

This Land: Tennessee

Ok… there we were… Memphis, TN… home of Graceland and, if we may be so bold, some of the worst highways and city roads poor Rocinante had been forced to endure on this tour. We didn’t hit a tire killer, but that’s only because Ronnie practices hypervigilance when traveling Tennessee roads. Read, he’d seen this show before… he came prepared. That said, we had a super pleasant stay in Memphis. Not all of the roads were peppered with tank-traps. For example, the eastside Germantown area is quite nice. It reminded Ronnie of some of those old money neighborhoods in Kansas City. Anyway, on laundry day, waiting for machines to do their business, Ronnie struck up a conversation with one of the patrons. We’ll refer to him as Ronnie’s “laundromat companion” (LC). After some brief introductory exchanges, Ronnie’s LC launched into a string of Music Biz-related anecdotes, slightly embellished below.

Turns out, Ronnie’s LC is from old money, himself, but chose a vagabond’s life over joining the family business. He struck out on his own doing various music-biz functionary tasks, traveling the world with this band or that. In the process, got to meet and work with quite a few of the stars most of us only see in the tabloids or on stages. Now, Ronnie wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass so, with encouraging nods and mostly closed mouth (don’t laugh), he took it all in.

“Well, now, let me tell you, Ronnie,” he said. “Tennessee’s music scene ain’t just fiddles and steel guitars. It’s a regular circus, i tell ya. A regular menagerie of the peculiar.”

“First off, there’s Elvis, ‘The Kang’ himself.” At this point, Ronnie couldn’t believe his luck, and this LC raconteur was just getting warmed up. “Now, you’d think a man with that much hip-swivelin’ talent would have the good sense to get himself a pup, like any respectable fella. But no, sir,” LC was on a roll. “Elvis, flush with his first taste of fame, decided he needed a monkey. And not just any monkey, mind you, but a spider monkey.” Ronnie nodded, having heard this particular story before. However, LC wasn’t done. “Then, as that wasn’t enough monkeyshine, he brought home a moonshine-swilling chimpanzee he called Scatter, a ‘coconut-headed little mother fucker,’ as Elvis would call him. Imagine the chaos! I reckon those critters saw more booze than a saloon floor on a Saturday night.” Ronnie agreed, anxious to hear more.

“Then there’s the Ryman Auditorium, that grand old cathedral of country music. Built by a man of the same name, who, they say, still wanders the halls like a lost gospel tune. Folks swear they hear noises, see lights flicker, and some even claim Hank Williams Sr. is still there, singin’ his lonesome tunes.” Ronne offered a lame missive, “Maybe he’s just lookin’ for a decent after-life honky-tonk.” Ronnie’s LC winked and carried on.

“And speaking of lonesome tunes,” LC’s segues were tight, as if he had had plenty of experience providing soundbites to interviewers, which by some cosmic synchronicity happened to be a skill Ronnie had honed in his working life as an electronic-media educator. “It’s all in the eyes,” Ronnie might say. LC continued, “…there’s Willie Nelson. Now, Willie, bless his edible cannaboid heart. He’s a man who appreciates the finer things in life, like… well.” He winked again. A friendly sort of ‘know what i mean?’ way.

Ronnie was keeping up without too much trouble. And since Tennessee doesn’t have legal weed for recreation, there was no talk of sharing a toke. Anyway, LC picked up where he left off, “Willie even claims he lit up a joint on the roof of the White House during Jimmy Carter’s time, the 1970s. On the roof! I tell you, that’s bolder than a bullfrog in a teacup.” Ronnie nodded. “Snoop Dogg, take notes,” Ronnie was warming up to this fella.

“Now, don’t go thinkin’ these music stars live a life of pure luxury,” LC continued. “Johnny Paycheck, of ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ fame, proved that wrong. He stopped for a drink on his way to see his mama, and some fella recognized him. Invited him for deer meat and turtle soup, which, to be fair, sounds like a dish straight out of a Ma and Pa Kettle episode.” Ronnie chuckled and LC took a sip of his soda. “Well, Johnny, he wasn’t havin’ it. He pulled a gun and asked the fella if he looked like a ‘country hick,’ then let a round fly, grazing the poor yokel’s scalp.” Ronnie was astonished, he hadn’t heard this one before. LC continued. “Nine years they gave him, but they let him out early. Seems the judge could appreciate a rare talent when he saw one.”

At this point LC and Ronnie had to move their respective laundry from washers to dryers. But once the tumbling got underway, the stories resumed. Ronnie remembered LC had mentioned working for George Jones at one point, so he encouraged LC to expand on that. “Now, i called George Jones, the ‘lawnmower man,’ LC began. I called him that because his wife, bless her drunk-wranglin’ heart, tried to keep him away from the bottle by hidin’ his car keys. Too bad she forgot about the lawnmower.” This sounded familiar to Ronnie, but he thought is was about someone else. Anyway, LC went on. “A ten horsepower rotary engine riding mower. He rode that thing all the way to Beaumont, Texas, 16ish miles.” Ronnie glanced at the tumbling laundry. This sure was more exciting than watching clothes dry. “Now that’s that’s dedication,” Ronnie said.

On the laundromat’s TV, a feature about T-Bone Burnett and his soundtrack for the Coen Brothers movie, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” was on and that reminded LC of a Bill Monroe anecdote. “Mr. Monroe, the father of bluegrass, a devout man, mind you. But even saints have their limits. He got himself arrested for hittin’ his ex-girlfriend with a bible. The word of God! And then, they let him go.” Ronnie sighed, “That’s taking bible thumpin’ to a new level,” joking. Ronnie’s LC chuckled. “I recon you got that right.”

As the dryers’ time grew short, Ronnie’s LC wrangled up one more wild Tennessee music biz anecdote. This one for for the ladies. “Sweet Dolly,” Ronnie’s LC drawled on. “Now, she’s a queen, no doubt about it. But even queens can be out-queened. She entered herself in a Dolly drag contest in Santa Barbara, and lost!”

“W-what,” Ronnie couldn’t believe what he was hearing!? “That’s right, she made her hair bigger, her eyes bigger, her beauty mark bigger, everything bigger, and still lost,” Ronnie’s LC said. She said she had gotten the least applause.” LC shrugged, “I reckon that’s the kind of humility you only find in a true legend.”

And with that, Ronnie and his LC had clothes to fold. Once finished, they bid fare well and went their separate ways. And, there you have it, loopers. A little slice of Tennessee’s musical madness. It ain’t always pretty, but it’s always entertaining.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

Keep your eyes peeled…
Drivin’ through Memphis…
The potholes deadly…
Will break your senses…
But take a moment…
To offer reverence…
Music is born in Tennessee.

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?