Rome Wasn’t Buggered In A Day

This post is a response to a James Fallows article over at The Atlantic. Fallows has published a series of articles comparing the fall of Rome to the US’s current trajectory. I called the US’s point of no return a couple of years ago here on The ‘Cord. Although Fallows started his US- deathwatch around that same time period, he falls short of any direct prediction surrounding our fate. He is still waiting for that point of no return—or some Ceaser crossing the rubicon moment—as if it’s still somewhere in the future. I think Fallows has the right idea, but I am not sure why he has to see a guy fiddling in front of a burning city to climb out onto this particular eschatological limb.

Don’t Buy All The Bull About Kabul

My goal for this piece was to find an insightful article about this twenty-year plight. I failed. This is, in part, due to the hijacking of our search engines as a whole. Back in the day, one could search Aghanistan War or Taliban back to the table and actually get somewhere. Today, since the first 1,000 pages are sold to the highest bidder, you end up with: You want to buy a comfy afghan? and Towels? We have lots of towels! Great stuff. Ultimately, I settled on one article from nearly a decade ago that really nailed this schitznik …my own.

How Liberals Will Flunk Their Midterms

Three days after my Illiberal Hillbilly post, Bill Maher took up the Olympic ‘Woke’ torch by focusing on the same firing of the Director of the Olympics for a joke he uttered in 1998. Maher mentioned two more incidents that I missed involving another dismissal for ‘bullying in grade school’ and yet another for a private ‘fat’ joke. As per my last post, everyone goes through a bullying stage during their own development, some in kindergarten, others in the third grade, and still others during their first administration. Kidding, he never moved beyond that. Again, denying consciousness growth or basic child development is a mistake on the liberal’s part, potentially a costly one. Maher calls this an ongoing purge. Ya think fat jokes are in bad taste? Wait for Donald Trump’s Grover Cleveland impersonation, because that could be the next act on the docket, kids. Yeah, there’s a lot at stake here. You forget that many red states are shifting blueward. Why derail that trend for crap like this? These examples are from Japan, but it’s the same mindset here that needs addressing.

The Illiberal Billies And The Cultural Hill We Will Die On

Liberals are proof that you can come from a place of compassion, yet still do a lot of damage. No easy trick. For all my pomp and circumrants, I remain a moderate liberal and my ideological drift leftward can be wholly attributed to a reactionary GOP-repulsive force. Electo-MAGAtism? The growing danger the GOP poses to humanity is why I blog, however, today, I’m officially calling out the cultural-warrior-faction of my own party, in Fatboy Slim style, aka Right Here, Right Now. My chief concern with the rise of the Language Police is how the coming Sayless Witch Trials could hand the GOP another underserved victory in the midterms and beyond. Woke, as it relates to supporting diversity is a good thing, but Woke as it devolves into some racist chasing tribunals …well, let’s defund those police before we ever hire them. Language penalties and jail time may well be on the horizon for such offenses. You don’t believe me? It’s already happening in the Great White North. Cancel 2.0 must be kept in check in the good ole US of A. We must encourage a societal shift toward acceptance, diversity, and a more conscientious discourse and yet there’s nothing liberal about punishing people for less than stellar usage issues. What next, the IRS doles out syn-taxing penalties? Does this mean I am rallying outside schools that insist on teaching a more balanced and accurate account of American history? No. In all-or-none thinkingville, many of you have already switched my brand to card-carrying member of Team Batshit, but that is false. I’m just issuing another warning: we have one legitimate political party left in this country and if you fuck this one up, too, there’s nothing here worth fighting for. As I move to post, the head of the Olympic committee over in Tokyo was just fired for a joke. Kentaro Kobayashi was dismissed for using the phrase, “Let’s play holocaust” during a comedy act the same year the X-Files movie aired in 1998. Personally, I am a holocaust joke denier. I don’t think he ever said it, but the truth is out there. In the western world, the green dragon has awoken, sooo how do we slay this beast?

Adding Grand Larceny To The Republican Scorecard

The constant barrage of democracy-widdling republican moments is ceaseless, or at least since I started blogging …in the late 1800s. This week, the highest court in the land green-lighted voter suppression laws and fist-bumped a Dark Money/Big Donor combo package, putting the ‘dick’ back into national jurisdicktion. Unjust for today? The indictments levied against the Trump Organization yesterday pale in comparison to this ruling. But for rightwingers, it’s just another walk in the park. Pack a lun—well, pack something. It makes me want to build a Jewish Space Lasar.

Postcards From The Grassy Knoll

The republican descent into paranoia and madness has plagued me long before the arrival of this current scourge.  I started venting about rightwingers around the time of the Spanish flu, when Woodrow Wilson rather controversially referred to it as the Spic-ey Sick-ey. And, yes, that’s a joke making fun of racists, so you mindless cancelers can fuck off as well. Meanwhile, our MAGA citizens remind me of that old Kinks’ song, Paranoia, self-destoyer. My blogvesary still resides in some Illuminati-style cave under a Free Mason building built on the flat-earthy side of Lemuria. Half of our nation’s citizenry seem lost in the weeds of this grassy knoll. On that fateful day, my friend would have thought, “Now there’s a good Texan, practicing his God-given 2nd Amendment rights. He’s creeping up into the grassy knoll of freedom! But why did Kennedy demand I do something for my country? Sounds like liberal oppression of the highest— [cue the motorcade footage].”

MAGA Journalism And More Fail Pattern Boldness

Cognitive political biases and dissonance go hand and hand with today’s political scheissgiest, but will it be enough to brand this new republican reality? Watching my blogvesary operate lately, well, think Dunning-Kruger meets the Hulk on Testo-Max. Time and time again, I’ve questioned just where this enduring conservative confidence comes from. If I screwed the prognosticative pooch over 90% of the time, I’d like to think I’d be aware of that fact. On the flip side of this phenomenon, I was always concerned that if our rightwing friends ever did sink their teeth into something semi-legitimate, we would literally never hear the end of it. The liberal media has just breathed new life into Qville.

Enter the Wuhan…

The Election Wasn’t Stolen, Your Brains Were

My blogvesary recently inquired into my mission here at The Discord. What are you doing, Zano? Art as entertainment? I actually agree with him on this one, which is why I’ve shifted the bulk of my energies from writing to inventing the first DMT snuff pouch©. This doesn’t change the fact I spent a couple of decades trying to point out this country’s mounting idiocy and our imminent descent on the world stage. Bad management is ultimately bad for business. Who knew? Reaching back toward an ‘industrialized west status’ won’t be easy for this new president, which might explain why my worldview lists toward the septic side of dystopic. But I would like to remind my blogvesary of another of my key predictions; namely, the arrival of you and your ilk, a group impervious to reality, swayed by the yellowist shades of journalism, and forever ready to wage war on reason. So what’s left to discuss after this pack of Unreachables has established itself on US soil? You arrived on schedule, safely. I hope you enjoyed your flight …into madness. I suppose if one glances over to the GOP wreckage, liberal ‘art as entertainment’ sounds nice, at least comparatively. Although, I understand you’re also not good at comparisons either. My friend is currently hyper-focusing on three main conspiracy theories, but not for the reasons he thinks…

Chernobyl Plans To Lift All Distancing And Mask Restrictions

Pripyat, RU—The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, has announced its intention to “get back into the gamma *cough* …the game.” In a recent interview with that Two Ferns guy, the #4 Reactor said, “We had a board meeting in March and thought, heck, with all the UFOs, pandemics, populism, and world strife, it’s probably time to climb back on that pale horse. Our facility is pretty safe these days, well, comparatively. We also finalized our new slogan: Chernobyl: Beats Detroit. We really wanted to reopen in 2020, but our project manager had a total meltdown. Ha, ha, ha, yeah, that one never gets old, but it does seem to have a half-life. So come on down and see our grand reopening! BYOB! …which means Bring Your Own Beta-radiation-detector. We are out.”

The GOP’s Hijacking Of The Ghost Of Christmas Past, Present And Future

There’s a different kind of War on Christmas occurring, and it’s a little more Ghostbustery than Grinchy. Something occurred to me during a recent conversation with a couple of republicans, well, besides the usual masochistic implications. Another dimension of rightwing madness availed itself, a kind of republican Wrinkle in Le’Guin. The first rightwinger feared our imminent return to communism under more liberal leadership, no surprise there, while the second conveyed a cresting China-angst as Beijing now sits poised to eat our lunch. “Better learn to speak Mandarin, Zano.” So on one side we find a Soviet-style communism, with all the Stalinesque trappings, no doubt courtesy of our Veep and her trusty sidekick, AOC—both secretly from Venezuela—as for that other side, we find China’s quantum economic leap amidst the pandemic. As for these Christmas Ghosts, well, the first is absurd and apparently the threat of China sprung from the void on January 20th. But let’s forget the merits of these arguments for a moment; what struck me is the elegance of the Fox News effect. The GOP keeps its viewership off balance and split-focused between these two ghosts. In this way, all problems occurring today, what many of us refer to as the present, can be duly ignored. Thus we can bypass anything resembling a solution to any problem, indefinitely, which is really cost-effective if you’re, say, Mr. Burns over at the power plant. This also explains how the rightwing position never evolves in an unwanted direction, or, more precisely, in any direction whatsoever. It rings of John Boehner’s recent comment, “What does the GOP stand for anymore?” Were this a chess game, D would have moved their pawn, donning a Lollapalooza shirt, and R would then start to talk about their next move and scratch their collective head. Eventually, Zeno of Elea would be proud, as the sun would gradually deplete its hydrogen supply before their first move. MAGA only pawn in game of life.

A Quick Quiz Courtesy Of Q’s COVID Cue

The COVID virus recently celebrated its world tour anniversary, or Around the World in 80-million Lungs. Here’s a quiz to find out where you stand on the basic COVID facts after being inundated with information, some good, some bad, and some ugly. This quiz was inspired by a recent conversation with a republican friend, who, despite a raging global pandemic, didn’t seem to pick up on even the basic key takeaways. The nearest equivalent would be wandering around 1350s Europe, asking, “What’s with the giant stack of corpses outside your shop, Fred? Fred?! Hey, where’s Fred?” While some of us were glued to the set in an effort to inform ourselves of the best strategies to keep ourselves and our families safe, others drifted Trumpward or Qward.  I admit I was in the middle. I followed the story, learned some stuff, but tried not to obsess about every new strain or development in COVIDville. But how, over one year into this mess, do we end up with the least informed bunch on the planet? Guatemala kicked our butts on this one, those savvy metropolitans.

Please hit read more and take this important informational quiz!

Volley Of Prince Phillip Saluting Batteries Triggers Retaliation Response From Nearby Pubs

Butler’s Warf, LondonUpset Londoners described “a very loud, non-stop, and quite senseless barrage of artillery fire right in the middle of lunch.” Several pubs in the Butler’s Wharf pier area of central London responded to the attacks that originated from the north side of the Thames earlier this morning. Many are calling the response to the display “unprovoked” as the artillery rounds were simply part of the ceremony honoring yesterday’s passing of Prince Philip. Many local pub patrons, however, are “not having it” and remain incensed by the incursion. The misunderstanding rallied a mob of patrons, mostly from the Anchor Tap Pub, to responded by hurling beer bottles and insults while others recited parts of Churchills’ fight them on the beaches speech. One witness said, “Did you ever see the Movie Cockneys vs Zombies? It wasn’t anything like that.”

Where I Prognostically ‘Screwed The Pooch’ As A Blogger

To the backdrop of my endless dystopic rants, it’s probably tough to tell that I actually enjoy writing. My basic motivation stems from humor, of course, but it’s a constant struggle to find anything remotely amusing about my time spent in a waning superpower that, even on a good day, functions on the shitshowy-side of fubar. Back in undergraduate-land, I once told my philosophy professor that I only wanted to learn enough about the absolute truths to make fun of them. He laughed, called me a nihilist, and then took another swig of his Stolis. A combination of nihilism and masochism have kept me blogging this long and the word fun is not how I would describe today’s politique, or what I have come to refer to as the American scheissgiest. It’s a truly awful prospect to climb, day-after-day, into this particular patch of rancid weeds, especially with all the Monsantocides and Foxal matter about. Staying an informed citizen is one thing, but following the political play-by-play comes with a certain risk to one’s own mental health. Hanging out here all the time is creepy …sending your daughter on a date with Matt Gaetz, creepy.

Stranded Suez Freighter Overloaded With All Those Returned Oxford, Commas

EgyptNow that the stranded container ship blocking the Suez canal has finally been freed, more disturbing details of the ship’s contents are surfacing. The freighter carried an unusually large number of returned Oxford commas. Whether or not this contributed to the disaster remains unclear. One chief editor said, “After the commas weren’t being used as much, well, the extra ones started stacking up a bit.” The controversy started when several grammar experts, perhaps most notably the AP-stylebook, encouraged a change in usage by suggesting the removal of the comma right before the last item of any list. The decision has since given many scholars pause.

Former Cuomo Secretary Describes Old Boss As “Stern But Even Handed”

The Big Mouth Apple—An old secretary, Lee Holloway, has surfaced from the 80s to defend Andrew Cuomo’s character at his darkest hour. The staffer insists Cuomo always struck the right balance, repeatedly, through a combination of discipline and humiliation. An infamous Swiss doctor, who wished to remain anonymous, added, “You should never Franken anything, especially if it’s already dead. I have some experience with this and, I can tell you, it’s a slippery slope to being forced to create a bride for the bloody thing, or ending up in a burning windmill, castle, or some such, or whatever happened at the end of that Aaron Eckhart schitznik ….talk about stitched together.”

The GOP Isn’t Dead, It’s Simply MAGAmorphosing

Enters the much-anticipated Democratic victory lap! The mighty stimulus has arrived thus slaying the austerity dragon. So let’s all do the libby jig, which, like dancing with the rest of the Riffraff, is just a Trump to the left. Covid slew Goliath, republicanism is in its death throes and ding dong the Mitch is finally dead, or at least dead-ish. We even have a new commander in chief calling his good friends across the aisle neanderthals. It’s a brand new day, a place where insight is once again valued and Trumpism has been relegated to the dustbin of Hannity. We can all breathe a sigh of relief at the now reopened pubs, right? Sadly, this is more wishful thinking from our intellgiencier, courtesy of those ivory towers of crapademia. Speaking of neanderthals, if someone could just drag Marjorie Taylor Greene back to her cave that would be great. Don’t judge me for that, after all, it’s common Pleistocene behavior. Fine, just tear up a Captain Caveman comic strip somewhere and get it out of your system. Fucking liberals. I know Trump is declaring war on all RINOS and he’s splitting the donations between the GOP and his legal GoFundMe page, but the bottom line is this: the republican party will climb back into its neococoon and will undergo a profound and radical transformation only to emerge once again as something …well, even more radical.