DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ~ MARCH 28, 2017

We all know how this White House just HATES to jump to conclusions...

DID YOU KNOW?

• Did you know that, when asked for the White House's reaction to news that a race terrorist (James Jackson) had traveled to New York City and murdered someone (Timothy Caughman) with a sword, spokesman Sean Spicer chose instead to complain about how the biased media had failed to predict that the idiot who called in hundreds of bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centers would turn out to be Jewish, himself? Fucking incredible, ain't it?
• Did you know that over 200 men, women and children were blown to pieces on Thursday during an American bombing raid in Mosul, Iraq? And that military officials are hinting that this may be the fruit of Trump demanding that Obama era "restrictions", designed to lessen the chance and impact of civilian casualties, be dropped?
• Did you know that while White House leakers were planting the story that Trump was "very upset" with son-in-law Jared Kushner for jetting off to Aspen for a family ski vacation during the final days in the disastrous campaign to pass Trumpcare, evidence has emerged that there may be a whole lot more to that Aspen trip than just skiing? Considering some of the other stuff this Eric Rosenwald cat has uncovered recently--and considering who's involved--I'd be avoiding small aircraft and packing heat at all times if I were him.
• Did you know that Alex Jones' apology for helping to spread the incredibly stupid alt.right conspiracy theory-cum-Fascist International psychological operation known as PizzaGate was totally sincere, legit, and above board? Here! Watch and listen for yourself!

• Did you know that Donald Trump supporters in Ohio don't just know that the man they voted for is lying to them on the regular... nor do they simply accept it... but that they've actually grown to ENJOY being lied to and taken for suckers?
• Did you know that Trump's recent meeting with German chancelor Angela Merkel was even more awkward and humiliating than we'd been lead to believe? Aside from the infamous handshake refusal incident, we've since learned that, during their private meeting behind closed doors, Trump handed Merkel a literal, paper and ink, printed out invoice for $374,000,000,000.00?! This, allegedly, is the amount that Trump and his minions have calculated that Germany owes to NATO... you know... for 'protection'. Ah... another totally diplomatic, above board, and not at all thuggish gesture from Trump!
• And finally, did you know that those upstart lefties over at (ahem) Business Insider have put together a month-by-month timeline of events that unfolded during the election that seem to support the FBI's investigation into Trump colluding with the Russians? To paraphrase one of our age's great statesmen: "It's true! It's really true! Bad (or sick) guy!"

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Are you ready for an incredibly information-dense serving of food for thought? Iain Sinclair's The Last London, derived from his February 10 presentation of the first of the London Review of Books' Winter Lecture series for 2017, serves as a meal and a half to those ready, willing and able to digest it. Half pre-Apocalyptic post-Modern fantasia and half hauntological mystery tour, it begins:

So: the last London. It has to be said with a climbing inflection at the end. Every statement is provisional here. Nothing is fixed or grounded. Come back tomorrow and the British Museum will be an ice rink, a boutique hotel, a fashion hub. The familiar streets outside will have vanished into walls of curved glass and progressive holes in the ground. The darkened showroom of the Brick Lane monumental mason with the Jewish headstones will be an art gallery. 

So? The Victorian theatre on Dalston Lane is already a windblown concrete slab with optional water jets propping up a reef of speculative towers nobody can afford on a buttress of failed enterprises, themed restaurants forever changing their allegiance and retail opportunities nobody is rushing to take up, despite those elegantly faded CGI panoramas of satisfied customers who never lived in the world as we know it. 

So? I’m trying to teach myself the grammar of a terminated city in which every sentence begins with a confident clearing of the throat: ‘So …’ That’s the entry code. It’s as if you’ve been shoved onstage, without lines, in a play you’ve never read. Smile brightly. Bluff like a politician in a glass booth being manipulated by semaphoring black-suited attendants with clipboards. 

So? ‘All for the best in the best of all possible Londons,’ says the mayor, says the minister, says Joanna Lumley. ‘All for the best,’ say the entitled, the connected, the stakeholders, the investors and the profit-takers. That insignificant ‘so’ has moved with the times. When my children were teenagers, ‘so’ meant ‘so’. 

So!!! So what? A hormonal challenge. Now it’s a signifier, a warning bleep letting the recipient know that nothing that follows has any billable consequence. The speaker, the spokesperson, the hireling expert, is not accountable. Language in the last London is a negotiation, a spin of terminological inexactitudes. 

We are losing the ground beneath our feet. Slipping and sliding on subordinating conjunctions, we are disorientated. We feel as if we are falling as we walk, reaching out for anything cold and hard and more than a week old. In his book Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, the geographer Stephen Graham quotes Hito Steyerl, a German video artist: ‘Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.’ 

Call it ground-zero vertigo. Non-specific paranoia. Territory, as soon as it can be adequately surveyed by drones, or hard-hat visionaries in helicopters, from heights where even the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park looks great, is only there to be explained, improved, colonised and captured. So? 

So? So what?

I realize that sounds like the end of the thing, but trust me, it's only just the beginning. Sinclair goes on, bringing in everyone from Thatcher and Reagan to J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock to Punk Rock and Fu Manchu. Also, there's an audio version at the link that serves as both a running commentary to the text and an augmentation of it (differing very much from the work it's allegedly an audio version of, for some reason). If you're sincerely interested in broadening your intellectual horizons and you've got an Internet connection and 90 minutes to kill, you could certainly do worse than read, and listen to, Sinclair's epic editorial peregrinations.

2. While it should in no way be viewed as the final word on the subject, practicing clinical psychologist Bruce Levine's Alternet essay "How Ayn Rand Helped Turn the U.S. into a Selfish, Greedy Nation" is one of the best things I've read about this noxious author in a very long time, and could definitely serve as a very fine critical introduction to--and thus, a good inoculation against--some of the more pernicious elements of her work, her "philosophy", and her cult. After an epigram by Gore Vidal, it begins:

Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. 

Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who have shaped American society. In the 1950s, Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,” Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists, which included Alan Greenspan, who would serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006. 

In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him to go into politics, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. 

But Rand’s impact on U.S. society and culture goes even deeper.

Levine has done yeoman's work, bringing us his specialist's take on Rand's peculiarly popular psychopathologies. If you've got any committed Randroids in your entourage, don't bother sending this to them. But DO send it to anyone you think that Randroid might possibly infect. And remember: Friends don't let Friends read Ayn Rand!

3. Yer old pal Jerky loves him some Mystery Science Theater 3000. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest--and definitely among the funniest--television programs in the history of the medium. I've been down about MST3K's cancellation since 1999 for Torgo's sake! So when news emerged that Joel was doing a Kickstarter for a new version of the show, I was like, YEAH! And then, when they broke all Kickstarter records for a TV show, I was like, HELL's YEAH! And then, when I found out it was gonna be on Netflix, which means all the first season episodes are gonna drop simultaneously, I was like, FRICKEN' ACE! And then, when I found out that the new season of MST3K was basically popping into existence ON MY BIRTHDAY, I was like, PPFFRREAAAAHHRRGGHH!!! Anyway, Today's Suggested Readings are pretty heavy, so here's a 48 second commercial for the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Huzzah!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I think that sooner or later the white working-class constituency will recognize, and in fact, much of the rural population will come to recognize, that [Trump's] promises are built on sand. There is nothing there. And then what happens becomes significant. In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball to something else. ... And that can turn out to be very ugly. I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.”

- Oh, so now the world's most widely respected public intellectual, Professor Noam Fucking Chomsky, is willing to "go there", is he? Welcome to the Parapolitical Science Club, Noam. Sure fuckin' took you long enough to get here.

DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on whatever day of history that it happens to be when you're reading this, why not check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog? You're sure to find something of interest, guaranteed!
• At the Kubrick U blog, you can viddy some very horrosho, very 70's Clockwork Orange bubble gum collector's cards!

THE TAKEAWAY

I have reformulated my image from the last DDD Executive Summary in order to more accurately reflect the way Trump backed off from his repeal and replace of Obamacare... and to add a tattered American flag. I think this way is better, frankly, because the original invests Trump's self-destruction with far too much conscious agency.