SORRY FOR BEING AWAY! HERE ARE MY PATHETIC EXCUSES

The chief problem with “alternative history” is that for those unacquainted with the best scholarship on the subject, with no yardstick to measure the truthfulness or accuracy of the new historical perspective, the chance of entering an imaginative space dominated by the unreal is all too likely. A journey through the unreal is an unreal journey; the blind begin to lead the blind. In the case of conspiracy theories, the results of exploitation of history may be quite deadly. For many malcontents, history is a powerful spur to destruction; a fair account, on the other hand, helps us understand a little more. If you want absolute certainties, you’ll be prepared to believe anything.

- Tobias Churton

Gnostic Philosophy

(2003)

Folks, a whole lot of stuff has passed by without yer old pal Jerky bothering to comment on it over the past couple months. This is partly due to a certain degree of outrage overload on my part, combined with a feeling of helplessness in the face of what I have always understood, deep down, to be my own absolute flailing impotence against what is daily revealing itself to be a rapidly metastasizing, world historic evil.

I mean, let's face it. I had no power back in the 'aughts, when I enjoyed a daily reading audience measured in the hundreds of thousands; what hope do I dare harbor now that my readership rarely scrapes past the low three digits? In the face of the Trump administration, and the vast and well remunerated army of boot-licking, brown-nosing sycophants who populate the increasingly septic "conservative movement" mass-media juggernaut, I know that me and my little hobby blog are nothing. Useless. Tits on a bull. 

And yet, and still... this urge to witness. And to document said witnessing. To note particular instances of grievous trespass, and to share with my few remaining readers my take on these events. Even when my take is limited to humorous asides, or offhand comments. Even when it's all I can do to point at something and declare in a voice barely raised, but noticeably sad, disappointed, and incredulous: "Do you guys see what I'm seeing?!"

Like THIS for instance.

Oh, I suppose this all may come in handy for someone, on some future day, once they've got the power back up and running and have scavenged a sufficient quantity of foodstuffs to last them through the next Purge Month and they want to check out a virtual time capsule of what it was like back in the days before The Big League Kablooey, to be one among the growing cohort of terrified observers for whom being good at pattern recognition and having a broad knowledge of historical precedents were enough to make them Cassandras in their own time.

I mean, for Pete's sake, we're living at a time when the so-called "alternative" media is full of stories about the rising threat of left-wing violence when in fact the Far Right holds a decades-long near monopoly on such tactics. Meanwhile (and not at all unconnected), the National Rifle Association is playing a whole new tune. They've gone from saying they need guns to fight some future hypothetical tyrannical government, to saying they need them to fight anyone who criticizes an increasingly tyrannical government, here and now. 

Of course, I'm sure that my speculating as to whether this overnight change in the NRA's posture might have anything to do with the President's race... that would just be more evidence of my liberal, leftist, postmodernist, cultural Marxist race-baiting ways. I mean, just because the NRA have followed in the the smoldering hoof-prints of the Alt-Right, Far Right, and White Nationalist movements to become big fans of Vladimir Putin's Russia--to the point where their leadership is in bed with Russian mobsters--that isn't necessarily a de facto admission that the NRA is, at its core, a profoundly racist and anti-democratic institution... is it? I mean, maybe they're just really big fans of Russia's super-strict gun control legislation! 

Okay, so it's probably not that, but surely their newfound love for Russia is based on something other than the New Fascist International's re-branding of the once and future USSR as "the Most Powerful White Power in the World"... right? If you've been able to figure out this paradox, please leave the answer in the comments below, or email it to me, because I gotta tell you, I'm finding this one to be a real puzzlement. 

Okay, so, in the coming days, I'll be playing catch-up on some of the stories and events I wanted to comment on, but didn't, and sharing with you some of the more important and illuminating (in my opinion) news reports, research studies, and think pieces that I've come across in that time.

For today, however, I leave you with a little something that I read many years ago in an excellent book called Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America, by reformed conservative movementarian Michael Lind, who got sick of seeing Far Right extremists mangling the meaning of the Constitution's second amendment. I think it's a fitting coda to today's somber, reflective offering:

The Second Amendment prevents the federal government from completely abolishing official state militias - nothing more, nothing less. Nothing in the Constitution prevents the federal or state governments, or both, from outlawing the formation of storm trooper squads on U.S. soil and limiting gun ownership to members of the National Guard. Members of right-wing paramilitary militias, of course, might claim a "natural right of revolution," of the sort invoked by the American patriots of 1776 (and by the Confederates in 1860-61), There is no constitutional right to revolution, however. There is, of course, a provision for instances where armed bands amass weapons and attempt to overthrow the federal government. The Constitution permits the death penalty for treason.

- Michael Lind