Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.
Must have coffee.
Purity is but puritan.
The only thing pure is snow, for a while. The rest are illusions in fairy tales. Now puritans abound in the strangest places, like self proclaimed Marxists keeping the specter of the middle class alive like a zombie they can still aim at before it comes for what’s left of their brains. What are we looking for? Youth? New blood?
The same people that clamor for young blood at the top hold on to the ghosts of Christmas past who are old as shit and puritans as fuck. Make it make sense. “We need kids who party like it’s 1969!” they say. Good luck with that; plus, 1969 was not what they think it was. The mud was less thick, perhaps. I do miss the Cold War, though. For cynical reasons and the sake of childhood memories. But I moved on.
I don’t feel sorry about AOC not getting her place at the top, yet I feel disappointed Gerry Connolly was the best we could do. I stopped being impressed by youth alone a long time ago and I certainly have expectations about what “new blood” means. Those who read me know by now I don’t place the bar very high, just enough to clear some of the most basic decency you’d expect those representing us to possess. I am most often disappointed.
After the loss we took and just before the apparent triumph of the pigs I keep looking for someone who meets those basic standards; like not being selective about their outrage or recognizing the tolerance paradox. People tend to underestimate the importance of the current rise of antisemitism while they face other tough realities like mass shootings and healthcare related tragedies. They shouldn’t.
My tolerance for the intolerable is zero. People like Ocasio-Cortez have shown some promise but they turn out to be dangerous pawns on the paradox board they are supposed to break. They started out to change things but ended up as players. They’re game enablers, not game changers. They look to the future with the 1969 stare in their eyes, even if they don’t know it. And then there are people like Ritchie Torres.
Just when you think at least someone is saying the right words they turn around and sing high praise to the Elon Musks of the world, perhaps dreaming of becoming the first men on Mars. Who the fuck knows? Fetterman is another one. And then you have the run of the mill ones who come online to boast about making the bald eagle the “national bird” because why not. There’s bipartisanship for ya. I am tired. The bar is so low and nobody clears it.
Nobody of consequence. Joe Biden cleared it with flying colors but he was “too old”. Kamala Harris might have cleared it but she was a black woman. “It’s always something” doesn’t seem to apply because it’s always the same thing. There are many places for new people to play a role in the awakening we need and they’re role is to say uncomfortable things and keep us thinking, but they have to at least meet the basic standards.
As for “the top”, the one who will personify the future, as in 2028, I stopped looking for people who are not relatively young white men. Now where the fuck do we find someone like that who represents all we aspire to while looking like all we see as problematic in our society? Perhaps we will find one if we stop looking for the answer to our problems and start seeking more time to solve them. Another paradox, it seems, for time runs out pretty fast.
Is it so hard to find someone who believes and acts like they care about everyone while declaring the rich have to pay more taxes, the government must provide healthcare and education outside any business model, only public money should fund political campaigns and at the same time show the backbone to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization and unequivocally support Israel’s right to exist? Someone who knows what colonialism is? I mean, it’s a very low bar.
I am not one to single issue my way into politics but this single issue has become a defining one in today’s world where Jews are persecuted and their persecutors are cuddled. A world where grand wizards are put in charge of teaching critical race theory. A world where thinking became a luxury few can afford. For those of us who can still think this Christmas I give you Palestinian Jesus. How about them apples?
Now if AOC would only come out and say “please stop saying Jesus was Palestinian, you dumbfucks” I would feel really sorry for her defeat as House Oversight ranking member. Unfortunately that’s not gonna happen. She’s got the 1969 stare in her eyes. She’s done. In the world I defined above where do we find those who meet the standards I mentioned? Maybe we are doomed to watch people lose their minds and burn what’s left of our house to the ground.
I read a lot of comments like “why can’t we have nice things anymore?” and I wonder if it occurs to us that there’s a horseshoe in class warfare as well. There is a common interest the top of the “haves” share with the bottom of the “have nots”. Both don’t want us to have nice things. We’re screwed either way. The puppeteers on both ends of the spectrum meet for brunch and tap each other’s backs as they go about their same objective: to poison our minds.
The warlords on both ends of the class war are not as different as they seem and it shows. As we gathered our ranks last year for yet another lost battle I could tell our best are still too little. Most of the fighters supposedly on our side fight for loot and have no discipline or purpose. It’s like an army of children, really, all with smart phones and TikTok accounts. You can’t even succeeed in pointing them in the right direction.
Here we are again, my thriends, readying ourselves to go into the breach and fight another battle with impossible odds. Perhaps this time the best in our ranks will be enough to achieve victory. We have to try. If we do win this time we will have to show more success reigning in the undisciplined among us who will be looking for the spoils in the field of their delusional glory. For make no mistake: many of us still fight for gold. And then you ask why we can’t have nice things.
