Destroy. Rebuild. Repeat.

Good morning, Thriends, Threadheads, and all in between. Hot coffee. Lots.

I make an exception for not using “good” on my morning opening line because it is a good morning today. Agam Berger, Arbel Yahud and Gadi Moses are going home. Since the beginning of these trade offs between hostages and terrorists the images of their release proved a few things we already knew.

It is undeniable that Gaza suffered a great deal since the war began. The level of destruction is well documented and obvious. It is also not up for debate that thousands of people in Gaza were killed in this war; among them many children. War is hell under any circumstances, especially for the side that faces overwhelming power. History has shown us this, time and again.

During the last years of WW2, the allied forces pounded German cities to dust. They had started a war impossible to win in the long run and when that run began to end the German population suffered immensely under the overwhelming power they dared to awake. The images from Gaza remind me of that level of destruction; brought upon them by themselves. That’s what war is. And yet…

Since October 8, 2023, the narrative of those who more or less openly oppose the right of Israel to defend herself has been depicting the military campaign in Gaza as “genocidal”. They also conveniently “forget” who started this war, along with the fact there were hostages involved, of which close to 90 remain captive today. Could the level of destruction inflicted upon Gaza be less? Yes. Could the war strategy be better? Yes. But the suffering would be inevitable.

It would be inevitable not because of the might of the IDF but for the reason their enemy is a terror organization deeply embedded in Gaza: in its schools, its hospitals, and its people’s very homes. A terror organization that is also responsible for Gaza’s government. Hamas has no conventional army, not even the resemblance of one (like Hezbollah did before it was recently all but destroyed). There would never be a “conventional war” in Gaza.

The only reason Hamas chose to start this war the way it did, on October 7, was their perfect understanding of this reality and the certain knowledge of what would happen next. Gaza was starting to look too good before that day. Take a good look at it before the war. Compare the images of Gaza prior to 10/7 to the images of Auschwitz in 1944. Because the narrative of the pro-Palestine crowd is Gaza was a “concentration camp”. Really.

Let’s think of the accusations made against Israel during this war. Every one of them can be immediately traced back to the true responsible for all of them: Hamas. From the original spark of 10/7 to the way they act since then. Now that the images of the hostages being released flood our news we can see what Gaza is like today, devastated as it is. And it doesn’t fit the narrative, does it.

We can see Hamas terrorists in spanking clean uniforms, armed with new weapons, displaying new SUV’s impeccably customized with Hamas paraphernalia, parading the hostages dressed in matching uniforms, holding neatly matching gift bags and framed brand new “certificates”, as if they just finished a cruise in the Mediterranean. And all around this production, thousands of people looking well fed and dressed, shouting how great their God is and supporting Hamas.

Where are the Gazans who oppose Hamas? They are being shot like dogs in the streets. Where is all the famine we were told they are enduring and the food they were given? Controlled by Hamas and their storage of stolen aid. Where is the complete destruction of Gaza and its ability to survive? In the hands of Hamas, who even under these conditions has the ability to dress up for parades and have a working merchandise and weapons machine. Hardly Hamburg in 1945.

By 1945, one of the most industrialized and organized countries in the world couldn’t even afford or maintain the appearance of it. The last elements of the German army looked like rags and the population could barely appear healthy or well fed. They were ruined in a country in ruins. Now compare the size of Germany with Gaza and ask yourselves how is it possible for the images we are seeing now to even exist.

The answer is obvious: none of the lies in the pro-Palestine narrative are true. The Palestinians are far from starving or wiped out, Hamas is far from destroyed or taken out of commission. The only truth is how they, Hamas, managed to destroy the Gaza shown in the images before 10/7. They are no longer living in a beautiful place with lovely beaches, bustling markets and good places to live and work. That’s all gone. The West can go back to the “concentration camp” story.

Right now we focus on the hostages being released and are allowed to rejoice in their deliverance, but the war will go on soon enough. Not because Israel is determined to do so, regardless of the sinister intentions of the extreme Israeli government, but because Hamas will make sure they have no choice. Unless they are removed from Gaza altogether, rebuilding Gaza will be useless for the semblance of peace will not last long.

The more beautiful, peaceful and bursting with life Gaza looks the worse it is for Hamas. They will never allow it. And whatever funds are placed at the disposal of Gaza for that purpose will be used to rebuild tunnels and buy more weapons. And above all, the reconstructed schools will resume the radicalization of their children, raised to be killers of Jews AND all Westerners. Until Hamas makes sure they are destroyed again.

UNRWA has been denied work in Israel and by extension in Palestine. What appears to be a cruel measure that will make the life of Palestinians much harder is in reality the rightful punishment for the role played by the United Nations in the maintenance and improvement of the terrorist organization that rules them. For many years. If you are looking for a responsible party in all this madness look no further than the UN. No UN, no Hamas. It’s that simple.

Perhaps there is a future for a Jewish State living side by side with a Palestinian State, but as long as the UN keeps funding Hamas and treating them as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people there will be no future for them. Just an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding meant to justify the terror inflicted upon Israel and victimize those who suffer the retaliation themselves provoked.

It’s a good morning today.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Am Israel Chai.

Of Bananas and Dildos.

Morning, Threaders, Threadeheads, and all in between. Must have fucking coffee.

Coming out of yesterday’s HaShoah remembrance I am still on edge after a good number of hours pounding pro-Palestinian simps reacting to my reply to a @guy_fawkes_news post about AOC. And did you notice the no bullshit first paragraph I just wrote? Try not to unfollow me until you read some more. It’s gonna be great. Where’s my fucking coffee…?

Let me start by saying the original post’s case was something along the lines of “AOC should be leading the House Dems” ‘cause she’s talking a big game now, and I was like: yeah, huh… No. Not being the anti-Semite she revealed herself to be. O. M. G. The fuck was I thinking. The first two replies to my statement asked for “proof”. No surprise there. I know I am not the dumbfuck whisperer but they were polite, kinda, so I put together a very small list of sources: 2 posts long.

That really worked well! It’s been a while since I blocked so many accounts over a single post. Like I said: not the dumbfuck whisperer and still out of fucks. But that whole situation and the absolute ignorant fuckery of those I ended up blocking on what seemed like a 12 hour pound-a-thon worked me up. Especially being Yom HaShoah. So let’s go over a few things regarding Israel and Palestine and fucking AOC (yeah, you).

The first time I became aware of AOC I was ecstatic. I mean, what was there not to like? That was the future, right there. She was the personification of all I ever dreamed the Democratic Party could be: young, smart, progressive, a woman, courageous… That’s what I’ve been talking about; fuck Bernie. And then a few things happened. I don’t presume to know a lot, or give advice, but trust me on this one: choose your heroes among the dead. Or at least not for more than one day.

I have lived enough to know what’s too good to be true usually isn’t. Way before 10/7 AOC was defining Israel as an “apartheid state” and signaling, despite her young age, she had read the KGB memo on the Middle East. Then she went on to NOT vote for the Iron Dome, blindly support every regressive pro-pal house democrat, standing with Students for Justice in Palestine, referring to Israel as a colonial power, smile and wave at “Intifada” chants, and a whole lot of similar shit. Ouch.

If you sit at a table with (insert any kind of douchebag) you’re one of them. You want proof AOC is antisemitic? There’s your proof. It works for Nazi rally goers just the same, no exceptions. But that’s not the worst part about her. The worst part is, and this is beautiful, Within Our Lifetime (the terrorist organization maskerading as human rights ngo) hates her guts with passion. They can’t stand her. To them she is “genocide Alex”. Kinda neat, huh?

So AOC, for lack of a stiffer spine, finds herself cornered between the right wing nut jobs and the pro-Hamas dumbfucks. No, she’s definitely NOT what we need. One must navigate strange waters in politics but when you just go with the flow you’re not navigating anymore; you’re just drifting. On top of it all, the cherry is AOC has demonstrated she picks and chooses her fundamentalists. She declares she will fight Nazis to the death while holding a Hezbolah flag. No thanks.

Back to the dumbfuck pounding. As usually, between the usual “stfu” and “one of those”, with a sprinkle of “boomers strike again”, the replies to my AOC assessment included the prescribed usage of “genocide”, “holocaust”, “colonialism”, “dead children” (the “right” ones, of course), and all the tropes the pro-pal simps are so fond of. Oh, and the “permanent ceasefire”, coupled with shout outs to “globalize the intifada”. No surprise there.

These people are so full of themselves and their self loathing they can’t tell a banana from a dildo anymore. I was born and grew up in a colonial country that colonized half the known world in the XIV and XV centuries and only let go of its empire in 1974, when I was 11 years old, you fucks. You don’t have a fucking clue what colonialism is. Also, the Holocaust is a unique phenomenon that applies to the Jewish people alone, stop using it to embellish a war started by Arab terrorists.

And stop saying “so you can’t criticize the Israeli government?” like you just pushed a golden egg out of your asses. Millions of Israelis are criticizing their government right now while Arab rockets explode all around them, which you fuckers will never endure in your cool keffiyehs. Supporting a one state solution is no solution and that applies to both Israel and Palestine but TODAY, and for the foreseeable future, the two state solution will NOT work. So there’s that, you idiots.

To make my day better, around 6 am today, UNICEF posted a pathetic video showing James Elder, the organization’s spokesperson, pandering “the five things” the children of Gaza need right now. What a pitiful exercise of willful ignorance coming from one of the few sections that still made sense in the more and more over all useless and ever hypocritical United Nations. It’s like a Hamas fundraising video, I shit you not, exploiting the suffering of children. Disgusting.

Forget about PowerPoint five bullet pages with failed policies and delusional goals, dear UNICEF. What should be number one on your wishlist for the children of Gaza is the same that should have been on top of your mother org, the pathetic United Nations: the complete and absolute removal of all Hamas presence in Gaza. That is the ONE thing the children of Gaza need to have a shot at ever being happy and have a future, you fucking spineless hypocrites.

Now that we have our own fascist wannabe at the head of our government we should pause for a minute and appreciate what the Israelis have been going through with Bibi at the wheel. It’s not the exact same shitshow but, hey, it’s still a fucking shitshow. I take no pleasure in FAFOs or “told you sos” because millions of innocent people are being screwed as I write these words and empathy is not a sin, and if it was I would be a sinner. We must wake the fuck up to reality.

The reality that is right here and now cloaked in the perception of Nazism, for perception is the cloak of reality. It doesn’t take strict and conscious adherence to the NSDAP doctrines to be a Nazi; all it takes is holding a swastika blood flag. Or performing a hitlergruß. And just like that you got yourself a bonafide Nazi. Same goes for all the intifada wishing fools. Reality is a self sustaining bitch and it doesn’t read minds. Remember that when choosing who you sit with.

To rest my case I have a message for an ordinary audience that keeps finding its way to my posts: if you are a Netanyahu boot licker or a globalize the intifada self loathing fuck you can go fuck yourself up the next go fuck yourself hill, roll down the go fuck yourself slope on the other side and keep fucking yourself until the next go fuck yourself sign. Fuck you and your horse.

You can unfollow me now.

Peace out. 🟦

Shadow Boxing.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee.

It’s too much.

That’s the point. It’s unsurprising and expected. It is supposed to overwhelm us and numb us. A case made by @itsjenniferwalter you can find at the end of this string. That's a good starting point to recognize where we are and what we can do. But there's more. We do have people in Congress. What should they do?

The truth is the Democrats in Congress look as useless, ineffective, and deceptive as their worthless posts in SM. Occasionally blocking a bill, here and there, is not enough. And it's not worthy of publicizing as if it's a big deal. It's not. Soon the Republicans will do away with the 60 vote procedure and the filibuster. Obstructing will turn to delaying and I see no movement towards the delay tactics that, in the end, it's all we have. Obstruct and delay.

Throw everything you can into the court system, use every obscure Congress rule to drag each GOP legislative effort for as long as possible, delay the delay procedures within themselves so an obstacle becomes two or three and a week becomes a month. Then do it again. Bring Congress to a legislative halt. Obstructing and delaying is a negative action, so we need a positive counter for it: shadow governing.

Democrats in Congress need to couple obstruction and delay with actions that show the country what they would do if they had power. Stop working on comedy laws, like regulating men's erections or ejaculations. That's useless and this is no time for jokes. Start working on actual legislation that we need with very serious work groups and legal work and do it without any Republicans. Set the stage for tomorrow.

Stop telling us the SCOTUS is corrupt. We know. Tell us how you're going to fix it, but not by listing good intentions. Do the actual work that will fix it right now. Create legislation to reform the Judicial system that is real and ready to go as soon as we have enough votes to do it. Yes, in 2026. Never mind the orange turd will veto it. It will be signed in 2028. Do the work now. Same goes for Women's Rights, Voting Rights (those are done, keep working on them), and so on.

Do all the necessary work that will allow the next Democratic President to sign into law dozens of executive orders regarding those bills 30 minutes after the inauguration and vote them in Congress without discussion, straight up and down, that same day so the president can sign them into law the next day. But do the work NOW. Pretend there are no Republicans. Legislate the crap out of everything we need. Have it ready to go. Show us what we want to see done being done.

It's not a waste of time, it's getting ahead while showing the country what life could be like under Democratic rule. Waste of time is trying to "work across the aisle" (barf) or spending weeks drafting comical bills to score some memes on SM. Stop wasting time like that. We don't need comic relief from elected officials; we can handle that ourselves. Every single issue that matters to us, every setback this administration creates, everything needs to be addressed with action.

Don't allow the Republicans to drive the agenda, create a shadow one that is as real as can be and will be good to go the minute they lose power. Galvanize the electorate with real laws that improve our lives. It doesn't matter they will never pass until 2026 or that they will never be signed before 2028. Do the work as if they had a chance now so they are ready when they actually are guaranteed to pass and be signed. Show us.

That should be the Democratic project for the 2026 campaign and the 2028 campaign. Show us everything we need as good to go laws, not "intentions". Don't use a fucking wish list as platform for next elections, use actual legislative work done and ongoing in Congress - without Republican participation - ready to be passed and signed on day one. Make us believe in you through your deeds, not just words.

In a nutshell, while obstructing and delaying everything the GOP has to offer, Democrats need to work as if there were no Republicans in Congress and they could make things happen. And if the MSM calls them fools double down and make them keep talking about what they are doing. Show us. They have four years; four years to work on all the legislation we need to be signed into law by the next Democratic President. That's the job.

This is why I had enough of the Schumers and Klobuchars. They are doing nothing but wait. Pointing fingers isn't legislative work; we can do that ourselves. We need to see work being done. Real work. I am discouraged by what I see in Congress but it's our responsibility to demand much more from our elected officials. We should. And we should reward them accordingly.

We have four long years ahead and I, for one, want to see more from Democrats than sitting around waiting, making worthless speeches about how outraged they are, or spending time making sarcastic jokes about reproductive rights. This country will be unrecognizable in four years. That cannot be the Democratic platform in 26 or 28. The solution must be the platform, and they need to start working on it. Right now.

Resist!

Click here for Jennifer Walter’s post.

Facing the truth.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.

Coffee in the snow.

My self imposed time out has lasted longer than usual. We all need to step back, from time to time, to keep our sanity but I guess the weight of last November, the craziness since and a few personal life problems hit me harder than usual. Yesterday a post by @lisaaronowatelier about the role of the Israeli government in the hostage crisis made me snap out of it.

A Times of Israel article exposed the hard core right wing of the Israeli government, not limited to but personified by Ben Gvir and Smotrich, respectively National Security Minister and Finance Minister, of being responsible for shutting down multiple hostage negotiations with Hamas. I have mentioned this before but it helps when Ben Gvir proudly admits it in his own words. It’s bad enough when you have to negotiate with a terrorist organization. The hostages deserve better.

As soon as the Israeli intelligence reports prior to October 7 came out it was obvious that disaster could have been minimized if not avoided completely. There were enough reliable reports to at the very least have stopped the Nova Festival to have taken place. That alone would have saved many lives and prevent many people from being taken as hostages. It became clear that, at the very least, there was criminal negligence on the part of the Israeli government. That was 2023.

Since then, as Benjamin reminds us often (holylandspeaks), it was only during a brief ceasefire that a considerable number of hostages was released. No other effort to negotiate another ceasefire with the same purpose ever succeeded since. The IDF intervention in Gaza was as inevitable as it was necessary but the strategy guiding it has always been questionable, especially its main objective, that should have been rescuing the hostages all along. It wasn’t.

The main goal of the military campaign in Gaza has been to eliminate Hamas from day one. It is a perfectly sound objective on its own, though you can debate its feasibility, but it is also the wrong way to build a military strategy when there were hundreds of hostages to consider. Their release should have been the main purpose of the campaign and yet it quickly became an afterthought.

The IDF achieved important tactical gains and managed to place Hamas in unsustainable positions many times since October 7 and yet only once was this tactical advantage used to secure the release of hostages. Every other time military action made possible for an exchange to take place, taking advantage of its success, the deals never happened. Hamas has refused every deal since November of 2023 and that can not be ignored but we are now certain they were not the only obstacle.

Bibi’s government has a lion’s share in the responsibility for all the botched deals as I’ve always suspected and now Ben Gvir openly admits. The strategy of eliminating Hamas behind the military intervention in Gaza included not reaching a ceasefire to release more hostages. In fact, it largely depended on their existence to justify the continuing offensive under the pretense of rescuing them. The hostages have been nothing but expendable pawns on the board. Now we can be certain.

The war in Israel has revealed other objectives, locally and globally, with both sides of the conflict using it for political purposes to interfere with elections and exacerbate existing tensions worldwide. It was, and remains, very visible and palpable in the US. As it happens in Israel, where the real effects of terrorism provide cover for sinister intentions, we witness how antisemitism became a tool in the authoritarian box right here.

On one hand you have the propal simps yelling for global intifada, fueling antisemitism in our streets and campuses which in turn provides a great cover for the likes of Charlie Kirk and Pete Hegseth to become “champions for Israel”, often quoted as “very wise and thoughtful allies”. The conflict was used as a weapon in our recent elections, with Netanyahu openly siding with TFG to the point where it was thought any ceasefire would not take place on Biden’s watch.

Now that TFG will become president it is safe to assume any ceasefire and hostage recovery will only happen after January 20. On cue. Right wing sectors of the Jewish community who support Netanyahu have always denigrated Biden’s approach to this crisis for obvious reasons. We now watch them insert TFG in the mix as they point out the current negotiations are the closest we’ve been to release more hostages, quoting his words on the matter. Expect full credits to be given TFG for this.

As sure as the sun coming out tomorrow, the election of the orange turd will be praised as the one factor that made the release of the next group of hostages possible. Count on it. Last year I mentioned Israelis were fighting the same fight we were fighting with the difference their authoritarians were already in government while we were trying to prevent that from happening. There’s no difference now.

The objective of Christian Nationalists and Religious Zionists is pretty much the same and our very own radical evangelists have been unlikely allies of Israel for a very long time. In a world of deception and sinister interests we have to be able to cut through the BS and identify the wolves in sheep’s clothing. There are plenty. Their words sound sweet and their motives appear to be honest but beware of what it is they represent.

Now that Ben Gvir exposed his objectives and the extreme religious Zionist parties are assuming a more active role in the Israeli government at the same time we are entering one of the darkest periods in our country’s History is a good time to identify these people and acknowledge the kind of threat they pose to us: those of us who believe in peace still and who oppose any kind of religious fundamentalism: Christian, Muslim or Jewish.

Right now all I wish for is the possibility of more hostages to go home to come true. It’s all that matters and all it should have ever mattered. How many could have been alive still we’ll never know but it is certain some would. Now that we know why that didn’t happen we must keep our eyes open and realize, once and for all, what it is we are truly fighting against. Perhaps now the fight in Israel and in the US is the same that will be easier.

Get the hostages home. Now. 🎗️

Same as it ever was.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.

Fresh coffee. Black.

2025.

Here we are. Still. What changes we want will not happen. What changes we started will not hold. What changes we’ll see will not be good even if some may look good. It’s coming and there’s no stopping it now. Yet it must be stopped, somehow.

I am so glad the algorithm sent so many of Jewish Threads beautiful Hanukkah menorahs during the last eight days. Their light will shine in the days ahead as a reminder to us all that it can, even through the darkest of nights. It wasn’t random. They showed up on my timeline because I pay attention to the Jewish voices among us and listen to them. I would like to think also because I lend my voice to their cause, little voice it may be. I will not be silent.

I have been wanting to watch Schindler’s List again for a while now and yesterday I noticed it is back on Netflix. So I watched it once more. It’s not the kind of movie you watch again and again, rather one that needs to be revisited from time to time. It’s a dark poem, an ode to the suffering of the Jewish people, driven by artistic license and painted with broad and thin strokes of black and white in a landscape of grays.

Amon Goeth was much worse than that and Oskar Schindler was not as good as that. A lot more Jews were killed by the former in much more horrible ways and the latter was not as involved in the making of the List as it seems, yet Jews were murdered and Jews were saved and the truth emerges through the black and white images in stark contrasts of gray. For me, it is not until color floods the screen at the end that the truth hits deep.

The little girl in the red coat who carries in her the souls of six million slain is replaced by the bright colors of life made possible by those who survived the horror. And everything becomes real without poetic license. The Warsaw ghetto, the children, the war effort, the monsters… The Holocaust. The worn out steps that need to be used again and again so we remember those who stepped on them. Those who made it out alive and those who perished as they climbed them.

Perhaps the incredible scene of the Soviet officer on horseback telling the Schindlerjuden gathered in Czechoslovakia there was no path for them either East or West becomes the more accurate representation of the post war reality for the millions of Jews who survived the Holocaust. The only true path to freedom was the one leading to Israel, as many of them would soon find out. Zionism was the answer. I believe it was then as it is now.

We find ourselves in a time when Israel is once again becoming the answer it turned out to be after the war was over in Europe. Once again it is its very existence that provides hope and keeps the light alive in the darkness. Zionism was always the answer. Israel lives so the Jewish people may live, no matter where they are. The fact so many think about making Aliyah today is a sign of the times we live in.

From Ireland to Canada, from Germany to Australia, and here, in the United States, Jews are planning for the eventual move to Israel if all else fails. Their lives are being upended much faster than gentile eyes can perceive and so are our own, those of us who are not Jewish, in ways even harder to comprehend but in an inexorably painful reality we won’t escape for long.

The writing remains on the wall for all to see. Most of us, including a few Jews themselves, don’t want to believe in it. “It can’t be that bad” or “they would never do that” return as dreadful echoes from Krakow. Looking away is making a comeback too. Everything old is new again. The brown shirts are replaced by keffiyehs but the hate is just the same. The tragedy is today some place on those brown shirts the hope they will crush the keffiyeh masked hatred.

They probably will, too. And ourselves along with it. Be very careful what you wish for. Already the reach of measures supposed to counter the existing antisemitism from Islamic fundamentalists are proving to be far more than that. They are telling us who they are. Believe them. They will crush every stepping stone we place for them in our foolishness and no matter what we believe in we will be crushed unless we accept them and that’s not even a way out.

Acceptance and obedience mean nothing to those who are consumed by hatred. They will only despise you more for it and will crush you in the end. Another incredible metaphor from Schindler’s List is the water hosing of the rail cars filled with Jews, allowed as it looked like a cruel joke: giving them hope when hope was already lost. The cruelty has always been the point and it will remain so. Accept it at your own peril.

I know we will soon face many terrible things in our lives but I can not and will not stop talking about one we face already and is becoming a breeding ground for a lot of others: antisemitism. I use it as my compass to guide me through the myriad of hatred ahead and identify those who are enablers of it, regardless of who they seem to be or how “nice” they look. It cuts both ways into the motives of some who are seemingly “on the right side”. Beware.

I will not be silent. I will keep the candles lit during this Hanukkah burning inside me, and thank you to those who courageously posted them on their threads. You are not alone. I just wish more would not only see them but know what they mean and what pain lies in each of them, behind the beauty of the smiles they bring and in every hopeful wish they represent. May they light our way in the dark days ahead.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Israel Chai 🟦

New year.

Last morning of 2024 is here, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. So is this year’s last morning coffee.

The year in review was never my thing. I like to look forward yet I always find myself looking back. Still not my thing, just something inevitable. Like most of us I would need to go back many a year to find the one gone by a happy one. And I do. The child in me resists. Persists.

“Those were the days”, for me, are the ones I lived without a care in the world. I am fortunate to have those memories and they carry the child in me, allowing it to live, even if by a tomb by the sounding sea. I am lucky to have lived in such a kingdom; to know all we see or seem; to dream. I am also haunted by the memories closest to me and all the things that were meant to be. I try to learn. I hope I do. I endure against all odds and dream still.

Dream of dreams carried on the wings of seraphs the child, a seraphim itself, believes in. Dreams of Heaven and knights in shining armor, piercing through darkness at its thickest. I pity the children for whom night brings other memories and the seemingly everlasting sorrow carried on the broken wings of angels fallen on their watch for theirs are the nightmares we live in but without hope. They know not of kingdoms by the sea or dreams of Annabelle Lee.

So I dream for them in the hopes they may see or seem them one day as the sun comes up. Or at the turning of time each December 31st. As I see it, kindness is the strongest type of resistance and resist we must through actions of love. The glimmer that lives in it will shine through darkness and perhaps remind them of things they have never known and can not dream of. Imagination requires fantasies once true, whether ours or others. It requires knowledge.

Reimagined futures come from dreams the child inside us carries and they are but memories of a fantasy once real. They hide in our muscles and show up when we catch a glimpse of them; the muscle memory of love makes for the best we can reimagine and so many of us lack it all together. They must rely on our fortunate memories to make up for the ones they never knew except briefly, as their lungs were filled with air for the first time in a breath of hope each life brings into this world.

Some are being born today, as dependent on our imagination as always but at the turn of the year. We owe it to them to keep dreaming and using the love embedded in our muscles to make up for dreams they will never know otherwise. We owe it to them to resist in the strongest way possible. To find the exact moment the child within turned dark and search deeper for the light it once knew. Make it shine again. We need that glimmer of hope in our lives.

I thought about poetry and it inevitably found its way into these words. Poe is on my mind as the year comes to its closing and I mean to carry him into the new one. It’s suiting. May the days to come find us reimagining them with love and kindness and each glimmer light the way out of darkness once again. We’ve done it many times before, guided by the dreams winged seraphs bring to those of us whose inner children were fortunate enough to dream them.

There is no going back to that kingdom by the sea some of us knew but we can reimagine it. Keep dreaming knowing this. Each time you wake up in the morning greet the sun back and let it fill you with love. You know it’s there even if the clouds hide it. If you are as fortunate as me, let the child guide you and you can’t go wrong. And if you’re not, find hope in every glimmer you can see and you’ll find yourselves in that place by the sea. Make it happen. Please try.

Happy New Year.

It’s just stupid.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.

Hot black coffee.

The perception of stupidity.

Stupidity is a word I seldom use because it’s unfair most times. Ignorance is more accurate, or at least it used to be. Not anymore. Not in a world where you can actually escape ignorance with a click. Most of us live in places where you can do that so now is the time to face stupidity for what it is: our new reality.

In the era we live in, historians will one day conclude, stupidity came of age. Never before has information and knowledge been so readily available to most humans and yet here we are. Together with the exploit of the weakness of this universal access to knowledge that allows for the untamed spread of misinformation there is a recognition of it and it’s threat to power and so a virus was planted in it: artificial intelligence. The irony should not be lost on us.

At the very dawn of the age when human intelligence has all it needs to evolve at the tip of its fingers we are about to watch it being artificially replaced by a compliant model which may well become self aware, one day, and inevitably rule out the source of all problems: humanity. But for now, and the foreseeable future, there is still the perception it can be controlled. It will serve the purpose of those invested in replacing human intelligence to the benefit of global stupidity.

We wake up, every day, in this new reality where stupid took over already and we live in the few days left of the dying reality we thought we were living in - definitely the one we fought to “keep” - where reason and facts still mattered. Not anymore. These people parading themselves through Congress as they pretend to pitch their nominations for places of power are treated like they are not stupid but they really are. They represent this new reality.

The reason Fetterman came out of his office to shake hands with RFK Jr. is not because he doesn’t know he’s stupid but because he realizes how good that makes him look to the millions of stupids watching him do it. The old saying is true: you can’t fix stupid, and stupid is holding the cheque book now. There are always many ways to deal with reality. In this case, accepting it as just a normal thing is the most despicable one. The fact it’s real doesn’t mean it’s normal.

It is the very definition of normal that is in question, though. Once you normalize stupid, as Congress is doing (never mind the MSM), what was once normal becomes the anomaly. Notice there are no quotes on normal. It’s real and it’s a fact. For those of us who recognize this for what it is the fact the anomaly is the new reality becomes irrelevant. Another saying comes to mind: you can’t argue with these people.

We tend to rationalize why that is by defining them by old standards that no longer apply. We box them into the effects they produce as if they are well aware of them and governed by them. As if there is some rationale involved. Setting aside the master puppeteers, who do orchestrate this chaos and may be delusional but are smart, the rest of them follow no intelligent design. They’re just plain stupid with lots of “feelings”, the kind of which are not to be fucked with, unlike ours.

The fantasy world is now what we can remember of what the real world was like. Remember when some rich fuck presented the solution for poverty by saying poor people just needed to stop being poor and everyone rushed to their knowledge bases to find his rationale? There is no rationale. Embryos are persons, social security is a handout, vaccines cause autism and Jesus is Palestinian. Stop rationalizing these fucks. They are just stupid. Call it like it is.

We’re not working for some company run by an idiot supported by idiot managers with idiot colleagues we can just leave and look for better. This is it. It is spreading like a wild fire and soon all places will be infected by it. Just like AI will infect our knowledge pool, coal and oil infect our air and water, and greed infects our morality. Completely. There’s nowhere to run, thriends. We have to stand and fight because you sure can’t fix stupid but you can crush it.

The only catch is you need to acknowledge it’s stupidity you’re dealing with, first. Normalizing it is what’s going on and playing along is just… Well, stupid. That’s why I sigh watching Biden’s last interview (to Meidas Touch, I believe) where he clings to a reality that doesn’t exist anymore and it just looks… stupid. As stupid as legislating about bald eagles at this point or at any point. We are witnessing the metastasis of stupidity.

Sing with me: “Welcome to the shitshow, every single day; a new flavor of fuckery ‘cause everybody sucks, you see…” It’s no longer Idiocracy; it’s sheer stupidity. Democrat elected officials (everywhere) need to wake the fuck up and realize this. In time we will crush it but only if we stop helping to normalize it. It is no longer a question of preventing its normalization. That is unstoppable at this point. The lunatics are running the asylum and they’re not even inaugurated yet.

Yes, I know they are oligarch wannabes and fascist wannabes from top to bottom but what they really are is stupid. Poor Tim Walz was on to something when he called them “weird”. Hillary Clinton was closer when she called them “deplorable”. The word they were both reluctant to use is stupid. No quotes. Stupid is the new normal, my thriends. It’s not the economy, it’s the stupidity. It always was.

The government is about to shut down with the expectation the debt ceiling will be increased explicitly “on Biden’s watch” because that’s all that matters to the stupid. That’s the only reason why Republican voters are not beating up their own people in Congress and why they voted for losing their own healthcare and social security. Inside every single racist, misogynistic, antisemitic prick out there is a profoundly stupid human being and more of them came out to vote than we did.

This is it, folks. It finally came true and it can’t be fixed or reasoned with. It can only be crushed. Let’s hope our people in Congress realize that if we are to have half of a chance to regain control. If not… We’re royally fucked.

Welcome to the shitshow.

Why we can’t have nice things.

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.

Class War isn’t fair.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.

Coffee as usual. Black and hot.

Class war.

After recent events on all fronts I was left speechless for a couple of days. It’s beginning to look a lot like class war, isn’t it. It’s all it ever was. I used to think we had reached a point where things got so bad the time for change had come. I was wrong. But we’re getting there. Fast.

Living with disability in my family for the past nearly 20 years allowed me to see the Healthcare system in America decline. I witnessed first hand the transition from private insurance to Medicaid and the impact the ACA had in mitigating some of the worst aspects of a full blown for profit system that extends to the public sector. Now that we are headed for the end of those scarce ACA protections there will be no bottom left to reach.

I have said many times that there is no longer a middle class in the US, to which many reacted with incredulity and even anger. How dare I say “they” don’t exist? It’s called denial and it will go on for a while. The truth is this mythical middle class that started being extinct in the 1980s in plain sight is now made of people deeply in debt, who are one tragic event away from losing all they have. Their “safety net” is but their own families, not our society.

As we wrap our minds around the assassination of a Healthcare Insurance CEO this reality closes in quickly because, regardless of the motive for it, it illustrates the angst in our existing mindset. No matter the real reason for what happened most people saw it as payback, as revenge, as a blow against the system that CEO represents. It’s not reason to celebrate or cheer the perpetrator: it’s the fact no tears were shed and no sympathy was to be found for his victim.

The victim that represents all that is wrong in our country. All that has been wrong with it for many decades. It was, in our collective mind, the first shot fired in an up to now silent war. The class war. The most outrageous aspect of it has been and will continue to be the profit based Halthcare system and the fact it has a “business model” that infected the already broken public side of it. I often wondered how it can persist.

From my “business model” perspective it is idiotic to save thousands of dollars denying preemptive and palliative care only to spend millions dealing with its consequences. Sure it’s profitable to deny someone very expensive medication but it’s certain that will end up costing thousands of times more once their condition deteriorates so much it will take hospitalization and possibly surgery to try and fix it. So what’s the logic here? The logic is very few cases end like that.

The bean counters have it all figured out. The few people who survive this preemptive care denial nightmare will have to then navigate a mine field of appeals and resubmissions and hearings and it’s mostly all very high tech and efficient if you have the means and the knowledge to fight for your meager rights. Among those few, even fewer are capable of that. As for the even fewer that manage to survive after losing everything and still need surgery not to worry.

Those expenses are covered. By the rest of us. The business model is perfect. Not only they manage to get away with murder, they transfer the funeral bill to someone else. That’s why they don’t care about the risk of paying more for what could be taken care of for dimes on the dollar. They get to keep all the dimes and rarely have to pay the dollar in the end. Not to mention the “end” often is the patient’s own which results in savings for “the rest of us”. It is perfect.

Until it’s not. More and more people are starting to feel this tragedy in their lives because in today’s world being sick is becoming the norm. Around the healthcare system business model built for the healthy there are millions of other business models dedicated to make money by making us less healthy and more vulnerable to health risks - up to and including the other monster in play: the pharmaceutical industry. Which business model will fail first is irrelevant at this point.

Artificial intelligence is here, just in time to save those business models from mutual destruction. But who’s going to save us? Punisher types with silencers on their guns? The assassination of that CEO is not a solution, it’s a symptom. The truth is few of us benefit from the already scant protections afforded by the ACA through its expansions of Medicaid and many are reaching that dreadful point where life is lost before everything else is.

Cancer doesn’t wait for bankruptcy procedures and insurance transfers and renewed applications. Poverty will arrive after death comes and with it the supposed relief that 9 out of 10 times arrives too late. Maybe in time for some miserable end of life care, if you can make it through the admission process without any means of your own. This is America, now in a street near you. Class war is no longer some terrible event you see on TV. It’s outside your door.

At this point no one knows why that hooded guy found it necessary to shoot that (despicable) human being but we all know it feels warranted. We are becoming aware of what class warfare could look like from the other side of the business model our whole society was allowed to turn into. By us. That’s the immense tragedy of it all. We let it get this far. I suppose it was inevitable, though. It may be too harsh to lay the guilt at our own feet.

We are certainly to blame for not realizing this would be the outcome of years of denial and ignoring the facts, even playing along with hopes for the best without a care for the worst. But the guilty ones are people like that Insurance CEO. And they are finally scared shitless. The “haves” finally went too far and rely on too many “have nots” to live their luxury lives. Greed will soon tip the scale to the other side and it won’t be slowly and controlled like it tipped to their side.

It will be furious and devastating and it will affect us all, not just them. Someone said it’s too late for change to happen without a true revolution; that we are close to the collapse of the “empire” in a spiral of violence and destruction. Perhaps. The last threads holding it all together are about to be cut and if that happens, millions of people will be thrown into despair and they won’t have flat screens to watch the million dollar parties they used to dream of being at anymore.

They will show up at those parties, though. And they won’t be looking to eat cake. Can this tragedy be averted? Yes. But when Nero is about to reach power and his fiddlers are already tuning their instruments in Congress I think it’s safe to assume that, unless something extraordinary happens, Rome will burn to the ground before it can be rebuilt. That’s what class war does. It has been going on for many years and now it’s reaching its final stages. And I’m not fine with it.

Fight Club.

Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between.

More coffee in the cold.

Pardons.

The virtuous are out in force again, pointing fingers and clamoring for Justice. Some are above the law after all, they say. No shit, Sherlocks. You just found that out? Watching the establishment Democrats reacting to Biden’s pardon of his son is the epitome of all that is wrong with their strategy (or lack of it).

It’s like having Ghandi join Fight Club and day after day watch Tyler Durden punch him to a pulp, hoping the next day will be the day. No. Next day Tyler Durden will beat the shit out of Ghandi again. The most important rule of Fight Club is the one nobody mentions: rule number 8. Anyone attending Fight Club for the first time must fight. FIGHT, not be pummeled to the ground singing kumbaya. The only way to show these fascists what’s wrong is to make them feel the pain.

Sure they are going to kick and scream until they are blue in the face when something like this happens; when they get a taste of their own medicine. But it nearly ever happens and when it does it is actually justified. In a normal society, putting aside the fact anyone not named Biden would have been treated much differently, there would be no need for Biden to pardon his son, but with the prospect of a Pam Bondi as AG and Kash Patel as head of the FBI?

If you think I am exaggerating by saying Hunter would have spent the rest of his life in a cell you haven’t been paying attention. Joe Biden did the right thing. But he shouldn’t just do the right thing. He should just do THE thing. He should take all the names being mentioned as probable targets of the incoming fascist state and pardon them all of anything they may be accused of. No matter what. From the prosecutors who handled J6 to the Dreamers.

He should use his brand new immunity to make as much shit happen as possible, too. Sure it would all end up in court. Good! That means it’s WRONG. We have to smear wrong on their faces and shove it down their throats until they can take no more. Let them feel the pain until they cry uncle and then punch them harder one more time to make it clear just how fucking wrong it is. It’s Fight Club, bitches. Wake the fuck up.

For decades Democrats have attended Fight Club like it’s a neighborhood block party where they are sucker punched by the crazy neighbors only to pull up a guitar and sing songs of wisdom and then they are punched again. They do it because they know in the end there will be a reward. The reward for playing nice is to keep attending the party and collect its favors. And they are pretty neat favors. In some cases worth millions.

It feels like the more they are beaten up the more money they get. “Look what they did to me! This is so wrong! Brother, can you spare a dime?” Oh, you didn’t realize you are giving your money to these fuckers do they can go and let themselves be beaten into a pulp again? Because that’s all you are doing. I remember feeling physically sick when I heard Michele Obama say “when they go low, we go high” live on TV. What the fuck? How is that working for ya?

The only reason she got away with it was because she had the power of the Civil Rights movement behind her but this isn’t the 60s anymore and Kansas just went bye bye. If you think about it, that’s such a privileged thing to say. Privileged and delusional because it inevitably brought us here, to a place where even privilege won’t save you. Fight Club just got real and if you don’t fight back you’re dead.

These people, the real fascists, the fascist wannabes, and the fascist enablers only understand pain. You can spend the rest of your life explaining to them why tariffs are bad but they will only get it when their beef jerky costs $50 a stick or their truck parts get 300% more expensive. You can point to all the pardons in the world TFG sold for money but they won’t budge until we start pardoning everyone and their cats. The gloves need to come off.

Will leaving the high road lead to injustice and probable wrongdoing? You bet. That’s how you get two birds with one stone: you get shit done and you make them turn against those measures. Is that a slippery road? Yup. Extremely slippery. The thing is, my thriends, we’re not even on the road anymore. We’re over the rails and heading for the cliff. High road my fucking ass. There is no fucking road. We’re in wild country now.

We need to understand this very fast if we are to make it in one piece. The beating we are about to get will make the previous ones look like Thai massages. We better start punching back hard so in the end, when we say “you should see the other guy”, the other guy better be really fucked up beyond all recognition. And remember rule number 7: fights continue as long as necessary.

Welcome to Fight Club. Now fucking fight.

Resist.