Cold and foggy this late-afternoon Friday here in California’s Central Valley — although there’s still some daylight flickering, it’s a gloomy, dark-shadowed end to another work week in this festered era of non-seasonal melancholy.
Seemingly, this year’s tule fog version is worse, thicker, and deeply damp — join the festivities.

This is my first post in more than three weeks — one of the longest absences from the blog in a while — due mainly to just not feeling the literary/object desire to write about the horrible shit that’s performing itself on the world’s stage at this current state of time. I usually always have a compulsion to write. However, due to Kamala Harris not being president-elect and the Orange Turd resting in her place has really. really got to me in a lot of conscious/subconscious ways beyond just politics.
The sense to even want to write hasn’t been there.

And in this particular episode today/right now, it’s actually the result of an explanation piece I read yesterday that made me conjure up an inclination of a dive onto the laptop keyboard and tap away.

As I write, the House has just passed a CR to keep the federal government funded until March (and it now goes to the Senate, where it should pass before midnight) — and if you’ve followed the news even half-heartedly you know the chaos and shit-clusterfuck Republicans have visited upon this country. I know not too many people visit this blog, but the article I mentioned is way-worth a read.
(And a great h/t to Digby for pointing me in the right direction.)

True scary, and frighteningly accurate: Toby Buckle at LiberalCurrents from earlier this month. Entitled “A Disease of Affluence,” the article takes a good hard look at reasons Harris lost and the asshole T-Rump was victorious. The bottom line is the same old, same-old ‘cruelty is the point.’
The most particular nutshell:

The narrative that hardship makes people tribal, and nativist, and mean, and vindictive—that toleration is only possible in a society of pure affluence—reflects a dark view of human nature. If that is true, then socialism, or even a progressive liberalism, isn’t. Those things aren’t compatible. It’s also a much more condescending view than whatever is ascribed to sneering affluent liberals by those who hold it.

But it isn’t true. The core of the MAGA base isn’t people who can’t afford enough $2 packs of pasta and $3 jars of tomato sauce to feed their children. I’m not saying that person doesn’t exist, but statistically they’re not representative. MAGA is someone who earns $70,000 a year and is angry that their overpriced Whole Foods costs a bit more. MAGA is someone who is angry that they might have to shift from buying their goods at a middle-class-coded supermarket to the cheaper, working-class-coded supermarket.

The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others.

And concluding:

It’s easy to pretend that all of this is a reaction, one caused by an inadequate economic platform, solvable with a better one. But it isn’t. Our country has been captured by a force that has its own ideas about our future. One that is ancient, compelling, and evil.

The best explanation I’ve come across on our current shit. I would way-highly recommend reading the whole thing, well worth your time. Toby Buckle is the host of the Political Philosophy podcast and writes about liberalism, republicanism, ideology, and religion.

Meanwhile as burning shit down from the force both ‘compelling and evil’ on our national/historical house:

Chaos cursed, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Image out front by illustrator and portrait painter, Tim O’Brien, and can be found here.)