YES, THIS IS WHO WE ARE
(July 8, 2022)

                This has to stop. Now.
                This can’t go on any longer!
                What is wrong with Republicans!
                What can be done?
                This is not who we are.
                These are typical bleats and social media tweets epidemic every time there is what TeeVee Newsmannequins term a “mash (sic) shooting” in the country---whether of poor little children, doctors, nurses, office colleagues, shoppers, parade-goers, other wretched unsuspecting law-abiding innocents.
                 And here are the answers to the bleats and tweets:
                 It will not stop.
                 It will go on longer.
                There is plenty wrong with Republicans, but they are not the only cause of the problem.
                Nothing can be done.
                This is exactly who we are.
                Look, there are about 120 guns per 100 noble humans in are grate nashun, give or take 1.2 AR-15’s. Cat out of bag, in other words, bag disintegrated to dust long ago. But let’s imagine that guns could be suddenly, magically banned---as they are in civilized countries such as Japan, England, Canada. Are these 120 killing machines per 100 noble U.S. humans suddenly poofed into the ethers, like some CGI effect? Yes, and Donald Trump is altruistic, and Anderson Cooper conducts incisive interviews. Then there is the black market factor which would, of course, quickly “compensate” for the ban.
                So banning---a “non-starter,” as the bloviators of D.C. like to say---would have as much efficacy as Aleve on a leper.
 

From the book, "The Ameriguns," by Gabriele Galimberti.

                Okay, so how about “just” banning assault weapons alone? Sure, eminently sane idea. Unless, as Republican Senator John Thune grunted, you like plinking prairie dogs. By the dozens. But given the hysterical, NRA-stoked guvment caint take away mah gunz slavering from about half the society, this is as likely as “cool” and “awesome” and “iconic” disappearing from all discourse.
               Well, then, how about banning assault weapons for persons under the age of twenty-one, like Congurse just did. Great idea! After all, as we know, no one over twenty-one is crazy, psychotic, poisoned by Internet fiction, or super pissed off.  This will be the most effective law since the legal drinking age of 21 prevented teenagers from getting shitfaced. And, uh, what if Pops or Uncle Q-Anon keep an AR-15 in the broom closet?
                Then we come to the "debate" over whether the problem is "mental illness" or "gun control"---a “discussion” that has the potential to outlive the ecosystem. On this and other planets. Well, at least this idiotic wheel-spinning generates massive income for media that profit from “conversation,” “debate,” “dialogue”---and we all want to keep the National Rifle Association, media corporate robberbarons and their preening anchormannequins wealthy, don’t we?          
                You might as well ask whether atmospheric methane problem is due to cows, or the fact that people like to eat them. And yet, the answer to this insipid question---a ploy by Republicans to keep their guns, essentially, and elected jobs, of course---is, in point of fact. . .
                Mental illness!  
                What? Rense, are you one of them?
                No. I speak not of the proposed “remedy” of increasing mental health funding, as if this could somehow stop the American sport of mass murder. Rather, I speak of the tongue-lolling derangement of the entire culture. No, this is not some ‘60’s sociology major “blame society” pablum. The finger is not pointed nebulously, academically, but specifically---at: demographers, marketing executives, and all attendant sycophantic parasitic professions that amorally, hypertrophically exploit absolutely everything for profit. It seems appropriate here to remember the words of the late comedian, Bill Hicks:
                “By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing. . .kill yourself. No, really. There’s no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good.”
                Translation of marketing in the 21^st century:  make money no matter the consequences to anyone, anything, anywhere, anytime. Further translation: dumb everything down to lowest common denominator bestial titillation, preferably so zero education, intelligence, knowledge is required to consume. This is what has happened to all aspects of society. Marketing/demographics has created a witless, twitchy, reactive culture that conflates brutishness and violence with entertainment.
                 Consider:
                Movies and television are an endless orgy of killing, mayhem, cruelty, perversion, torture, misogyny, subjugation/torment of the weak, sexual degradation, nastiness, aggression, and above all, people killing or threatening one another with. . .guns. Big guns. Crazy guns. Macho guns. Guns that solve all ills. Even the very production values of most “entertainment” are jarring, menacing, lurid, bizarre, violent in presentation. Right---the crazy-shifting images, quick-cuts, terrifying sound effects, cheaply manipulative music---all psychotic, nightmarish. The avalanche of sense-punishing  fooom, bash, shummm, bam used to illustrate simple scene changes, or doors closing, or nothing at all---sound like apocalyptic cataclysm. You need Attention Deficit Disorder to take in such fare, and if you don’t have it, keep watching and you soon will.  
                 I hear you: Okay, boomer. Shove it up your apps. We're just giving people what they want! That's the standard corporate excuse, and it's quite a con. No, the marketing/ demographic juggernaut is not giving people what they want---it is giving people what they will respond to. And the cheaper the manipulation, the easier the response. Read: dumb it down. Read: violence, mayhem, sex, perversion, etc.
                And let's not omit so-called popular music. Or rather, demographically designed music-product reflecting, creating, and profiting from egomania/self-importance/ narcissism epidemic in the culture since roughly the advent of I-want-my-MTV. Then we have so-called rap/hiphop, which does not even attempt to disguise its glorification of: criminality, cruelty, hatred, crassness, vulgarity, obscenity, racism, killing, sexual abuse of women, and other such, uh, pastoral things. (Note: if you criticize this fare, you're deemed racist by BLM/”woke” reactionaries---as I will be here.)
                It’s really quite miraculous, in a grotesque sort of way: creativity, which used to the basis of music, has been replaced by demographically calculated product design. It is not “popular” music---it is foisted music. It is fed to a perpetually teenaged public (of all ages) primed since earliest sentience to consume its fave bands and "icons." Hell, the “artists” do not even know that they are creating corporate, demographic/ marketing-fired, focus group-approved, dumbed-down banality. They imagine they are, to employ the idiotic new term, creatives---because they are told this by. . .the corporations that so exploit them, and the jejune millennial “critics” who enable them. Closed system. The snake eats itself.
                I know. I 'm ranting. But stay with me. Just for the sake of illustration, here is a “lyric” chosen at random, in this case from a “song” by one multi-Grammy-award-winning Cardi B, who, aside from having been a guest at the Biden White House, allows men to come on stage and perform analingus on her. True. Oh, yes, and she has also recorded herself defecating, and narrating the event as it happens. It is all on Youtube, along with similarly sophisticated fare.
                Once upon a time, man, I heard that I was ugly
                Came from a bitch who nigga wanna fuck on me
                I said my face bomb, ass tight
                Racks stack up Shaq height
                Jewelry on me, flashlight
                I been lit since last night
                Hit him with that good-good
                Make a nigga act right
                Broke boys don't deserve no pussy (I know that's right!)
               And for those who are now grumbling, “racist,” allow me to be “inclusive.” Let us also note the wailing waif music category, in which suicidal-sounding, heavily tattooed young (mostly white) women neurotically whine about, oh, being wronged, not getting something they want, hating someone who did not give them something they want, imagining how they will get revenge against someone who did not give them something they want, etc. This sells hugely to all the. . .neurotic young heavily tattooed young (mostly white) women who identify with such petulant woes, or who will, after listening. . .become neurotic young women who identify with these petulant woes. The snake eats itself again. So-called “country?” Mega-volume preening, as related to Hank Williams and Patsy Cline as I am. I mean, you see and hear all this fare, and you start to think that guitars and microphones should be licensed. . .
                This devolution-as-sound started around 1980 with MTV, as I said, which introduced and championed shameless narcissism, egomania, self-adoration, artlessness---these things now being the starting point in most mainstream recording. Along came Ivy League educated Rolling Stone writers het-up to establish imaginary “street cred” by writing about rap---notably “gangsta” rap---as if it demanded analysis traditionally reserved for, oh, master's theses. This intellectual validation proved very helpful to persons who, uh, do not sing, do not play instruments, do not read or write music---none of which, of course, are necessary in order to become a “rap artist.”  After all, “rap” and “hiphop” seldom resemble anything approximating a “song.” Just program a machine to play a simple, guttural beat, and start reciting kindergarten-simple (usually angry, hateful) rhyme in an autotuned surly voice, and voila, you’re an artist. 
 

The obvious solution? Ban the Internet. Let the government run it, and levy heavy fines for bad grammar, spelling, and use of the word, "awesome." No, really. I think 24/7 guvment-approved Mickey and Jesus would be preferable to what we have now.

                What? What does this have to do with gun violence?  This is all “just” free-market capitalism, you contend, hardly mental illness? Well, hey, what’s the difference? Since losing its way during the de-regulating, "trickling down" (not) Reagan era, capitalism abandoned allegiance to anything other than profit. Consider: capitalism used to take care of employees, contribute to community, fix potholes, even (gasp) pay taxes (Attn: Facebook, Amazon, Elon Musk.) There was a sense of responsibility to the society and the culture. Mental health. "Free market" did not mean paying $500 million to someone who can hit a ball with a stick, and run, or allowing for six or seven people to own 90 percent of the world's wealth. Worshipping profit and profit only is the enemy of, oh, empathy, compassion, ethics, other 20th century notions. (See: ecosystem still being destroyed by fossil fuel companies well aware of the destruction they wreak.) In other words: mental illness.
                This, readers, is the Triumph of the Till, in the land of the fee and home of the crave. Fascism came as a hamburger. I got mine. Don't bother me, I'm eating.
                Which brings us to the devil, the Beast, Beelzebub, Old Scratch, the man with the pointy tale and sulphury reek (to quote Frank Zappa). . .a miracle far beyond the dreams of “father of public relations” Edward Bernays, or Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. . .
                The Internet.
                This is the worst catastrophe ever to befall humankind---the shatterer of thousands of years of traditional societal structure and function, the annihilator of social contact (and contract) in the guise of “connecting” people; the champion purveyor of alienation, divisiveness, misunderstanding, misinformation, disinformation; the all-time greatest reinforcer of ignorance, prejudice, hatred, intractability, delusion, insanity; the welcome mat to every flim-flammer, hustler, phoney, martinet, con-artist, megalomaniac under the globally warming sun; the roiling caldron, or better, overflowing toilet, of every bad, fiendish, deceitful, cunning, evil, insane human impulse.
                And it also has a bad side. Badda-bing. 
                For those of you thinking my opinion over-the-top, extreme hyperbole, a kooky overreaction to the “negative aspects” of the Information Superscamway, I will play my trump card (pardon the expression) first: child pornography. An easy pose of sanctimony and outrage of the ilk generally struck by the right-wing? An obvious excuse? It has always “been around?” Think again. What used to be “underground,” a creepy-crawly thing with criminal “rings” occasionally busted by authorities. . .is now in every home on the planet equipped with a computer. It must be a multi-billion-dollar business. One need not download it, trade it, participate in its manufacture and sale, to see it. Anyone who surfs porn sites---roughly, oh, wild guess, 75 percent of the population over five---at one point or another will be presented with it as ads, samples, etc. Including scenes of such cruelty that D.C. should be absolutely swarming with millions of people demanding this stuff's eradication.
                This alone, I say, invalidates the Internet, renders it unfit for existence.
                If you still think I am extreme, here’s my considered response: you’re nuts. I don’t have statistics, but I think it’s a foregone conclusion that human trafficking has increased exponentially since people first logged on to the “world-wide web” in 1990. Yes, the marvelous world-wide web turned out to be full of human spiders. But that’s not all. There is a world of “snuff” (murder) and torture on the Internet, not just of people, but of, yes, helpless animals. The perpetrators must figure it’s less likely to invite prosecution if the victim is furry and meows or barks. I came across one such “video” about ten years ago, and I think it was on Facebook (which used to have no filters for such horror), but I am no longer sure. It featured a woman in black bra, black g-string, black mask, black stiletto heels, and sado-mashochistic accoutrements, using a handheld torch to. . .well, I’ll let that sentence end. The woman was laughing as she perpetrated a ghastly murder. Why describe it, even to this extent? Because no one else is. You can’t find this fiendishness reported on any news program, ever. People simply do not know that such atrocities are all over the Internet, and I think they need to know. The video of the S&M woman, who should be summarily executed (I would do the honors) is the most evil thing I have ever seen in my life, by far, and I have the Internet to thank for it.
                But chin-stroking “social scientists” forever contend that the Internet (used to be television/ literature/media) just mirrors human society, and its worst aspects. Fine. So let’s stop mirroring, then. And I say it does much more than “mirror.” It makes images and behavior that most people do not think about or even imagine. . .part of reality. This implies. . .acceptance, at least subliminal. So the Internet not only mirrors---it creates, foments, encourages. “Mirroring” amounts to hype, advertisement, legitimizing, conditioning of. . .mental illness.
                From the time a relative of mine long ago discovered that his twelve-year-old son had a computer file full of things such as “man fucks donkey,” I realized something was drastically, insanely broken. Those who imagine that all of this craziness does not “influence” people to imitate it, participate in it, “join the club,” are either profoundly naïve or disingenuous. The Internet is the biggest monkey-see in history, never mind social scientists forever crowing “there is no proof” (a ruse long used by corporate entertainment conglomerates to justify violence and brutality in movies, music, etc.) The Internet teaches, “inspires,” and worst of all, brings the blackest tendencies of human nature into. . .daily reality, thus tacitly suggesting “normal.” Remember: lowest common denominator stimulus yields highest profit.
               I am reminded of the movie, “Forbidden Planet,” and how the occupants of the planet, Altair 4---the Krell---had, through technology, loosed their “monsters from the id” until their society was destroyed. The movie was prescient.
                One more point on the subject of general pornography, which conservatively generates $2.5 billion a year on the Internet: it has become largely concerned with degradation. “Deep Throat” and “Behind the Green Door,” two of the big porn theater hits of the ‘70’s, are “The Wizard of Oz” and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” compared with most Internet sex fare today. The general goal seems to be extreme humiliation, mostly of women. Suffice to say: metoo, where are you?  
                Citing the comparatively innocent functions of the Internet offers no comfort. It  is now cliche that use of "phones" and other devices has supplanted going out into the world and interacting with other people. You remember when there were no iphones---just I and friends. Socializing. This was a phenomenon that, for the most part, tended toward engendering well-being, empathy, social adjustment, co-existence. Otherwise known as mental health.
               Think for a moment: since the Internet, you no longer need to go to: the bank, the bookstore, the record store, the classroom (in many cases), the market, and myriad other things that used to be quotidian (if they even still exist.) You can “do” any/all things on-line. No human contact necessary. Not exactly a recipe for sociability, but a great recipe for turning a nobody nerd named Jeff Bezos into the richest human being in history. (Well, after Elon Musk.) I mean, with the ecosystem-pulverizing Amazon.com, Bezos has realized Monty Python’s world suffocating monolith, “The Very Big Corporation” (see: “The Crimson Permanent Assurance”).
 

Oblivious, fabulously greedy youth, obsessed with consuming anything cool or awesome (passwords to acceptance), from $300 bags of "single origin" coffee to food-truck brain tacos, aggressively conforming in terms of fashion, speech, cars. H. G. Wells' "eloi" realized.

                Perhaps most damaging of all, the Internet has done to traditional media (newspapers) what “Survivor” has done to human dignity, what Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing to thinking and knowledge. For all their inherent flaws, newspapers were shared. If you were left, right, center, or objective (gasp), you read the same newspapers and magazines. They were called community newspapers for a reason: they aimed to serve all members of a community. This created an implicit and accepted unity, a commonality of experience. Even if you disagreed with the schlub sitting next to you on the bus, both of you schlubs read the same paper. Why, you might even talk about that paper on a given day, without wanting one another dead.  At least the sports page.
                No more.
                The Internet assassinated daily newspapers, reducing them to websites. These websites suddenly found themselves competing with other websites set up by: martinets, poseurs, nutcases, megalomaniacs, amateurs, Russia or China operatives. But these sites often looked, to the average person, as credible and potent as a newspaper site! Most web-surfers lacked the ability to discern one from the other in terms of legitimacy, research, professionalism, integrity. And when readers found their point of view reinforced by a given website, well, why bother reading anything else?
               Take it or leave it: newspapers had high standards for trying to get at the facts of a story. Websites posing as newspapers mostly have neither the staff nor the obligation---and often not even the inclination---to do so. In fact, it works against their “circulation” to not pander to the prejudices and reactionary opinions of readers. (Talk about giving people what they will react to!) The outright vilification of responsible media by the “alt news” sites culminated with wide embrace of the demented fantasies of the Internet spider, Q, of so-called Q-Anon---and the sack of maniacal adipose, Trump, discrediting anything he dislikes as “fake news.” Thanks to the Internet, somewhere from a third to over half the country thinks legitimate news is “staged.”
                Factor into the death and dearth of newspapers---remaining specimens have literally shrunk to less than half their content and sizes---the rise of 24-hour argument-as-news on cable television. Newsjabber. Used to be, TV news was. . .news! What a concept! A half-hour or hour broadcast of selected stories about events of the day, presented with a degree of research, responsibility, organization, vetting, editing. Along came CEO’s working solely from marketing/demographic models, and it was easy to see that “talking heads” arguing about/discussing any/all topics of the moment was more profitable than dull, responsible reporting. Hard news? Hasta la vista, baby! As the old CBS newsman, Joseph Benti, used to say, news became “watching two drunks fighting in a bar---it’s stupid, but you can’t look away.” (Or something close to this that he said to me long ago.)
               In other words, contention over “controversial” issues (what issue isn’t?) turns more heads than reading (yawn), or viewing vetted news stories. Rupert Murdoch of Fox, Jeff Zucker of CNN, and other media robberbarons have literally turned acrimony into industry.
                Which brings us at last to “social” media. This is the Internet's crowning gory, which has transformed conflict, anger, ignorance, stupidity, hatred, pose, lie, conspiracy theory, berserk declamation into a commodity so precious as to have made an insufferable, callow millennial, Mark Zuckerberg, the tenth richest person in the world. Exclamation point. And the children shall bleed us.
                Result: the country is now famously in permanent contention, divisiveness, polarization, reactionary extremism, snarling petulance on left and right---created and reinforced by demographic/marketing-ruled Internet, cable news, social media, for profit. Right: confusion, suspicion, disagreement are gold. The USA might as well be the MMA. There is "you're wrong" on one side, and "you're wrong" on the other side, and never the twain shall meet. Which reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain:
               "Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
                The obvious solution? Ban the Internet! Let the government run it, and levy heavy fines for bad grammar, spelling, and use of the word, "awesome." Better yet, just outlaw social media outright. How delicious that would be! Imagine those millennial thumbs with nothing to type! Yes, I realize these things will never happen---too threatening to corporate fat---but it would be absolutely fine with me. No, really. I think that 24/7 guvment-approved Mickey and Jesus would be preferable to what we have now! I mean, in the old days (not so long ago), things that should be said only in living rooms and bars were not the news of the day. There was debate, actual discussion, not permanent rift. At the end of a Congressional day, Speaker of the House Tip O' Neill and Republican leader Bob Michel had dinner together.
 

The left is deranged with self-righteous “woke” politics, the right is Trumpshit-crazy with hatred of the left’s self-righteous “woke” politics. The ancient “melting pot” egalitarian ideal is now considered by ethnic studies academics to have been a plot by whitey to keep minorities down, denying their identities.

                I could go on. So I will! Let’s see. . .
               There is, oh, the Kardashian empire (net worth in the many billions), built on a video of one Kardashian daughter having oral, traditional and anal intercourse with a male, and drinking his semen---the new "start-up," apparently. . .Corporations happily anointing “influencers”---puerile young (mostly) women showing other puerile young women what make-up to wear---and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars for their little videos. . .Tik-Tok being routinely mined for personal information by China to some nefarious end or other. . .Social media infiltrated and manipulated by Russia to influence elections. . .The Jesus Freaks of the Supreme Court banning abortion---even for rape victims, of all things vicious and deranged---at a time when countless babies are born to people who have neither the wherewithal nor inclination to care for them. . .What else? Hmm. . .The long-gone middle class, an "American Dream" turned into American Ream. . .Ongoing inflation, recession, depression, anti-depressants. . ."Private equity" groups of rich nobodies redefining cynicism, as they turned the basic need of housing into their own private stock market. . .About ninety-nine percent of the citizenry not knowing how to function without phones, thumb-typing. . .The Internet-stoked death of capitalization, grammar, spelling. . .People routinely sitting together looking at their respective phones, rather than speaking. . .Posting photos and videos of food, or preening at the edge of the Grand Canyon (those who do not fall off in the process) on Instagram and Twitter replacing actual experience. . .Public education long ago gutted by testing instead of learning, now just another thing to be gamed. . .College students largely majoring in money, as opposed to actual professions, or actual learning. . .A growing shortage of persons in traditional professional roles, from airline pilots to teachers, because most people prefer to create “start-ups” and other get-rich gambits with the Internet. . .Election to public office now largely based on manipulation via Internet, fake or otherwise. . .Most people in the country no longer having means of intelligently processing information, let alone discerning fact from pedophile pizza parlors. . .Artificial intelligence on the brink of utterly destroying believability of any image or information. . .Oblivious, fabulously greedy youth, obsessed with consuming anything cool or awesome (passwords to acceptance), from bags of "single origin" $300 coffee to food-truck brain tacos, aggressively conforming in terms of fashion, speech, cars. . . 
               All presided over by hap-hap-happy, rolling-in-dough TeeVee newsmannequins, grinning as if on intravenous valium as they narrate the demise of the planet and civilization.
                Gasp.
                Mental Illness? This country is a stinky, heavily tattooed recluse hiding in the basement, staring fish-eyed at a computer screen, scratching his or her billions-served belly, farting through old underpants, swilling Diet Pepsi and canned cocktails, masturbating to porn that would have disgusted Caligula, AR-15 close by to deal with deep state stormtroopers, heathens, minorities, women, gays, Nancy Pelosi. Either that or throwing asinine, sanctimonious “pink pussy hat” weekend parties in the streets, carrying impotent signs about “Repignicuns” and “Regulate Dicks,” conflating lascivious sexual behavior with “rights” and “liberation,” turning every issue into identity politics, and “diversity” and "inclusion" into code words for quota systems and discrimination worthy of the China Cultural Revolution. (The opinions in this column alone prevent me from being hired by "woke"/PC corporations.) Glazed over with widely legalized super-pot, sometimes with 100 percent THC content, baking brains into private worlds where you can star in your own private hallucination. You know, like the mash shooters do.
                Common ground? Gone as cheap gas. The left is deranged with self-righteous “woke” politics, the right is Trumpshit-crazy with hatred of the left’s self-righteous “woke” politics. The ancient “melting pot” egalitarian ideal is now considered by ethnic studies academics to have been a plot by whitey to keep minorities down, denying their identities. I am reminded of the actress who starred in “Crazy Rich Asians,” Constance Wu, telling an interviewer that if he did not acknowledge her ethnicity, he was “erasing” her. Wow! So what do you do, say, “Hey, I see you’re Chinese-American?” Do that, and you’re accused of racism, stereotyping.
               Speaking of which, if you are “white,” you are---according to the tenets of Black Lives Matter---automatically assumed to be a racist, get this, whether you know it or not. Look it up. It's in the treatise. And if you dare to assert that a great deal was done in the country to combat racism before Black Lives Matter---from the Civil Rights Movement to the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action, the youth movements, even media---you are promptly labelled a purveyor of “revisionist white history” (this has happened to me) by BLM adherents and their comically labelled, obsequious “white allies.”
                Last, but not least, there is the astonishing, pervasive re-emergence of old-fashioned Nazi-esque racism aimed at all minorities, Jews, gays (and permutations thereof) by gap-toothed, gap-brained, know-nothing giant children suckled on the Internet. These would-be brownshirts are on one side, and the left, and “leftist media” straining to exalt anything minority or “LGBTQIA2S+” (yes, that is the full self-obsessed acronym), are on the other.
                I run screaming.
                And so here we are, at least half the population armed to the eyebrows, seething with hatred, suspicion, paranoia; media built almost entirely of acrimony, the Internet a rat’s nest of fiction fit for first graders; popular culture dumbed down to sensory assault, banality, killing, perversion; Internet sexual degradation, scamming, predation wired into every home and phone; “music” that panders to teen/tween mentality and outright criminality, hatred, narcissism, materialism, consumerism, greed; citizenry bursting with no knowledge, no perspective, no ability or interest in acquiring either, and, in the case of most persons under, say, 40, no understanding of anything that occurred on this planet before they were born.
                Cure all this, and guns will go away.
                It's that simple!

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