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Making perfect stock for kindling wood

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2000 Years to Christmas

Cold as hell in here. Haven’t you got that fire going yet? Put some of that kindling around the bottom and let’s see if that catches. Okay, okay – nice. Hey … why does that kindling have an F-hole. MARVIN!!

Hello, friends. Well, winter is upon us again. This is the time of year when Big Green most deeply regrets squatting in an abandoned hammer mill. (Sounds like a good album name: Big Green most deeply regrets …. or not.) Squatters don’t get energy hookups. They just flat out ignore us, man. It’s like we’re not even here …. which is good if they’re the cops, but not so much if they’re delivering pizzas. (If cops start carrying pizzas, we’re all in trouble.)

The ghost of El Kabong

Okay, so we rely on Marvin (my personal robot) for many things. This week, it’s tending the fire. So I told him to go get some kindling wood so he could get the damn fireplace started. He came back with an odd but acceptable assortment of maple, rosewood, and birch fragments. I thought, “Hey, what the hell – maybe he’s not such a fuck up.”

Well, now I have to eat my epithets. I had pictured Marvin rooting through the neighborhood, picking up discarded pieces of wood. Turns out, he just made his way into our rehearsal space, smashed up some of our instruments like El Kabong, and brought the remains in to be incinerated. Okay, so … let me say that again. My robot assistant smashed an old guitar and a violin so he could have kindling for a fire.

You get the kindling. I'll just go over here for a while.

For the greater good

Hell, you know, this reminds me of a song. It’s called Greater Good, one of them there Big Green songs from the 1980s. I played a live version of it on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN a couple of years ago. Anyhow, there’s part of the lyric that goes something like this:

There’s something lurking there behind your eyes
It sees in me perfect stock for kindling wood
It’s sentimental for those bad old days
when sinners were murdered for the greater good
It wants to burn me for the greater good

Ironically, I think the guitar Marvin smashed up may have been the one I wrote that song on. Somehow he was trying to make the metaphor come true. That’s not something I strongly recommend when it comes to rock songs. Such a practice could make life even more confusing than it is now, and damn it, life is confusing enough!

What is the plan, man?

While we’re trying to keep warm over here in upstate New York, I imagine you are making plans for your holiday revelries. We are doing the same, in our own fashion, bit by bit. I’m still planning a holiday nano concert – just you wait and see. Marvin is looking forward to his annual gift of light machine oil. Mansized tuber is hoping for some more plant food. Lincoln, well …. reinstatement, perhaps, in true Trumpian fashion.

Got interesting yuletide plans? Share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Get them to me early enough, and I’ll write a lame song about one of them, chosen randomly. Because that’s the way we roll.

Political Rants

Making half of us second class citizens

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I heard a few moments of oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health while they were underway. I didn’t, however, get the chance to dig into it until about a week later, when Michael Moore ran the full audio feed on his podcast, Rumble. You can also read the transcript posted on the Supreme Court’s web site, if you prefer.

Either way you access it, it’s pretty ugly, but that’s not surprising. The fact is, we’ve been seeing this slow-motion train wreck coming for decades, and many, many of us chose to do nothing to stop it. But before I get into that familiar diatribe, I want to comment briefly on some of what was said during these oral arguments – specifically, a few reactionary hot takes as analyzed by someone who is not a Con Law expert.

Being neutral on a speeding train

If you listen to the entire proceedings, you will hear Justice Kavanaugh dive into a discussion of precedent. Kavanaugh cited cases like Brown v. Board of Education as fodder for his argument that sometimes it’s appropriate to overturn decisions that are wrongly decided. Legal experts have pointed out that most if not all of his examples were cases that expanded rights, whereas overturning Roe would take rights away from Americans. But he also contended that the court should be “scrupulously neutral” on the question of abortion because, he claims, the Constitution is neutral on abortion.

Kavanaugh affects to consider Plessy v. Furguson as wrongly decided – fair enough. But wasn’t Plessy effectively the court’s way of saying that they were neutral on “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws? After all, the majority wasn’t forcing all states to adopt these laws. If a state wanted to do so, it was up to them. In light of that, what was Plessy, then, if not “scrupulous neutralism”? How can he describe this kind of neutralism as being a positive thing?

Fetishizing enumerated rights

Both Justice Thomas and Justice Kavanaugh appeared to agree with Mississippi’s Solicitor General that abortion was not a right explicitly laid out in our 18th Century constitution. If they mean the word does not appear in the text, they are correct. However, it seems more than unreasonable to expect that the only human rights we should honor must be spelled out in our founding documents.

For instance, is there anything in the Constitution about a right to breathe? How about walking across the street – is that buried somewhere in Article II? Reactionary Supreme Court Justices play this little game all the time. Now, I’m not even just an old country lawyer, but I’ll say this much. It seems to me that what happens under your skin should be your own damn business. That strikes me as the closest thing to a natural right as anything I’ve ever heard.

Ladies choice, please

I have a suggestion for the Justices. Your honors, take this as you will. If you are considering a decision that will relegate women to second-class citizenship, it seems only fair that the decision should be made by those amongst you who are best situated to understand the full ramifications. I’m speaking of the women currently seated on the Court. Let’s let them decide how to move forward on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. You boys just wait in the cloak room until they work it out.

Hey – if you don’t have a uterus, you should have a say in this. Simple as that.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

The worst of all possible universes

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2000 Years to Christmas

Just give me a minute, man. I’m changing the strings on my superannuated cheap-ass guitar. And yes, I’m using new strings. Don’t ask me where I got them. Lets’ just say that someone’s Christmas stocking is going to be a little light this year.

Oh, hi, blog visitors. It’s you’re old pal Joe. Yeah, I’ve made the momentous decision to restring my guitar because I don’t want to even attempt to deliver a Christmas concert on those rusty old cables I’ve been twanging on. And when I say twanging, I mean just what I say. Just give a listen to my recent nano concert on YouTube and you’ll get the picture. And the picture has sound, by the way.

Holiday Tide … I mean, Cheer

Of course, I’ve always been terrible at marketing things. (That’s precisely why I went into advertising, but I digress.) Given that it’s the holiday season, you’d think I’d be hawking our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, like a maniac. But the fact is, those songs are just the tip of the Christmas iceberg here in Big Green land. There’s plenty more where those came from. You’ll see!

Some of those songs are from Matt’s early period, when he recorded Christmas songs on his 4-track cassette deck and distributed them as low-rent, labor-intensive gifts. And then there are some songs from the Ned Trek period, which covers the second half of the 2010s and, technically, is still underway. Many songs in this latter group feature funny voices and bizarre ass lyrics. Oh, and many in the former group, as well.

All about the wormhole

I wish I could say that everyone is looking forward to the holiday season. Fact is, I squat with a bunch of sad sacks. Take Mitch Macaphee (please!). Our Mad Science advisor has spent the past three weeks laughing up his sleeve at Mark Zuckerberg. The reason for that is simple – Mitch has been conjuring wormholes into alternate universes since long before Zuck was a tike. The notion of someone creating a fake universe seems hilariously redundant to him.

Okay, so here’s my question: what if Mitch finds out you can make money at that Zuck scam? Will he borrow Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine and rip open the fabric of space/time? Will he then charge punters fifty bucks a head to step through and shake hands with purple protozoa-men from the fourth dimension? And last, but perhaps most importantly, will he share the proceeds with us? THAT’s what keeps ME up at night.

So, is this your answer to the Metaverse?

The reason for the seizin’

In any case, our Christmas season is starting out like all the rest of them have: fighting off the bailiffs. As you know, we’ve been squatting in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of two decades (or, perhaps, the worst part). The local authorities, bless their hearts, have been trying to evict us for most of that time. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without an eviction notice!

Thus far, we have let our nasty upstairs neighbors answer the door when the cops come calling. Frankly, I think they’ve forgotten we still live down here. And truth be told, I am in no mood to remind them.

Political Rants

Running out of Greek letters (and patience)

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News of the new Omicron COVID variant is settling in, and people are understandably wary and disgusted. Every time it seems like this thing is ending, this thing is not ending, and there are few things more frustrating than that. Life prior to the pandemic seems like this strange, distant, exotic state of being that can never be entirely restored.

Of course, we really don’t know very much about Omicron. The networks are doing their best to pre-emptively scare the living shit out of everyone. I try to tune out all but the most authoritative voices; nevertheless, it eventually catches up with all of us in one way or another.

The great, untried solution

Now, we know how to get out of this. In case you haven’t heard, this is what needs to happen: rich people need to defeat their hunger for more riches. And if that doesn’t happen, we need to do the work for them. In other words, we need to separate Big Pharma from their excess profits and aggressively distribute their intellectual property (i.e. the formulae for the COVID vaccines) to the developing world.

We need to vaccinate the entire world. The only way we can do that is by compelling these manufacturers to drop their patent rights. With Moderna, it would be easy – the United States participated in their vaccine development. They can compel the others to follow suit. In the medium term, that will help poorer countries protect their citizens. But in the short term, we need to push global vaccine distribution with all of the resources we can bring to bear.

No place like home

What’s just as important as getting people vaccinated in the developing world? Getting people vaccinated in the industrialized world, and that includes right here at home. We’re still seeing almost 1,900 COVID deaths every single day, with new cases in excess of 110,000 daily. That far outstrips countries we have travel bans against, like South Africa, which is seeing about 8,000 new cases and 80 deaths a day – too many, yes, but not a fly on us.

I know – I’ve been making this case for a long time. But it’s as true now as it was in July, and in some ways it’s even MORE true now. For one thing, we know a lot more about how safe and effective the vaccines are, despite the bullshit being thrown up by the right and some on the loony left. For another, we are seeing in real time what happens when you let a virus run rampant. It’s like a massive scientific experiment – let’s see how many freakish mutations we can spawn. And at 110,000 cases a day, the hottest corner of the test mass is right here in the U.S. of A.

Keep your head down, and your chin up

When I started getting take out again regularly, back in the summer, people were just starting to gather in restaurants and pubs the way they used to, pre-COVID. No masks, lots of drinks, and plenty of yakking at one another. Now we’re seeing COVID cases overrun our local emergency rooms. County officials are telling us not to go to the ER unless we’re having a heart attack, stroke, etc.

This is nuts. And it’s going to keep happening until we take action. We need to keep pushing our electeds to take this pandemic seriously, and push global distribution of vaccines and treatments. And we need to do it now.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

There’s a thank you in this somewhere

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2000 Years to Christmas

Over the river and through the woods to Macaphee’s house we go. Isn’t that the lyric? Got it wrong again? Damn. Okay, here goes. Over the river and through the woods to Trevor James Constable’s house we go.

Oh, hi. Didn’t think anyone would be reading the blog on Thanksgiving weekend, but here we are. My guess is that you’re trying to get away from your annoying relatives, especially uncle Sully, quaffing his gin, telling you all about it. That’s the kind of holiday we know and love – food and family conversation, both thoroughly indigestible.

What’s cooking, bad looking?

Let’s talk about the fare. People have this mental picture of what the traditional Thanksgiving feast should be like. Naturally, it is a concoction of many different stories and fables. The harvest feast shared by English settlers and Wampanoag people in 1621 was likely a diplomatic gathering of sorts. Who the hell knows what they ate? Corn, maybe. Freaking pine cones.

Yeah, well … we don’t go in for these fables. None of that in the old Cheney Hammer Mill. Of course, we’re all vegetarians, except for one or two vegans. Actually, Anti-Lincoln is a pescatarian, though in a very narrow sense, as he only eats one kind of fish. That’s the ancient Coelacanth, and frankly, they’re a little thin on the ground in Central New York. Most of the ones you find up here are fossilized. Sometimes they’ve got a little friend in the rock with ’em.

A thankless job

I don’t want to even suggest that Big Green is exemplary of bands in general. Contrary to popular 1960s belief, the groups don’t all live together, as Frank Zappa suggested so many years ago. And no, we don’t all gather around a big walnut table on Thanksgiving day and break bread together in fellowship. Ridiculous suggestion. The table is oak, and it used to hold woodcutter’s tools.

One of us has to cook. I usually leave that task to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). That’s because you can write up a menu, insert it into his scanner, and he will attempt to make it real. That’s the good part. The bad part is that he makes it real bad. The tofurkey is like tire rubber from the 1930s. The stuffing came out of an abandoned easy chair. And don’t even get me started on the sweet potatoes.

I know you’re supposed to thank the chef, as well as the author of the meal, but it seldom happens around this dump. Next time Mitch invents something, let’s hope it’s edible.

Incoming: annoying holiday mail

Ass Clown!

You know how people you hated in high school sometimes send a letter around the holidays telling you what they did all stupid year? Well, I’ve been thinking about doing something similar. Just a festive photo of the high times we’re having this Thanksgiving, so as to lord it over all you losers who are spending the day alone with a can of spam.

Of course, like anyone on facebook, I had to embellish the image a bit. Hard to gloat when you live in an abandoned hammer mill. All of our photos turned out hideous, so here’s a shot of me at the Macy’s multi-promotional parade, brought to you by EveryCorp(R) – slogan: “If it were in our inventory, we’d sell you ass.”

Political Rants

Keeping an eye on the foreign policy blob

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After a week of nearly non-stop domestic news, good and bad, I’m going to talk about foreign policy. Think of this as the latest in an ongoing series of posts about how bad Biden’s foreign policy is. Frankly, the only good thing I can say about it at this point is that it is better than Trump’s version, albeit not by much.

Longtime readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast Strange Sound (now on hiatus) know that I have been critical of Biden’s imperial world view from the beginning. Since his candidate days, he has de-emphasized foreign affairs. His campaign web site, for instance, included almost no detailed information about his plans in this regard. That was not because he had no plans – it was because he didn’t want to talk about them.

Target Asia (again)

If you watch the mainstream media, you can’t miss the extent to which they are obsessing over China. They don’t do that unless our nation’s political leaders give them the space to bloviate. This is true of the so-called liberal networks, like MSNBC.

Morning Joe, for instance, platformed Indiana Senator Todd Young, who stuck to his party’s current insistence on referring to the nation of China as “The Chinese Communist Party”. (See Young’s pinned tweet about his “Endless Frontier Act”.) Young spent some of his time warning of China’s undue influence in the South China Sea (which, as the name suggests, is closer to them than it is to us). There have been multiple stories, also, about China’s supposed military hardware, like hypersonic missiles, and so on.

Enter the killer subs

This would be laughable if it weren’t so potentially dangerous. The United States accusing another country of throwing its weight around militarily is objectively ridiculous. We have a much, much more muscular presence on the periphery of China than China does. That includes massive military installations throughout the region, thousands of troops, fighter/ bomber squadrons, and a fleets of warships.

Case in point, as Noam Chomsky pointed out recently on Democracy Now!, a single Trident submarine holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy nearly 200 cities in Asia. We have more than one, of course, and have contracted with the Australians to ensure that there will be more killer subs patrolling the Chinese coast.

So, why the hell …. ?

Of course, this policy is about Asia writ large and who calls the shots in the region. American presidents have been focused on this for multiple administrations, with a significant uptick since the Bush II regime. A permanent presence is essential to our ability to project power – and, crucially, the credible threat of power – across the continent.

That’s why it’s target China time. Frankly, we can’t maintain a large military presence in the region without inventing some enemies. I’m personally convinced that that is the reason why the Korean conflict has remained in stasis for seven decades. We need to keep the threat level up to continue this toxic policy.

In short, regardless of what happens on the home front, we need to keep an eye on Biden’s foreign policy establishment, even – and really, especially – if they don’t want us to.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Usual Rubbish

Can Christmas be that far behind?

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2000 Years to Christmas

I don’t think that’s the right box, man. I keep the glass bulbs in the box marked “winter gloves” and the tinsel in the box marked “soup can collection”. That box is marked “Christmas decorations”, and that’s where I keep my soup can collection. And my winter gloves.

Oh, hey. I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in. No, I’m not being anti social. I just don’t want to spoil the surprise. We’re working on our Christmas pageant, and we’re hoping that no one will guess this year’s theme before we finish our parade floats. I’ve had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run out for some more plaster of Paris. What’s that, Anti-Lincoln? Are you sure? Damn. Marvin went to Paris.

What’s in a theme?

I can tell you what the theme won’t be this year. Anti Lincoln wanted to do a reconstruction-themed Christmas. I told him that we simply couldn’t do it justice. Also, our crazy neighbors upstairs would come at us with torches for advancing what they’ve been calling Critical Race Theory. Much as I like the idea of pissing them off, I think we’ll let that one rest.

Then there was the mansized tuber’s idea. Do you really want to hear it? It’s kind of predictable. He had some goofy notion that you could find a fir tree, chop it down, haul it through the snow and back to the Mill, then poke the trunk into a base so that it stands upright. What then? According to tubey, you hang little baubles and lights from the carcass, and when you wake up Christmas morning, they’ll be a surprise under the dead tree. Crazy shit.

Living in Christmas past

Hey, in all honesty, we’re getting older. And when you get on in years, there’s a tendency to look back a bit. We’ve got a kind of storied Christmas past, which is to say that we’ve got a lot of stories about it. Of course, there’s 2000 Years To Christmas, our first album. Then there’s all those Xmas episodes we did on THIS IS BIG GREEN. And don’t forget the fractured carols we sing when we’re drunk, in any season.

Yeah. That costume's a bit much.

Suffice to say, we’ve got a lot of material. If we actually opt for a pageant this year, there will be singing. No dancing, though – unless you count what Marvin does when he updates his operating system. Will there be a full band performance? Well …. not likely. But you may see me sitting in front of a cheap camera, strumming hesitantly on a guitar.

Our pledge to you, dear listener

One promise: I won’t play any Cowboy Scat songs. That’s final. That wouldn’t be Christmas-y. (If you want more promises, I’m taking requests – just use the comment form, below.)

Political Rants

Get back onto that plague ship, you lazy prole!

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The chattering classes are having a hair-on-fire moment about labor. We’ve seen this coming for a while now. I commented on it back in July when retired ad man and political commentator Don Deutsch fired off a petulant little tweet about working people, then yakked about it with Joe Scarborough.

Well, they’re back, and it’s because the service is just not what it should be. Hell, do you realize Joe and Mika had to wait two hours for a flight because there weren’t enough baggage handlers? It’s like workers don’t want to work anymore. Unprecedented … or IS it?

An ill wind, indeed

When the Black Plague ripped through Europe in the 14th Century, it created a massive labor shortage. This was due to the fact that the disease may have killed as much as 1/3 of the population. The peasants who survived were reluctant to return to their rich masters’ fields. This compelled the gentry to sweeten the pot a bit – compensate the workers more, give them money, cut their rent, etc.

That was kind of a great leap forward for labor. Then the gentry passed a law that established a kind of maximum wage. This was to protect the essential feudal relationship between lord and peasant. (They had their own Donnie Deutcshes back then, of course.) It kind of backfired, though – there was a peasant rising, and they won some concessions. By 1500 the feudal system was giving way to another system of worker exploitation.

Here’s a tip for you

What television pundits are complaining about is simple: workers are saying “fuck this lousy job.” The wealthy underwriters of cable television don’t like this. This is the part of supply and demand that drives them nuts. Their pundits roll out the claim that lazy workers are all at home, eating grapes and collecting their federal unemployment enhancement checks.

The fact is, many workers who left their jobs were in tipped industries. Wait staff make sub-minimum wage plus tips, and it’s hard for them to demonstrate that they earned enough income to receive full unemployment. Worse, they get harassed and abused at work, and have to worry about catching COVID. Patrons will tell them to take off their mask if they want a tip. Who needs that bullshit?

Same old same old

Employers, large and small, are conveniently forgetting something: COVID is still killing people. The rolling three-day average is running over 1,100 deaths a day – that’s a 9/11 every third day. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to work remotely. The more poorly-paid, low-benefit occupations tend to be in-person only, and that’s why people are not returning to those jobs.

Also, if this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that withholding labor is an effective tool. If enough people do it, rich people start squawking. When you hear that sound, you know you’re doing something right.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
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Trying to overcome the rule of thumb

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2000 Years to Christmas

Step back a little bit further – you’re out of frame. Okay, now take a step to the right. That’s it. That’s … no, that’s too far. Go back to the left. LEFT! You know, the side your left hand is on. Oh, Jesus!

Oh, hi. Well, once again I’m called upon to do something that I have zero aptitude for. Namely, that’s taking pictures of our band. We do not have an official photographer, which is a shame … because we had a professional photographer before we even had a drummer. (In fact, he sat in on one of our photo sessions as our drummer.) Then we had a drummer, but no guitar player. But I digress.

Bad self portaits

That said, I’m not averse to learning new skills. Neither am I skilled at learning a new verse. The thing is, I am singularly bad at photography. Ask anybody I’ve taken a picture of. I’m always giving them portrait orientation when they want landscape, and vice versa. (Turns out a lot of people prefer portrait – it’s more slimming.)

There’s another thing, too. I think it’s because of these damn camera phones. Back in MY day (get off my lawn!), camera’s were big, bulky things with a massive lens and hard metal shutter buttons. Now, you hold your dumb-ass phone out in front of you, accidentally pressing three or four soft-touch buttons, and next thing you know you’ve essentially butt-dialed Madagascar.

Thumbs up, baby

Then there’s my honking thumb. The sucker keeps getting in the way of the lens. I spend half an hour setting up a shot, getting all the folks together, polishing Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to a high gloss, trimming the root-mesh off of the mansized tuber’s strange protuberances, and so on. Then I take the shot …. and my MF thumb is taking up a third of the frame.

Me and my thumb

See, this is why I’m not filthy rich. If I was a shameless capitalist opportunist, I would promote this as my distinctive style, an aesthetic flourish, a unique take on the world. A little hot air can go a long way, my friends. Soon my thumb-obscured photos would hang in galleries and museums all over Europe, and I would have many imitators. But alas, like my clumsy thumb, the money-making gene skipped my generation of Perry. Them’s the breaks.

Xmas greetings ahead

Now, I know we’ve been doing nothing but repeats these past few Christmases. This year will be different …. I hope. Stay tuned. I’m thinking another nano concert is in order. Think of it as our Christmas Pageant. I’ll be the third reindeer on the left.

Political Rants

Playing (and losing) at the same old game

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There was an old saying among politicos in Albany, according to noted New York State Government scholar and CEO of WAMC public radio Alan Chartock. It went something like this: “Don’t break the other guy’s rice bowl.” (I always felt there was some element of latent racism in this saying – why a rice bowl? – but let’s set that aside for a moment.)

This is, in essence, the principle of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. A legislator will not attack the pet project or campaign funding source of another, and therefore can rely on the same deference from their counterparts. While Chartock’s example is specific to New York politics, it applied at a national level as well, to some extent, and I think the Democratic leadership still plays by these types of rules. Trouble is, their opponents have changed, and they have not changed their tactics in response.

No Justice, No Peace

Honestly, I sometimes have to slap myself across the face to be certain I’m not having some weird, surrealistic dream. The leadership of the Republican party attempted a coup d’etat at the beginning of this year, and the Democrats are treating it like it’s some run-of-the-mill corruption issue. Let me say that again: TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, and thus far NO PLOT LEADER HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

This is not business as usual. Whatever you think of the U.S. government (and I have plenty of criticism for it), the degree to which we have an elected government is a function of the Constitution, and that was very nearly set aside. Trump was actively lobbying state governments to throw out the legitimate results of the 2020 election. He sent an army of thugs into the Capitol to stop the tabulation of the electoral vote and take revenge on the clueless vice president. Again, this is NOT the usual shit.

Proud to be an authoritarian

This all wouldn’t be so bad if it were confined to just a cabal of nutcase politicians and hangers-on. The problem we have, though, is that propaganda works very well. All of that blather about supposed fraud risks associated with mail-in voting has convinced a large number of Americans that the last election was stolen. They are not the majority, but there are enough of them to ensure that the next insurrection will be successful.

Some of these people are truly out of their minds. I mean, we’ve all heard about the Q-anon types who gathered in Dallas last week, anticipating the arrival of John F. Kennedy Jr. They are part of a broader death cult that fantasizes about overthrowing the government, installing Trump as a dictator, and executing people associated with the Democratic party, shooting them in the streets. That’s a pretty dark vision to be shared so broadly.

Who you going to call?

The thing is, the police are doing practically nothing about these people. Some of them are even threatening election officials with murder, torture, you name it, and the cops are AWOL. The FBI is making noises, but little else. They are under very little pressure from Democratic office-holders to hold people like this accountable. It’s obvious that law enforcement do not see these people as a threat. It’s up to our elected officials to change their minds about that. We need to urge them to do so, before these authoritarians act on their warped fantasies.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Official site of the band Big Green