“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Rahm Emmanuel, former Democratic campaign advisor (William J. Clinton), White House Chief of Staff (Barack Obama) and Mayor of Chicago.

27 February 1933 is the day that Germany’s Reichstag, Capitol Building, burned. To this day, the exact perpetrators are unknown. The recently appointed German Chancellor (head of government) used the fire as a pretext to suspend civil liberties. That Chancellor was a guy by the name of Adolf Hitler, an illegal immigrant to Getmany from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Since I don’t know of anyone who supports or endorses the riot, I can conclude that the big tech social media companies’ responses are draconian. Couple that with the increasing capability of artificial intelligence to perform surveillance and censorship, and,, well, we have the makings of a dandy way to limit and restrict free speech. The censoring is performed by private sector social media companies, who claim to be neutral forums for free expression. The companies are acting contrary to the principles of a neutral forum, declaring opinions and positions with which they disagree as hate speech, their dubious justification for censorship. That’s not creepy, is it?

The Capitol Hill riot has been the justification for deleting not only President Trump’s but Lt. Gen Mike Flynn’s and defence attorney Sidney Powell’s Twitter© accounts. Sen Josh Hawley had a book deal cancelled by Simon and Schuster (a CBS affiliate). Hawley’s transgression was exercising a challenge to the electoral votes of a state. This right to challenge is outlined in the U.S. Constitution. It has been exercised in the past by such people as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.. One can easily conclude that this was an act of censorship. Facebook© suspended Brandon Stracha and The Walk Away© Campaign’s Facebook© page. Stracha’s page deals with individuals who have become disillusioned with The Democratic Party and “walked away.”

Time travel eighty eight years, and we see that the Reichstag Fire was an excuse to suspend civil liberties, just as the riot was a pretext to censor Conservative thought on social media. Free speech has been stifled. That Big Tech gave big money to the Democrats made these moves all that more unsettling.

When the major legacy communications and media companies, overlooked, ignored, and generally derided claims of voter fraud in the battleground states, claims with strong supporting evidence, there was even more reason to suspect that the election was rigged. Biden is entering his Presidency, not with a cloud over his legitimacy, but a cyclone.

Artificial Intelligence can advance the goals of the surveillance state. And we give the tech companies the right to sell data regarding our activity, e.g. purchases, sites visited, blog entries, to interested third parties, like the federal government. The government can conduct domestic surveillance via a third party and deny it is even taking place.

This situation stopped being about President Trump on 4 November. That was when the evidence of alleged voter and electoral fraud began appearing and became a threat to our freedom. The allegations have not been vetted in any court. Courts have dismissed the claims not on the merit of the claims made, but on procedural grounds, i.e. lack of standing.

And so, before even attaining the power of the Executive Branch, the Democrats in the Legislative Branch are rushing Trump supporters (all 74+million) to judgement along with President Trump. Their media allies report the Democrats’ accusations, unvetted. Trump supporters can be dismissed as “bigots”, and thus denied their rights to free expression in public forums, like social media platforms.

“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Barack H. Obama, then a Senator, campaign speech 14 April, 2008.

So perhaps Obama’s bitter clingers, quite easily, morphed into Trump supporters, because Trump spoke to their concerns. Now some Trump supporters, a few thousand out of 74 million, stormed the Capitol. Perhaps agent provocateurs, posing as Trump supporters, possibly mixed in with them, possibly inciting them to violence, if not just criminal trespass.

But 74 million people have been stigmatized, as Trump supporters have been since 2015, and the social media companies are denying conservatives their rights in a grand display of prejudice. The actions of a few are the pretext to deprive the many of their rights. It keeps happening. Berlin 1933, Washington 2021.

Do we really expect human nature to change?

Nothing

Matters

Any

Longer.

While we were busy committing virtual seppuku Wednesday, Kim Jong Un made a statement on the terrible failure of the most recent North Korean Five Year Plan, yet another failure that can be attributed to Marxist economic theory.

Still, the American Left continues to romance Marxism. It isn’t all Che Guevara tee shirts and clinched fist salutes. Most people like to eat, own the roof that shelters them, and possess more than two changes of underwear.

Lawyers like to work. We all know that. They can make a pretty good living interpreting, implementing, or litigating against the laws, rules, and directives of the administrative state. But, on the other hand, people who know how to manufacture and market things,tend to make economies and the nations they support, prosperous.

Prosperity is not a dirty word. Put another way, poverty sucks. Think about that.

Before COVID, people were working, making money. The number of illegal immigrants undercutting the wages of blue collar workers had plummeted. And then COVID hit the United States and the rest of the world. To America, COVID has been an attack deadlier and more danaging than Pearl Harbour.

Somebody is going to have to advocate for small business and the American worker. Wall Street spent the last thirty years financing the export of American jobs, robbing Americans of their jobs and dignity. And Wall Street bankrolled Biden, just as the financiers bankroll most of the Never Trump Republican Establishment, e.g. the Bush family and Mitt Romney. There is a wave of unjustified nostalgia for the status quo ante Trump.

It would be nice for American high tech workers to have jobs, jobs to pay off student debt, and get these workers on the road to owning houses, starting their own families and businesses. And cheap immigrant high tech labour is a priority for Silicone Valley, another source of Democratic support.

It is very difficult to savour a pyrrhic victory, yet another irony for your consideration, Democrats.

After today’s Dung Deluge in D.C. , I decided I needed a Christmas Do-Over. You remember Christmas, don’t you? It was two weeks ago. Even with the pandemic protocols, it seems more like ages ago.

Fortunately, our brothers and sisters in the Russian Orthodox Church still use the Julian Calendar and the Julian Calendar’s December 25 is the Gregorian Calendar’s January 7. So we get another crack at Giving Glory to God in The Highest, and Peace to Men (People) of Good Will.

Russia is a great place to live if one is a basso profundo. The basso registers feature prominently in the liturgical chants.

Metropolitan Hilarion is presiding at this liturgy. He’s is only 54, a spring chicken by Orthodox Bishop standards. He does not look like Santa Claus yet. And he still trims his beard. If you’ve ever wondered why a group of (Russian) Orthodox Bishops gathered in one room looks like a Santa Claus convention, it’s because St Nicholas ( the original Santa) was an Orthodox Bishop.

The choir, mostly soprano, sounds magnificent. I need a heavenly choir right now. They have the incense being passed over the altar. The choir has been singing nonstop for almost two hours.

Serenity returns.

19. Jul. 1957- 05. Jan. 2021

I lost a friend today. I was exchanging emails in the morning. He died of cardiac arrest, waiting for a bus, in the afternoon. He was 63.

I’m a little numb.

That’s it. For now.

ADULTS ONLY 18+ NSFW

This is my first foray into homoerotic kink. It is NSFW, sexually explicit with flagellation. It is purely a work of fiction. I do not endorse this type of activity. ADULTS ONLY

“Dignity is a luxury of the well-fed and the free.”

The words struck at my core. I had not eaten in a week. What water I had came from the spring in the park. I trusted it. The City, when it last provided public health services, certified that it was safe to drink. That was when, 2—-? 2—? Not too long ago.

How Marco and his bounty hunters found me, I still wonder about. I guess I really had been nanochipped after all. Bruno lied about the vaccines then. The Bastard.

Bruno fed me all right. The crickets that were just then becoming available were the protein. After they molt, take the heads off, fry them in cottonseed oil, dump some cumin and paprika on them and maybe you really are eating the newly “discovered” land shrimp, that The Party’s Gourmet Page touts every other post.

You could close your eyes, dream you were eating something else, as long as their chirping stopped long enough before you ate them. You take what they give you here. Ginger Rogers had a steer tattooed on her arse, as if to say she was the only meat they could get right now. The joke worked well at the brothel, especially when the soldiers came. We were kindred spirits, after all. Our bodies and those of the soldiers were both State Property.

As pimps go, Bruno sufficed. He preferred to think of himself as a full spectrum recreational facilitator. I suppose he was what they once termed a bull shitter. Was that what they called them, back before the Protein Sequestration? We took a chance on being discovered and looked up the term bull on the Fact Portal. Myrna Loy knew the override code to reach the unexpurgated words. And there it was, a cow with a dick and balls instead of teats.

“In the old days, the bulls fucked the cows, and that’s how it all started. Pretty soon there would be a calf, the cow would give milk. And not long after that somebody figured out how to make ice cream, the real kind.

I stopped my daydreaming when Marco scanned the code on my chest. The screen that I could not see gave out the information the Data Reserve shared about me. Height, last calculated BMI (for Caloric Monitoring). Another would be performed to gauge how well I had been eating during the Free Range Interval. That would show how long I had been a fugitive. If the BMI was within acceptable range or higher, that usually meant a fugitive had not been free all that long.

“Did you flee of your own volition, or were you released for Training and Recreation?”

” Fled, Sir.” There was no use in lying. Released For Training Quarry were always thusly noted on their files.

” How long before you were bagged?

“Three weeks, Sir.”

“Quite a bit of sport, you turned out to be, Mr Cary Grant .”.

” Angelo, take Cary Grant, give him a scrub and brush down, use the #2 strap on him. Stop before you draw blood. Then let those interested, bugger him while he’s eating his oatmeal. If he gets high marks, feed him seconds, with extra sugar”.

So that’s how it would turn out.

The bath and the scrubbing felt good. Getting my pubes, my armpits, my head shaved, my arse crack and anus waxed was customary after any Free Range Interval. Keeps the lice in check, so they said. Actually I think it was the power trip that comes with a Fugitive Capture. Makes The Capture that much more ostentatious.

Bathed, shaved and waxed, a collar came back on, the GPS tracker double-checked, I was taken to the St. Andrew’s Cross, and beaten with the narrow #2 strap, that left lovely cross-hatched welts on my back. The sting was barely tolerable. I would NOT cry out. No blood was drawn.

Angelo had me kneel before him. He motioned for me to take his now blood engorged penis in my mouth and fellate him. I did as I was directed. It took little effort to bring Angelo off, taking him deep a few times, until I “polished” him off with my tongue. He was easy to please after he used the strap. Truth be told , I just wanted to get this cock sucked and squirted, the balls emptied, so I could eat food. Food for godsakes. Jizz is for the amateurs.

The bowl placed before me, I knelt down, mouth in the bowl , arse in the air ready to accept however many pricks and dildoes were pressed against my anus. I stretched easily, more interested in food than buggery.

Typical, in so many ways, of a capture in the Game World. Maybe one day I will make it to The Border. Yet I still loved The Sport.

I’m watching old commercials from the 1970’s. The men have haircuts that look just awful. Think John Kerry, who hasn’t changed his style since he testified before Congress in 1971. Why, John, why?

Then there are commercials for Kodak cameras, pantyhose, Sears. This was even before VCRs caught on, or compact discs. You could go buy a TRS-80 computer at Radio Shack.

You could buy McDonald’s gift certificates. Burger King had this annoying “King” character, who, by comparison, imparted to Ronald McDonald the dignity of the Pope.

There were no ATM machines to speak of. Nor internet, cell phones. The technology is one thing that is different, but using media to promote consumerism is the same. We just think different stuff will give us fulfillment now. Why just change your hair colour, when you can change your whole damn gender?

But everything was presented in a familiar context, or maybe not. I just remember this stuff.

There was Farrah Fawcett, Ricardo Montalban, Hervé Villechaize, Gavin MacLeod, James Garner, Marriette Hartley. I was busy getting divorced during a lot of this, pursuing jobs in work I hated, trying to deal with the conflict between the values I was raised with, while I lived in a culture that was rejecting them, like a baboon heart, transplanted into a human.

The women’s hairstyles were as dated as the men’s. The styles all looked like hair helmets you could pull over a bald head. Nobody had tattoos. I never thought I would view that as odd. Today I can see a woman cutting hair, waiting tables, fixing lattes, sporting a full sleeve and not even look twice. The world, superficially, is very different.

It was a nightmare relived, like instant breakfast, instant coffee, instant oatmeal, instant grits, instant pudding.

Dear God, why?

I always have to remember that Christmas isn’t just a day but a whole season. You never know where you will find your Christ Child in His manger or when the Magi will show up. If one is truly devout, Christmas can end on Candlemas, February 2nd, the Feast of The Presentation of the Christ Child in The Temple. And, if one is eager to get the ball rolling again, The Annuciation is March 25th. On that day, the Angel Gabriel announces to The Blessed Virgin Mary that she will bear The Messiah.

Santa Claus and the whole manic secular holiday is fairly short. No sooner does the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade end at Herald Square, than we’re looking at After-Christmas sales, or so it seems. Fun, for sure, just like a roller coaster. You never know when the real joyful day will come.

This Christmas, the magic day was today, when my son told me, “Dad I have responsibilities.” In his case, it’s a dog to care for. And a job to be at. But he acknowledged he has adult responsibilities. He knows he’s an adult. He also played the piano over the phone for me. 32 years old. I am so proud.

That’s Christmas. No tree needed. Nor even a Midnight Mass,

My son is a man. And I helped in his becoming that person. I did my job.

I awoke about an hour ago, around 0230. J is at work, moving stock from the delivery truck and the stock room to the shelves. The holiday overnights should end soon, maybe another two weeks.

I am watching a freight train go through Ashland. Spotting a train is like catching a fish. I sit and wait and see what happens.

I made the mistake of reading a Reddit thread from someone who possessed more opinions than facts. There are a lot of people like this person, myself included. Like Montaigne, I will now write about the one person I do know. Me. Gets a little tedious, reading opinions from gas bags who castigate people they don’t like as “bloviators”. Jesus spoke about people who call out others for having specks in their eyes, while they possess logs in theirs. Yeah, some things never change.

I guess the internet serves as a huge safety valve. It allows people to fulminate about some public figure or another, without resorting to messy assassinations. Maybe Oswald would have remained a harmless loser, had he possessed a Facebook© page rather than a Mannlicher Carcano rifle with a telescopic sight.

Most of us, though, go through life with a large assemblage of hunches or intuitive feelings that the whole story on any subject, issue , or person is never fully revealed or disclosed. It’s similar to that subliminal sense of danger that keeps a good soldier alive. We know things are incompletely revealed. We know we are being told stories. We sense when we are getting “spin” around a person or situation or legislative proposal. That’s why politics reads like a melodrama most of the time.

Powerful people want to hold on to the power that they have, whether that power is money, political influence or marketable charisma. Getting the news that the days of power are over is most unwelcome. Like the alcoholic, who is the last person to comprehend his alcoholism, the “has- been” is always the last person to know the glory days are gone. It’s what makes those commercials Joe Namath does for Medicare Advantage plans so agonizingly cringe-worthy.

(Joe, the game is over! Half the people watching you don’t know or remember who you were.)

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I have this thing that rents space in my cranium. It may or may not support me in what I want to do, choose to do, need to do.

I am NOT the Master of my thoughts. I am more like a spectator to the cerebral sumo wrestling between the part of my brain interested in my welfare and its mirror image committed to my unhappiness and discontent.

If you think this is overblown, consider that taking care of me often sounds like selfishness on my part. Sleep, exercise, regular meals, prayer, positive self-talk all sound like self-indulgent luxuries rather than the fundamentals of positive self-care.

So here we are, ready to finish another orbit around our home star and I’m back in the Remedial Human Being Section.

Oh well. Be kind to me. Because I probably won’t be.